John records a very long speech of Jesus to His disciples...

John records a very long speech of Jesus to His disciples which takes up four chapters (14 to 17) of his Gospel. During this crowning speech, Jesus announces that He will leave His last instructions and gives them His last spiritual testament. There is no trace of this in the other Gospels. The same process can work the other way however; Matthew, Luke and Mark all relate Jesus's prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, but John does not mention it.

JOHN'S GOSPEL DOES NOT DESCRIBE THE INSTITUTION OF THE EUCHARIST. The most important fact that strikes the reader of the Passion in John's Gospel is that he makes absolutely no reference to the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper of Jesus with His Apostles. There is not a single Christian who does not know the iconography of the Last Supper, where Jesus is for the last time seated among His Apostles at table.

The world's greatest painters have always represented this final gathering with John sitting near Jesus, John whom we are accustomed to considering as the author of the Gospel bearing that name. However astonishing it may appear to many , the majority of specialists do not consider John to have been the author of the fourth Gospel, nor does the latter mention the institution of the Eucharist.

The consecration of the bread and wine, which become the body and blood of Jesus, is the most essential act of the Christian liturgy. The other evangelists refer to it, even if they do so in differing terms, as we have noted above. John does not say anything about it. The four evangelists' descriptions have only two single points in common: the prediction of Peter's denial and of the betrayal by one of the Apostles (Judas Iscariot is only actually named in Matthew and John).

John's description is the only one which refers to Jesus washing his disciples' feet at the beginning of the meal. How can this omission in John's Gospel be explained? If one reasons objectively, the hypothesis that springs immediately to mind (always supposing the story as told by the other three evangelists is exact) is that a passage of John's Gospel relating the said episode was lost. This is not the conclusion arrived at by Christian commentators.

Let us now examine some of the positions they have adopted. In his Little Dictionary of the New Testament (Petit Dictionnaire du Nouveau Testament) A. Tricot makes the following entry under Last Supper (Cène).