John reads unlike the other three Gospels from its opening line: "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," a philosophical prologue with no parallel among the Synoptics, which open instead with a birth, a genealogy, or a preacher in the wilderness. There are no parables in John and almost no exorcisms; instead Jesus speaks in long discourses built around a small set of recurring images, light and darkness, bread, water, vine and branches, and performs a curated set of seven "signs" rather than the many scattered miracles found elsewhere.
Seven times Jesus makes an "I am" statement, I am the bread of life, the light of the world, the good shepherd, the resurrection and the life, language that deliberately echoes the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush. The chronology also differs sharply from the Synoptics: John places the Temple incident near the start of Jesus' ministry rather than at its end, spreads the ministry across three Passovers rather than one, and dates the crucifixion a day earlier, on the day the Passover lambs were slaughtered, a detail many readers take as deliberate theology rather than a discrepancy to be explained away. The unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" appears only in this Gospel and becomes, by the book's own closing claim, the source behind it.