Our third speaker is Hugo Mendez, who is an expert on the Gospel of John and argues the gospel and the three letters of John are a lineage of literary forgeries. For instance, the gospel of John pretends to be written by Jesus’ beloved disciple, even though this is false.

John is full of cryptic teaching and esoteric knowledge, Jesus being the divine man revealing secrets that people don’t quite understand. Certain key figures are given interpretive keys for his message. The most important is Jesus’s farewell discourse to his disciples (John 13:31-17:26). Mendez argues in order to read John effectively, you must read it backward, starting from the farewell discourse.

For example, Jesus says he is going to the father, and the disciples can’t follow him now, but will later. Jesus has prepared dwellings for the disciples in his father’s house. Jesus is going to the father and is himself the way to the father. Jesus is in the father and the father in him, the father dwells in Jesus. The idea of the Father’s house where Jesus is preparing dwellings for the disciples is a metaphor.

Please do check out the conference replay to see how Mendez relates this to understanding the Gospel of John as a whole!