Re: Responses to Robbie and Tina

Jim writes:
<< [. . .] 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. >>

I suppose that may be, but I assume that extraordinarily few people can go
from uneducated and non-literate (if not illiterate) to literary mastery
(which is what I presume that author of John to possess) in their adult
life, five years or five-hundred.

It's possible, I suppose -- wasn't Joseph Conrad wholly ignorant of English
until early adulthood? -- but a staggering achievement if it happens.

And:
<< 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. >>

The claim of authorship comes at the end of the final chapter, which,
largely because of the ending of the previous chapter, is sometimes
suggested as an addition.

And this unnamed witness, the student/disciple "hon égapa ho Iésous," "whom
Jesus loved," is a puzzling and intriguing character when the book is read
as literature. A lot of people don't like this reading, but I do think he
can be read as a sort of avatar, a generic good-sincere-follower of Jesus.
He is quite non-descript aside from his being a good-sincere-follower. And,
among other things (if I say too much I'll be writing all night -- you'll
have to wait on it if it ever comes) there's the strange moment on the cross
when Jesus tells his mother that this disciple is her son, and tells him
that she is his mother, after which Jesus knows that all had been
accomplished/completed/perfected (twice the sentence emphasizes the
immediate presence of the moment of completion -- "Meta touto," "after THIS"
Jesus knew, and what he knows is that édé, "NOW," all has been
accomplished). Thus this disciple is admitted into Jesus' own immediate
family -- presumably suggestive of a more immediate familial association to
God than an ancient cultural/ancestral one. And, interestingly, if this
disciple was not a Jew before, now he has a mother who is, and the adoption
ties him to the covenant with Abraham.

As I've already said, I have a hard time not reading this book as highly
composed literature. It certainly is suggestive of some sort of historical
pertinence, but particularly with such details as the student whom Jesus
loved, I am not sure how central this is.

(As an aside, I've heard it argued that the author, or the fictional
"author" at least, is to be understood as Lazarus.)

And:
<< 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 might be agreeing with your sentiment here, but I'd rephrase its emphasis.
People don't ordinarily claim "against" apostolic authorship. They often
suggest its improbability, but conclude only with a claim of necessary and
permanent ignorance. There is no compelling cause to assert positively that
it was or was not written by an apostle -- and to most scholars, this is
reason enough to suppose as a greater possibility that it was not.

And, concerning claims of Jesus' deity:
<< What about John 1 -- in verse 1, the Word was God, then in vs. 14, the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us? >>

The preface to John is so obscure that I insist to myself in principle not
to draw anything from it with confidence. But my reading is affected deeply
by the Greek, which seems to me to have a different tone and emphasis than
the English translations for two primary reasons.

First, it is exceedingly reminiscent of the Septuagint's Genesis chapter
one. This is present in English, especially when it is pointed out, but I
think it is much, much sharper and more vivid in Greek. Second, the logos,
translated "word" doesn't really mean "word" (or, rather, it means "word"
and a lot more) and doesn't have anything like the capital-W it almost
always gets in English, and receives masculine pronouns because it is a
masculine noun in a language where nouns are gendered. In English we must
remember that "word" is probably insufficient, that it probably shouldn't be
capitalized, and that until it becomes clear at the end that the subject of
sentences is Jesus all pronouns should probably be "it."

The tone is also shifted by hearing the "en" in "ho logos sarx egeneto kai
eskénôsen en hémin" ("the logos became flesh and dwelt 'en' us") as a word
that suggests a containment much more widely than "among" and is in fact
USUALLY translated elsewhere simply as "in." Also, the word translated
there as "became" is used much more widely than this English
somewhat-equivalent, and to "become flesh" does not necessitate the sort of
transformation as I hear in becoming a cockroach, but is lighter -- it is
often translated elsewhere merely as "was" and we might hear it as "started
to be" or something similar.

I've heard it suggested that this line refers to a general infusion of the
divine logos into ALL flesh.

In any case, I do think that this logos, which was with God (though "with"
might not be quite right, there is no other simple solution) and which was
God, in some manner of speaking "became" Jesus -- that in the world of this
book, Jesus or some important aspect of him is a manifestation of this
divine thing. I'm not sure that requires his being God, though -- was it
the Mad Hatter who so well explained to Alice (whose father, as it happens,
was Liddell of Liddell & Scott's Greek-English Lexicon) the dirtiness of
ontological manipulation with "to be"?

And:
<< There are also a few times Christ claimed perogatives reserved only for
deity: knowing Abraham, forgiving sins, etc. >>

I certainly acknowledge that Jesus is in this book an extraordinarily
special character -- he is a, perhaps even THE, manifestation of logos.
There is divinity about him. I only am claiming that it remains unclear to
me just how extraordinary he is in the book -- and I wonder if this question
was asked also by the author. Jesus consistently seems to be trying to
induce some extraordinariness in others, and while he claims things that are
sometimes considered "reserved," as you say, he points out to the Pharisees
who want to kill him for saying that God is his father that their own
scripture says that Ye are sons of God.

The strongest claim, it seems to me, is when he says things like that he is
the way to God (no one comes to the father. . .), but if I try to read the
book with an idea of a Christianity wherein Jesus is only the founder and
revered spiritual leader, nothing immediately and conclusively dispels the
notion. The claim that Jesus is himself God -- not just extraordinary, not
even merely divine, but himself God -- might be consistent with the book,
but I'm not yet sure it's a necessary consequence.

And then:
<< 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.
>>

I actually didn't mention this last, but was referring to the five husbands
that Jesus says were had by the Samaritan woman at the well in Suchar in
Samaria.

And then:
<< 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. >>

I don't know what translation you're reading (the fellows of the King James
don't refer to covered colonnades) but I expect it is itself providing a bit
of explanatory detail. The Greek says that there is a pool, tells where it
is, what it's called, and ends with the words "pente stoas echousa," "having
five stoas." Stoas are porches, or porticos, or something like them. Your
translators might have given it a more descriptive explanation based on some
archaeological information or conjecture, but the Greek is one word, and not
especially or vividly descriptive.

In the cases I mentioned I saw someone seeking something, some sort of
refuge or solace, in something that was five, and failing; and I see Jesus
being presented as a solution.

And:
<< 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 [. . .] >>

The last I didn't mention; and though it seems to present the problems you
suggest, this is unsurprising since it comes from Matthew, not John.

In the case of the crippled man, we see a man who sits waiting for the
divinity in the pool to fix him. He sits and waits, and he thinks the magic
is in the pool. And the magic is very technical, since it only works when
something stirs in the pool and it only works on the first one there after
the stirring. He had been crippled for thirty-eight years, living just like
this, presumably. Jesus says to him, You wish to become whole? He doesn't
answer the question (in this book, people seldom answer Jesus' questions,
but their responses shed light into what they wrongly think the question
ought to have been; and Jesus seldom answers their questions, but his
responses shed light into what he rightly thinks about them or their
question), but instead says that he doesn't have somebody to help him into
the pool when the magic comes. So to him, despite Jesus' asking if he
himself WISHES to be whole, he will sit and wait and stare at the magic
until somebody unites him with it. It's been thirty-eight years. Jesus
tells him to get up, to pick up his sitting pad (the verb can also be
construed, with some etymological sensitivity, as to destroy), and to walk.
As is his custom, he doesn't say hocus-pocus, he doesn't utter a prayer, he
doesn't lay his hands on the afflicted and convulse. He doesn't even say
You're healed, because he's still sitting there, and he isn't. He just says
get up. There won't be a man to give you the experience of the magic
residing in the pool. Just get up.

And it seems to me that most of us sitting on that pad would look at the man
like he was a lunatic. I've been crippled for thirty-eight years! My mind
hardly recalls how to activate those muscles! But the man made his mind try
to activate those muscles, and he got up and walked.

The important parts of this pattern are repeated throughout the book. Some
of the themes are repeated in virtually every chapter. One of the other
scenes I mentioned, that of the Samaritan woman at the well, also suggests
the confusion about where the magic lay, a confusion of receptacle and
source, of symbol and referent. Jesus and the narrator repeatedly refer to
the well as pégé -- a spring, or natural, God-given source of water -- while
the Samaritan woman repeatedly refers to it as phrear -- a pit, or cistern,
dug to store water. It's a damned shame that every translation renders both
words as "well" (there are many cases in John of words that are similar but
not quite synonyms being translated universally with one English word).
Jesus says pégé, the woman responds phrear. Source or receptacle? Apply
this confusion to religious symbology and it amounts to idolatry. When
Jesus says his confusing bit about living water, the woman is confused
because he has no bucket: how can you have water without a receptacle? When
she leaves him to tell the others, ostensibly having learned something, the
narrator again supplies a "superfluous" detail: that she left her bucket
behind.

I do think that this stuff adds meaning. Maybe I should make no association
between the fives and Torah (the woman loved five husbands and -- perhaps
suffering the same frustration as the crippled man, staring at the five but
not getting it -- before her encounter with Jesus, at least, has found for
herself a sixth man who is not her husband). It does seem meaningful to me,
though.

-robbie
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Sat Jul 26 01:02:36 2003