War on the Gospel of John

The war on the Gospel of John is the repeated demoted and downplaying of the Gospel of John to the point where few Christians learn much about this Gospel any longer, despite initially being the most important one as written by the most beloved disciple of Jesus, John the Apostle. The most-quoted verses of the Bible are from the Gospel of John, yet it continues to be marginalized by liberals. The demotion of this Gospel hinders evangelism.

The stages in this demotion and marginalization of the Gospel of John include:

• early dilutions of this Gospel that obscure its powerful meaning, including adding an apocryphal, confusing John ending, the very liberal, doctrinally incorrect Adulteress Story, and numerous parenthetical asides;
• placing the Gospel of John last of the four Gospels, which makes no sense as a way of Ordering the Gospels;
• removing its regular use as a New Testament reading from the liturgy as part of Vatican II of the Roman Catholic Church, which is also followed by other Christian denominations; and
• removing the regular reading of John's Prologue ("The Last Gospel") from the liturgy.
• liberal slanders of the Fourth Gospel as "antisemitic" (despite its emphasis on Jewish feasts as the only book in the Bible to mention Hanukkah)

The oldest extant fragment from the entire New Testament is P52 (the John Rylands Fragment), dating from the first half of the 100s A.D. This weighs further against deemphasizing this Gospel.

Criticisms of the Gospel of John

• 8 alleged embellishments in the Gospel of John compared with the other Gospels, but these can be viewed as dilutions in the other Gospels rather than anything embellished by the eyewitness John.
• 18 alleged parallels with the Gospel of Luke: many of these "parallels" are actually significantly different, while others are to passages in the Gospel of John that appear to have been later additions (e.g., Adulteress Story and John 21). Some of the similarities are memorable quotes for which one would expect there to be independent verification. If nothing in the Ghospel of John corroborated the other Gospels, then skeptics might use that as a pretext for doubt.
• 33 alleged contradictions between the Gospel of John and other Gospels are superficial and often not contradictory as all, such as failing to recognize that the multiplication of the loaves likely happened more than once.