Quote:
How do you know who wrote the Gettysburg Address?
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It's well documented with multiple sources of attestation.
Here are a few more sources on the authorship of the Gospel of John:
Encyclopedia Britanica says:
Although the Gospel is ostensibly written by John, “the beloved disciple” of Jesus, there has been considerable discussion of the actual identity of the author. The language of the Gospel and its well-developed theology suggest that the author may have lived later than John and based his writing on John’s teachings and testimonies. Moreover, the facts that several episodes in the life of Jesus are recounted out of sequence with the Synoptics and the final chapter appears to be a later addition suggest that the text may be a composite. The Gospel’s place and date of composition are also uncertain; many scholars suggest that it was written at Ephesus, in
Asia Minor, in about ad 100 for the purpose of communicating the truths about Christ to Christians of Hellenistic background.
The Catholic Encyclopedia's lengthy article on the subject supports the traditional view. It's linked here
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08438a.htm#III
The author does make the following admission however:
"The historical genuineness of the Fourth Gospel is at the present time almost universally denied outside the Catholic Church. Since David Friedrich Strauss and Ferdinand Christian Baur this denial has been postulated in advance in most of the critical inquiries into the Gospels and the life of Jesus. Influenced by this prevailing tendency, Alfred Loisy also reached the point where he openly denied the historicity of the Fourth Gospel; in his opinion the author desired, not to write a history, but to clothe in symbolical garb his religious ideas and theological speculations."
Adolf von Harnack (7 May 1851–10 June 1930), was a German
theologian and prominent church historian stated the following
"In particular, the fourth Gospel, which does not emanate or profess to emanate from the apostle John, cannot be taken as an historical authority in the ordinary meaning of the word. The author of it acted with sovereign freedom, transposed events and put them in a strange light, drew up the discourses himself, and illustrated 22 great thoughts by imaginary situations. Although, his work is not altogether devoid of a real, if scarcely recognizable, traditional element, it can hardly make any claim to be considered an authority for Jesus’ history; only little of what he says can be accepted, and that little with caution. On the other hand, it is an authority of the first rank for answering the question, What vivid views of Jesus’ person, what kind of light and warmth, did the Gospel disengage?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_...te_note-JInt-3
Marilyn Mellowes
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...eligion/jesus/
"Tradition has credited John, the son of Zebedee and an apostle of Jesus, with the authorship of the fourth gospel. Most scholars dispute this notion; some speculate that the work was actually produced by a group of early Christians somewhat isolated from other early Christian communities. Tradition also places its composition in or near
Ephesus, although lower Syria or Lebanon are more likely locations. The most likely time for the completion of this gospel is between 90 and 110 CE."