Dear Gabriel,

John is supposed to be the author of the fourth Gospel and three epistles, but was he? Perhaps these were the work of several people. Does it matter?

It seems to me that you, like me, attempt to rationalise things too much.

Perhaps its better to focus on the beauty of his (or their), deeds as in today’s reading from

John 20:2-8:

So Peter set out with the other disciple to go to the tomb. They ran together, but the other disciple, running faster than Peter, reached the tomb first. … Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in. He saw and he believed.

I think the concise elegance of this last sentence makes it one of the most overwhelming in the gospels.

Yours,

Thomas