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Replying to post 1 by Zzyzx]
"You talking about me?" Oh, yes, he is.
I'll start by copying in part of my first post in a series I posted in Christian Forums, an evangelical website not interested in my Higher Criticism of the four gospels.
After a fluff introduction there about some scholars like Richard Baukham now being less afraid to talk about eyewitnesses (what with the acknowdedged failure of Form Criticism to help us learn anything about Jesus), I continued:
As for the Gospel of John, critics have readily singled out the Signs, the Passion Narrative, and (by some) the Discourses as due to sources. I will show that each of these has an eyewitness author and the main Editor was himself an eyewitness. My case is that the upshot of two centuries of Higher Criticism properly is to identify seven eyewitnesses to the four gospels.
Tracing sources of the gospels would seem to start with the earliest written documents, but the logic starts better with the foundation upon which the other sources and additions were built. This source is the Passion Narrative, the largest part of the material common to both John and the Synoptics. The source for the information in it is most likely John Mark, who was the most likely "disciple known to the high priest". (See John 18:15-16, 20:2-9, in which in John 20:2 the English word "love" is phileo in the Greek, not "agape" as in John 13. In John 18-19 we get events and direct quotes that Peter would not have witnessed.)
John 18 launches right out with Jesus going to the Garden. Whereas [Howard M.]Teeple [in his 1974 Literary Origin of the Gospel of John] believed the information here came from the Synoptics and was later enlarged upon, he more correctly called it a source. No one regards these chapters as from the Signs Source. This foundation source from John Mark is the following:
My expansion upon the Passion Narrative includes in the shared source (from John Mark) also verses preceding the Passion Narrative in John 11:54, 12:2-8, 12-14a, 13:18 or 21, and 13:38. These provide additional evidence that the person providing this "earliest gospel" was indeed John Mark, as most of these additional verses apparently took place in his house when he was a teenager.
My take on the "rough draft" of the Passion Narrative includes (based on Teeple's literary criticism). The Roman numerals indicate the number of times I see eyewitness touches present in the verse(s) cited:
John 18:1b, 1d,ii. 3,vi. 10b,v. 12,iv. 13b,i. 15-19,xiii. 22,ii 25b,ii. 27-31,vii. 33-35,vii. (36-40);x. 19:1-19,xl. 21-23,viii. 28-30,vii. 38b,iii. 40-42;vi. 20:1,iv. 3-5,viii. 8,ii. 11b-14a,iv. 19b,ii. 22-23,v. 26-27,viii. 30,ii. John Mark gives the story of this one week in his life, best called the Passion Diary.
Some of the later passages in John 20 are as likely to have been added as P-Strand, but as discussed later this may have come from the same author.
A great many scholars have believed that a Passion Narrative was the first element of the gospels to be written. It seems similarly often believed that John Mark was very young at this time and lived near Jerusalem, so his personal testimony would not tend to include [much] narrative preceding John 18. He is the first of seven identifiable eyewitnesses in the gospels.
http://www.christianforums.com/threads/ ... s.7594923/
