Is the Gospel of John reliable?

[Elijah John]

1) Is the Gospel of John a good, reliable account of the historical Jesus?
2) Did Jesus say everything in that Gospel that was attributed to him?
3) Without the Gospel of John, how can a person make a good case be made that Jesus claimed to be God?

[tam]

Peace to you,

[Replying to post 6 by tam]

What an odd response, so you believe the Bible in somethings, but not in the necessary things to support those things.

The odd response is yours, Willum. I cannot make sense out of your post.

So long as you believe in a "flat Earth," without needing to believe in the underlying rules of gravity, you are golden.

See above.




Peace again to you.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 2 by tam]

Most scholars do not believe the Gospel of John was written by the rough, Gallilean fisherman who was and apostle. The Greek is too lofty and fluent for a native, uneducated Palestinian Jew.

Or did a kind of Deus ex Machina intervene and make "John" miraculously fluent? If so, this claim seems to fall under the fallacy known as "special pleading".

I pointed out the numerous problems with this argument to you just a couple of months ago:

• Mithrae wrote:

  Scholars doubt very much that the GoJ was written by the apostle John. For one thing the Greek was too lofty for a rough Gallilean fisherman. Or is it a case of special pleading, a miracle which made this possible?

  It would hardly be a miracle for someone who had spent all their vocational time for the past forty-odd years communicating their good news to become proficient in the common language of their region Sadly, that quality of argumentation is pretty much par for the course for what I've seen regarding authorship of the fourth gospel, dubious speculation taking priority over the historical evidence of both internal and external attributions of authorship. For the three earlier gospels the first clear attributions come from proto-orthodox Irenaeus c. 180CE, from memory - which is somewhat weak, but not all that bad compared to many other ancient works - whereas the fourth gospel is explicitly attributed to John by multiple disparate sources, the unorthodox Valentinians Ptolemy and Heracleon, a decade or two before Irenaeus; to say nothing of the 'appendix' to the gospel itself explicitly confirming authorship by the beloved disciple much earlier still!
  
  In any case John's Greek is among the most Semitic/vulgar in the NT, alongside the likes of Mark and Revelation. Some of the concepts may sound lofty, but that hardly implies anything about authorship... and in any case perhaps it's just convoluted, needlessly circular and repetitive to dazzle and befuddle the plebs.

Also to save a bit of confusion since Tam hasn't cleared it up, if memory serves she favours the view that the 'beloved disciple' was Lazarus. I'd consider that a reasonably competitive theory on the basis of internal evidence alone, but a very distant second given the historical attributions to John; but it does even further undermine the already exceptionally weak and fallacious argument that the gospel has 'fluent Greek' too good for an 'uneducated fisherman.'

[tam]

[Replying to post 12 by Mithrae]

Also to save a bit of confusion since Tam hasn't cleared it up, if memory serves she favours the view that the 'beloved disciple' was Lazarus.

Yes, thank you Mithrae (peace to you!).

From this thread (although I think there are a couple of thread on the topic):

viewtopic.php?t=34470&start=0&postdays= ... highlight=

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 12 by Mithrae]

OK, so you told me before, do you expect me to accept your opinion as the final say? If I don't remember, perhaps your arguments were not all that convincing, or memorable for that matter.

You both seem to be discounting recent, historical Jesus scholarship, and Mithrae speaks of "internal evidence" that the Gospel was written by an eyewitness. OK even if that be the case...How do you account for the differences in statements between the GoJ and the Synoptics?

Such as the imperative to "ask in my name". Why didn't the Jesus of the Synoptics teach this? Instead, the Synoptic Jesus only taught to invoke the Father's name.

Or the "I AM" statements. Where in the Synoptics does Jesus say "I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me".

Or why the scarcity of parables in the GoJ? Jesus of the Synoptics was big on Parables.

Or why does John's Jesus speak in long, theologically tinged discourses, instead of the brief maxims found in the Synoptics?

There is a clear difference between John and the Synoptics. Which are more Jewish? Which are more likely reflective of the real, historical Jesus? (remember, he was a Jew not a Christian.) In Mark, Jesus affirms the Sh'ma. Not so in John. And the "Lord's prayer" is a very, monotheistic prayer that any Jew could embrace. Not found in John..why not?

John seems to pluck Jesus out of his Jewish context, and in fact paints "the Jews" as enemies. His writing reflects the bitterness of recent Christian expulsion from the Synagogue, and anathemas leveled against Jesus and his followers.

Have you ever accounted for the differences? Did Jesus have very different speech patterns from the Synoptics vs. the GoJ? Why would that be?

Seems to me these things point to huge discrepancies. Are both likely to be equally reflective of the real, historical Jesus. How so?

No, the circularity seems to stem with those who accept the GoJ first and foremost, and interpret everything else though their Johannine lenses. Is that wise, given that John was the most recent Gospel? Wouldn't it be more prudent to allow the earliest Gospel, Mark, set the standards. Are writings furthest removed from the events they depict more or less reliable than earlier accounts, such as Mark, who had Peter, an actual eyewitness, as his inspiration and perhaps mentor.

Consider this statement from John Shelby Spong.

Does that mean that John Zebedee was the author of the fourth Gospel in the way we understand authorship today? I know of no one in the ranks of Biblical scholarship that would argue for that today.

Rather, Spong continues, the author was writing in the "tradition" of Zebedee. That is the scholastic conventional wisdom today.

And that kind of "school of" attribution was not uncommon in NT times, for a disciple to write in his mentor's name.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 12 by Mithrae]

Also, the common language of the region was Aramaic, not Greek. John was a "commoner". Is there any evidence that John was a Hellenized Jew? I know of none. Did he go on any missionary journeys with Paul?

[Difflugia]

2) Did Jesus say everything in that Gospel that was attributed to him?

By and large I believe so. I have some good historical reasons to think that. But if Jesus did say every word attributed to him in that Gospel, I can't prove it.

I'm curious what your reasons are, even if they're conjectural.

And to show that I'm not just fishing for things to pick on without giving anything up myself, I think that John's Gospel is historically unreliable. In broad terms, John includes a number of stories that conflict with the Synoptics such that either John or the Synoptics must be unhistorical. Even if we don't insist on inerrancy-type accuracy, John's stories seem subject to more legendary embellishment than the Synoptics, which fits with the stories being later traditions.

Mark and Matthew, for example, have a much more straightforward story of the call of the first disciples (Simon and Andrew were fishing and followed Jesus when he called to them). Luke (the latest of the Synoptics) has a modified tradition that includes a catch of fish (apparently adapted from the life of Pythagoras), while John's tradition has become a rather mystical dialog involving John the Baptist.

This same pattern appears with the plot of the Sanhedrin (John turns the involvement of Caiaphas into a prophetic speech and include Lazarus to boot), the Last Supper (Matthew and Mark, simple prophecy of the bread dipping, Luke adds the argument over who was the greatest, and John embellishes with the whole feet washing, spiritual cleanliness thing) and the crucifixion (John changes the day so that Jesus is killed before the Passover with the other lambs). The Gospel of John seems to present a more advanced, more spiritual, and more polished set of traditions than any of the Synoptics. If John was an eyewitness or participant, I would expect that his own version of the tradition would have formed at the same time as the earliest of any traditions. Even if discussions with others suggested changes over time, I wouldn't think John the Baptist would be inserted as an intimate participant in a scene that he was apparently absent or that the Last Supper would change from the Passover meal to one that was merely "before the Passover."

As an addendum, though off-topic in a strict sense, several interesting books are available about the Gospel of John:

C. H. Dodd's magnum opus, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel can be borrowed as an ebook from the Internet Archive. Dodd thought that John's Gospel was written by a later generation Christian within an established church that later became known as "Johannine." He nevertheless believed that the church retained much authentic history that was independent of the Synoptic traditions.

James Louis Martyn's more recent History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel is available as a relatively inexpensive ebook. Martyn saw the Johannine church as a sect of Jewish Christians that had been expelled from a synagogue for professing the Christ (exemplified by John 12:41-43). The Gospel of John, then, is a mostly allegorical description of their spiritual journey in which "the Jews" nevertheless represent the real men of the synagogue that ejected them.

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 12 by Mithrae]

Also, the common language of the region was Aramaic, not Greek. John was a "commoner". Is there any evidence that John was a Hellenized Jew? I know of none. Did he go on any missionary journeys with Paul?

350-400 years after Alexander's conquests, the common (ie. shared) language for most of the eastern empire was Greek: Even the apparently Jewish author of the first gospel, apparently writing primarily for a Jewish audience (perhaps in the Antioch/Syria area), used the Greek language to do so. According to traditions of varying reliability most of the original apostles eventually spread beyond Judea (eg. Peter to Caesaria, Antioch and eventually Rome) and John was no exception, winding up in the Greek city of Ephesus according Polycarp via Irenaeus and perhaps Papias. Exactly when that might have been isn't clear... but even a year or two can be plenty of time for someone with the inclination and aptitude to become highly conversant in a new language.

It's just a really poor argument based on a) false information about the quality of the gospel's Greek, b) baseless assumptions about the character or intelligence of anyone born into fishing families, and c) willfully ignoring the vocation of communication which the apostles engaged in for all the decades after they met Jesus.

No, the circularity seems to stem with those who accept the GoJ first and foremost, and interpret everything else though their Johannine lenses. Is that wise, given that John was the most recent Gospel? Wouldn't it be more prudent to allow the earliest Gospel, Mark, set the standards. Are writings furthest removed from the events they depict more or less reliable than earlier accounts, such as Mark, who had Peter, an actual eyewitness, as his inspiration and perhaps mentor.

So far as I have ever seen, both internally and from historical attributions there's a pretty solid balance of evidence suggesting that gJohn was probably written by a disciple of Jesus. In contrast gMark certainly was not written by a disciple or witness, and the evidence suggesting that it was written by any identifiable figure (ie. Peter's interpreter) is weaker than in the case of gJohn. So writing off gJohn on the basis of gMark or the other synoptics seems quite illogical.

That said, John's prioritization of theological rather than historical messaging is evident on its own merit: The unapologetically theological introduction in the first half of chapter one; the semi-coherent directed dialogues, starting from the second half of chapter one, which don't even read well as narrative fiction let alone actual events; the rambling monologues which couldn't possibly be remembered with any kind of accuracy; the obvious anachronisms. That doesn't imply anything about its authorship however. The assumption that eyewitnesses always (or even usually) remember and recount pivotal, formative periods/events from many decades earlier with a view primarily towards historical precision rather than their meaning and significance in general terms and in relation to current circumstances seems, again, both unfounded and highly questionable.

What that implies about your first question in the OP is debatable. For questions like "Was Mary Magdalene the only woman at the tomb?" and "Did Jesus disrupt the temple courts on an annual basis, or just before his death, or near the start of his ministry?" I would say that John should not be treated as a reliable source, such details being quite mundane and potentially susceptible to change under some other literary or theological agenda. The same could obviously be said of the exact words John puts in Jesus' mouth, those rambling monologues being one of the biggest reasons for concluding that historical accuracy was not the author's main focus. But for a question like "Can John's central themes about the nature and purpose of Christ be discarded as unreliable at their core?" the answer seems much less simple. He was just one disciple after all (for all his self-declaration of being the one that Jesus loved) and really getting on in years by the 80s or 90s CE when it was written, so perhaps he was simply mistaken in his recollections and later interpretation of how Jesus presented himself.

But it's difficult to imagine that those core themes were intentionally adjusted or falsified by the author like mere historical details were, and while it doesn't confer infallible authority his status as an eyewitness and disciple surely warrants some respect. If it's true (as I argued in post #9) that the depiction of Jesus by 'Matthew,' Luke and even Mark lean towards a much more than merely human figure, then it seems to me that John's much heavier emphasis on that theme more or less clinches it that Jesus really did present himself in that way, at least to his inner circle. He was hardly the first or last to do so. Presumably only as a created/begotten secondary god or something along those lines, rather than God eternal... as if that makes any real difference outside of theological semantics.

Rather, Spong continues, the author was writing in the "tradition" of Zebedee. That is the scholastic conventional wisdom today.

And that kind of "school of" attribution was not uncommon in NT times, for a disciple to write in his mentor's name.

Common or not, I've never seen any clear evidence for such a view, and it seems to me that a few grams of genuine historical evidence such as the author's self-attribution (1:14, 19:35 and 1 John 1:1-3) and the further confirmation in the appendix (21:24) is worth a ton of learned modern speculation. Ingenious analysis of the gospel's contents might reveal subtle clues by which a scholar purports to identify different layers of redaction, but as far as I've seen those same subtle clues might just as easily be explained by a single author's writing process and thematic goals.

For example 14:31 to 15:1 ("Rise, let us be on our way. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower....") is an obvious continuity break in the text which might suggest a redactor's additions: But surely a redactor would have removed such an obvious break; whereas a single author might plausibly finish off with 14:31 late on a Friday, but over the Sabbath cement in his mind some further ideas he'd been toying with and decided to continue the supper scene further. A little more subtly the supposed incongruity of there being no eucharist ritual in the supper scene, but apparent heavy emphasis on it elsewhere has suggested to some that the content of chapter six indicates a later redactor's work: But again, why would a redactor not simply put a eucharist scene in its proper place; whereas the implications raised by John's omission of overt reference to Jesus' own baptism and eucharist actually dovetail in very nicely with the historical reports we have of his theological dispute against Cerinthus, making the more abstract references elsewhere entirely plausible as the work of his own single hand.

Speculation about multiple layers of redaction on an original, quite different Johannine work is basically the only reason I have seen or can imagine for invoking a Johannine school to attribute the gospel to. But while that's a possibility - the evidence suggesting Johannine authorship is fairly strong, but obviously far short of certainty - I simply haven't seen any convincing reason to consider it as likely as the more parsimonious view reported in history. Of course I'm not a professional scholar and I may well learn quite the opposite tomorrow

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 17 by Mithrae]

OK, for the sake of argument, (and I think you do make a good case on this as well) let's concede that the GoJ was indeed penned by the apostle John, and that he picked up the Greek language and wrote under his own name, in Greek.

Still, do you agree there are significant problems with John, as enumerated in post 12? Especially when it differs (very often) with the Synoptics, thematically, theologically and with the comparative sequence of events?

How do you account for those, if you hold the position that John is as reliable because it was penned by an eyewitness. Or do you?

Does chronological proximity to the actual events matter at all to the devotees of the GoJ? ( including, it seems, the Church, which bases most of it's theology and liturgy on the Gospel of John, and the theology of Paul.)

[Mithrae]

[Replying to post 18 by Elijah John]

I think I gave my opinion on most of those questions in these paragraphs of my post:

That said, John's prioritization of theological rather than historical messaging is evident on its own merit: The unapologetically theological introduction in the first half of chapter one; the semi-coherent directed dialogues, starting from the second half of chapter one, which don't even read well as narrative fiction let alone actual events; the rambling monologues which couldn't possibly be remembered with any kind of accuracy; the obvious anachronisms. That doesn't imply anything about its authorship however. The assumption that eyewitnesses always (or even usually) remember and recount pivotal, formative periods/events from many decades earlier with a view primarily towards historical precision rather than their meaning and significance in general terms and in relation to current circumstances seems, again, both unfounded and highly questionable.

What that implies about your first question in the OP is debatable. For questions like "Was Mary Magdalene the only woman at the tomb?" and "Did Jesus disrupt the temple courts on an annual basis, or just before his death, or near the start of his ministry?" I would say that John should not be treated as a reliable source, such details being quite mundane and potentially susceptible to change under some other literary or theological agenda. The same could obviously be said of the exact words John puts in Jesus' mouth, those rambling monologues being one of the biggest reasons for concluding that historical accuracy was not the author's main focus. But for a question like "Can John's central themes about the nature and purpose of Christ be discarded as unreliable at their core?" the answer seems much less simple. He was just one disciple after all (for all his self-declaration of being the one that Jesus loved) and really getting on in years by the 80s or 90s CE when it was written, so perhaps he was simply mistaken in his recollections and later interpretation of how Jesus presented himself.

But it's difficult to imagine that those core themes were intentionally adjusted or falsified by the author like mere historical details were, and while it doesn't confer infallible authority his status as an eyewitness and disciple surely warrants some respect. If it's true (as I argued in post #9) that the depiction of Jesus by 'Matthew,' Luke and even Mark lean towards a much more than merely human figure, then it seems to me that John's much heavier emphasis on that theme more or less clinches it that Jesus really did present himself in that way, at least to his inner circle. He was hardly the first or last to do so. Presumably only as a created/begotten secondary god or something along those lines, rather than God eternal... as if that makes any real difference outside of theological semantics.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 19 by Mithrae]

Yes, the rambling monologues do not pertain to the GoJ's authorship. I concede that. But they do pertain to it's reliability regarding a more accurate reflection of the historical Jesus, especially when compared to the Synoptics. Given the choice, isn't it more sensible to consider the earlier Gospels, the Synoptics, more reliable than the last one written, the Gospel of John, in light of the fact that the GoJ was penned by an aged eyewitness? Events, roughly 30 A.D. Gospel of John written roughly 90 A.D. At least sixty years after the events.

I'm not as concerned with the narrative, chronological discrepancies as I am with the theological ones. John's Jesus preaches a different theology, and has different speech patterns (like a different person) than does the Synoptic Jesus.

Are we closer to agreement or still talking past each other?