Page "Gospel of John" Paragraph 166

Throughout the 20th century a minority of prominent scholars, such as John A. T. Robinson, have argued that John is as historically reliable as the synoptics.

Robinson wrote that, where the Gospel narrative accounts can be checked for consistency with surviving material evidence, the account in the Gospel of John is commonly the more plausible ; that it is generally easier to reconcile the various synoptic accounts within John's narrative framework, than it is to explain John's narrative within the framework of any of the synoptics ; and that, where in the Gospel Jesus and his disciples are described as travelling around identifiable locations, the trips in question can always be plausibly followed on the ground, which he says is not the case for any synoptic Gospel.

Scholars such as D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Craig Blomberg, often agree with Robinson.

Henry Wansbrough says: " Gone are the days when it was scholarly orthodoxy to maintain that John was the least reliable of the gospels historically.