What are so-called "seams" (or aporia) in the Gospel of John? This week I start a new series on this topic with fresh content that is not even found in my book The Eye of the Beholder.

Some scholars use the presence of (allegedly) awkward transitions, (alleged) contradictions, and (allegedly) out-of-order segments to argue for the involvement of editors (even multiple editors) in the composition of the Gospel of John. Evangelical-labeled scholar Gary Burge agrees with the perspective of the skeptic John Earman in saying that "seismic seams" and "editorial traces" are "abundantly evident." While Burge holds that the Beloved Disciple lies somewhere behind all of this editorial activity, he seems to ignore the effects of unnecessarily distancing the Gospel we have from an eyewitness of the events. Ehrman, of course, does not pretend to consider the fourth Gospel to be historically reliable in the first place, so this distancing fits very well with his model.

In this introductory video I explain the concept of seams and what they supposedly show, and I give one example using Ehrman's claim of a contradiction between John 2:23 and John 4:54.

Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403