Re: Responses to Robbie and Tina

Responses below:

"L. Manning Vines" wrote:

> 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.

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.

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?

> 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)

totally fair. I'm interested when it does come :)

> 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.

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?

> 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.)

I believe it...

> 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.

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.

I really like what Origen said about Hebrews -- who the author of this epistle
is, God only knows. ;)

> 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.

Let's call this the pantheist reading, just for the sake of discussion...

> 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"?

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'd agree that John 1, divorced from context, can be read in a few mutually
contradictory ways (although there's no question the "word" is "Jesus" before
the end of the chapter), but within the context of the book I think traditional
readings are more reliable than a pantheist reading.

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. If you're interested in following
through on this I can dig up some reference books. At the moment, I'm on the
first floor and all the relevant books are on the third :).

> 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.

That's fair. All this means is that there's more than one possible, legitimate
reading. That's always the case.

> 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.

Sorry about that...

> 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)

NIV

> 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.

"Covered colonnades" was probably the translation of the single word.

> 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

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.

Jim

PS I very much appreciate the time you took with this...

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Received on Sat Jul 26 10:55:52 2003