that there were at least two hands (or "schools") at work in thecomposition of the Gospel and that the Gospel as it stands now is in a state of greatdisorder.The great commentators since Bultmann (Dodd, Barrett, Brown, Schnacken-burg,Lindars, and Marsh) all call attention to the difficulties with Bultmann'sreconstruction but do little more toward reconstructing the so-called original Gospelbeyond suggesting a series of inept redactors or editors who have distorted theoriginal order of the Gospel by introducing new material at several points and byadding to what is considered the original ending of the Gospel (20:30-31) a newconcluding chapter (21).To explain the alleged disorder, they propose variant versions of the followinghypotheses: (a) hypotheses of accidental displacements; (b) hypotheses of multiplesources ineptly melded together; (c) hypotheses of successive editions of an earlierGospel supplemented and re-edited later by incompetent editors. Despite these andother hypotheses, what H. M. Teeple said in 1962 remains true: "No one yet hasdemonstrated convincingly that the gospel has been disarranged.".Page 22 IntroductionWhat follows is a proposed hypothesis that the Gospel of John has sufferedneither displacements nor disarrangements but stands now as it came from thehand of the author. This proposition is based on the contention amply demonstratedthat the Gospel was composed according to the laws of chiastic parallelism ratherthan according to 20th century Western literary devices.The Gospel appears to be in a state of disarrangement only if one presupposesthat the author composed it according to the ordinary principles of narrativecomposition. If one presupposes, on the contrary, that the Gospel was composedaccording to the principles of chiastic parallelism, every part, sequence, section, andelement is precisely where it belongs.It is my belief that the Gospel as it now stands is the work of one individual; thatit has suffere...
