Who made up these words attributed to Christ?
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[** you do not have permission to see this link **] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit…”
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
What does he mean, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you.”? How is that possible? Did a scribe come up with these ideas, these sentences, these promises and warnings, the concept that his disciples are loved as much by his Dad as He was? Was this the work of an imposter who used “John” as a cover name to cull credibility?
Could these be the words of God? I am not asking, “are they”, rather, “is it within the realm of possibility that GodMan spoke these words?”
Criticism specializes in analyzing certain scriptures through asking important questions. Fascinating stuff. It really is. Critics want to know so many interesting things about various texts. Mind boggling.
Yet, at the same time, asking them to examine other scriptures with the same intellectual zeal and an emphasis on unraveling the affirming truths of those texts, seems to fall on deaf ears.
Give it a shot folks. Tell us how John came to be filled with expressions, statements, thoughts, commands, pleadings, revelations, insights attributed to Jesus, that are absolutely stunning. Tell us what Jesus was trying to say, in depth.
Major doctrines of christianity remain intact, despite everything criticism has unearthed. So why not focus on exploring all the ramifications of the texts regarding the resurrection, the divinity of jesus, his virgin birth? Seek to explain what it must have been like for the crowds to hear Jesus give the sermon on the mount, how it may have motivated them, how they hung on his every word. In other words cull the numerous ways to find and to view the wonders of the new testament texts and what they teach instead of dwelling primarily upon what has been distorted, omitted, modified, etc.
“If he was God and omniscient, surely he’d know the mess that would arise from multiple authors…” kendalynx
Ahh, the mess! What mess? Einstein stated that god is not malicious. He is subtle.
25 At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 26 Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. 27 All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Dr Luke
Who would anyone devote his/her life to writing John? Dr Bart says none of the words attributed to Christ in John is His, except maybe a couple. Well, somebody wrote John thousands of years ago and gave him many words and expressions to say that are life changing to this day. (I would bet John was a significant factor in Dr Bart’s born again experience.) If they aren’t Christ’s spoken words, whose are they? And why would someone sit down and compose this gospel? He is an unknown. He received $0. He had to have a great deal of free time on his hands. He had an incredible imagination. He pretended to write an authentic biography which it turns out has changed the lives of millions, is a building block for the most influential set of ideas from which an entire civilization has developed and continues to be examined for its mysteries and astounding claims in the most minute detail 2,000 years later by some of the world’s best and brightest. And, don’t forget, it is still read by hundreds of millions regularly.
Why haven’t we heard about any of his other writings?
prestonp, re your comment in post number 5 above “So why not focus on exploring all the ramifications of the texts regarding the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth?’. That is being done almost every Sunday morning and by apologists as well. It’s the big field called theology. History is a totally different field and presumably has a different focus.
Does this help?
I am asking “criticism” to tell us who wrote John 15, and why and what the author was trying to say and whatever else they can. I am not familiar with the work they’ve done on that chapter.
prestonp, re your comment in post number 5 above “So why not focus on exploring all the ramifications of the texts regarding the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth?’. That is being done almost every Sunday morning and by apologists as well. It’s the big field called theology. History is a totally different field and presumably has a different focus.
prestonp said
Does this help?I am asking “criticism” to tell us who wrote John 15, and why and what the author was trying to say and whatever else they can. I am not familiar with the work they’ve done on that chapter.
prestonp, re your comment in post number 5 above “So why not focus on exploring all the ramifications of the texts regarding the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth?’. That is being done almost every Sunday morning and by apologists as well. It’s the big field called theology. History is a totally different field and presumably has a different focus.
I will do my best to attempt an answer. Let me say first that our definitions of certain terms should, for this purpose, be mutually understood. There might be a difference between how the term “criticism” is being used. Textural criticism is not a negative assumption. It is simply a term used to describe the process of objectively determining the most accurate content of a document. What you are asking for is known as “Higher Criticism”. It is just a term for separating types of criticism, in this case, ‘Who was the author’. Thinking that textual criticism is ‘against’ something, or solely out to disprove something is not accurate.
There are micro and macro textual criticisms of ‘John’. You could spend days reading the critical analysis of just the word ‘Vine’ as it is used in John. You could spend years reading the critical analysis of the entire Gospel of John. In short, there is no short answer to your question. Since this blog is owned by a rather prolific author may I suggest that you read his writing on the subject in both the macro and micro of John. His specialty is new testament and he is easy to read.
At the other end of the spectrum you might look into the possible Gnostic influence on the writing of John. This is not easy stuff to comprehend. It takes time and a lot of patience, but if you read enough of it you will either lose your mind or start to understand the jest of it. Look up Sethian Gnostic and you will understand what I mean. Best Wishes.
Azeus said
prestonp said
Does this help?I am asking “criticism” to tell us who wrote John 15, and why and what the author was trying to say and whatever else they can. I am not familiar with the work they’ve done on that chapter.
prestonp, re your comment in post number 5 above “So why not focus on exploring all the ramifications of the texts regarding the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, his virgin birth?’. That is being done almost every Sunday morning and by apologists as well. It’s the big field called theology. History is a totally different field and presumably has a different focus.
I will do my best to attempt an answer. Let me say first that our definitions of certain terms should, for this purpose, be mutually understood. There might be a difference between how the term “criticism” is being used. Textural criticism is not a negative assumption. It is simply a term used to describe the process of objectively determining the most accurate content of a document. What you are asking for is known as “Higher Criticism”. It is just a term for separating types of criticism, in this case, ‘Who was the author’. Thinking that textual criticism is ‘against’ something, or solely out to disprove something is not accurate.
There are micro and macro textual criticisms of ‘John’. You could spend days reading the critical analysis of just the word ‘Vine’ as it is used in John. You could spend years reading the critical analysis of the entire Gospel of John. In short, there is no short answer to your question. Since this blog is owned by a rather prolific author may I suggest that you read his writing on the subject in both the macro and micro of John. His specialty is new testament and he is easy to read.
At the other end of the spectrum you might look into the possible Gnostic influence on the writing of John. This is not easy stuff to comprehend. It takes time and a lot of patience, but if you read enough of it you will either lose your mind or start to understand the jest of it. Look up Sethian Gnostic and you will understand what I mean. Best Wishes.
Most have accepted Ruckstuhl’s conclusion, but in recent years there have been criticisms of Ruckstuhl’s method and attempts to demonstrate anew the existence of different sources in John’s gospel. In particular, many attempt to salvage Bultmann’s hypothesis of a “Signs Source” underlying the Gospel of John. These attempts include: Robert Fortna, The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel; W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel–Tradition and Redaction; Howard Teeple, The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John. These arguments are not incredibly convincing, and do not even agree with one another in their results (which is a sign that something is wrong). The attempts to discern the alleged sources used in John tend to be circular: variations in vocabulary and syntactical features are assumed to be evidence of different sources. What is assumed wrongly is that such variations are not compatible with single authorship (see J. A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John, 10-23). Crandall University ** you do not have permission to see this link **
But where are the affirmative, positive declarations of the incredible “seamless” qualities of this magnificent gospel, for example?
prestonp, the Gospel of John is a striking literary artifact. No doubt about it. But divine? The message in the passage you quoted doesn’t seem too terribly profound. Love me or else. I’ll love you if you do what I tell you. No amount of beautiful language can disguise such a controlling message or make it any more palatable. I respectfully decline the offer. Having to coerce someone into loving me, even if that were possible, would spoil it all. Being coerced into loving someone else, even if possible, would kill any feelings I did have.
You can take what he says as a practical matter-hang with me and we’ll be close buds. Drift or move away and we can’t be close. That’s reality.
Also, aren’t we neglecting to appreciate the fact that he’s inviting us into a tight relationship with him? BTW, Who is him? The GOD of the universe! That’s all. Instead, we immediately go to and dwell on the negative aspect: Control! Teslas are controlled, by electricity, if you want to look at it like that. Or, you could say, Teslas are empowered by electricity, and they do a quarter mile like nothin else!
prestonp said Or any part of them? Why wouldn’t he have? How can it be determined if he did or didn’t? Who put the words in his mouth?
Well it can be determined that he didn’t write the Gospels because they were written after he died. For example, the Gospel of John seems to show knowledge of the Temple Destruction and such. That indicates that this Gospel was written after the fact. Next, the Gospels were written in Greek, whereas Jesus would have only known Aramaic.
The Gospel of John in particular claims to be written by “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” So, even that authorship attribution would discredit Jesus.
Furthermore, Jesus was probably not literate. He probably knew oral traditions, and knew of many of the laws and codes. But given that only around 2-3% of Palestinian Jews were literate at all, the likelihood that Jesus could read or write in his own language of Aramaic is slim to none, let alone having knowledge of Greek writing.
These kinds of markers, throughout all the Gospels, indicate that they were written long after the fact.
Furthermore, the Gospel of John incorporates many newer and developed Christian theological ideas. For example, the other three Gospels (which all predate it) lack any reference to Jesus claiming to be God or really divine in general. The Gospel of John is the first to do this. Given it dissents from the Synoptic works, this indicates a different branch of Christianity and a much later date of theological development. The Gospel of John also dissents from the chronology of the other Gospels as well, lending even more credence to a later date and different group of authors.
The Gospel of Mark, the first one (which Luke and Matthew were partly based on), is also not likely to have been written by Jesus. Firstly, because the original text doesn’t even claim that Jesus resurrected. The original Gospel ends after 16:8, with the tomb simply being empty and the women saying nothing because they are afraid. He never appears to them in the original Gospel.
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What do we know about the authors? Well they were learned in Greek, made mistakes in interpreting Biblical texts, and seemed to not have much awareness of the Hebrew versions of the Bible, using the LXX as their source instead (which I argue is one reason for the virgin birth, as the Isaiah prophecy talking about the messiah being born of a young woman “almah” in Hebrew is rendered parthenos “virgin” in the LXX).
The reality is that Jesus didn’t write any of it, and the authors were writing decades after the fact, and they were clearly making up a lot of stuff to fit their theological agendas and sensationalism.
Chris_Hansen said
Next, the Gospels were written in Greek, whereas Jesus would have only known Aramaic.
The gospels indicate that people believed Jesus was smart and that he spent much time with the teachers in the temple.
“Luke 2:46 After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.
“52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
It’s an interesting idea that Jesus could have written parts of the gospels. Obviously, the parts about him being arrested and crucified he could not have written. But the other parts like miracles and teachings, of course. The teachings are the teachings of Jesus and therefore in a sense he did write portions of the gospels.
People want to believe that Jesus was illiterate because average people in those days were illiterate. Jesus was not average. Neither was Peter. Or Paul. In fact, we know Paul wrote plenty of letters and his trade was as a tent-maker, not even a biblical scholar.
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