St John the Evangelist

Nine of the ten Eusebian canon tables list passages common to all four gospels or to various combinations of three or two of them. The last of the canon tables lists the passages unique to each gospel in turn, ending with St John’s gospel. Of the many sections of text that distinguish the fourth gospel from the three synoptic gospels, patristic and early medieval writers most often cited from the theological epitome contained in its Prologue (John 1:1–18), Augustine over a thousand times. ¹ It might be expected that the Prologue would begin the list of passages peculiar to John in Canon X, but this is not the case. Instead, it is mostly found in Canon III, which compares what Matthew, Luke, and John have in common. In the first of these parallel entries, laid out with customary clarity in the Lindisfarne Gospels, fol. 12, the verses of John’s mystical Prologue describing the pre-existent divine Logos or Word are compared with the accounts of the human genealogy of Christ in Matthew and Luke. ² The Eusebian canons here give unusual expression to the theological rather than literal concordance existing between texts, but the spiritual harmony of these passages was well established in patristic exegesis. ³