Responses to Robbie and Tina

Robbie -- dang, good responses. Thanks much for refreshing my memory
about all this. You're probably right about my confusing statements
about Revelation with statements about John, but I'm pretty sure I've
read some scholars who were dismissive of John because of his limited
Greek vocabulary. By "traditionally" I tended to mean a couple
different things without signifying any shift in meaning -- first,
scholarship over the last 100 years, and in other places what was
commonly asserted by church fathers. I'll try to be clearer in future
responses.

I did most of my study in this area between 1982 and 1995, so it's much
more recent for you..

If you do pull together a coherent paper, I'd love to read it.

I would say about this, though:

>And if the assessment in Acts 4.13 is to be believed, John the apostle
>probably wouldn't have written such a beautiful and carefully-crafted book.
>There, a fancy council sees John and Peter, and "katalabomenoi hoti
>anthrôpoi agrammatoi eisin kai idiôtai," or, "comprehended that they were
>unlettered (agrammatoi) men and unskilled/commoners (idiôtai)."
>
that the John being described in Acts may be as much as 50 years younger
than the John who would have written the Gospel, so it's reasonable to
assume that during that time John the apostle could have acquired a
limited mastery of koine Greek. Another argument in favor of apostolic
authorship, in addition to church tradition, is simply the fact that the
author of the book claimed to have been present. These aren't
conclusive arguments for a number of reasons, but the fact is all
physical evidence points in the direction of apostolic authorship, while
claims against apostolic authorship don't quite have that going for
them. I think there's a letter by one of the church fathers that can be
read as describing two different Johns -- the apostle and the elder --
and that's it.

Robbie also said:

>And regarding Jesus' being God, I should add that the Gospel of John, though
>it is widely considered the most concerned with Jesus' divinity, doesn't
>seem to me to make many clear and bold statements about it. It is this
>book, in fact, that is often pointed to as containing the only passage where
>Jesus himself claims to be the messiah, and it is a passage that I believe
>has ambiguous Greek.
>

What about John 1 -- in verse 1, the Word was God, then in vs. 14, the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us? There are also a few times Christ
claimed perogatives reserved only for deity: knowing Abraham, forgiving
sins, etc. I think the Pharisees had good reason to want to stone
Christ from their point of view.

You mention parallels employing the number "5" for the colonnade, the
loaves of bread, the virgins (there were actually ten -- two sets of
five, wise and foolish. Is there a foolish version of the Torah?), and
the Torah. Let's assume this was a deliberate link -- what work does it
do in these passages? How does it add meaning to any of the passages?
I think it really doesn't. The five "covered" colonnades around the
pool seems to serve more descriptive purposes than anything else.
Christ heals a guy who can't walk and we forget all about the
colonnades. The five loaves of bread could probably serve some
allegorical purposes since they were used to feed the masses, but two
sets of five virgins doesn't work at all, and that parable is the one
place you'd expect to see some kind of symbolism. So I would tend to
read a description of "five colonnades" as meaningless detail than
allegory, which I'm not sure that John employed very much at all.

Responses to Tina below:

tina carson wrote:

> No, to have the Romans take out their trash, as it were would be
> immasculating. If they wanted him dead, they'd have done it. Rome
> wanted him dead, so he was crucified. Not because the Jews wanted
> it. No king but Caesar? Please? This is Roman propoganda. No
> self0-respecting Jew would have said this. Hail the guy who conquored
> God's land and taught us that our God is powerless? Come on!

I think this is a pretty naive reading that doesn't take into account
some of the subtleties of the NT records. The overall presentation of
Jewish groups that were actively persecuting Christ/Christians is that
they were willing to get in bed with anyone who would help them suppress
the church. In Ephesus, they aligned themselves with idol makers who
should have been equally offensive to Jews -- but they didn't mind,
because it helped them cause problems for Christians. Part of Christ's
invective against these groups is not that they had too high a respect
for Jewish law, for Moses and Abraham, but that they didn't really care
for them at all. These kinds of details reinforce that invective. See
what they said about Ceasar? They don't really care about Moses. They
really only cared about their own prestige, and were willing to at least
temporarily set aside the religion that gave it to them if it helped
them attain their goals.

> No, the Romans leveled the place because the Jews finally got the
> balls to defeat the Romans, so Romwe came down in full force.
> Remember, in all of history, the Romans are the only people who have a
> word for "killed every tenth man" The Jews were a pain to occupy, why
> would they turn to Riome to kill a man that by Jewish law should die
> by stoning? Wouldn't happen.

Why not? If you really want someone dead, what do you care how he's
killed? There was growing fear of Christ's popularity among the
Sanhedrin -- it may have been more expedient for the Romans to do it
than for the Pharisees -- less fear of consequences from the masses.

I think you need to recognize that your argument doesn't proceed from
fact, though, but from speculation.

> Yes, there is lots of evidence for Romans defying occupied people's
> wishes. They kept excellent records which is why we know that
> crucified men were buried in mass graves unless a bribe was paid.
> They were even honest about being dishonest.

The fact that Romans often or consistently defied occupied people's
wishes doesn't mean it was done _every time_ and _without exception_.
You really need to learn how to better handle these kinds of details.
The establishment of a rule doesn't eliminate the possibility of
exceptions.

You should also note that Christ had a couple wealthy sponsors according
to the NT accounts -- Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. It's quite
possible they paid the bribe. They certainly did provide the gravesite.

> Of course it is an overstatement, yet it holds true because no one
> kept records like the Romans, we can even tell how many sheep were in
> a district 2000 years ago thanks to them

Again, the fact that Romans records were well kept doesn't mean we have
complete records in our possession today, or that the records kept were
exhaustive.

Jim

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Received on Fri Jul 25 11:12:15 2003