thread: 2007-01-04 : Self-identification vs. Membership
On 2007-01-10, Valamir wrote:
Sydney Wrote: "Argh. The Saint Paul thing again. Everyone, read the Gospel of John—attributed to followers of the Disciple John, not to Paul: its first line states explicitly, "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The Word (Logos) being Jesus"
Heh, sorry Sydney I don't mean to make you go "Argh" but you should investigate the original origins of the texts. Its fun stuff. There's lots of evidence that the Gospel of John was not (could not) have been written by the apostle John who would have been an eye witness to the events.
Such evidence includes the fact that other gospels attest to John being uneducated while the gospel was written in a very literary form of Greek and expresses some high theological concepts...so even if one argues that John dictated the gospel, its clear the actual writer took some hefty liberties.
Another interesting tidbit is that John refers several times to Jesus and his followers having been banned from the Jewish places of worship...something that did not become standard Jewish practice until many decades after Jesus had died...making it likely that the book was written sometime much later by someone who was familiar with the practice of banning Christians but didn't realize that wasn't the case at the time Jesus was around healing people.
Another fun fact is that none of the early church fathers who are fairly well known from the first century make any reference to the Gospel of John at all, the most likely reason being because it hadn't been written yet.
Most likely it was a later reimagining of the earlier gospels purposefully designed to claim an early origin for later theological thought... Thought that had already been dominated by Paul's refocusing of Jesus's life onto his death and divine origin and resurrection.
Interestingly there is a case to be made that the very phrase you cited and references to the "flesh" as part of the sacraments were actually added even later than the main text by a copyist seeking to once again "update" the gospel to retroactively provide a original foundation for traditions that had developed long after all those who knew Jesus personally were dead.
Sorry for the side bar. I find this stuff extraordinarily fascinating.
Digging into who actually wrote the gospels, when, and what personal politics and theology they were trying to support reveals alot about the nature of man in general and the early church leaders in particular.
The New Testament is pretty useless at telling us who Jesus was...but its great at telling us who the early church leaders wanted him to be. And to me...that's WAY more important to understanding faith.
Personally I think if church leaders spent less time trying to claim divine origin for every word and more time decoding the agenda behind why certain versus were written the way they were, modern Christianity would be a much more sensible religion, and much more appealing to a broader range of people
