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Joh_21:24. Conclusion by John to this his supplement, Joh_21:1-23, which he makes known as his work, and the contents of which he maintains to be true. To his book he had given the conclusion, Joh_20:31; all the less should the apostolic legitimation be wanting to the appendix added by him at a later time.
περὶ τούτων and ταῦτα refer to the supplementary narrative in Joh_21:1-23.
Observe the change of participles, pres. μαρτυρῶν (for his witness, i.e. his eye- and ear-witness, still continued a living one in an oral form) and aor. γράψας .[292]
οἴδαμεν ] Not οἰδα μὲν (Chrysostom, Theophylact); but John, as he has avoided throughout in the Gospel, in accordance with his delicate peculiarity, the self-designation by I, here speaks out of the consciousness of fellowship with his readers at that time, none of whom the aged apostle justly presupposed would doubt the truth of his testimony. With this good apostolical confidence he utters his οἴδαμεν . He might have written, as in Joh_19:35, οἶδεν (Beza so conjectured). But his book up to this appendix, chap. 21, had belonged in truth already for a considerable time to the narrower circle of his first readers; they could not therefore but know from it how truly he had testified concerning all that he had written; all the more could he now, when by way of supplement he further added the appendix, conceive what was to be said concerning the truth of the contents in the above form of fellowship, and as he conceived it, so he says it; as he is in so doing certain of the concurrence of his readers (comp. 3Jn_1:12) with his own consciousness, so he writes it. According to this, no satisfactory reason is apparent for recognising in οἴδαμεν a composer different from the γράψας (Bleek, Baeumlein), and conceiving of the Ephesian presbyters or friends of the apostle as the subject, whether the chapter be now ascribed to them (or to an individual among them) (Grotius, Lücke, Ewald, Bleek, and several others), or only Joh_21:24-25 (Tholuck, Luthardt, Godet, and several others), or again merely Joh_21:24, Joh_21:25 being rejected (Tischendorf).
[292] Note also how the witness is identical with the γράψας , so that John himself expressly announces himself as the composer of the appendix, and consequently also of the whole Gospel, with which the assumption that the Gospel proceeds from the apostle through a second hand, stands in contradiction.