My according the Fourth Gospel primary authority is indeed a matter of my personal preference, since even before I was a Christian it always seemed that it was the most beautiful book of the Bible.
But is it just that - merely personal?
No - there is something more to it than taste, and something that may be generally true.
For many years I interpreted the IV Gospel in the mainstream orthodox way, as a kind of "mystical appendix" to the Synoptics and Paul's letters, or else part of a mosaic of Biblical evidence but without special eminence.
This framework meant that the meanings of the IV-G could-not and did-not change anything substantive - it merely provided a kind of "radiant glow" around the main stuff, which was elsewhere.
It was only after I had decided to read and re-read the IV Gospel as the primary authority - on the basis of what the book said about itself confirmed by my deepest intuitions, and that it really did feel deeply like a near contemporary eye-witness account by an intimate of Jesus...
Only after doing this multiple re-read; did I realize - and with considerable shock - that instead of being mystical, abstract and vague - the IV-G was actually highly coherent and clear...
But about what? There I was shocked to find that what it was so clear about was that the essence of Jesus's teaching was that of resurrected eternal life, possible for all those who recognized and "followed" Jesus.
This was shocking because it was so plain; and because I had a kind of inner snobbery against a religion which was based-upon promising its adherents eternal and fulfilling life after death...
This offer of better times to come later seemed like a simple-minded basis for a religion, designed to appeal mainly to selfish and simple-minded people...
Almost like the nasty caricature of Christianity by its enemies - a controlling socio-political scheme offering "pie in the sky" for those who do what we say, and think what we tell them to think.
A classic bit of priestly manipulation...
Except that in the actual IV Gospel, when read as a coherent whole; the offer of resurrected life was not conditional upon obedience to an external authority or adherence to complex laws and rules.
Indeed, there wasn't anything in the valid parts of the Gospel* about setting-up a priesthood or church.
The Gospel is about an un-socio-political, as non-institutional, as could be imagined; it is all about loving familial and marriage relationships.
IV-G was about our attitude-to and relationship-with Jesus primarily, and his Father secondarily yet necessarily.
So that when I then went back to re-read the other books of the New Testament in light of the IV, I often seemed to be reading about another Jesus; a Jesus whose focus was very different from IV-G, and who was (as his priority) proposing primarily to set-up a new priesthood and a new church - with all that entailed in terms of laws and practices**.
Therefore to read the IV Gospel as the primary authority of Jesus Christ that the Gospel itself tells us that it is; seems to entail a very profound reshaping of what has become the mainstream orthodox understanding of "what Christianity is" - its nature, aims, mechanisms.
If the IV-Gospel is accepted and embraced as true and valid in its own right; then the rest of the Bible needs to be approached with a great deal of selectivity; and a good deal of it needs to be discarded.
Small wonder - it seems to me - that the IV Gospel has, and apparently since very early after the ascension of Jesus; been accorded only a minor, subordinate, supplementary role in defining the teaching of Jesus and the true nature of substantive Christianity.
*The process of reading and re-reading, spontaneously led to the rejection of a few parts of the Gospel being recognized as - to me - obviously alien and from another source, with a contradictory implication from the unity of the whole. For instance, Chapter 21 comes after the Gospel - pretty clearly - has ended with a recapitulation.
**. More exactly, "Christianity"/ following Jesus is presented an inner desire and attitude, that can (when necessary) be practiced in the context of any religion, or none.
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