John's Internal Evidence

As you may remember, I wrote earlier that the gospel writer John and his brother James were the fishermen to whom Jesus said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Matthew 4:19). John then lived another 50-60 years before writing his gospel narrative in AD 80-90. In the meantime, during AD 70, the Romans utterly and completely destroyed Jerusalem. The historian below concludes that John’s gospel contains information that ONLY someone living in Jerusalem prior to AD 70 could have had. Here then is more internal evidence for the truthfulness of the Bible:

“Recent archaeological discoveries include both the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1f) and 'The Pavement' (John 19:13). Their existence was doubted just a few decades ago. Confirmation of the accuracy of the setting of Jacob's well has also been found (John 4). Such findings have caused many scholars to reverse earlier skeptical opinions on the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. Its author has demonstrated an obvious intimate knowledge of the Jerusalem of Jesus' time, just as we would expect from the Apostle John. Such detail would not have been accessible to a writer of a later generation, since Jerusalem was demolished under Titus' Roman army in 70 A.D.”

This came from Raymond Brown, “The Gospel According to John I-XII”, 1966.