John's Double Ending

The Gospel of John has two endings:

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John 20:30—31; 21:24—25 (NRSV):

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Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
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This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

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What I find interesting is that these two endings are so similar; they both follow a simple form of 'Jesus did more stuff, we don't want to write it down, hopefully what we did write will convince you, have a nice day', though they do it in slightly different orders.So, what might explain this? Were the stories that made up the two separate endings part of the same tradition, and so ended similarly? Were they from two separate traditions that just happened to follow that same form? Or, did the redactors adding chapter 21 just tack on that little bit so as to make the new ending look like the old one?JonEdited by Jon, : Icon; and apostrophe glitch

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

I guess the main thing I was hoping to investigate was why the endings are so similar.The additional endings of Mark, for example, bear no resemblance to the first ending. The additional ending of John, however, wraps up in the same way as the first ending. Now I do believe that there is no evidence that this gospel ever existed without this second ending (unlike Mark), that is, no texts have been found that end at chapter 20. On this, I'd say, it's almost certain that chapter 21 was the responsibility of the original redactorsresponsible for the rest of the gospel having the form it presently has.At the same time, chapter 21 is clearly an addition; chapter 20 has a wrap-up phrase common even today, and so must have been the end to an original piece used by the redactorsadditionally, such out of place passages aren't rare in John, since the redactors, unlike the authors of the other three gospels, used something of a 'scissors-and-glue' approach for compiling their gospel.Now, the part that intrigues me is the similarity of the two endings. When chapter 21 was pasted to the end of John, what evidence do we have that might tell us whether the similar part (21:24—25) was originally part of that pasted piece or a part added by the redactors who pasted it onto chapter 20 in order to make the new ending look like the old one (20:30—31)?Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr