In the last post I began to discuss what we can know about the history of the community that produced (or that produced someone who produced) the Gospel of John.  My argument is that you can use hints in the Gospel to reconstruct what appears to have happened in the community in which and for which it was produced, and reconstructing what these events were can help make sense of how and why the distinctive views of the Gospel developed (or rather, the *various* views, some found in one of its sources, others in another). To make best sense of this post it will probably be of some use to read the preceding one.  Again I am taking this discussion from my textbook on the New Testament.   ***************************************************************** Stage Three: Against the Synagogue Sociologists have studied a number of religious communities that have been excluded from larger social groups and forced to carry on their communal activities on their own.  The findings of these various studies are of some interest for understanding how the [...]

In my previous post I explained that there are different (even divergent) understandings of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  I ended, the post by asking the following:  How does one explain these thematic differences among the stories of John?  Social historians would argue that the history of the community affected the ways that it told its stories about Jesus and that critical events in this history led to changes in the community's understanding of Jesus and his relationship to the people to whom he came.  Scholars who have developed this idea have traced the community's history through three stages. That is where I pick up here, by citing how I lay out the matter in my New Testament textbook discussion of John, and the three stages in the life of the community.  This particular aspect of the question will take two posts.  All of this information is important for my ultimate goal: to explain why scholars have found the theory of a Johannine Community so valuable as a way of explaining what we find [...]

Now that I have explained what the socio-historical method is in general terms (in my previous post) I can go on to show how it can be applied to a particular Gospel, in this case, the Gospel of John.  Again, none of this is new and fresh scholarship that I myself came up with; two of the real pioneers of this method were two of the greats of New Testament interpretation in the latter part of the twentieth century, both of whom, remarkably, taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York (taught, in fact, some of my good friends!), the Protestant scholar J. Louis Martyn, and the Roman Catholic scholar, Raymond Brown.   Their views ended up being a more or less consensus position for many years, and continues to be prominent among teachers of the NT still today. This is how I explain the matter in my Introduction to the New Testament **************************************************************** The Gospel of John from a Socio-Historical Perspective The place to begin is by examining the different thematic emphases evident in different [...]

The New Testament Gospels can be studied like any other piece of literature, since they are, of course, literary texts.  And so over the years scholars have applied a number of literary approaches to unpack the meanings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.   But in a number of ways these books are different from most literature we encounter otherwise, for example, from antiquity, the writings of Homer or Virgil, or, from the modern world, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, or, well, J. K. Rowling.  These authors and their works are very different from each other, of course.  But the books they write are fiction.  The Gospels are different. They do, of course, contain numerous fictional elements, and they certainly can be studied following the same literary methods one would use for other texts (on the basic level, looking for plot, subplot, theme, character development etc etc.).   But they are, in addition, historical texts, more like historical fiction, I suppose, but not designed to be "fiction" probably -- designed to be history but (whether wittingly or not) constructed [...]

I have been providing the evidence that the Gospel of John is not a single composition written by a single author sitting down to produce the account at a single time, but is made up of written sources that have all been edited together into the finished product. (See my previous two posts.) Now I can say something about these sources of Jesus’ life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection.  Again, this is taken from my Introduction to the NT. ****************************************************************** Thus the theory of written sources behind the Fourth Gospel can explain many of the literary problems of the narrative. These sources obviously no longer survive. What can we say about them? Character of the Sources in John (1) The Signs Source. Some of the seams that we have observed appear to suggest that the author incorporated a source that described the signs of Jesus, written to persuade people that he was the messiah, the Son of God. There are seven "signs" in the Gospel; it is possible that these were all original to the [...]

So far in this going-to-be-substantial thread on the Johannine Writings (Gospel of John;1, 2, and 3 John) I have shown how John is very different from the other Gospels in numerous ways, argued that it's account is not based on those of the others three (whether or not the author knew of their existence), yet maintained that he must have had other sources at his disposal that provided him with his stories.  Before detailing what scholars have said about these other sources I need to give the argument that seems most convincing that his account is indeed based on earlier written accounts that he has taken over.   It also happens to be the argument that is most intriguing, at least for my money. The other two argument I gave may not seem in isolation to be convincing.  This one is meant to be.  There are inconsistencies in John's narrative that are easiest to be explain if he is compiling various sources together; these sources didn't all say the same thing or have the same view; [...]

In my previous two posts I've talked about how John is very different from the other three Gospels, the "Synoptics" -- both in the stories it tells and the way it tells them.  That leads to the natural question.  Where did "John" (whoever the author was) get his stories from?   It's widely assumed he didn't make them all up -- and he certainly didn't make up the ones found in other Gospels, since they were written before him.   Then where did his stories come from? Did Some of them -- the ones they have in common --  come from the Synoptics themselves?   The traditional answer is yes, since he was writing later.  But then the issue is why he didn't use *more* of the stories, including the ones that would have especially suited his purposes, and why he so drastically changed the ones he (allegedly) borrowed. But the prior question is whether there is sufficient *evidence* to suggest he used the Synoptics.  It is absolutely not good enough to think he must have because they [...]

In yesterday’s post I began to show how vastly different the Gospel of John is in comparison with the Synoptics, purely in terms of contents.  What is even more striking are the differences when when John and the Synoptics contain the same kinds of stories (e.g., miracles; teachings; passion narrative).  This is where you can see how the portrayal of Jesus is REALLY different in the fourth Gospel (something no one can see if they simply assume they're all saying the same thing and all have the same views -- as happens when people will read one passage from one Gospel, then another from another, and yet another from another, instead of reading one at a time and seeing what *it* has to say, apart from what the others do). Here is how I deal with it in my textbook, slightly edited here. ************************************************************ Comparison of Emphases The differences between John and the Synoptics are even more striking in stories that they have in common. You can see the differences yourself simply by taking any [...]

I am about to embark on a very long thread, on the Gospel and epistles of John.   As many of you know, my colleague, Hugo Mendez, assistant professor of New Testament and early Christianity at UNC, has started publishing on a major project involving the "Johannine Community."  That phrase will not mean a lot to many of you.  To New Testament scholars it means volumes.  In fact there *have* been volumes written about it.   It is almost certainly the most important view about the Gospel of John and 1, 2, and 3 John to be developed over the past fifty years.  We all teach it in our classes.  And Hugo wants to challenge its existence. Hugo is on the blog and I asked him if he'd be willing to write some posts about his views.  But then we both realized that I would need to set it up by explaining what the issue is all about before he shows his different perspective.  And when I started thinking about how to introduce the matter, I realized, [...]

This will be my final post dealing with the recent book, The Case Against Miracles, edited by John Loftus.  As you know, here on the blog we have guest posts from scholars with a wide range of views on the blog, so long as they relate to the issues we are concerned about here, the history and literature of early Christianity, starting with the New Testament.  Our guest contributor now is Darren Slade, author of chapter 4 of the book.   He supports the same basic view we have seen by the other two contributors, that there is not and cannot be sufficient proof of miracles, in either the ancient or the modern worlds.  What do you think? One of the values of the blog is that we can see different views from ours, on topics we are all interested in.  In your comments with Dr. Slade, please be respectful, even if you disagree.  Dr. Slade here summarizes his views in the third person, and he will be willing to respond to comments and questions you have. [...]