82 GEORGE C. HEIDER Yet the immediately preceding verses suggest that the disciple is dead, at least as the final verses are written (John 21,23), and the last two verses distinguish between that disciple and both “we” and “I”. The upshot is to undermine authority as devolving from authorship and to deflect it to the books’ words and characters (chiefly, the mediators Moses and Jesus) — precisely the kind of “move” to be expected, as the canonical process inevitably underlines the authority of the written text. IV. John as the New Testament’s Deutero-Deuteronomy What, then, do we make of these external and internal parallels, taken together? A longstanding Christian reading of the Fourth Gospel would argue for seeing in it a “canon within the canon” vis- à-vis the other gospels. Thus, Martin Luther wrote: “John’s Gospel is the one, tender, true, chief Gospel, far, far to be preferred to the other three and to be placed high above them” 33. In the modern era, Adolf von Harnack went so far as to argue that either John itself or the canon was seeking to supplant the other Gospels 34. If anything, the numerous parallels that we have seen between Deuteronomy and John vis-à-vis the Torah and Gospels would argue against such an extreme construal of the role assigned by the canonical behind the text is reminiscent of Moses’ authority in Deuteronomy. And wit- hin the narrative, the beloved disciple’s intermediary role on behalf of the community of disciples with Jesus (cf. John 13,23-24) calls to mind Moses’ standing between Israel and God in Deut 5,5 and often elsewhere in the book. 33 What Luther Says (ed. E.M. PLASS) (St. Louis, MO 1959 [Ger. orig. 1522]) II, 988. See similarly J. CALVIN, Commentary on the Gospel according to John (Grand Rapids, MI 1949 [Lat. orig. 1553]) I, 22. 34 A. VON HARNACK, The Origin of the New Testament (New Testament Studies VI; London 1925) 72-73. Just short of this view (and writing nearly forty years earlier), F.C. BAUR, The Church History of the First Three Cen- turies (London 1878) 1:24-25, cited in R. MORGAN, “The Hermeneutical Sig- nificance of the Four Gospels”, Int 33 (1979) 385, stated: “If it be assumed that the four gospels agree with each other and are capable of being harmo- nized, the absolute importance which the Gospel of John assigns to the per- son of Jesus must determine our whole view of the Gospel history ... . Whenever the first three gospels disagree with the fourth, the authority of the latter must be held to be decisive”.