ALT Infinite Memory: The Gospel of John and the Jesus of History Tom Thatcher The Gospel of John is now best understood not as a receptacle for a lost oral tradition but rather as an instance of a living collective memory. John’s book about Jesus and his associates was one of many ways that one person remembered those people and their activities. And since John must have envisioned some sort of audience for his book, we can reasonably say that the Fourth Gospel is one way that an entire group of people remembered Jesus, at least at one particular moment in time.