[I]n John there is even less than in the Synoptists that can be taken as reference to the fall of Jerusalem after the event. Indeed the presumption is that it is still standing as the evangelist himself describes it in the three present tenses of 5.2 (though nothing can be built upon them: ‘There is in Jerusalem a place which is called in the language of the Jews Bethesda, having five porches.’ The only forecast is that the Romans would come and destroy the city and its holy place if the Jewish authorities left Jesus at large (11.48) – in fact an unfulfilled prophecy, for they did not and the Romans still came. The threat that the sanctuary would be destroyed is referred by John to the events of 30 (2.19-21), not to those of 70 (contrast Mark 13.2 and pars.). The relations of the Jews to the Romans remain obsequious and collaborationists to the end (19.12-15), with no reflection at all of the revolt of 66. There is no hint of state persecution, which hit the church with Nero in 65, only of bitter Jewish harassment. Certainly in the Epistles there is no evidence of Gnosticizing heresy, but this is no more advanced or elaborate (indeed less) than what we find in the same area in the Epistle to the Colossians, which if it is Pauline, as I am convinced it is, cannot be later than the early 60s or late 50s, and I would say it is earlier. (John A.T. Robinson, The Priority of John [ed. J.F. Coakley; London: SCM Press, 1985], 70, emphasis added)
Apart from being an interesting insight, it also provides further support for the contingent nature of biblical predictions, something I discussed in some detail at:
