Week 41 John
I was thinking that if a guy asked me which gospel writer devoted the highest percentage of his gospel to the actual words of Jesus then I’d say John – but that would be a guess.
So I thought I’d a) count the number of verses in each gospel then b) count verses with Jesus’ words then c) calculate the percentages.
Step One was to count the verses:
Matthew 1070
Mark 680
Luke 1150
John 880
Step Two was more problematic. Counting Jesus’ words verses would take way too much time. So I skipped Matthew-Mark-Luke.
But I did find 431 verses in John. 49%… which seemed like a fairly high percentage. But it’s not very accurate.
For example one time Jesus told the crowd he was the bread that came down out of heaven. His words. In the next verse some people are wondering how can he say I am the bread that came down from heaven? So his exact words quoted (and counted as his words). But Jesus didn’t say them the second time. So maybe I shouldn’t have counted them.
And there’s a couple of other places where I counted a whole verse but Jesus said almost nothing: remove the stone or I am he.
The What Percentage question is interesting enough. But a better question is not how much he said but what he meant by what he said. And my sense is that he says quite a few things in John that are pretty weighty head-scratchers.
Note: quotes from John 6:41 42 11:39 18:6 (NASB)