Does Jesus sound sooo different in John? The Myth of the Sock Puppet Jesus

Charles Darwin said that a false fact is an injurious thing. One of the false facts that gets repeated in New Testament studies, without checking, is the claim that we're often unable to tell in John's Gospel who is speaking--Jesus or the narrator. This alleged fact is then used to support the conclusion that John thinks he's licensed to put his own interpretations and elaborations into Jesus' mouth, as though Jesus said them historically, when John knows that he didn't.  In fact, there is only *one* place in John where it is hard to tell where Jesus stops speaking--in the conversation with Nicodemus, in John 3:10-21.  But in multiple places John scrupulously distinguishes his own explanations from what Jesus historically said. Why would he do that if he thought it was okay to put his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth? 

The three discussed in the video are John 2:18-22, John 7:37-39, and John 13:10-11. (By the way, it is in fact a plural "you" in John 13:10, something I did not check before making the video. It still seems possible that Jesus meant that the disciples corporately were clean, but that even those other than Judas needed some further purification. The force of the aside--showing that John distinguishes his own interpretations from Jesus' words--remains regardless, since Jesus does not *at this point* in the chapter relate his comments to Judas, but the narrator does.)  

The other two explanatory asides after Jesus' words are found in John 18:8-9 and 21:22-23. Further evidence that John recognizes a distinction between Jesus' historical teachings and John's own teachings, led by the Holy Spirit, is found in John 16:12-13 and John 14:26.  

The article by D.A. Carson quoted in the video is here:  https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf 

Originally published to YouTube Aug 7, 2022