nature of the discourses and disputes in the gospel makes it almost certain that John’s ultimate motive was doctrinal.17 Apart from such hints, explicit and implicit, as we find within these texts, there does appear to be an overriding factor in the felt need to write the gospels. Stated briefly, it is that the contemporaries and eye-witnesses of Jesus were beginning to die. The decade of the 60s was critical in this regard. In AD 62, James the brother of the Lord was martyred in Jerusalem. It was