WAS JOHN'S GOSPEL ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN HEBREW?

I was recently forwarded some quotations atating that the Gospel of John was originally written in Hebrew.

“The oldest manuscripts of the Gospel attributed to John are in the Hebrew language and much shorter than the Greek versions that appear in our Bibles. In those manuscripts, chapter one begins with verse 6...” (The Encyclopedia Judaica, “The language of the New Testament,” vol 12, page 1060) My source did not make it clear whether the above quote came directly from The Encyclopedia Judaica or represented his own interpretation of what it said.

“For a long time many have contended that the background of the fourth (sic) Gospel was essentially Hellenistic rather than Hebraic. In dealing with such an assertation (sic) we may note that studies in [the] Dead Sea scrolls (sic) have tended to confirm the traditional conservative position that the cultural orientation of the Gospel of John was Hebraic. Moreover, we must observe that John was a simple fisherman from Palestine…there is no evidence that he imbibed any Greek pagan philosophical orientation in John Chapter one (sic).” This is supposed to be a direct quote from The Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia, Vol.2, pages 1046-1047, but the grammatical mistakes above make that contention questionable. Unfortunately, I do not have that book at hand to check.

Note that this second quotation really says nothing directly regarding the original language of this Gospel account. It merely confirms, as conservative scholars agree, that it is doubtful that John's words were overly influenced by pagan Greek ideas, unless it was perhaps to refute them using language with which those philosophers would be familiar. It is the supposed contentions of The Encyclopedia Judaica which need much clarification.

Were the oldest manuscripts of John's Gospel originally written in Hebrew?

Not one single manuscript, or even a single verse, of John's Gospel has been found written in either Hebrew or Aramaic. They are all in Greek. So how can anyone make such a pronouncement as in The Encyclopedia Judaica? The answer is, they can't. The closest thing I could find to such a proclamation is the theory propounded by the source critic Rudolph Bultmann. He proposes that the Gospel of John originated as three separate written sources, to which a final editor added his own material. One of these three original sources was felt to be written in Aramaic, a Hebraic language. Borchert noted that “it is safe to say that his methodology applied to John has convinced few followers, even among his own students.”

In other words, such a contention is based on sheer speculation, as are many of the “discoveries” by liberal source critics.

Were these much shorter than our present Greek version?

The Encyclopedia Judaica goes on to state: “In these older manuscripts there is no prologue. In later Hebrew manuscripts that have the prologue, the word used is “dabar,” not “logos.” “Dabar” refers to a plan, decree, proposal, command, precept, or proposal. Hence, the prologue denotes God’s revealed will, a plan as having formed in the mind of God. Hence, the prologue: In the beginning was the plan of God, and the plan was with God, and the plan was God’s. The same plan was in the beginning with God. All things were done according to the plan of God.

Now you can see where this whole discussion is heading – an attempt to totally discredit the notion that Jesus had anything to do with the Creation by stating that the Prologue to John's Gospel was not part of the original Hebrew or Aramaic text, but was added later by a Greek-speaking author who was highly influenced by Greek and Roman philosophy. Interestingly, according to Bultmann's theory that same Prologue was originally written in an Aramaic poetic style, not in Greek at all.

And look again at how The Encyclopedia Judaica continues to talk about the “older manuscripts” without a Prologue and the “later Hebrew manuscripts,” neither of which exists in reality, but only in speculative space. Because of that, the statement that the original of logos was the Hebrew dabar is also a hypothetical reconstruction only.

The unfortunate upshot of this whole thing is that someone only reading the above quotations superficially comes away with the mistaken idea that these various hypothetical Hebrew versions of John that disprove the Deity of Christ are actually floating around somewhere or perhaps locked up in the Vatican so that no one can see them.