Shermana wrote:1. Jesus did not break the Sabbath. The Pharisees accused him. Divine Healing and picking heads of grain was not work. They tried to accuse him of it according to their version of the Law. They did not gather. They picked heads of grain. Gathering would be cutting the grain. Big difference. Do you understand the concept that the Pharisees had twisted the Law and were trying to accuse Yashua of their own interpretation of what was breaking teh Sabbath? Picking heads of grain and eating them is no different than picking apples off a tree. Gathering sticks for firewood with an axe and chopping is work. Hope that settles that.
Fair enough; you make valid points, and whether or not Jesus was a 'Judaizer' is a little off-topic in any case
I'd certainly agree that he wasn't the kind of anti-law type that Paul was.
Shermana wrote:Also, you say that it was unlikely to gain widespread acceptance if written by Cerinthus...
Apparently Cerinthus was such a threat that John wrote it, according to Iraneus, specially to COUNTER Cerinthus.
No, I said that 'Saint' Justin Martyr's use of it (alongside Matthew, Mark and Luke) shows that John had quickly gained acceptance in
proto-orthodox circles. Justin Martyr's views were more in line with Irenaeus' than Cerinthus' - if Cerinthus had written the gospel, Justin would be considerably less likely to have used it.
Incidentally, what do you believe Cerinthus taught? You've said his views on creation come from Philo. Do you agree with Irenaeus that Cerinthus also did not believe in a virgin birth, and that he considered 'the Christ' separate from Jesus before his baptism and during his death/resurrection?
Shermana wrote:6. Cerinthus's followers insist for while his Gospel (which you apparently mentioned you haven't heard of, type in "Lost Gospel of Cerinthus") was the original John. I see no reason why this shouldn't be as compelling of evidence as saying that Iraneus attributed it to John or that Polycarp knew John.
There's no end to what I haven't heard of, I'm sure
As I've said three times now, our information on this point comes from Epiphanius around 390CE. You haven't provided, and I haven't been able to find, any earlier mention of it. Irenaeus didn't accuse the heretics of perverting and lying about the gospel's author. Nor did Caius. Dionysius reported that some folk believed Cerinthus was the one who prefixed John's name to the Revelation, but again made no mention of anyone believing that Cerinthus had written a gospel. And Eusebius, summarizing all of these three, apparently found no other early source accusing Cerinthus' followers of believing him to have written a gospel. Not until the end of that century did Epiphanes mention that belief.
If you think an argument from silence is valid because no-one identified John as the beloved disciple before Irenaeus, how much more deafening is the silence on a gospel by Cerinthus! It may well be that Epiphanius wrote accurately what people of his day believed. It might even be true that some folk in the earlier 4th, or even in the 3rd century believed that Cerinthus had written a gospel. But until you provide some kind of further evidence or source, that's about all we've got; a guess about very late beliefs. If you see no reason why claims from 290 years after composition aren't as compelling evidence as claims from 90 years after composition, there's not much more I can add.
Shermana wrote:9. The evidence overwhelmingly amounts to Iraneus being a liar and having something to do with the adoption and manipulation of Cerinthus's work to become John.
What? Let's see if I can remember what you've accused Irenaeus of lying about...
- - About Polycarp being John's disciple. I haven't thoroughly checked whether there's any earlier evidence
for that, but there's certainly no evidence that Irenaeus was wrong
- - You say Irenaeus went "OUT OF HIS WAY" to accuse Cerinthus of gnosticism. What he
actually said was "[Cerinthus and] ...those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that knowledge falsely so called..." Unless you're thinking of some other passage by Irenaeus, I'd say that comparing a Philoan/Nicolaitan/Cerinthian view of God and creation with a gnostic view is no more of an error than your implication that it was some major scheme by Irenaeus
- - And you seem to be implying that Irenaeus lied about John being the author, and that he himself had revised the gospel now in the Christian canon. Yet
your very own source for claiming there were
many changes to the gospel states that the
final change was the epilogue, which was added shortly after the disciple's death and does not name the disciple. "
Finally, the "epilogue" (Jn21:1-25ff), widely considered to be an appendix, was added on at the end." Clearly it was not written by Irenaeus and, since it was the final change, obviously Irenaeus didn't change anything, according to your own source!
Let me know if I've missed anything, but as far as I can see you haven't provided a single iota of evidence that Irenaeus lied about
anything. Even if we accept your argument that he was off the mark in saying "knowledge falsely so called" in reference to Cerinthus, you yourself have made errors at least as bad in trying to discredit him and we wouldn't accuse you of lying. People do make mistakes, you know
Shermana wrote:7. Go to historical-jesus.info for a full breakdown on the Gospel of John. There is more evidence of changes and spurious fixes over the years than any other text, and the Egerton fragments hint at some things that may have been left out too....
8. John was disputed as written by john even back in the day.
I won't have much time to look at that site 'til I get my home internet sorted out. But having just briefly glanced down one of the pages, I was interested to find that it confirms what I'd earlier said:
- Mithrae wrote:
We have evidence that shortly after the author/disciple's death, a follower added the final chapter to somewhat off-set the disappointment of his death, to confirm that he'd written the gospel and to lend support to Petrine leadership of the church now that all the apostles were gone.
Muller writes:
Peter becomes very prominent at the end of the gospel (Jn13:6-9,18:10). However, according to Jn13:24-25 & Jn20:3-8, Peter is second to another (unnamed) disciple who, as his latter contemporaries thought (Jn21:20-23), was being kept alive (because he was "the disciple whom Jesus loved"). But when this last known (alleged) eyewitness finally died (as Peter did long before), and obviously before the second coming, the main reason for his predominance was removed
As I've said before - and I re-ordered your comments a little to get this in at the end - it seems a simple and important fact that the appendix, written shortly after the beloved disciple's death,
explicitly confirms that he wrote the gospel. After the eyewitness claims in the gospel itself this is probably the single most important piece of evidence in the discussion - and as explicit, additional confirmation by a third party, its weight as evidence is considerably greater.
In the absense of any clear or strong evidence to the contrary, we have sound reasons to believe that the fourth gospel was written by a disciple of Jesus.
John does use the phrase 'born again' later in that passage (3:7), and they're both quite distinctive terms regardless; I'd actually be more concerned about the difference between 'see the kingdom of God' vs. 'enter the kingdom of heaven,' which could mean quite different things theologically. Matthew's gospel is noteworthy in its use of 'kingdom of heaven' rather than kingdom of God. In that light, it's probable that Justin Martyr didn't have John's gospel open in front of him to write the above. But like I say, the two passages are very distinctive and very similar - enough that even having read John 3 a few days ago I mistook it for an exact quote.
