Gospel of John

The latest and theologically most distinct of the four New Testament gospels, sharing little direct literary material with Mark, Matthew, or Luke and instead built around long discourses and seven symbolic "signs." It opens by identifying Jesus with the eternal "Word" (Logos) present with God at creation, language many scholars read as engaging both Genesis's opening and the Hellenistic Jewish philosophical use of Logos found in writers like Philo, though John's Logos becomes flesh in a way Philo's philosophical mediator never does. Likely shaped by a distinct Christian community, possibly centered in Ephesus, whose long internal development left traces of revision and expansion, it presents an unusually high, explicit claim to Jesus's divinity that later, largely settled Christian doctrine drew on directly.