Gospel of John Was Written MUCH Earlier Than Scholars Say–Here's the Proof! | The Jimmy Akin Podcast
Jimmy Akin | 6 July 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nStpeGNrTtU
5:06 The traditional biography of John, while Fr. Jean Colson may have had a point that the Beloved Disciple wasn't the son of Zebedee, so not one of the Boanergs, would probably just be making a conflation and unlike his views actually be accurate to the Beloved Disciple after misplacing him into the twelve, and it specifically states that Domitian:
- tried to kill John by boiling him in oil and failed
- then banished him to Patmos
- whence he was released by "honest Nerva"
If St. John's measure to get the Apocalypse to the Seven Churches was writing to Caesar (as a banished person was allowed to), I would say that Apoc. 13:18 plus the fact that M. NEPOYA (genitive and vocative of M. NEPOYAC) adds up to 666, plus the fact that the book reached the Seven Churches and John was released actually does show Nerva was a very honest man.
I don't know what "the most recent persecution John mentions" is about, but the seven churches could be persecuted in other ways than by official Caesarian policy, the official Caesarian policy could have been there but be now missing, and if it's in the part that's traditionally taken as end times related, it wouldn't be about a persecution that John saw at all.
I obviously have very little patience for the revisionism that wants to see Apoc. as Preterist. Not how the Church traditionally read it.
5:55 Confirmed.
I started publishing in 2001 on MSN Group Antimodernism, and some Swedish and English stuff from back then is salvaged to blogs on my blogger account, when all MSN Groups closed down, and I am still publishing basically daily (though not yesterday). (For future reference, this is 7.VII.2026)
8:48 Yes, I've used the argument of:
- how St. John in his voice uses the word Jews
- contrasted with how Jesus in His voice used it before the woman of the well of Sychar, in Samaria.
I would tend to argue, 1) in Apocalypse he promotes a greeting from Heaven to Jewish heritage believers: "for the King of the Jews, you are the real Jews, your persecutors aren't" and then 2) guided by the Holy Spirit, in his Gospel tells them "but here on earth, you are actually pretty wise to allow those guys to use the word" ....
10:28 I'd say that St. Paul's use 2 Corinthians 11:24, like that of Jesus before Pilate in the Gospel of John, 18:36, was situational.
"The Jews" was a conenient shorthand, especially before Gentiles for that group of perpetrators.
In the Gospel, I suspect John is actually telling Christians whose grandfathers were Second Temple Jews "now it's time to leave that word to the other set" ...
For instance, in the Synoptics, when Jesus reproaches a group of Jews, generally that specific group (for instance "scribes and Pharisees") is specified in the actual words of Jesus, in the vocative.
In John, the group is left out, "to the Jews" is in the the sentence where John introduces the word, and Jesus is obviously NOT represented as saying "woe to ye Jews" .... whether He specified a group or not, John leaves it out, and in his own intro resumes this as "the Jews" ...
So, I'd date the Gospel to c. 100 AD, when the Sanhedrin of Jamnia or Yavne had claimed the name for non-Christians.
It's intriguing that one leading figure at that Sanhedrin was Yohanan Ben Zakkai, and I'm not sure he wasn't an unbelieving son to a believing Zacheus. Mentioned in Luke 19.
17:22 Horror of horrors.
I just saw a timeline where you put Matthew after Mark and Luke!
In the 19th C. a set of German liberal Protestants started campaigning for Marcan priority and while it was some time before the Kulturkampf, it was clearly popularised by the Kulturkampf.
You see, to certain Protestants, "accretions" are not just after the Bible, in Tradition, but even in the later written books of the NT. So, if Matthew was late, as they liked to argue, that could mean that the Papal and Indefectibilist statements of the Church in Matthew were "later accretions" ...
Traditionally, Matthean priority holds.
St. Matthew, the author of the gospel that we have under his name, was a Galilean, the son of Alpheus, a Jew, and a tax-gatherer; he was known also by the name of Levi. His vocation happened in the second year of the public ministry of Christ; who, soon after forming the college of his apostles, adopted him into that holy family of the spiritual princes and founders of his Church. Before his departure from Judea, to preach the gospel to distant countries, he yielded to the solicitations of the faithful; and about the eighth year after our Saviour's resurrection, the forty-first of the vulgar era [A.D. 41], he began to write his gospel: i.e., the good tidings of salvation to man, through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Of the hagiographers, St. Matthew was the first in the New, as Moses was the first in the Old Testament. And as Moses opened his work with the generation of the heavens and the earth, so St. Matthew begins with the generation of Him, who, in the fulness of time, took upon himself our human nature, to free us from the curse we had brought upon ourselves, and under which the whole creation was groaning. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock was a grandnephew several generations removed of one of the English martyrs.
He published his comment in ...
George's brother, Thomas, was the Bible's publisher. Production began in 1811 and was completed in 1814, in a large, folio edition.[6] As were many editions of the Bible at the time, Haydock's was published and sold by subscription, a few leaves at a time. Subscribers would accumulate the sets of leaves over the years and ultimately have the completed Bible bound. Different copies have general title pages dated 1811, 1812, 1813 or 1823,[7] showing variously Thomas Haydock's Manchester or Dublin locations. English Catholics enthusiastically welcomed this impressive volume that symbolized a reinvigorated Catholicism on the verge of winning its long fight to repeal the Penal Laws. At least 1,500 copies of the first edition were sold.
So, it's not as if I came with some kind of novelty ...
21:25 There are some more interpretations on who the seven kings are:
A) Berean:
Let's us briefly examine the historical kings of Rome to see where we are in the timeline at the time of the books writing. Here are the kings of Rome:
1) Julius Caesar (49-44 BC)
2) Augustus Caesar (31 BC – AD 14)
3) Tiberius Caesar (AD 14-37)
4) Gaius "Caligula" Caesar (AD 37-41)
5) Claudius Caesar (AD 41-54)
6) Nero Caesar (AD 54-68)
We see, starting from the first Caesar of Rome, that Nero would be the sixth. But what about this future seventh one, you ask? You know, the one that the book says was to come but only for a little while. That will surely be a tell-tale point to determine if we're in the right spot with this counting. Well, after the suicide of Nero in 68, the next king to appear was Galba, and guess what? He reigned just seven months before being murdered in January of 69.
The page is going to argue what you have also argued that 666 refers to nrwn qsr.
B) Haydock:
Ver. 9. Seven mountains. We have already observed that ancient Rome stood upon seven mountains. The same cannot be said of modern Rome, as some of the hills are not inhabited. --- The seven heads....are seven kings, or seven Roman emperors, who were particularly distinguished as the chief supporters of idolatry, and the most virulent persecutors of the Christian religion. Their names were Nero, Domitian, Severus, Decius, Valerian, Dioclesian and Antichrist. --- Five of them are fallen or gone, viz. Nero, Domitian, Severus, Decius, Valerian, who supported the idolatrous empire for a time; one is, viz. Dioclesian, with whom the reign of idolatry falls; and the other is not yet come, that is, antichrist.
Ver. 10. Five are fallen, one is, and the other is not yet. The meaning of this is obscure. And perhaps it were better to own with St. Augustine that we do not know the meaning, than to advance suspicions and conjectures. But it is not improbable that by these seven kings may be understood the collection of kings, in what are called the seven ages of the world, from its creations to its consummation. The first age, is reckoned from Adam to Noe[Noah], and the deluge: the second age, from Noe to Abraham; the third, from Abraham to Moses; the fourth, from Moses to David; the fifth, from David to Christ. These five were past, and fallen, when St. John wrote. The sixth is, and is to last from Christ to antichrist. And another, the seventh, is not, being the time of antichrist, and only a short time. See Cornelius a Lapide on this verse. (Witham)
C) Peter Goodgame and Rob Skiba II:
1) Nimrod
2) Pharao of Exodus
3) King of Babylon
4) King of Tyre
5) Antiochus IV Epiphanes
6) Nero or Domitian, depending on the date of the Apocalypse
7) Hitler
"the eighth is one of the seven" ... they take this not as Satan, with the seventh as Antichrist, but that number 8 is the Antichrist. Rob Skiba thought it was Nimrod.
Now, I'd say Lenin was both more evil and ruled a shorter time and over a larger space. He's still in a maosoleum. So, I'd replace Hitler with Lenin on the list.
23:05 Consecutio temporum.
In Latin, you have separate tense forms for "prior" and "subsequent" action.
qua morte clarificaturus esset Deum.
In Greek, however, you have aorist for "prior" and future for "subsequent" in subordinate clauses.
23:43 "or has happened so recently"
I think you have answered your Bethesda argument.
John could simply not have known that the well's porticos had been destroyed. W a i t ...
πέντε στοὰς ἔχουσα would be true simply if it had five porticos back when this was about.
The porticos may have been erased by Titus, but that doesn't mean the well wasdried up. And St. John doesn't even specify that it still has those five porticos, since, in Greek, a participle is "contemporary", now, primarily to "estin" but ... this functions as an intro to the actual story. So, it could be contemporary to the story ensuing, even if the only part still true when he wrote was that the pool still existed.
26:03 By definition, John the Beloved, whether he was son of Zebedee (as St. Irenaeus thought) or a Cohen and host to Jesus (as Jean Colson thought), was living memory.
The late date is no obstacle.
If, one of my options for John the Beloved, building on Jean Colson, he was Theophilus Ben Hanan, though my friend Stephan Borgehammar contradicted that from Revelations of St. Bridget saying John was a virgin (though not exact same terms as John the Baptist was a virgin), that would mean that, dying by c. 100 AD, he had lived to 120, the last hagiographer like the first one (unless you count Job as written before Moses by the man concerned). 120 is a humanly possible lifespan.
You might hear "but back then they only lived to around" ... sorry, but medium lifespan is no indicator on how far out the extremes go.
For a selection of Polish and Austrian royals, imperials, ducals, royal ancestors prior to Sobieski, I got lifespan mediums 43 for men, 42 for women. But maxima reached 78 for men and 61 for women. On other selections,
I've seen for great-great-great-great-grandparents of Marie Antoinette: Médiane 50/52, Maximum 80.
