Three Stages in the Numerical Composition
of the Gospel of John

John outlived Paul and Peter by thirty years. During this time, John and his followers, including Luke, were responsible for the third and final stage in the canonical process that produced the Completed Tanakh. Luke's role in this process is more clearly seen in the numerical composition of Acts of the Apostles, as we will see in the next chapter. Our focus here is primarily on the Gospel of John in relation to Luke.

Evidence from the numerical composition of the Fourth Gospel, as preserved in Codex B (Vaticanus), suggests at least two stages of composition. It appears that the original version of John's gospel ended with chapter 20, as many scholars have suggested through the years on other grounds. The concluding words in that chapter are indeed a fitting conclusion. "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name" (John 20:30-31).

The evidence from total word count in Codex B (Vaticanus) suggests a possible relationship between John and Luke, at this point in time:

Luke	19,346	cf. 19,346	=	17 x 2 x 569
John 1-20	14,808	cf. 14,807	=	17 x 13 x 67
Luke + John 1-20	34,154	cf. 34,153	=	17 x 7 x 7 x 41

From the perspective of numerical composition, Luke appears to be written as a complement to John 1-20. As we will see in the next chapter, the numerical composition of Luke is also closely related to that of Acts of the Apostles.

If the epilogue in John 21 is treated separately as an addition to an earlier version of the Gospel of John, impressive numbers appear in terms of numerical composition:

Matthew	18,291	18,292	=	17 x 4 x 269
Mark	11,047	11,050	=	17 x 26 x 25
Luke	19,346	19,346	=	17 x 2 x 569
Synoptic Gospels	48,684	48,688	=	17 x 16 x 179
John 1-20	14,808	14,807	=	17 x 13 x 67
Gospels (without John 21)	63,492	63,495	=	17 x 5 x 747
John 21	538	537	=	n/a
Four Gospels (with John 21)	64,030	64,032	=	23 x 32 x 87

The final chapter in John's gospel has 538 words in Codex B (Vaticanus). This number may have been selected so that the total word count of the Four Gospels comes to 64,032, a number which is divisible by both 23 and 32— the two numbers associated with "glory" in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). It is also possible that the total word count in the Fourth Gospel was originally 15,351 (= 17 x [17+26] x 3), for Codex Sinaiticus alone has at least five words in John 21 that are not included in Codex Vaticanus (vv 1, 8, 14, 17, 18, and 20). We must extend our study of the word count of the Second Testament to include the Epistles and the Revelation to John before we can determine more precisely the ancient scribal goals in terms of total word count within the canonical process itself.

Sometime after the martyrdom of Paul and Peter in Rome (ca. 64-67 CE), the Gospel of John was completed with the final addition of the story of the woman taken in adultery (7:53-8:11). Like the longer ending of Mark's Gospel (Mark 16:9-20), this addition to the Fourth Gospel has 170 words arranged in twelve verses. The addition of these two texts appears to be motivated by a desire to obtain the total verse count in the "New Torah"of 4784 (= 26 x 23 x 8). It may also have been the editor's intention to obtain a total word count of 82,603 (= 17 x [17+26] x 113) at this point in the numerical composition of the Second Testament.

In this final stage of the canonical process, the Revelation of John was added, along with 2-3 John, 2 Peter, and the Letter of Jude, to produce the twenty-seven-book canon of the Greek New Testament. In this new version of the canon, the Four Gospels and Acts of the Apostles were separated out as a "New Torah", which functions as a bridge to connect the First Testament and the Second Testament, each of which has twenty-two books. And so the Bible as the Completed Tanakh emerged with forty-nine books (22 + 5 + 22 = 49 = 7²).