Loading...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. The reason for dealing with this question is this: one of the overarching theses of my book on memory and the historical Jesus is that the things we experience in the present affect how we remember the past. They affect which parts of the past we remember (if they something in the past isn’t relevant for something in the present, we don’t bother to recall it; that’s just how memory works) and they radically affect how we remember. The past is always shaped, in our minds (unconsciously), by the present.
My argument in the book is that this is true not only of us as individuals but also for us as social groups. Collective memory reflects the present as well as the past, or rather it reflects the past as it is molded by the present. To illustrate the point here on the blog, I’m citing the example of the Gospel of John, which remembers Jesus in light of the social history of its author’s community.
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.
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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 views of the Johannine community appear to have developed with the passing of time.
Religious groups (sometimes called “sects”) that split off from larger communities often feel …
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You say this happened specifically to the Johannine community. I’m puzzled as to why *all* the early believers in Jesus didn’t have the same, or very similar, experiences – being rejected, unpleasantly, by the Jews with whom they’d formerly worshipped.
I gather you think this exclusion, and subsequent “us-against-them” mentality, led to the Johannines’ exalting Jesus as more and more “special.” Ultimately, an eternally existing part of the Godhead. I can follow your reasoning; I just don’t understand how and why the communities that produced the Synoptic Gospels didn’t have similar experiences.
It’s a great question. My sense is that every community is different — then and now — even if they have similar beliefs. That one community was kicked out of its synagogue. Maybe others were as well? Don’t know!
Could it be because John was written later so the “rejection based” theology had more time to develop and to be included in their gospel?
Yup, could be! Good point.
Bart, you address here what must be one of the most profound mysteries in the New Testament. You write in part 1 that “the Johannine community originated as a group of Jews who came to believe that Jesus was the messiah, who nonetheless continued to maintain their Jewish identity and to worship in their Jewish synagogue.” In part 2, you note the puzzling fact that John’s Gospel repeatedly uses the term “the Jews” in a derogatory way. This is hard to understand. The identity of the Johannine community was thoroughly Jewish, and the memory on which this community was based was also Jewish.
For certain: it makes sense that the Johannine community might have demonized their Jewish opponents. What’s harder to understand is how and why the community would have so quickly abandoned Jewish identity. Why wouldn’t the Johannines have adopted the stance taken by so many other Jewish sects of the time, that they represented “true” Judaism, and that their Jewish opponents were in error?
My understanding is that social memory and group identity are closely related. The decision of the Johannine community to label “the Jews” as their enemy thus seems something close to social memory amnesia! What would Halbwachs, Schwartz, et. al., have to say about a group that cedes its core identity to its enemies?
Yes, great questions. Maybe by the time they were attacking “the Jews” they were predominantly gentile?
This question is puzzing me as well, Could it be that the original manuscript had a prefix before jew (a qualifier) which were later lost or edited out?
Seems unlikely. There’s no textual evidence for it.
It Puts me in mind of the migration of my own tribe. When I was young, all of my people were Southern Democrats. We had little use for Yankee Republicans. They were strange and foreign. Now, my people are Republicans, and often (well, on Facebook, at least, lol) express contempt for and loathing of the Democrats!
Reagan’s joke was that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left him.
The more things change…?
🙂
Bart Ehrman: Religious groups (sometimes called “sects”) that split off from larger communities often feel persecuted — many times with considerable justification — and build ideological walls around themselves for protection.
Steefen: John 6: 53 is one such wall. “I [Jesus] tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Why is that such an effective wall against Judaism at large?
Leviticus 17: 10: “Any Israelite or any alien living among them who eats any blood—I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from his people.”
Calling Jesus or anyone the messiah isn’t that big of a wall. Akiba called Bar Kokhba messiah. Both messiahs experienced tragedy.
What evidence, Dr. Ehrman, is there that the Johannine community practiced communion before the Jewish Revolt? I’d say the biblical Jesus (27-36 CE) had no grounds to set God’s face against him and to get cut off from his people. All of that is post Temple Destruction ideology. One needs to see the carnage in the Temple when the Temple was under siege by rebels committing sacrilege, the Idumeans killing high priests, standing on their dead bodies in way of jest, proceeding “to that degree of impiety, as to cast away their dead bodies without burial, although the Jews used to take so much care of the burial of men, that they took down those that were condemned and crucified, and buried them before the going down of the sun.” – Josephus, Wars of the Jews, Book 4, Chapter 5, 314-317, 325. (This also questions your comment that Jesus did not have a decent burial.)
The virtue of the God of Moses had to be so defeated as was done in Wars of the Jews that any Jew would come up with John 6: 53. As long as a synagogue honors the God of Moses, Christians with John 6: 53 need not be welcomed. The synagogue is for the face of the God of Moses to be upon you and the congregating of His people.
With all of your textual criticism, you believe John 6: 53 dates back to 30-36 C.E.?
And just to show where we are in agreement on this matter, we know the church in Jerusalem was not split from the larger Jewish community 33/36 – approximately 65. The split certainly did not occur while James was head of the church in Jerusalem. James certainly wouldn’t want the consequences of Lev. 17: 10.
The only way this makes sense for Jesus is if he is in prophetic mode, where he is forward in time when high priests are murdered in the temple and their killers step in jest upon their unburied, dead bodies. If Jesus had a fit over money changers, I can see him going as far as throwing in the towel given the atrocities in the Temple when it was overrun. 30-33 or 30-36, Jesus was not advocating a split between “Christian” and “Jew”. Jesus’ prayer for his disciples was for a kind face of God of Moses, the Father, to be upon his disciples.
You have said other things were not authentic to the original gospels. What rationale can you give that such a verse as John 6: 53 was authentic to 30-36 C.E.? Even if we go with Jesus was in a prophetic stupor, that time of tribulation was not upon them yet, so there was no need to risk the consequences of Lev. 17: 10.
Finally, it would be helpful if your post explained why the Christology became so unbridled without shame that the Johannine community semantically does not break the first commandment because although Jesus is not put before the God of Moses, he does become divine.
No, I think it’s hard to date any traditions into the 30s securely.
Hey Bart 🙂
I’m incredibly inspired by your thorough, objective approach to the Christian religion. The work you do is a great service to the public 🙂
I’m eagerly awaiting your next trade book on memory. Will you write a scholarly book/college text-book on the same, or a similar, topic? I would love to read a scholarly book/college text-book on the topic of memory and how it relates to the historicity of Jesus; it would be a massive contribution to the field! 🙂
Peace, health, and truth 🙂
Joshua
My current plan is to write a scholarly book about it as well, but we will see!
Us versus them, we know the truth, everyone else is in the darkness. Next stop… gnostism!
This is a very interesting blog as are most of your blogs.
So far, I see remembering the “past in light of the present” as being similar to “confirmation bias” where people remember the “past” in a way that confirms their “present” biases and beliefs. For example, I think there are likely to be three reactions to your very important thesis that during three or more decades of oral transmission much was remembered and misremembered about Jesus as follows:
1. Some are going to see the book as further confirmation of their view that much in the Gospels is not historical.
2. Others are going to contend that since the Bible was inspired by God, then He/She ironed out all of the oral transmission problems that might be present in other ancient books. So the Bible, as a result of this inspiration, remains completely inerrant despite the decades of oral transmission.
3. Still others are going to contend that oral transmission over 3 or more decades changed the “incidental” details, but not the “main” details about the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus and that these non-historical, incidental details are stories that transmit truthful theology and ethics.
Moreover, which of these three views one has is going to depend on confirmation bias, that is what one believed prior to reading the book.
Very interesting!
Dr Ehrman,
Can you comment on the difference between the two Greek words, “rhema” and “logos”, that are translated as “word” in the N.T. I remember that rhema is more of a spoken word and logos has a broader philosophical meaning, but so many Fundamentalist Christian friends of mine latch on to this hymn and the logos/”word was God” portion in particular to argue and elevate Christology. A Jehovah Witness friend of mine also insists that it should be translated “a god” and uses it to lessen the Christological claims. In your mind, was this early hymn trying to make dogmatic claims about Christology, or was it being poetic, in the sense someone might sing a song today about a lover being the most beautiful woman in the world.
Rhema usually means the word as a thing itself — the thing we call a word. Logos has a larger range of meaning, involvling something like reasoning, the thought behind a word. The verse is much debated, but I do see the passage as having a very high Christology, as does most of the rest of the Gospel.
DR Ehrman:
YOUR COMMENT
The author of the Fourth Gospel eventually attached this moving hymn to his narrative, providing a Prologue that explained his understanding of Jesus, as narrated in the various stories that he had inherited from his tradition.
MY COMMENT:
The author of John was a disciple…The disciple Jesus loved. The is what the text itself records in:
John 21:20-24
John 21:24-This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.
YOUR COMMENT
At some point in this later history, someone within this Christian community composed a hymn to Christ…
MY COMMENT
I understand John’s prologue to be more than just a hymn, it’s a revelation of who Jesus was before He became a man. A revelation of Truth, concerning the Lord of Glory, that had not been revealed to people in past generations. Thus John states in John 1:14-“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” And this revelation manifested itself in the form of Christ Himself, being witnessed by those who saw Him and His Glory….This is what John declares. I understand and interpret it literally…I believe it’s true and not just a lovely notion turned into a hymn supposedly by those who inherited the various stories as you state. The disciple himself, whom Jesus loved, wrote the account of John.
Dr. Ehrman,
Random question here regarding the Gospel of John and his community… Of all the gospel manuscripts you have seen, is there always the bit in chapter six about disciples who “followed Him no more” regarding the old manna and the teaching of eating His flesh and drinking His blood? Or is that a later addition by the proto-Orthodox?
Also– In ALL manuscripts out there that contain the Lord’s prayer, is it or has it ever come up altered in any way? Or is it always the same? Just curious. Thanks!
I don’t know of significant variants on that in John. The Lord’s prayer does get changed often in the Lukan form to make it match the Matthean (since Luke’s version is so much shorter)
Two quick ones a day late. 1) Since you are addressing the question of the present shaping the view of the past, do you get meta and analyze how current memory colors our views of the three example Gospels on top of how the memories of the authors’ communities shaped that authorship? 2) Is there a linguistic construct (rhyme, meter, structure, etc.) in Greek (or another ancient tongue) behind the scholarly tendency to refer to the opening of the fourth Gospel as a “hymn?”
1) I don’t get into that; 2) yes, the parallelism used is poetic and makes it look like a poem rather htan prose. But it does not scan as a hymn.
OK, I can see how John’s take that “only those who were born ‘from above’ could enter into God’s kingdom (3:3)” would endear his gospel to the gnostics. Thanks for the insight. 🙂
But, tell me, how did this come to be translated as “born again”?
Until now, I never saw a reason to prefer one translation over the other. But now I wonder what justified the traditional translation.
Many, many thanks! 🙂
I think the translators are relying on the context. Since Nicodemus thinks Jesus means born a second time that must (in the translators’ view) have been what he meant.
I came across John 19:7 the other day which says: “The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.” What law is John referring to? Or does this have to do with the way John sees Jesus in his Gospel and the changing of the meaning of “Son of God”? Curious if I was somewhat in the right direction. 🙂
Yeah, it’s a bit strange, but I think the “law” refers to the idea that no one but God is God, and Jesus is claiming to be, in some sense, divine.
Regarding memory: has your research uncovered whether those who have undergone a trauma (e.g. the survivors of the holocaust) have a more accurate memory of that past than those who were not personally involved? If yes, wouldn’t proto-Christians who witnessed Jesus’ execution have a more accurate memory of it, if not a more generally accurate memory of Jesus?
Yes, it’s much discussed in the literature, and no, trauma does not make memories more accurate.
Regarding the Prologue of John: has your research uncovered elements of it in older scriptures such as those of the Babylonians or the Upanishads or Bhagavad Gita, etc.? I guess I am asking if scholarship has any idea where the Prologue may have originated/been inspired. Thank you.
It’s written in Greek by someone who *may* have been influenced by some forms of Greek philosophy (though in the end it is very contrary to most Greek thinking: the word became flesh would have been anathema to most Greeks); it is most highly informed by Greek understandings of the Jewish Scriptures, esp. Genesis. There’s no evidence of influences from the (further) East.