Does John "narrate theologically"? On the perils of theological theory in history
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
I have noted in other posts the unjustified rhetoric that is often leveled at the Gospel of John to the effect that he is less historical than the synoptic Gospels. (See also Craig Evans's extensive comments to this effect here.) John is the red-headed step-child of historical Jesus studies. He is always assumed to be a problem, frequently assumed to be historically dubious on the flimsiest grounds. When something (like the fact that Simon of Cyrene was forced to carry Jesus' cross) is found in the synoptic Gospels but not in John, the question is: What's historically wrong with John? When something (like the "I am" sayings) is found in John but not in the synoptic Gospels, the question is: What's historically wrong with John? Double standard duly noted.
In this post I want to examine some passages from the commentaries of eminent and learned New Testament scholar Craig Keener that illustrate the unwarranted bias against John and that also illustrate the negative effects of an undue mingling of theological interpretation with the attempt to answer the simple question, "Did this really happen?"
It goes without saying that my criticisms of Dr. Keener's ideas in these commentaries are in no way, shape, or form a personal attack but rather a part of our mutual search for truth concerning God's word.
I'm going to start with a passage (including one footnote) from Keener's commentary on Acts in which he mentions John's gospel, because I think it provides a good illustration. Keener is talking about Pentecost in Acts 2 and its supposed tension (which I'll discuss more in this entry) with John 20:22 where Jesus breathes on his disciples on Easter day:
[D]o John and Luke refer to distinct events? Or has John invented the setting to include the event before his narrative closes? Because I believe that John takes many more symbolic theological liberties with his story than does Luke, my John commentary addresses this question somewhat more fully than does the treatment here, which rehearses some of my discussion and conclusions there. I believe that there may have been historical experiences behind both reports but that Luke is accurate about a subsequent setting for the Spirit's empowering the church for mission...[T]he Johannine "Pentecost" (John 20:19-23) shares some common features with Luke's Pentecost, but their primary relationship is their mutual affirmation that Jesus imparted or sent the Spirit shortly after his resurrection. John's report is far less dramatic and does not occur in the era of Christ's exaltation, but John completes his account before the promised exaltation...and hence presses into this event the narrative fulfillment of Christ's promises concerning the Spirit. It is possible that historically the disciples experienced a foretaste in 20:22 that was fulfilled more dramatically on a later occasion....But for those who must choose one account or the other and regard Luke's as too dramatic: Luke seems more likely to report the events as he has them from his tradition than does John. John takes significant liberties with the way he reports his events, especially in in several symbolic adaptations in the passion narrative ([footnote] 105), whereas Luke follows, where we can test him..., the procedures of a good Hellenistic historian....Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary, vol. 1, pp. 790, 793
Footnote 105 reads thus:
E.g., Jesus gives Judas the sop (John 13:26; contrast Mark 14:20); he appears to be executed on Passover (John 18:28; contrast Mark 14:14); he carries his own cross (John 19:17; contrast Mark 15:21).
In his commentary on John, Keener makes it fairly clear (see quotes below) that he is casting doubt upon the historicity of John 20:19-23 and undeniably clear that he believes that John has changed the day of Jesus' crucifixion to have Jesus crucified on the afternoon of the first day of Passover, whereas that was not historically when he died. He uses the phrase "theologizing narrative" (p. 521) in the commentary on John for what he here calls "symbolic adaptations" and "tak[ing] significant liberties."
Keener uses this same list of examples to call John's literal historical accuracy into question in his John commentary:
A close examination of the Fourth Gospel reveals that John has rearranged many details, apparently in the service of his symbolic message. This is especially clear in the Passion Narrative, where direct conflicts with the presumably widely known passion tradition (most notably that Jesus gives the sop to Judas, is crucified on Passover, and carries his own cross) fulfill symbolic narrative functions. (The Gospel of John: A Commentary, pp. 42-43)
I want to take several of these examples given by Keener one at a time and show how they illustrate a bias against John's historicity, haste in casting doubt on historicity, and the role that theology plays in encouraging these problems.
Jesus breathes on the disciples on Easter
Let's start with the case of Jesus breathing on his disciples as recorded in John. John gives this account, which is almost certainly referring to the same meeting recorded in Luke 24:36ff, like this:
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:19-23)
I will not quote all of the several pages of Keener's commentary on this passage either in his Acts commentary or his John commentary. One of the most unfortunate features of that discussion, to my mind, is its lack of clarity as to what Keener is saying about the historicity of the events. The Acts commentary quoted above is very slightly clearer than the John commentary. One concludes that Keener thinks there may, just possibly, have been some separate, real, historical event when Jesus was on earth, in addition to the historical Pentecost recounted in Acts 2, but he appears to think that we know little about it and that we should not take John's account at face value as historical reportage. Here are some portions of the commentary on the passage in John:
Views on the relation between this passage and a later impartation of the Spirit, such as Acts 2 depicts, vary. Some would argue that John retains a distinction between Easter and a later Pentecost, perhaps by John 20:22 symbolically pointing forward to the historical Pentecost. Whatever its historical plausibility, however, the view that Jesus merely symbolically promises the Spirit here does not pull together an adequate narrative climax on the literary-theological level of John’s earlier promises of the Spirit. Certainly the verb for Jesus breathing on the disciples means more than mere exhalation. Whether John might use Jesus’ breathing symbolically, however, is a different question than whether Jesus is portrayed as acting merely symbolically in the story world. Keener, John, p. 1196
So did it happen, or didn't it?
Part of the conflict between views here may be semantic: are we speaking of the historical events behind John’s Gospel or of the theological points he is emphasizing by the arrangement of the elements in his narrative? [LM: I'm not really very interested in a commentator's opinion on the latter. I'm really interested in the former and would much rather we didn't use distancing phrases like "historical events behind John's Gospel" as opposed to "What really happened."] Some of Turner’s observations may suggest legitimate complexities or incongruities in John’s language. These in turn may suggest that John is aware of a subsequent Pentecost event and lays emphasis on an earlier event that also provided an encounter with the Spirit.
As in the Acts commentary, this looks like an extremely cautious and qualified acknowledgement that maybe something like the event described in John really happened.
Even if the giving of the Spirit in the tradition behind 20:22 represents merely a symbolic or partial impartation, it must bear in John’s narrative the full theological weight equivalent to Luke’s Pentecost.But if its narrative function (in terms of its full theological weight) is in some sense symbolic of an outpouring of the Spirit, one need not seek a chronological harmonization with Acts 2. As Burge emphasizes, Luke-Acts itself provides a similar chronological situation: because Luke must end his Gospel where he does, he describes the ascension as if it occurs on Easter (Luke 24:51) even though he will soon inform or remind his readers that it occurred only forty days afterward (Acts 1:3, 9). Likewise, “knowing his Gospel would have no sequel,” the Fourth Evangelist theologically compressed “the appearances, ascension, and Pentecost into Easter. Yet for him, this is not simply a matter of literary convenience. . . . John weaves these events into ‘the hour’with explicit theological intentions.”
This quotation from Burge, which Keener apparently gives approvingly and with which he ends the discussion, gives the distinct impression that he thinks that the event in John did not happen historically in anything like the form that John records it. His remarks taken all together in both commentaries cast significant doubt on the historicity of the events. (On the allegation that Luke "describes the Ascension as if it occurs on Easter," no, he does not. I've dealt with that claim here, inter alia. In any event, the analogy is very poor, since this breathing of Jesus on the disciples bears no recognizable narrative resemblance to Pentecost, whereas Luke is undeniably telling about the ascension in Luke 24:51. Jesus is personally, visibly, tangibly present in John 20:22, as he is not in Acts 2. There is no rushing, mighty wind in John 20:22. Jesus speaks specific words to the disciples in connection with the breathing in John 20:22. Etc.)
Mike Licona expresses great doubt about the historicity of the event more succinctly than does Keener, though he throws in the word "perhaps" as he so often does:
Pertaining to Jesus’s breathing on his disciples and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22), perhaps John, knowing he would not be writing a sequel as had Luke, desired to allude to the event at Pentecost. So he wove mention of the ascension into his communications with Mary Magdalene (20:17) and of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost into his communications with his male disciples (20:22). (Why Are There Differences in the Gospels, p. 180)
Keener's strong degree of historical doubt is doubly odd since he makes some comments that indicate a provisional openness to a separate event. What strikes the reader most of all about John's description of Jesus' actions and words at this point in John 20 is their brief and cryptic nature. If there were some historical "earlier event that also provided an encounter with the Spirit," why would it not have looked like this? One can scarcely decide such things a priori. Why think that John has taken any liberties at all at this point in his narrative, much less that he may well have invented the event?
To someone not steeped in the subculture of New Testament studies, all of this looks passing strange. Why should we consider that there is the slightest doubt at all about the historicity of this part of John's narrative, unless we have an exceedingly low view already of John's historicity? There is no contradiction, not even an apparent contradiction, between Jesus' words and actions here and any other resurrection narrative, so what's the problem?
It is at this point that one begins to realize how great a role theology and presumptions about theology are playing in all of this. It is not a helpful role. The alleged contradiction, evidently, is supposed to be with Acts 2.
But why? Once again, Jesus often did strange and cryptic things that his disciples didn't understand. There are things that Jesus said that we still argue about the meaning of 2,000 years later. Why should we assume that John means to convey some clear, definite, theological meaning here to Jesus' action? Indeed, its strangeness is part of the reason for accepting its historicity. If John wanted to talk about Pentecost, there was nothing stopping him from writing about Pentecost. As D.A. Carson points out (p. 514), if John's readers thought he was really investing this event with all of the theological significance of Pentecost, would they not simply have been confused? For surely they knew about the events on Pentecost. We should take seriously the possibility that this odd event is there because it is historically real; John told it because it happened, even though he doesn't explain what it meant.
There is not even a prima facie contradiction between Jesus' act of breathing on the disciples, along with his saying something very much like these words, and the events in Acts 2.
It is apparently almost impossible for NT scholars to acknowledge this because they are insisting on resolving a purely theological question as a prerequisite to resolving an historical question. Lurking somewhere in all of this, implicitly, is something like the following deductive argument:
If Jesus, as portrayed in John, is really, seriously giving the disciples the Holy Spirit on Easter Day, then it is impossible that both the events described here and the events described in Acts 2 could have occurred as narrated.Jesus, as portrayed in John, is really, seriously giving the disciples the Holy Spirit on Easter Day.
Therefore,
It is impossible that both the events described here and the events described in Acts 2 could have occurred as narrated.
Hence, when D.A. Carson defends the historicity of John's narrative in his commentary (pp. 511ff), he takes a fair bit of time to argue that Jesus' action there was merely symbolic. That's not by any means a dumb view and may well even be true, but should it be necessary to argue it in order to defend historicity? No, it shouldn't. When Keener apparently finds a purely symbolic theological interpretation of Jesus' actions in John unsatisfying, he automatically assumes that this theological disagreement over the significance of the events as John reports them casts doubt upon their historicity.
But it shouldn't be like that. Jesus' action in breathing on the disciples in John 20:22 may have been mysterious to the disciples themselves, and it is not necessary to provide a fully intellectually and theologically satisfying explanation of precisely what Jesus was doing in order to take the verse at face value as historical.
It cannot be said too often: What the gospels tell us Jesus said is one thing. Our interpretation of what that meant is another. The latter should not be used to cast doubt on the historicity of the former, not because that is impious but because it is historically unreasonable.
Jesus carries his cross
Let's turn to some of the other examples Keener gives in footnote 105 in which John supposedly takes historical liberties in the Passion narrative for theological reasons. In the footnote, Keener implies a contradiction with Mark on the question of whether or not Jesus carried his own cross. And in his commentary on John, he went so far as to list this as a case of "direct conflict" with synoptic tradition. John 19:16-17 reads,
So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha.
At the same point in the narrative, Mark (with which Keener suggests we should contrast John) has this:
And they led him out to crucify him. And they compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross. Mark 15:20-21
In his commentary on John's gospel, Keener suggests some degree of ahistoricity to John's narrative at this point, while simultaneously acknowledging that it is both externally attested on this precise point and also easily harmonized with Mark's:
More significantly from the standpoint of Johannine theology, John is emphatic that Jesus carried ... “his own,” cross (19:17.... Just as Jesus gave the sop (John13:26) rather than mentioned that one had dipped “with him” (Mark 14:20), just as Jesus “laid down his life” (10:18) and “delivered up” his spirit (19:30)...so here he remains in control in the narrative. A condemned criminal normally carried his own patibulum, or transverse beam of the cross, to the site of the execution, where soldiers would fix the patibulum to the upright stake...that they regularly reused for executions....In the Synoptic tradition and probably the broader passion tradition, Jesus is too weak to carry his cross, and it is carried by Simon of Cyrene. Given the unlikelihood that the soldiers would simply show mercy to a condemned prisoner, scholars are probably correct to suppose that Jesus was too weak to carry the cross and that his executioners preferred to have him alive on the cross than dead on the way....
That the Synoptic report is undoubtedly historical does not render impossible a historical basis for John’s account: it is in fact most likely that the soldiers would have sought to make Jesus carry his own cross at the beginning, following standard custom, until it became
clear that he could not continue to do so. But merely reporting (or inferring) those initial steps is hardly John’s point; by emphasizing Jesus’ carrying his own cross, he emphasizes Jesus’ continuing control of his passion. Just as condemned criminals must bear their own instrument of death, Jesus chose and controlled his death. As Drury puts it, in John Jesus bears his own cross “as befits the one who alone can bear the sin of the world.” (John p. 1134)
Both the bias against full Johannine historicity and the negative influence of theology in such a negative evaluation are on display here, and even more so when Keener expressly states that this is an instance of "direct conflict" with the synoptic gospels. I stress again: Keener acknowledges that John's statement that Jesus carried his own cross (the cross-beam of the cross) is externally attested by our other historical information. So this very point in John, the very point which Keener lists elsewhere as an example of his "tak[ing] significant liberties with the way he reports his events, especially in in several symbolic adaptations in the passion narrative," is actually independently confirmed. Why in the world, then, would Keener question it?
Moreover, after categorizing it as a "direct conflict," Keener later fully admits that, as other commentators have noted, there is really no irresolvable contradiction with Mark! As the Romans would have done, and as we know they generally did do, they began by forcing Jesus to carry his own cross. When he eventually was not able to go on doing so, they impressed Simon of Cyrene to continue. In fact, as D.A. Carson emphasizes (The Gospel According to John, p. 479), the statement that Simon was "coming in from the country" in Mark may provide a hint that Jesus carried his cross as far as the city gate, which is hardly (pace Keener) merely "initial steps." Matthew, at the same point in the narrative, uses the phrase "As they went out" (Matt. 27:32) to describe the time when they found Simon of Cyrene and compelled him to carry the cross. This phrase fits quite well with Mark's "coming in from the country" and with Carson's suggestion of the point at which the switch took place. Why are we questioning John at this point at all?
The question apparently arises from a presumption that John must be manipulating his narrative somehow in order to make a theological point. Keener downplays the amount of carrying Jesus did by the phrase "initial steps" and then adds a great deal of theological speculation about John's motives, which also seems to imply (though Keener does not say this explicitly) that John has deliberately suppressed Simon of Cyrene's role in order to make it sound like Jesus carried his cross all the way to Golgotha, and that John does so for these theological purposes.
Speaking as an outsider (which at this point I'm rather glad to call myself), the alleged theological motive is woefully inadequate. Why should Jesus' bearing his own cross for a long distance indicate his being in control of his own death? In concrete terms, it would hardly have looked that way! Instead, it would have been a continuation of the brutal treatment by the soldiers. Jesus was driven, step by painful step, carrying his cross along the via dolorosa. One might just as well say that John's narrative makes Jesus seem more brutalized than Mark's does because John does not portray his receiving the relief of having Simon carry the cross. The "control of his own death" claim is simply a weak theological hypothesis. We have no reason at all to think that this was in John's mind when he narrated those verses. It is much more plausible that the author narrated it as he did because he was present and had a vivid visual memory of Jesus, having just been brutally beaten (as Keener himself emphasizes), bleeding profusely, carrying his own cross. Or, if you prefer to speak in terms of human sources and want to prescind on the question of Johannine authorship, because someone saw the scene and vividly remembered this aspect of it.
One could, if one wished to be even-handed in one's attribution of complex theological motives, as easily ask why, since Jesus carrying his own cross is "undoubtedly historical," Mark left that part out! What was Mark up to, theologically? Ah, I have it: Perhaps Mark, by leaving out the picture of Jesus carrying his own cross and mentioning only Simon's role in those final steps, making it sound like Simon carried the cross the entire way, wishes to emphasize that we must all be willing to take up our cross and follow Jesus to Golgotha. (Compare Mark 8:34) See how easy it is to construct such theories?
But it is sad and interesting to note how often they are constructed, specifically, against John, using Mark as a wrench with which to dismantle the historical reliability of John.
At a minimum, Keener implies that John exaggerates the extent to which Jesus carried his own cross and suppresses Simon of Cyrene. But this is an utterly unforced error--a type of error all too common among NT scholars. There is not the slightest reason whatsoever to think that, at this point in his narrative, John is writing symbolically rather than literally and historically.
A note on the day of the Last Supper
I have discussed elsewhere (see here) the claim that John "has" the Last Supper occur on a day other than Passover as part of (allegedly) changing the relationship of the crucifixion to Passover and "having" Jesus die on the first day of Passover. Esteemed Husband deals with it at the beginning of his video here. Craig Blomberg has done thorough work bringing into contemporary NT scholarship the insights that were known to older scholars. The claim that John changes the day of the crucifixion and the day of the Last Supper has been thoroughly answered again and again. Put bluntly, it just isn't true. In endnote 105 in the Acts commentary, Keener briefly refers to John 18:28 as indicating that the Passover had not yet taken place, though his commentary on John (p. 1103) shows that he knows (his knowledge really is encyclopedic) that the reference here to ceremonial uncleanness for eating "the Passover" could refer to a chagigah meal in the rest of the feast, such as the meal at noon. There he says that that is not "the text's most obvious sense," but in point of fact, as Blomberg and others have pointed out, it is historically a more plausible sense than a reference to a first Passover meal that evening, since any ritual uncleanness from entering Pilate's hall could have been readily taken care of by washing at sundown. So it is actually more likely that 18:28 refers to some meal that is coming up sooner, such as the noon chagigah. Keener does not (that I have found so far in the John commentary) deal with this point and (as the Acts commentary shows) continues to cite John 18:28 as being in conflict with the chronology in Mark. He also refers to "other clues in John's narrative" and even goes so far as to say that John, taken alone, would lead us to "assume the reading" that Jesus was crucified on the first day of Passover. But again, this has all been thoroughly answered elsewhere, showing that actually John does not imply that Jesus was crucified on the first day of Passover. In any event, reading one historical document in isolation from other accounts of the same event is not good historical practice.
I will discuss here only one small additional point to illustrate how careful we should be about taking the word of just one expert on a subject in NT studies.
On one of the occasions when Keener states that, in John's gospel, the Last Supper occurs prior to Passover, he brings in a particular detail to support this conclusion--namely, the statement that when Judas went out the other disciples thought perhaps Jesus had sent him to buy something needed for the feast (John 13:29):
[I]n John’s story world it is not yet Passover. Thus Judas can be thought to be buying something for the feast (13:29), even though after sundown, once the Passover had begun, the bazaars would be closed. John, pp. 919-20
Note the use of the phrase "story world," a frequent usage in this commentary that implies that John's narrative and the real world come apart at various points.
So Keener is declaring with great confidence that this detail makes it impossible that this should have been after sundown of the first day of Passover and that the disciples could have been eating a Passover meal with Jesus, because Judas wouldn't have been able to purchase anything at that time.
A reader might well feel that this is a very telling point, taking Keener's statement at face value. And if asked for further details, Keener could argue in support of his point (Leviticus 23:7) that the first day of the Passover was treated like a Sabbath and that laborious work was forbidden on that day; hence, the shops would not have been open after it was night, since Hebrew days begin at sundown. Case closed, right?
Not so fast. It might come as a surprise to the same reader to find that Craig Blomberg makes precisely the opposite argument, stating that the shops would have been open on that night for people to make last-minute purchases for the feast! (See here, for example.) So Blomberg is arguing both from this point and from the reference to Judas's possibly giving alms to the poor that John 13:29 is evidence for harmony between John and the synoptic gospels.
D.A. Carson gives helpful further explanation:
These objections are far from convincing. One might wonder, on these premises, why Jesus should send Judas out for purchases for a feast still twenty-four hours away. The next day would have left ample time. It is best to think of this taking place on the night of Passover, 15 Nisan. Judas was sent out (so the disciples thought) to purchase what was needed for the Feast, i.e. not the feast of Passover, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread (the hagigah), which began that night and lasted for seven days. The next day, still Friday 15 Nisan, was a high feast day; the following day was Sabbath. It might seem best to make necessary purchases (e.g. more unleavened bread) immediately. Purchases on that Thursday evening were in all likelihood possible, though inconvenient. The rabbinic authorities were in dispute on the matter (cf. Mishnah Pesahim 4:5). One could buy necessities even on a Sabbath if it fell before Passover, provided it was done by leaving something in trust rather than paying cash (Mishnah Shabbath 23:1). Moreover, it was customary to give alms to the poor on Passover night, the temple gates being left open from midnight on, allowing beggars to congregate there (Jeremias, p. 54). On any night other than Passover it is hard to imagine why the disciples might have thought Jesus was sending Judas out to give something to the poor: the next day would have done just as well. Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 370)
Nor am I just taking Caron's word for it, either. Here are the relevant rabbinic authorities, helpfully collected in a work by Darrell Bock. (The Internet is amazing!) And indeed, Sabbat 23.1 does allow for obtaining needed items after the beginning of a day (that is, after sundown) in which work was not to be done, provided that it was done by a barter system of "leaving security" rather than by paying in money.
I bring this point up to illustrate the importance of checking things out, particularly when it is claimed that a gospel author cannot be narrating historically because of some contradiction with other information. It is of course possible that there could be an error in a narrative. But long before we conclude the highly complex hypothesis that the author is actively changing facts, we should look at other alternatives. It is unfortunate that the claim of contradiction between John and the synoptics on the day of the Last Supper and the crucifixion, and the claim that John is therefore narrating "theologically" (aka altering fact) should continue to be repeated after it has been so fully disposed of. This makes it all the more valuable that commentators like Blomberg and Carson have gone into the nitty-gritty historical details that are alleged to support this conclusion.
Jesus gives the sop to Judas
What, precisely, is supposed to be the "direct conflict" between John and the synoptics about whether or not Jesus gives the sop to Judas?
Other than the fact that the incident of Jesus giving the sop to Judas is not recorded in the synoptic gospels, it is rather difficult to see what could possibly qualify as a "direct conflict." But Keener tells us to contrast John 13:26 with Mark 14:20, so let's look at those, beginning with the passage surrounding John 13:26.
After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus' side, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” (John 13:21-27)
Now Mark:
And as they were reclining at table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” They began to be sorrowful and to say to him one after another, “Is it I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” (Mark 14:18-21)
I'm still not seeing any "direct conflict." Keener explains a little more in his commentary on John 13:
[W]hat may be more striking to those familiar with the Markan line of tradition is that Jesus does not identify the betrayer by the betrayer’s choice but by his own. In the Synoptics, Judas stretches out his own hand “with” Jesus...(Mark 14:20). Given how widespread the pre-Markan passion narrative that Mark used probably was, this tradition was probably known to John’s audience. Here, however, Jesus, rather than Judas, appears in full control of the betrayal.... John, pp. 918-919
Keener is apparently taking it that the narrative in John in which Jesus gives Judas the sop must be seen as a competitor to the narration in Mark in which Jesus says that betrayer is dipping bread into the dish with him. To get any conflict here whatsoever requires an extremely wooden interpretation. The only way that seems to work is to take it that, in Mark, Jesus is making it a signal or sign to the disciples that the person who puts his hand into the dish to dip at the same time as Jesus at some particular moment is the one who betrays him, and then he leaves it up to Judas to choose that moment. Then, one would have to take it, according to Mark this signal was given instead of the signal recorded in John.
But Keener himself notes (p. 919, footnote 217) that such a strong reading of "with me" in Mark makes it hard to see why the other disciples did not understand that Judas was the one who would betray him. If Jesus said openly to all the disciples something along the lines of, "Watch now, folks. The next person to dip with me into the dish is going to be the betrayer!" and if Judas then voluntarily took up the challenge and did so before everyone's eyes, they would all have been gasping in comprehension. But nothing of that kind takes place.
So, once again, where is the conflict?
It is not at all clear that Mark 14:20 indicates an explicit signal of any kind as opposed to a more general use of dipping into the bowl with Jesus to indicate eating with him. Matthew 26:23 uses a slightly different tense: "He who has dipped his hand with me..." and if we assume that this is the same saying as in Mark 14:20, given in just slightly different wording, it doesn't look like an individual, informative signal at all. Luke 22:23 even seems to show the disciples as still asking among themselves who the betrayer could be after this point in time. It is entirely plausible that this is Jesus' slightly modified version of Psalm 41:9:
Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me.
In which case the reference to having dipped or dipping the bread is a general reference to eating his bread, as is Luke 22:21, "The hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table."
There really is no conflict then whatsoever. Jesus makes the more general statement, perhaps paraphrasing a verse from a Psalm, that one of his closest companions who is eating with him that night will betray him. The disciples want more specific information. Peter asks (as in John) the beloved disciple, sitting right next to Jesus, to find out who it is. Jesus tells the beloved disciple that it is the person to whom he will give the sop, and he gives it to Judas.
Notice that in John itself we have reason to believe that this information was not heard by everyone, since the other disciples don't know what Jesus means by telling him to do what he is going to do quickly:
So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. John 13:26-29
Even though, as we have already noted in comments here, the gospel authors don't seem to say if someone is whispering or speaking sotto voce, the narrative itself implies as much. In other words, the beloved disciple had special information that the others did not have. What more likely, then, than that John's narrative, with its special connection to the beloved disciple (John 21:24), would be the one to contain this information?
Again, there simply is no conflict and no evidence whatsoever that John is inventing an incident in order to make a theological point about Jesus being in control of his passion, or for that matter any other theological point. Rather, it looks like he tells this part of the story because he knows this part of the story, perhaps even because he remembers it from his own intense, personal experience. (See my discussion of the vividness of the Last Supper narrative in John here.)
Again and again, critics miss the sheer artlessness and witness qualities of the narratives in the gospels by imposing illusory theological patterns. "Conflicts," which exist only in the minds of critics, are strung together to make "patterns," which also exist only in the minds of critics, to support trends of "theological narration," which also exist only in the minds of critics.
One is tempted to ask how John could have told that part of the story more historically. There is nothing particularly "theological-looking" about it. It looks like a bare narrative of fact. One can be sure that, if Jesus in John, like Jesus in Mark, had appeared to be (plausibly) quoting a Psalm at this point in the story, that fact would have been brought up to support the allegation that this is a theological addition! But no such accusation is brought against Mark. And rightly so. Jesus quoted the Old Testament all the time. I merely bring it up to point the double standard and to emphasize the arbitrary nature of questioning John's historicity here.
Another alternative is that perhaps Peter (a probable source for Mark) and Matthew were not sitting as close to Jesus as the beloved disciple and heard somewhat unclearly Jesus' words about dipping into the dish and gave their version of what Jesus said somewhat less precisely than does John. If anything, John could be take to have the more privileged access to what Jesus said historically, if one insists on placing the two sayings in competition at all. But I do not think that is necessary. There is no reason why Jesus could not both have made the more general comment about the betrayal of a friend who is eating with him (as recorded in the synoptics) and given the specific sign for the benefit of the beloved disciple (recorded in John).
Dr. Keener is by no means a strongly liberal New Testament critic, and he is immensely learned and tries hard to consider issues of historicity from a variety of points of view and upon consideration of a great deal of evidence. Readers will note that he wrote the foreword to Hidden in Plain View, for which I am very grateful. In multiple places in his commentary he speaks against any wholesale dismissal of the historicity of John's gospel, and it appears to me (thus far) that his view of John's historical reliability is higher than that of Craig Evans (to take one example). It would be, I think, fair to call Keener a "moderate," at least in evangelical circles, on the question of John's historicity.
I bring these labeling points up both to illustrate that I am well aware of gradations on such matters and, perhaps more importantly, to show that the world of New Testament criticism does not divide neatly between those properly labeled liberals (who cannot be trusted at all to give due weight to the probability of historicity) and those labeled conservatives (who have no biases against historicity and imply ahistoricity only when the evidence is strong). Matters are by no means that simple, and presumptions against robust historicity, especially for John, are rife at nearly every level of biblical studies, regardless of labels. If a younger, less well-established scholar nowadays were to take the positions taken by Carson and Blomberg on the historicity of all of these passages in John and on John's gospel generally, he would probably be considered "ultra-conservative"!
Keener's oft-repeated claim that John imaginatively changes or adds things to his narrative in the service of a theological agenda, and the thin arguments on which this is based, do unfortunately show a somewhat low view of John's reliability. Nor, when one thinks about it, is this just a matter of itsy bitsy details. After all, if John invented Jesus breathing on his disciples and saying the things that accompany this act, that is the invention of an identifiable, separable incident in the gospel, though it occurs within the larger context of the first appearance of Jesus to his male disciples. If John invented the exchange between Jesus and the beloved disciple and the handing of the sop to Judas, this is the pure invention of dialogue and events which prima facie appear entirely historically serious when one reads the narrative. Why should we think that John ever did that? And where else did he do it, if he is that kind of author?
The time is long past for a global reconsideration of John as an historical source fully the equal of any of the synoptic gospels. For that to happen, scholars must shake off the undue influence of theological theory-making over historical evaluation. Once that shift has taken place and the unsupportable prejudice against John's historicity has been abandoned, scholars can give John's plain assertions their due weight in our picture of Jesus.
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