The evidence:
- some Gospel passages show clues of stories having John as hero, and not Jesus
- some words of Jesus coincide with words of John
- there is evidence that the function of the first "Gospel about John" was to show that a holy man named John was chosen by God to give the "grace" (in virtue of his name itself) to both Jews and gentiles.
- This "Gospel about John" was a Jewish work meant to show John as a Jewish hero, but it was a compromise: behind 'John', it was judaized, i.e. made acceptable for Jews, the idea that divine knowledge (gnosis) leads to upper heavens.
- The "party of Apollos" read this "Gospel about John".
- Against radical gnostic evolutions of the party of Apollos, the name of John was connected by fanatic Judaizers with the Book of Revelation: his 'divine knowledge' was reduced so to vision of the future Zealot apocalypse (being Revelation in his original form a Zealot book).
- the connection of John with Zelotism via association of his name with the book of Revelation justified the description of John as potential rebel in the eyes of Herod according to the Baptist passage that was a Christian interpolation.