Re: Responses to Robbie and Tina

I'm sorry to be so late again. . . you know how it is.

Concerning my estimation of great unlikelihood that a young man with a low
level of literacy could have written the Gospel of John, even after several
decades, Jim wrote:
<< You may be slightly exaggerating the acheivement given what you've said
before -- that it was pretty likely that Galileans were bi- or tri-lingual
(if they couldn't write the languages, they could at least speak in them),
that John's vocabulary was limited even though you have a high opinion of
his style, etc. It would be a very small stretch to write a language you
already know how to speak, and quite possibly have been immersed in, if John
worked as a missionary outside Judea. Not that big a stretch for a 30-50
year period. >>

I want to emphasize that the relative smallness of the vocabulary of the
BOOK says little or nothing about the vocabulary or sophistication of
language of the author. I do not believe that an argument can be made for a
linguistically unsophisticated, or even lexically unsophisticated author
from the vocabulary of the fourth gospel. A deliberate and sharp limitation
of vocabulary is characteristic of many literary traditions, perhaps very
notably the Hebrew literary tradition which no doubt informs this book.

Different sources with different counting methods give different numbers,
but it is usually said that the entire corpus of Jean Racine uses only a few
thousand (several counts are below 3,000) different words. If that's an
empty statistic to anyone, perhaps it should be compared to similar counts
of Shakespeare's working vocabulary, which usually hover around 30,000
words. Most estimates for the average working vocabulary of a native
English-speaker today are around 15,000 or 20,000 words.

I would in fact suggest a comparatively high level of lexical sophistication
for the author of John, aside from other measures of stylistic or literary
competence, from his suggestive use of almost-but-not-quite synonyms, and
other very subtle distinctions made and used consistently in his vocabulary.

I do not doubt that the John in Acts could speak Greek, nor that he could
have learned to write it if he didn't already know how to write it when
depicted there and that he could then even have written a book. But that he
would have written THIS book, though I cannot call it impossible, seems to
me unlikely.

And then:
<< Yeah, Conrad is certainly an exceptional character. You're right, he
didn't learn English until later in life. Would you consider John a
literary equivalent to Conrad in English? >>

I would not be comfortable calling the author of John, as a writer of
literature, inferior to Conrad.

And:
<< This is all pretty reasonable. Let's say, for a moment, that the Gospel
of John is indeed a piece of deliberately crafted fiction. This is a pretty
sophisticated manipulation of symbols -- it goes far beyond mere allegory.
Is this common in fiction of the period? Can you name some contemporary
parallels. Did people compose fiction in this sense back then? >>

My immediate reaction is to say that this book, like all great literature,
is utterly unique and has no real parallels before or since, but of course
this sounds like cheating. So I'll say that I can certainly refer to other
books of this time and earlier that can be read in very similar ways, with
similarly "sophisticated manipulation[s] of symbols," though if you're
skeptical of this reading of this book I expect you'll be just as skeptical
of those. I certainly know of no great revolution since then that would
allow us to read in a way that the ancients could not, especially since they
were by no means ignorant of symbols and used them in very sophisticated
ways. I in fact think that most of the poo-pooing moderns give the ancients
is a result of our being too damned literal-minded these past few centuries,
and we are too inclined to impose our literalism on the ancients, who, I
think, were often much less literal than us. And perhaps because it's
easier to smile at our simpleton forebears than to think that maybe they
didn't mean it like that and to engage their ideas more slowly and
carefully. (Almost everything one sees about Aristotle, for instance, is
profoundly condescending historical curiosity rather than a sincere and
respectful engagement of an extraordinary and still vibrant mind, as if it
should raise no eyebrow to say Ha Ha Ha, what a simple fool Aristotle is!)

Many of the very involved uses of symbol in the Hebrew tradition, as you
probably know, seem to be critiques of the nation of Israel, and while they
can be sophisticated and subtle I don't think they're often as complex as
John. I do think that things more like, if not quite exactly like John can
be seen particularly in the less ostensibly historical and more literary and
mythological texts. The vastness of the Greek canon makes for easier but
less helpful pointing, I think. Maimonides is probably a helpful reference,
as he was a twelfth-century Jewish scholar (he wrote in Arabic) who was
deeply influenced by the Greeks, especially Aristotle. His Guide to the
Perplexed is written to the student of the Hebrew Bible who, having studied
philosophy and mathematics and astronomy as he says is necessary, becomes
perplexed by the Bible's contradictions and textual problems, and who
perhaps is tempted to abandon it all. He describes different ways to read,
particularly different ways to read the Bible, and found some conflict in
his time for endorsing non-literal readings. He, of course, comes quite a
while after the author of John and would probably not be interested in that
book in particular -- but his primary influences are ancient Hebrew and
ancient Greek and he would certainly favor such a reading, I think. Other
Jewish writers and rabbinical authorities, though usually less radical than
Maimondes, suggested similar readings well before him, and it has long been
part of the tradition (though impossible to know how long) that every
word -- sometimes LITERALLY every word -- can be read in many ways.

And:
<< That sounds like a fair description of responsible scholarship. There's
quite a bit of scholarship like the kind Tina has been referring to, though,
that has a very iconoclastic attitude toward tradition. Much of this
depends upon the temperment of the scholar, of course. I think what you
just described is probably a good summary of a reasonable position from a
consensus of scholarly voices. >>

There is, as you say, a bit of the "iconoclastic" scholarship like the sort
Tina has referred to, but these scholars are a loud minority.

And:
<< I appreciate the information. Parallels with Genesis 1, of course, are
pretty widely discussed so I'm not unfamiliar with that. But I think the
answers to this question lies in the rest of the book of John, where you
distinctly get the impression that some kind of identification between
Christ and the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" is going on. This is the
very reason the Pharisees -- who seem to have understood Christ's own words
better than his disciples did at times -- wanted to stone him on a few
occasions. >>

I agree with this, certainly, but it remains that I find it at least unclear
whether this "identification" is to suggest that Jesus IS HIMSELF GOD, or
merely to suggest a sort of authority by affiliation and to shock and
provoke -- I might say to sting and perplex somewhat Socratically -- into
the consideration of unconsidered beliefs. Much of the rhetoric is clearly
meant to shock and provoke (like the eating of his flesh and drinking of his
blood, when obviously nobody would have any idea what the hell he was
talking about and even eating the meat of an animal without first draining
the blood was a smite-able offense), and it often seemed to do this with the
goal of revealing hypocrisies or an ignorance of Hebrew law (or a techical
knowledge of it, with a demonstrable ignorance of the point).

And:
<< There's more to that word "dwelt," now, isn't there? I've often heard it
said that it could be translated "tabernacled" -- drawing a parallel between
Christ's physical body and the tent in the wilderness. >>

Yes, eskénôsen, from skénoô, usually translated here as "dwelt," has a sense
of "pitched tents" or "encamped" since skéné is "tent."

Though the line says that the logos became flesh and "pitched tents" (or, if
you like, "tabernacled") amongst (or in) men, and not that the logos, or
men, did such in flesh-- so it seems to me to take a bit too much ingenuity
to have Jesus's body being the tabernacle here.

 And finally:
<< That's a pretty good reading of those passages. The important thing to
me, though, is that you've moved pretty far away from any suggestion of
allegory -- this meaning could just as easily come from a historical
narrative of sorts. Nothing needs to "represent" anything other than what
it is for this meaning to arise from the stories. >>

If I've moved away from anything I said two or three posts ago, perhaps it
is because I share Tolkien's discomfort with even the intimation of
allegory, and prefer his side of the distinction between it and
applicability.

Tolkien wrote:
"I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to
the thought and experience of readers. I think that may confuse
'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the
reader and the other in the purposed domination of the author."

And elsewhere:
".any attempt to explain the purport of myth or fairytale must use
allegorical language. (And, of course, the more 'life' a story has the more
readily will it be susceptible of allegorical interpretations: while the
better a deliberate allegory is made the more nearly will it be acceptable
just as a story.)."

I have been using the language of allegory, but I would rather think of it
as deep resonances between, say, a repeated number and its significance to
the most sacred books of Judaism -- which is, I think, a supporting
resonance to a theme developed elsewhere in varied ways -- than as a cold,
allegorical equation, as five loaves = five books of Torah.

-robbie
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Received on Sun Aug 3 21:32:33 2003