Re: Responses to Robbie and Tina

Responses below:

L. Manning Vines wrote:

>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.
>
Ok, but once we concede a Hebrew literary tradition, we need to view the
Gospel in that light -- which certainly begin to imply claims of deity.
I get to this at the end of this post.

Your following paragraph uses Racine and Shakespeare as
counterexamples. I don't think that's really relevant...why do you? It
would be more relevant to compare John's Greek to the Greek of other
works from the same period and go from there. This is exactly where
early assessments of John's unsophistcation came from, by the way --
espcially in comparsion to Plutarch, I believe. From my understanding,
this may have even been before koine was recognized as a distinct
dialect of Greek, though. Some modern reassessments then understand
Plutarch to be writing in an artificially literary style while the
Gospels were written more like the way people actually spoke.

>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.
>
That sounds like a reasonable measure.

>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.
>
Ok, but let's examine the chain of reasoning that leads to this judgment:

1. The Pharisees are recorded in Acts as judging the apostles as
"unlearned" men.
    a. You assume that the Pharisees were accurate in their judgment --
which from the narrative itself we know was an on the spot guess.
    b. You assume that this assumption is relevant to the apostle's
facility with the Greek language, rather than just familiarity
with/education in Jewish tradition.
    c. You assume that 30-50 years isn't long enough to develop a degree
of sophistication in language use, when you have nothing upon which to
base a comparison
       (in other words, we don't have writings from the 20 year old John
to compare to the 70 year old John).

Now this is what I meant by the statement that the "traditional" views
of authorship are based upon evidence while rejections of it are based
upon speculation. The book of John claims to have been written by an
eyewitness, there are some small markers supporting that claim, and
church fathers who actually knew the apostles ascribed the Gospel of
John to the apostle John (Clement and Irenaus, I think...and I'm
thinking there was another guy whose name started with a P).

Now I'm not saying this physical evidence is conclusive. It's not for a
number of reasons, and that's why your description of scholarly
consensus in your next post was a fair and accurate description. But it
has more physical evidence on its side than any other claim, that's all.

>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'd have to say I agree with what you go on to say below about the
modern poo-pooing of the ancients, and I think my choice of the word
"sophisticated" was somewhat dysfunctional -- it's an indication of the
degree to which I've been affected by the modern disease you went on to
describe. Now I know it's something I just have to watch out for. What
I should have said was that the reading of John you were suggesting
seemed like a very _modern_ manipulation of a sign system. I can't
think of too many documents from that time period that used a sign
system in quite that way. Allegory was much more typical and was highly
respected even through the time of St. Augustine and beyond -- probably
well into the Medieval period. It was considered the highest form of
literary interpretation for quite some time. At the same time, though,
you aren't arguing for an allegorical reading, but something more subtle.

The closest thing I can think of is Ovid's _Metamorphosis_, where it's
becoming evident to the storyteller that all these stories about the
Gods are really stories about human emotional development or our
emotional lives. The stories aren't quite allegorical, but they are
symbolic. I don't think this is a good comparison to John, though,
because the author of that Gospel clearly intended his audience to
understand his writing as eyewitness history -- and what I don't think
you see in literature of the period is too much eyewitness history that
has very dense layers of symbolism. The closest thing I've seen to this
in even the modern period is Tom Woolf's _The Electrice Kool-Aid Acid
Test_, especially the closing scene, where all the Merry Pranksters are
playing before an audience, but all the sound is only going into each
band member's headphones.

Now, this may be a convention of sacred history, but even then I get the
definite impression that the events are meaningful in themselves and
only serve as symbols after the fact. So what I think you're arguing
for in John is a completely unique thing -- which needs more accounting
for than just "genius," which ultimately doesn't tell us anything.

You may just as well say the work was breathed by God.

>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.
>
Good summary of the history, but I think it also demonstrates the
problem with your thesis. Kabbalah isn't a very good point of reference
for John's Gospel either.

>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).
>
Now if you claim Hebrew influences in John, though, you should recognize
that "authority by affiliation" was very common in the Hebrew prophetic
tradition, but none of them -- not a single Hebrew prophet -- was ever
accused of blasphemy as Christ was. Authority by affiliation was a
common claim, but Christ's claims were understood by his contemporaries
(and his opponents) as going far beyond that.

At this point we have a few options. First, we can assume that we
understand Christ better now, 2000 years later, than the Pharisees who
were listening to him, or we can assume the whole thing is made up --
but then we have to ask why?, or we can take the claims at face value
and admit they were a bit disturbing.

This whole thing about a great misunderstood moral teacher who never
really claimed deity but had that laid on him is a bit too...oh....too
much like modern humanism looking at itself in the mirror and calling it
Christ. It's too much like a reading we moderns would like.

>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.
>
If John was writing within the Hebrew tradition, and was as brilliant as
you say, why is this too ingenious? The original tabernacle was a tent
in the wilderness, literally, that housed the presence of God. This is
a readily accessible and easily understandable sign in the Hebrew
tradition, and Paul used the same word to describe the physical body of
the Christian (if this tent we live in is destroyed....).

Putting John within the Hebrew tradition makes the statement that the
Logos was God, the logos became flesh and "pitched his tent" among us, a
clear claim that the logos was God the Creator in human flesh. I think
it takes more ingenuity to dance around this.

Jim

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Received on Mon Aug 4 10:01:55 2003