John's author: "Jesus is divine. But he's not the only one..."

What does the Gospel of John actually claim about Jesus — and about everyone else? In this conversation, I sit down with Dr. Hugo Mendez (UNC Chapel Hill) to talk about his new book The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford University Press), and the result is one of the most genuinely surprising readings of John I've encountered. Most readers know John as the gospel that "makes Jesus divine." That's half the story. The other half — the one Mendez argues we've been missing for centuries — is that John's Jesus extends that same divinity to his followers. The logos becomes flesh, yes. But the logos also draws human beings into oneness with God, gives them the glory he had with the Father, and even tells them in John 10, "you are gods." We get into: Why John is almost certainly the work of a single author (and where chapter 21 gives itself away as a later addition) How John knew and creatively reworked Mark, Matthew, and Luke — the Lazarus story is a wild example John's Philonic logos theology and why it isn't yet 4th-century Trinitarian thought The deification of believers — what scholars have missed about John 10 and John 17 Mendez's argument that humans in John may also be angelified (John 1:51 and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man) Why Mendez calls John the first apocryphal gospel — and how it pioneered the eyewitness-claim playbook later used by Thomas, Mary, and the Protevangelium of James The Beloved Disciple as a literary device, not John son of Zebedee How the Johannine epistles and even Revelation may belong to a wider tradition of works imitating the Gospel of John Dr. Mendez's books (affiliate links) 📘 The Gospel of John: A New History (Oxford University Press, 2025) https://amzn.to/3PxNEC1 📘 The Epistles of John: Origins, Authorship, Purpose (Cambridge University Press, 2026) https://amzn.to/3QZK8kf ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Common Questions Answered: Who wrote the Gospel of John? Is the Gospel of John an eyewitness account? Does John think Jesus is God? What does John 10:34 ("you are gods") mean? Did the Gospel of John use Mark, Matthew, and Luke? Who is the Beloved Disciple in John? Are the letters of John forgeries? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Community - https://skepe.mn.co/ Substack - https://substack.com/@cjcornthwaite Patreon - Patreon: FootnoteFamous 📱 FOLLOW FOR MORE YouTube: @cjcornthwaite Instagram: @cjcornthwaite Website: cjcornthwaite.com Email: [email protected] 🎙️ FOOTNOTE FAMOUS (MY PODCAST) Conversations with the world’s top scholars of the Bible and Christian origins. 🔗https://www.footnotefamous.com/ OR Listen on your favorite streaming platform ᯤ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4lSzQzT... Apple Music - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Audible - https://www.audible.ca/podcast/Footno... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 0:00 Introduction 0:43 Is the Gospel of John the work of one author? 4:42 Why chapter 21 doesn't fit 8:44 John knew the synoptics — and reworked them 14:21 The Lazarus story: how John remixes Luke 19:24 John's Philonic logos theology 24:35 John's other deified beings: humans 29:54 Angelified humans in John 1:51 34:21 How John's themes connect signs to speeches 40:42 John as the first apocryphal gospel 44:37 Why the Beloved Disciple is a literary device 50:10 Why it's probably not John son of Zebedee 54:54 The Johannine afterlife: epistles and copycats 1:00:27 First, Second, and Third John as forgeries 1:04:16 Why Justin Martyr probably knew the Gospel of John 1:06:45 Where to find Dr. Mendez's books