Every Villain Thinks He’s a Hero

John was a brilliant storyteller. He knew how to hook his audience and slowly build tension to keep them engaged. For example, all four gospel accounts include conflicts between Jesus and the religious leaders of Judea, but in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, any attempt to arrest Jesus appears only at the very end of their Gospels, in the final days before the crucifixion. John’s narrative is different. At times, it reads like a cat-and-mouse caper because it presents the authorities as trying to capture Jesus from the very beginning of his ministry, but he always slipped through their fingers because “his hour had not yet come.”