John strikes me as a very personal composition, and not something that was produced by committee…
But see Raymond Brown’s very influential speculations about the Johannine ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Textual analysis (including computer word analysis) reveals at least four different sources in John, edited not altogether cleanly.
If Father Brown is correct then one can easily imagine a community producing sources and texts over the years until they are finally collected and edited into a single document. I’m not completely against the idea that this community might indeed trace it’s origins back to one of the early disciples, maybe not actually John himself. The fly in the ointment is that some scholars, for example Prof Ehrman, think the writer/editor of this gospel was a gentile not a Jewish believer.
Well, Father Brown was always correct in those G.K. Chesterton stories, but in real life, nobody is 100%. 😉
An impression is an impression–impossible to prove, impossible to argue with. And my impression is that one person wrote John’s gospel, though several might have rewritten it (the Pericope Adulterae had to be added at some point, since John would never have used it).
godspell said
John strikes me as a very personal composition, and not something that was produced by committee, or by dictation. It also strikes me as largely inconsistent with everything else we have about Jesus. John’s Jesus has basically no human qualities. It is a powerfully written book, though–and we’re supposed to believe an illiterate supervised?See, the NT texts are, on the whole, a remarkable body of literature. Christianity attracted a lot of people with serious writing talent, which isn’t something that just springs out of the ground full clad. Being able to write–being able to write well–two entirely different things. (Have you ever tried to read the Book of Mormon? Or Dianetics?)
I don’t think Jesus recruited his disciples on the basis of writing ability, because what relevance would that have to him? Nobody’s going to need books in the Kingdom to tell them how to live. You get into the Kingdom by proving you already know that. But he did recruit men (and women) who could inspire others, and as their numbers grew, inevitably some people with writing ability were inducted into the ranks, and they wrote most of what we now call the New Testament. Not that all of it is great, by any means. Acts is a bit hamhanded. Second books can be a problem for a new writer. Mark and Matthew may have never written second books (or else they were lost), and both men certainly cribbed a lot of material from earlier sources, as did Luke. Gifted writers aren’t always prolific (ask Harper Lee).
John’s Gospel strikes me more as the work of a poet. Actually written in verse (and who believes Jesus spoke that way?) Yes, you can argue, as Richard Bauckham has, that it’s the reminiscences of a very old man, far away from his memories of Jesus, but how is that making it any more credible?
I read Mark, I can see Jesus. Matthew and Luke, he’s further off. John–he’s not there at all, except in the Pericope Adulterae–which was added much later.
There are real memories in all four, but they’re borrowed memories.
“Have you ever tried to read the Book of Mormon? Or Dianetics?” Couldn’t agree with you more on that!
“[John] is a powerfully written book, though–and we’re supposed to believe an illiterate supervised?” Oral traditions can also be very powerful. There is a bright line between literacy, on the one hand, and vocabulary and composition, on the other. To use a modern analogy, many great works of music have been composed by people who can’t read sheet music.
“I don’t think Jesus recruited his disciples on the basis of writing ability[.]” Completely agree here as to “writing.” But what about story telling and public speaking? What purpose does a disciple serve if he can’t spread the “good news”?
“John–[Jesus is] not there at all, except . . .” There are parts of John where the biography of Jesus make more sense: for example, the multiple visits to Jerusalem, placing the cleansing of the temple earlier in his ministry, and connecting Palm Sunday and the subsequent charges against Jesus to Lazarus makes sense. Also, the depiction of divided Pharisees also has the ring of accuracy. But, yes, as to Jesus himself, our connection to the authentic man is less so with John, it would appear.
Oral traditions can be powerful, when the storytellers come from a tradition emphasizing proficiency in that area (shanachie, griot, etc). Jesus was himself a gifted storyteller who didn’t write his stories down. But we have no basis anywhere in the NT for assuming his disciples shared that gift. Not one parable in Acts. And Paul (not chosen by Jesus, unless you believe he was posthumously chosen) goes out of his way not to tell stories. His gift was for what we now call theology, which is quite a different thing.
You have a point in that the way the disciples originally spread the word was through storytelling, but those would have been personal testaments–“I was myself present when our Lord said–“–not in the gospels. There is almost no personal testimony in the NT. Even Paul only occasionally and briefly indulges in it. Strange, since to testify to one’s calling to spread the gospel message is such an integral part of Christianity today, and has been for a very long time.
The author of John clearly had some sources the synoptic authors didn’t, and in some respects they may have been more accurate. But of course, we can’t know that. And John himself seems to be at odds with his own sources regarding the believably divided reaction of different Jewish factions to Jesus–for the simple reason that John hates all the unconverted Jews, regards them as a pure expression of unrepentant evil and disobedience to God’s will. Only those who took one look at Jesus and recognized him as Messiah (and more than that) are redeemed.
As to Jesus making regular visits to Jerusalem, consider me skeptical about that.
Stephen said
John strikes me as a very personal composition, and not something that was produced by committee…But see Raymond Brown’s very influential speculations about the Johannine ** you do not have permission to see this link **. Textual analysis (including computer word analysis) reveals at least four different sources in John, edited not altogether cleanly.
If Father Brown is correct then one can easily imagine a community producing sources and texts over the years until they are finally collected and edited into a single document. I’m not completely against the idea that this community might indeed trace it’s origins back to one of the early disciples, maybe not actually John himself. The fly in the ointment is that some scholars, for example Prof Ehrman, think the writer/editor of this gospel was a gentile not a Jewish believer.
I think the hypothesis of a Johannine community (in Ephesus?) makes a lot of sense. The themes of the epistles of John and the Gospel According to John reconcile nicely, even if neither the voice of the author, nor hand of the editor, is identical in those works. A multi-year (or even multi-decade) redaction process also makes sense.
Was John the son of Zebedee part of this community? Was he the “disciple whom Jesus loved”? That is a mystery. My latest opinion is that this community was led by the so-called “Elder,” John the Presbyter, from whom all three Johannine epistles take their name.
Might the Gospel also be named for this Elder, rather than for John the son of Zebedee? It’s a difficult question. While the beloved disciple is still generally associated with the son of Zebedee, I tend to think they are distinct people. If the unnamed disciple who was known to the high priest and was present in his courtyard is one in the the same with the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 18:15-16) — a hypothesis which reconciles with the setting for the narrative of John’s Gospel in Jerusalem, rather than Galilee — then it makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the son of Zebedee is the “testifier” of John’s Gospel.
Writers need readerships, and vice versa. Each impacts the other, and in that sense you have a collaboration. Nobody should be arguing that the gospel writers were scribbling away in garrets (pretty sure there were no garrets for them to scribble in). I assume they all had communities of other Christians to interact with, and it would the ones they had regular contact with who they wrote for, and it was from the community that the gospels disseminated. It may be that the earlier writings that we’ve lost perished precisely because the communities they were composed for died out before that dissemination process was complete.
godspell said
Oral traditions can be powerful, when the storytellers come from a tradition emphasizing proficiency in that area (shanachie, griot, etc). Jesus was himself a gifted storyteller who didn’t write his stories down. But we have no basis anywhere in the NT for assuming his disciples shared that gift. Not one parable in Acts. And Paul (not chosen by Jesus, unless you believe he was posthumously chosen) goes out of his way not to tell stories. His gift was for what we now call theology, which is quite a different thing.You have a point in that the way the disciples originally spread the word was through storytelling, but those would have been personal testaments–“I was myself present when our Lord said–“–not in the gospels. There is almost no personal testimony in the NT. Even Paul only occasionally and briefly indulges in it. Strange, since to testify to one’s calling to spread the gospel message is such an integral part of Christianity today, and has been for a very long time.
The author of John clearly had some sources the synoptic authors didn’t, and in some respects they may have been more accurate. But of course, we can’t know that. And John himself seems to be at odds with his own sources regarding the believably divided reaction of different Jewish factions to Jesus–for the simple reason that John hates all the unconverted Jews, regards them as a pure expression of unrepentant evil and disobedience to God’s will. Only those who took one look at Jesus and recognized him as Messiah (and more than that) are redeemed.
As to Jesus making regular visits to Jerusalem, consider me skeptical about that.
“Jesus was himself a gifted storyteller who didn’t write his stories down. But we have no basis anywhere in the NT for assuming his disciples shared that gift.” No basis? If you want to make the argument that we lack positive evidence that the disciples were gifted storytellers, that’s one thing; but to suggest there “no basis anywhere in the NT,” it’s just not correct. The opening chapters of Act are largely devoted to the public speaking of Peter (another illiterate, according to Acts) and we are told Peter and John (and the apostles) had angered the Sanhedrin by preaching about the resurrection of Jesus. There are just so many examples of this. Paul’s letters reference the “good news” about Jesus, including the last supper, passion and resurrection, he had preached. Acts tells us about Peter preaching about Jesus’s mission in Galilee following the baptism, while at Cornelius’s home; following the martyrdom of Stephen, disciples preached about Jesus to Jews in Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch; and then Paul proceeds to establish churches throughout the Mediterranean. The whole theme of Acts is that Paul and Peter and the apostles keep getting in trouble with authorities for preaching about the resurrection and Kingdom of Heaven.
“And Paul goes out of his way not to tell stories.” If you are talking about the epistles, then it’s really a question of purpose. Yes, the content of those epistles themselves is largely devoted to theological and moral matters. But Paul is repeatedly referencing the stories he has told to this audience when he was in their presence.
“There is almost no personal testimony in the NT.” This is chiefly because virtually none of the authors of the NT claimed to have known Jesus during his lifetime. The exceptions are, obviously, the epistles of Peter and James (considered pseudonymous) and the testimony in the Gospel According to John. Other than historical autobiography, virtually no works of antiquity contain this type of personal testimony.
“As to Jesus making regular visits to Jerusalem, consider me skeptical about that.” Four recounted visits over three years. I don’t think that’s all that unlikely. I think it’s far less likely that Jesus suddenly shows up to Jerusalem, having never previously preached there, and gets himself crucified within a couple weeks.
Yes, I am making the case that we have no positive evidence of that, and Peter could well have been a convincing public speaker–doesn’t make him a good storyteller. It’s not the same thing.
Yes, I am talking about the epistles (what else could I possibly be talking about?), and letters can be used to tell stories. Paul goes out of his way not to tell us much about Jesus, which wouldn’t be first-hand info anyway, but he still could have done so. It’s not his area of interest, nor is it likely to have been his area of expertise. People like doing what they’re good at. Paul was good at getting ideas across, but not through storytelling. And I think he was wary of committing to any specific story, because he himself didn’t know which were true, and they must have been proliferating too rapidly for anyone to keep track. Paul picked his fights, and he didn’t want to fight over the precise details of Jesus’ life.
Wouldn’t you consider the dialogues of Plato personal testimony? Fallacious in great part, naturally (For example, Plato was not going to give Athens the chance to make him drink the hemlock as well, so the Apology is pure fiction based on a real event learned about from a safe distance). But the impression given is that Plato is conveying conversations he himself was witness to. “Other than historical autobiography” is a pretty big caveat. My point is simply that the gospels are not written as personal testimony, which means they could not originally have been taken as such. Later, it became expedient to pretend they had been. Q.E.D.
Four visits in three years? That’s a lot of walking. And we do not, in fact, know Jesus’ ministry lasted that long. I think he spent most of the time in Galilee, and maybe traveled to a few bordering areas, and it seems logical he’d end with Jerusalem, since that was the culmination of his mission. Now what seems logical to me doesn’t prove anything, but what makes it logical to you that he’d spend so much time and energy traveling there several times, when there were so many sheep outside Jerusalem to be tended to? And if his appearance there was some annual event, why did he suddenly shock everyone there so much that he had to be done away with?
godspell said
Yes, I am making the case that we have no positive evidence of that, and Peter could well have been a convincing public speaker–doesn’t make him a good storyteller. It’s not the same thing.Yes, I am talking about the epistles (what else could I possibly be talking about?), and letters can be used to tell stories. Paul goes out of his way not to tell us much about Jesus, which wouldn’t be first-hand info anyway, but he still could have done so. It’s not his area of interest, nor is it likely to have been his area of expertise. People like doing what they’re good at. Paul was good at getting ideas across, but not through storytelling. And I think he was wary of committing to any specific story, because he himself didn’t know which were true, and they must have been proliferating too rapidly for anyone to keep track. Paul picked his fights, and he didn’t want to fight over the precise details of Jesus’ life.
Wouldn’t you consider the dialogues of Plato personal testimony? Fallacious in great part, naturally (For example, Plato was not going to give Athens the chance to make him drink the hemlock as well, so the Apology is pure fiction based on a real event learned about from a safe distance). But the impression given is that Plato is conveying conversations he himself was witness to. “Other than historical autobiography” is a pretty big caveat. My point is simply that the gospels are not written as personal testimony, which means they could not originally have been taken as such. Later, it became expedient to pretend they had been. Q.E.D.
Four visits in three years? That’s a lot of walking. And we do not, in fact, know Jesus’ ministry lasted that long. I think he spent most of the time in Galilee, and maybe traveled to a few bordering areas, and it seems logical he’d end with Jerusalem, since that was the culmination of his mission. Now what seems logical to me doesn’t prove anything, but what makes it logical to you that he’d spend so much time and energy traveling there several times, when there were so many sheep outside Jerusalem to be tended to? And if his appearance there was some annual event, why did he suddenly shock everyone there so much that he had to be done away with?
“Yes, I am making the case that we have no positive evidence of that” Okay, but can we agree that “no positive evidence” is quite a bit different than “no basis”??
“Paul goes out of his way not to tell us much about Jesus” To go “out of his way” presupposes a purpose for the epistles that is not self-evident. Much of your conclusions about Paul are based on a handful of surviving letters. Would you want some person living in the future to judge your skill set and interests based on a handful of surviving message board posts?
It has been pointed out that, if not for the Corinthians using a pre-Christian practice of consuming alcohol to excess during spiritual services, Paul would never have had occasion to write about the Last Supper. Based on your formulation above, you certainly would be arguing that Paul went out of his way not to discuss (and lacked interest in) the Last Supper; many critical scholars would have used this as an opportunity to deny the historicity of the Last Supper.
I don’t think it’s prudent to assume that a handful of Pauline letters encompasses Paul’s entire “area of interest.”
“Wouldn’t you consider the dialogues of Plato personal testimony?” Plato, as an eyewitness transmitter of the words of another (Socrates), is the exception that proves the rule. We have a protege aristocrat reciting the words of a master aristocrat. This is just very rare. And, of course, we can’t even be sure that Plato himself is recording these dialogues, or if they have been passed down as recited by Plato.
“And we do not, in fact, know Jesus’ ministry lasted that long [three years].” Well, we don’t know of any these things for a fact. We are trying to understand history as best we can from the available evidence. Luke places the beginning of the post-baptism ministry at CE 28 or 29 (more likely in 29). We have nothing to contradict this. All of our sources place the crucifixion during a Passover Preparation Day on a Thursday or Friday; that really leaves only two options (during the reigns of Pilate and Caiaphus): CE 30 or CE 33. It could have been merely a year or shorter (if it was CE 30), with only two passovers (at most) falling within that period. But, there is some interesting astrological and seismic evidence to suggest that CE 33 is more likely.
“[W]hat makes it logical to you that he’d spend so much time and energy traveling there several times, when there were so many sheep outside Jerusalem to be tended to?” Mainly because Jesus was a Jewish prophet, and Jerusalem was religious and political center of Judaism during that period.
“[I]f his appearance there was some annual event, why did he suddenly shock everyone there so much that he had to be done away with?” Probably because three (or four) visits was one too many. Enough is enough. The great figures of history we hear about tend to be the ones who didn’t get killed right away.
Sure, but I still don’t see the basis for anything more than vague supposition. Jesus reportedly did two things–miracles and parables. Acts is full of the former, and devoid of the latter. You ask me, they made the wrong pick.
I have never made the argument that Paul not mentioning something in the epistles is proof that Paul didn’t know about or believe in whatever it was. They are just a handful of letters, but they are all we have of him. And they are, I believe, strongly indicative of his priorities as an evangelist. He wrote to multiple communities in much the same way. This was how he worked.
Exceptions don’t prove rules. That saying is just a way to weasel out of having forgotten an exception (and hardly the only one in this case).
Jesus did not think the Temple was the true center of Judaism (and of course it had only been built a short time earlier, by the father of the man who murdered Jesus’ teacher. I think if he went to Jerusalem, it was for the purposes of confrontation, and he would have only gotten to make that trip once. His Judaism was unconventional, and in any event, we have no basis for believing John the Baptist went to Jerusalem at all. Jesus was more peripatetic, but still there’s only so much ground you can traverse on foot, while stopping repeatedly along the way to preach, perform faith healings, and tell stories. He probably spent most of his brief ministry in his home province.
The exception to Jesus only traveling slowly, by foot, stopping frequently to preach the word, would be trips taken via large inland bodies of water, which some of his disciples had the necessary skill set to undertake. This helps explain how he sometimes got outside of Galilee, and in some cases it may have been necessary to use boats to evade the minions of Antipas. (The execution of John the Baptist would certainly have been sobering news). But Jerusalem he approached by land, and that’s a long trip. Many Jews made it each year, but it was not incumbent on all Jews to go there every Passover. No room at the inn doesn’t half say it.
“Exceptions don’t prove rules. That saying is just a way to weasel out of having forgotten an exception (and hardly the only one in this case).” First, not even Plato’s Socratic dialogues constitute the type of “personal testimony” you describe above. Plato does not place himself at the scene of these dialogues. These are a sui generis genre of prose created, almost exclusively, for the figure of Socrates. What we can really say, at best, is that these dialogues constitute “personal testimony” by implication or by one degree of separation. I’m assuming you do not actually believe that Plato and Xenophon personally witnessed all of the dialogues they pass on to us.
What’s unique about these works is that (i) Socrates may very well have engaged in dialogues resembling what is reported to us, and (ii) Plato actually personally knew Socrates. This is unique for antiquity, where most non-autobiographical information is relayed by people without the direct lifetime connection to the historical subject about whom (and which) they write. In this way, the Gospel According to John is very similar to the Socratic dialogues. So, by the way, would be the Gospel according to “Didymos Judas Thomas,” if, in fact, we believed it to be authentic.
“[Paul’s letters] are, I believe, strongly indicative of his priorities as an evangelist.” This really depends on what definition of evangelism you mean here. If evangelizing merely means, “preaching the faith,” then the letters probably do a good job of capturing Paul’s activity with his churches. But, if evangelizing has the more traditional meaning of “converting people to Christianity,” which appeared to be the primary purpose of his missionary work, then it’s pretty clear that the letters stand apart from this. These letters are exclusively written to the already-converted. He’s preaching to the choir. The purpose of these letters is expressly not to win converts over to Christianity. The Pauline corpus is silent as to his priorities in that regard.
“Jesus did not think the Temple was the true center of Judaism (and of course it had only been built a short time earlier)” Wait …. huh?? You’ve caught me way off guard here. The Second Temple period had existed for centuries before Jesus was born. The Herodian renovation was “new” (I suppose), but was still decades old by the time of Jesus’s ministry. The Gospels repeatedly quote Jesus citing to the great scripture of Second Temple Judaism: the Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Job and Daniel. Jesus is thoroughly a product of Second Temple Judaism … or am I missing something??
“[W]e have no basis for believing John the Baptist went to Jerusalem at all.” Again, you’re using “no basis” here a bit liberally. John’s Gospel places many of the Baptisms near Jericho — about 15-20 miles from Jerusalem. All of our historical sources on John the Baptist are completely silent as to whether he ever traveled to Jerusalem. This is an argument from silence on steroids.
“[T]here’s only so much ground you can traverse on foot, while stopping repeatedly along the way to preach, perform faith healings, and tell stories. He probably spent most of his brief ministry in his home province.” I’m not a fan of attempting this type of history. You’re layering modern supposition upon modern supposition to construct this argument. Firstly, Nazareth is on the border of Galilee and Samaria. Second, even the Galilean ministries depicted in the synoptics involve over a hundred miles of walking each. The gentile tour depicted in Matthew and Mark would have been a few hundred miles on its own. You are obviously free to reconstruct his ministry in any way you see fit, but if you are going to diverge so dramatically from all the historical material we have, why even adopt the belief in a Galilean ministry at all? Why not presuppose that Jesus never really left Nazareth until he arrived for his death in Jerusalem?
I made it quite clear I don’t believe Plato’s dialogues are accurate representations of any real conversations (my post was not that long, read slower), but I doubt very much none of what is in them is drawn from memory.
I see no similarity between the Socratic dialogues and John’s Gospel, other than the obvious comparisons that can be made between the story of Socrates and that of Jesus, and how both became mythologized. That is not specific to John, and I continue to think John’s gospel is the furthest from being eyewitness testimony, not the closest. His Jesus never existed. And you were the one who said ‘the exception that proves the rule’ so take it up with yourself. 😉
“I suppose”? Jesus speaks with some contempt of the existing temple (defiled by the Herodians), and remember what he did when he got there? It was much more than just a renovation, man. Herod rebuilt it. (And then the Romans knocked it down again.)
If John had gone to Jerusalem, it would have been a significant event. That silence is quite eloquent, as is the silence of the first three gospels (and basically every source we have other than John’s gospel) about any earlier visits by Jesus.
You’re undercutting your own argument by saying Jesus did hundreds of miles of walking in a short period of time, and yet still had time to walk to and from Jerusalem on a yearly basis. He could have done no such thing.
“If John had gone to Jerusalem, it would have been a significant event. That silence is quite eloquent, as is the silence of the first three gospels (and basically every source we have other than John’s gospel) about any earlier visits by Jesus.” I just reject doing history this way. Virtually the entirety of surviving evidence for everything we know about First Century Jerusalem is from Josephus, the New Testament text, and archaeological findings. Every surviving word we have about John the Baptist can fit onto one piece of paper. Claims about what people did not do or where they did not go is nothing more the conjecture built upon fractional evidence and layers upon layers of modern presumptions.
“You’re undercutting your own argument by saying Jesus did hundreds of miles of walking in a short period of time, and yet still had time to walk to and from Jerusalem on a yearly basis. He could have done no such thing.” What is the basis for this contention exactly? Even if Jesus did every single mile of walking depicted in every single Gospel, that is less than 2 miles per day of walking over a three-year period. On what possible basis are you claiming this could not be done?
“Jesus speaks with some contempt of the existing temple (defiled by the Herodians), and remember what he did when he got there?” There’s a big difference between indifference to something (“Jesus did not think the Temple was the true center of Judaism”) and anger over the misuse/abuse of that thing (“remember what he did when he got there?”). Why would Jesus think the Temple needed to be cleansed if not for its centrality to the Jewish faith?? The whole point about cleansing the Temple was that Jesus believed that the most holy place of faith was being defiled (to use your term).
Virtually every modern scholar thinks that the figure of Jesus of Nazareth is a product (first and foremost) of the Second Temple period of Judaism, and the Temple itself is the religious and cultural center of Judaism during that period.
“It was much more than just a renovation, man. Herod rebuilt it.” This is more than semantics. The Temple was “rebuilt” (after its destruction by the Babylonians a half century earlier) in the late 6th Century BCE, most likely by Zerubbabel. That was the start of the Second Temple Period. By the mid First Century BCE, the Second Temple was in a state of disrepair. However, the great relics of Judaism (the Holy of Holies, the Menorah for the Hekhal, the Table of Showbread, the golden altar of incense, and the “Foundation Stone”) were all housed at the Temple (pre-Herod).
If you don’t like the word “renovate,” then let’s use the word “reconstruct.” Herod took an old and decaying, but still standing Temple, and made it much, much bigger and flashier. Again, this was a project completed decades before Jesus was born, which only underscored the centrality of the Temple to Judaism.
I studied at the graduate level (different era), but I wouldn’t say I am in a position to reject any specific historical method out of hand. And absence of evidence is evidence of nothing.
If you’re making the claim, you do need some proof for it. John is full of so many clearly nonfactual events, it can’t very well stand on its own as documentary evidence. Where it agrees with the other texts, possibly. Not where it differs from them. It differs from them a lot–and was written later. Very late to have credibly been written by an eyewitness (let alone an illiterate one). Not impossible, but very very unlikely. But some are so determined to make it more historical when it is very clearly less so (at least in most regards), they bend over backwards to look for something. An eyewitness account of Jesus’ life shouldn’t make him seem less human. (Inhuman, really. And full of hate for his own people.)
I’m sure it’s physically possible to do all that walking in the time allotted–if walking is all you’re doing. Walking was the very least of what Jesus was doing. He made many stops along the way. But let’s leave that aside, because there are better arguments to be made against John’s account of his peregrinations. Occam’s Razor cuts John to pieces.
I doubt you’re an expert on the geography of that area and I know i’m not. I do recall silly arguments regarding the plays of Shakespeare. Many who denied Shakespeare wrote the plays would say that a man who had not traveled could not have written so convincingly of other lands. In point of fact, that’s nonsense–there are geographical errors (like Bohemia having a sea coast), but leaving that aside, the things he got right he could have learned from books (nobody denies Shakespeare was literate) or from talking to others who had traveled.
So could the author of John. Or he could himself have been a traveler at times, and having no compunction about changing things in the earlier stories he didn’t like, he just fixed what he saw as mistakes (and they might well have been, but that doesn’t prove his account of Jesus’ travels was right). It wouldn’t be surprising if all the gospels are wrong about Jesus’ movements, since who the hell was keeping track? But multiple visits to Jerusalem would be remembered–so why did only the author of John remember them? I suggest that he invented them.
Good point about cleansing the temple, but it hardly makes sense that he could engage in such a provocative action on his first visit, then keep coming back there, and go unmolested. His symbolic attack on the temple authorities (and indirectly against Roman authority) may well have been what triggered his arrest.
Furthermore, the whip of cords makes no sense. Jesus repeatedly rejected violence against other people (and these were, after all, people doing a necessary job, without which many could not buy their sacrificial lamb). Mark only has him commit violence against furniture, Luke and Matthew follow suit.
The courtyard was a huge area, and an overturned table or two might have attracted little attention at first–but not if he was literally driving everybody in there out with a whip, which we both know could not happen (unless he’s being played by Mel Gibson).
John’s story takes the existing story and stretches it past the point of credulity. And this is just one example out of many of John doing that. Because historical veracity is even less John’s agenda than the previous three gospels. That is simply not a disputatable statement. Unless you think John the Baptist never baptized Jesus, was never his teacher, and acclaimed him the Chosen One the moment he laid eyes on him, told his followers “This is The One.” We know more than enough about The Baptist (and the cult that long survived him) to know that isn’t what happened. ‘John’ either didn’t know, or didn’t care. He was out to create an entirely new image of Jesus, and if the facts got in the way, the facts went out the window.
I’m good with ‘reconstruct’–the point stands, however. Jesus would have felt the temple had been defiled not only by money changers, but by Herod, and many devout Jews felt that way, long before he ever saw it. Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t enter it, but the notion that he’d go many times, when his first priority was preaching to ordinary people–I doubt it.
The real telling point, however, is that he could commit armed mayhem in the most public place in Jerusalem, walk away unscathed, and come back several more times before anyone did anything about it. “Oh look, here comes Jesus of Nazareth–must be time for our annual whipping.”
John wanted to believe this because he wanted to show an invincible godlike Jesus literally at war with his own religion, his own culture, his own people. Not gradually becoming more at odds with the Jewish authorities, but rejecting them from the start (from the dawn of time, really). Once you come to terms with how this agenda skews everything John writes, it becomes difficult to believe anything he says, unless it clearly comes from an earlier source that John didn’t see a reason to heavily rewrite. Or, in the case of the woman taken in adultery, because it was added to his gospel later on. John never wrote a story in which Pharisees showed the ability to rethink their actions and show mercy to someone they had declared a sinner.
“I doubt you’re an expert on the geography of that area and I know i’m not. I do recall silly arguments regarding the plays of Shakespeare. Many who denied Shakespeare wrote the plays would say that a man who had not traveled could not have written so convincingly of other lands. In point of fact, that’s nonsense–there are geographical errors (like Bohemia having a sea coast), but leaving that aside, the things he got right he could have learned from books (nobody denies Shakespeare was literate) or from talking to others who had traveled.”
Uh oh …. You’re really not going to like me now. 🙂
WARNING (WAY) OFF TOPIC: I am convinced that the man from Stratford did not write the plays attributed to Shakespeare — this is actually a hobbyhorse of mine — and the geographic evidence is some of the most compelling.
The book Shakespeare’s Guide to Italy by Richard Paul Roe (** you do not have permission to see this link **) pretty much settles the issue as to whether the author of those works must have traveled through Italy; spoiler: yes, he did. We have painstakingly intimate details of dozens upon dozens of locations and structures, with the type of accuracy that, in the period, would have required a personal visit. This isn’t like the Gospels, where we get the name of a village and maybe an occasional geographic feature. Shakespeare is giving us precise details of what random structures looked like — which has been verified.
Beyond that, we actually know pretty much every single book that was available during the period. England under Elizabeth was essentially an autocratic state. All books had to be authorized for publication by the Stationer’s Register. Books containing this type of intimately detailed geography of Italy simply were never registered. Now …. were books circulated in violation of the Register? Yes. But a detailed and accurate book of Italian geography never would been published in violation of the Register. Such a book would have been far too expensive to risk seizure by the State; and avoiding registration would have been unnecessary.
Whether the author traveled to Bohemia is another matter. Interestingly, the Holy Roman Emperors during this period, e.g., Maximillian II and Rudolph II, ALSO held the title of King of Bohemia. And, yes, they did command several seacoasts, including the Adriatic and Baltic. So … who knows?
Geography is but a small piece of a much larger body of evidence — all pointing decidedly away from the Stratford man. “Shakespeare” is unique among his literary contemporaries as far as being a virtual enigma. Unlike his contemporaries, there is no record of any letters he ever wrote, no references to the Stratford man ever being a writer, and no obituaries following his death; the limited writings we do have — a few lawsuits and his his Will — bear no indication of the great Shakespeare.
According to his Will, the Stratford man apparently owned no books, no writing table and no quill. His countrymen and even his family members (his physician son-in-law kept a very detailed daily journal, which survives) never make any reference at all to the Stratford man being a writer of any kind. The monument to Shakespeare inside Stratford’s Holy Trinity Church originally depicted the Stratford man not as a poet or writer, but as a wool merchant. And the inscription on his tomb — “Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here, Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones” — is hilariously un-Shakespearean.
If you’re interested, I’m happy to recommend some literature. The case is overwhelming.
I am well aware the Anti-Stratfordian literature is overwhelming (and on the whole, badly written). The case is nonexistent. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. But I can’t say I’m surprised you’re in that camp.
I’ve been down this road before, and it’s a dead end. Some people are just determined to believe it couldn’t have been him (it was some OTHER guy with a dead son named Hamnet who Ben Jonson wrote an ode to), as some are determined to believe Jesus didn’t exist. It’s the same basic mindset, and interestingly, both POV’s go back about the same length of time, with the Jesus denial being just a shade older. People just like believing they have the inside scoop, which leads to conspiracy theories, cover-ups, and all the other fol-de-rol, and the theories keep changing, but they never gel.
Good evasion, though. Got you out of explaining how Jesus could go around whipping people in the Temple Courtyard, and come back several times after. Nice try. Back to the subject at hand. 🙂
I’ll get back to Jesus in a bit.
In the meantime, can you name one piece of evidence before 1623 (the Stratford man died in 1616) — other than the similar (but not exact) spelling of their names and the Stratford man owning stock in the Globe Theatre — that the Stratford man wrote the works of Shakespeare??
“But some are so determined to make it more historical when it is very clearly less so (at least in most regards), they bend over backwards to look for something. An eyewitness account of Jesus’ life shouldn’t make him seem lesshuman.”
I agree with you here. I’m not arguing that we just simply accept every historical claim in John. I certainly don’t believe that Jesus spoke about himself with high Christology. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to reject the claim of eyewitness testimony outright. Claims should be evaluated on a case by case basis.
On the cleansing of the Temple, I’m unsure if that would have warranted a death sentence by crucifixion.
vergari said
I’ll get back to Jesus in a bit.In the meantime, can you name one piece of evidence before 1623 (the Stratford man died in 1616) — other than the similar (but not exact) spelling of their names and the Stratford man owning stock in the Globe Theatre — that the Stratford man wrote the works of Shakespeare??
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I can’t think of any evidence at all that Plato wrote Plato, other than that posterity said he did, and there’s no reason to think otherwise (except some of the surviving dialogues are forgeries). Oh, but he came from a well-off family, had the best education available (we believe–there’s basically nothing about him in the historical record, other than what he himself provided).
That seems to be the basis for the animus towards Shakespeare–who does this schmo think he is? He’s what most great writers are–an anomaly. Genius is not a predictable thing.
That’s how we’re talking about some guy from a backwater Palestinian province, who clearly had little or no formal education, who put together some makeshift religious mission over a period not exceeding three years and was then executed as a criminal, leaving a few terrified confused followers behind, becoming the most influential human who ever lived.
If you can believe that, why not Shakespeare? There’s zero evidence connecting the plays to any of the men put forth as alternates. There’s lots connecting the plays to the Stratford dude, but obviously there wouldn’t be much chance of a slew of historical records from his lifetime. This is basically the same kind of argumentation Richard Carrier uses–can’t you see that?
Is it surprising we don’t have more information about him from his own lifetime? Not if you know one damn thing about how history works, and how unimportant playwrights were in the scheme of things back then. The surprising thing is that the plays even survived, and why did they? Because he had friends who pooled their savings to put out a printed collection of them. And why did they do that? Because they couldn’t stand to think of him being forgotten. But nobody’s going to forget Francis Bacon. The Earl of Oxford led a fairly mediocre life (and his writing under his own name is ONLY remembered because of his being a candidate for Bard-dom, being almost unimaginably dull and tepid). Christopher Marlowe died much too soon, and his own works don’t match up stylistically, or thematically.
You clearly like attacking scholarly consensus. Fair enough. But that’s all it is. A personal bugbear. Not a real argument. And a thousand years from now, if there’s still anybody left to care, Shakepeare will have written Shakespeare, and Jesus will still be the most influential human who ever lived.
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