Jim writes:
<< 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. >>
I do think it is relevant, because my assertion was that the size of the
vocabulary in a book or body of books does not bear any necessary
correlation to literary sophistication, to linguistic sophistication, or
even to lexical sophistication. To an assertion of an unsophistication in
any of these respects, claims of small vocabulary are immaterial. Racine is
a particularly good demonstration of this, and I mentioned Shakespeare and
estimates of average English vocabularies only to lend Racine's statistics a
context.
As you suggest, I could have attempted to demonstrate the same thing with
Greek names instead of a French one, but the French one was so clear and
handy that I didn't bother, not seeing what benefit it would provide anyway
since my point was purely of the worthlessness of counting words to
demonstrate unsophistication in literature.
If I had been more ambitious, I surely could have gone beyond these small
claims to discuss John's Greek in more detail, and THIS would, as you say,
require comparison to other Greek works. Such an ambition, however, would
require much time and many words to attain my satisfaction, and I doubt that
any other active participant of this list has the technical background to
follow it without too much effort for me to expect you to exert for such a
trifle anyway, so for all my time I'd probably only be read by you and
Scottie (or maybe only Scottie). Thus I never had such an ambition.
I wrote:
<< 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 to this Jim responds:
<< 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. >>
1. I don't think that the judgment is strictly by the Pharisees, but by a
generic plural subject when something like "rulers and elders" were present;
and the judgment is not of the apostles, but specifically of Peter and John.
a. I do not assume that they were accurate in their judgment, which is why I
have throughout included such clauses as "If their judgment is correct," or
"Supposing for now that we can trust this report and their estimation," (I
am sure I said things to this effect two or three times, at least). And we
actually do not know from the narrative that their judgment was a guess --
the narrator uses the verb katalambanô, which I discussed with Scottie, a
word that in contexts like this carries the force of "to realize" or "to
comprehend" (it comes from a root meaning to seize, like our "grasping" of
an idea). Perhaps we are not to trust their realization, but the author
certainly had available to him Greek words meaning to guess or to suppose or
to believe, none of which he used here.
b. I do not assume that this judgment is SPECIFIC to Peter or John's
facility with Greek, but that a general judgment of being unlettered and
common, if it is accurate, is relevant to one's capacity for composing
literature.
c. I do not assume that 30-50 years (or any other number of them) is
insufficient to develop a degree of linguistic sophistication (though I
don't know how you can say that I have "nothing upon which to base a
comparison," since probably most of us are familiar with learning languages
and the relative degrees of aptitude shown by people learning our language,
and it happens that my own father's native tongue is not the same as mine,
and through his family I know people who speak my native tongue to varying
degrees of aptitude, who have started with it at varying ages and continued
with varying effort and varying skill for varying numbers of years). I only
assume that one cannot accept it as ordinary -- though I have repeatedly
backed away from saying "impossible" -- when someone goes from slack-jawed
yokel (or, to be fair, "unlettered and common," though I'm not sure the
former is starkly in disagreement even with the gospel account) to literary
mastery in his adult life. Perhaps you are of the opinion that with a good
knowledge of the language and enough pluck, anyone can write a masterpiece,
and in this case I am powerless to convince you. But I am not of this
opinion. As I see it, most people just ain't got the chops, and no number
of years will give it to them -- and people who can without surprise be
described by strangers as unlettered and common might be particularly
unlikely to have the chops.
And:
<< 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. >>
But, as I've taken pains to state and restate and emphasize, I am not
rejecting it -- I am rejecting only your apparent conviction of it.
And:
<< 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). >>
We know as little or less about the earliest church fathers than about the p
eople in question (and wasn't Irenaeus a middle-to-late second-century
figure? I thought the tradition was that he knew people who knew the
apostles). The "small markers" like visual details in the narrative are
sparse and not compelling (I think less compelling than literary readings
that incorporate them, but I suppose you'll disagree with that).
And it becomes hard to believe ancient histories, even ancient eyewitness
accounts, the way we believe newspapers, after one reads something like
Herodotus (the Father of History, he's called, but Thucydides called him the
Father of Lies). And in any case, the claim of authorship at the last notes
of John is, as I've said before, often suggested as an addition, and the
section in which it sits would be suggested as such a candidate even if not
for the claim at the end.
But I'll say it again: none of this is to be a rejection of apostolic
authorship. You seem to be giving it a slant of, Well, of course we don't
know but it sure does look like it -- and I'm just trying to scratch that
last bit, which I don't think we can say so confidently as you seem to be
doing.
After after where I've cut him off above, Jim says:
<< 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. >>
It's that last sentence where it looks to me like you're grasping. If by
"any other claim" you mean claims that it is impossible for apostles to have
penned any of the gospels, I'd say that both sides have essentially
negligible physical evidence, though such claims of impossibility are
obnoxiously naysaying (and very rare) while yours seems rather too hopeful.
Jim goes on to write:
<< 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. [. . .] you aren't arguing for an allegorical reading, but
something more subtle. >>
I don't think it needs to be seen as a modern manipulation of a sign system,
and it seems to me that this is still the sort of thinking that leads us to
believe that the ancients were too simple to do things as we can do them,
though it is here more responsibly phrased.
As I said before, we can read other ancient texts in ways very much like
this (your suggestion of Ovid is probably a good one), but if one isn't
convinced that it's valid for this book he won't be convinced that it's
valid for the others either. And besides which, the claim that no other
ancient book was written this way does not argue against this one's having
been. Honestly, I have a harder time comparing my reading of this book to
my readings of modern books than to other ancient ones -- perhaps this is
simply because the most immediately accessible list in my mind is weighted
that way, while yours is weighted the other.
And:
<< 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. >>
I don't think it's so clear that the author intended his audience to read
this as eyewitness history, and if he did he had a very different sense of
eyewitness history. There are, for instance, lapses -- of a sort which I'll
always associate with The Great Gatsby since their presence in that book was
brought prominently to my attention while I was in high school -- where the
narrator narrates something he should not know.
And both the Greek and Hebrew traditions of those days and earlier (along
with many, many others) allowed much more wiggle in what was "history" than
we do, as is abundantly clear in almost all of the historical or
somewhat-maybe-historical books from both.
And, concerning my talk of Maimonides and other Jewish commentators:
<< 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. >>
Maimonides was not a Kabbalist (and neither were the other commentators I
had in mind).
And:
<< 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. >>
True or not, I'm not sure that this particular uniqueness requires the sort
you seem to be hunting for.
Then:
<< Authority by affiliation was a common claim, but Christ's claims were
understood by his contemporaries (and his opponents) as going far beyond
that. >>
In the Gospel of John, which is the only book I really mean to be talking
about here (and which is the book usually pointed to as containing the
boldest claims of Jesus' divinity or godhead or messiahship or whathaveyou),
Jesus' contemporaries accuse him of blasphemy for making himself as God by
saying that his father is God, and HE responds that the Hebrew scripture
says Ye are sons of God. It's not a big deal, he says. Books you
yourselves consider religiously authoritative say the same thing about all
of you.
As depicted in John, Jesus' religious ideas were certainly a threat to the
authority and he certainly said things that were deliberately provocative
and taken as blasphemies. But, very interestingly, the author has ample
opportunity to have Jesus (or his own narrative voice) come right out and
say it, the one thing we want to hear clearly and explicitly, no more
riddles or funny talk, and he just never does it. The one place where
people point to say, There it is! the only place in the Bible where Jesus
calls himself the messiah, is not so clear in Greek. (There's actually
another place in John, which, though not ground-shaking, I think is much
closer than the oft-cited place with the Samaritan woman at the well.)
And:
<< 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. >>
I think the author of John certainly HOPES that we would understand Jesus
better than the Pharisees depicted there. And I don't doubt that the
particulars of most or all of the specific interactions on the street are
made up, but I don't think I have to ask why any more than I am obligated to
ask that about any other literature, or semi-historical literature.
(And the claims, taken at face value as you suggest, certainly were
disturbing to the Jerusalem religious authority, but they do not explicitly
include claims of deity.)
And:
<< 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. >>
I don't pretend to know or even to have a reliable idea of whether Jesus the
man ever claimed or believed himself to be a deity. Perhaps he didn't, and
you can ugly up a summary like that to belittle the idea all you like
without changing this. And perhaps he did. I'm talking about a book
usually called the Gospel of John, though, and my claim is that this book
can be read by someone who doesn't know about a tradition claiming that
Jesus is God, and he will scratch his head a great deal and wonder just what
the deal with that guy is supposed to be, but that he will not necessarily
walk away with the conviction that this character in this book is supposed
to be God.
And, referring to what I said about the word that can be translated as
"tabernacled" :
<< If John was writing within the Hebrew tradition, and was as brilliant as
you say, why is this too ingenious? >>
I meant that the reading is too ingenious in the sense that it must work too
hard to find its meaning. You said that the line might draw parallels
between Jesus' body and the tabernacle, and this alone was what I thought
was too strained -- certainly the word is suggestive in its placement there.
And I say this because the line does not indicate the the logos
"tabernacled" in flesh -- which is what it sounded to me like you were
suggesting -- but that it became flesh and "tabernacled" amongst (or in) us.
Following the grammar of the sentence makes "us" a more reasonable
tabernacle than the flesh of Jesus' body.
And finally:
<< 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. >>
As I suggested before, this simple equation leaves out the messiness of "to
be" and leaves out all manner of obscurity between those lines that are
being drawn together. The logos does not simply equal God (nor does it
simply equal Jesus). If it did, it would be a redundant term and all the
difficulty of the first six or so lines would be empty. I think this
messiness is ordinarily resolved by some very well-developed
trinity-theology, but I see no reason to expect that most of this wouldn't
be foreign to the author of John.
-robbie
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Received on Tue Aug 5 00:29:29 2003
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