For what it is worth, James was the remnant of religion in the conscious mind of Jesus and John of Zebedee was the remnant of religion in the subconscious mind of Jesus. This makes JOZ illiterate but a very persistent force in the life of Jesus. Both were willing to kill the entire village of Samaria because religion (Judaism) is redundant after salvation and must be annihilated for the sake of liberty (freedom from the bondage of slavery and sin). Herod was ruler in the subconscious mind and could easily do away with JOZ with the 'double edged sword' when knowledge and understanding frees the true identity of man.

Their net had probably torn with the birth of Christ out of the heavy heart of Joseph the wealthy carpenter who was pregant with despair prior to this event (Jesus was the reborn Joseph).

The sea of Galilee is the celestial sea.

Jesus was headed for the new Jerusalem and before entering he needed to purify base metal into gold wherefore he needed James and JOZ but could not promise them that they would be on his left and right because there would no longer be a left or right side in his mind (the veil is rent and the divide will be closed prior to his entry into the New Jerusalem or there will be no entry).

The other 10 apostels were eidetic images and were the reason FOR but not the cause of the salvation of Joseph. Combined they represented the need for consolidation and became the skill required to write the gospel of John from JOZ's perspective.

Amos

This reminds me of an old Peter Fonda movie I saw while I was stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia in 1967. The screenplay was written by Jack Nicholson. The title: The Trip.

rodahi

Bede

James,

May I assume from your post that while rejecting the authorship of JOZ, you do accept that John's Gospel was probably written by an eye witness. If so, I won't be arguing with you.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

James Still

I do not believe that the fourth gospel was written by an eyewitness for essentially the same reasons it was not written by John. If (1) a direct disciple did not write it; (2) it contains evidence of redaction over time; (3) no one in Rome or Asia Minor appears aware of it until late in the second century; (4) it was written after the community was kicked out of the synagogues; and (5) while the gospel is Jewish on the whole its otherworldly portrayal of Jesus as the divine "word and reason" is not likely to have come from an eyewitness who knew the real itinerant rabbi who taught in rural Galilee.

Bede, you say you would argue with me. How about if we discuss the issue in the spirit of discovery?

[Corrected misspelling and added a comment.]

[This message has been edited by James Still (edited June 18, 2001).]

Bede

OK, we'll try although I didn't say I would argue with you, I said if I'd understood you, I wouldn't.

We'll leave aside JOZ. I take the view that GJohn is probably primary and possibly by John the Apostle. The Gospel as a record is not compromised if the attribution to John turns out to be a later tradition. If it is an eye witness, it is by a disciple but there were many more of those than just the Apostles.

Of your other arguments, the existance of redaction (of which I agree there is quite a lot) would not prevent the original source being primary.

The lack of early quotations is an argument from silence. We have reason to believe GJohn was treated as suspiciously gnostic and was accepted as orthodox rather late. Your point on the commentary in Egypt reinforces this.

Remind me of the date of the synagogue proclamation. Although, I've never been fully convinced by the reference in John, I don't think it would make the Gospel too late, even if we accept it isn't a redaction.

Your final point is quite invalid even on a rationalist basis. People with incredible charisma have had very odd effects on their followers. With decades of reinforcement from the burgening Christian cult I don't think that the writer of GJohn, though an eye witness, could not have ended up with a divine view of Jesus.

The internal evidence is that the redactor thinks the Gospel he's editing is primary and says so (or he's lying in which case classical history is impossible). He is in a much better position to know this than we are. Also, the Gospel insists it is a witness to the crucifixion.

The circumstantial evidence that shows the writer was familiar with pre 70AD Jerusalem and Galilee, I mention is passing as it reinforces the case. Finally, the date of the crucifixion (Nisan 14) is right in John and wrong in the synoptics. An independently collaborated correct detail that contradicts other sources is highly suggestive of primary evidence.

Which areas would you like to focus on?

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

I think you missed Sentinel00's <sarcasm> tag... He's not exactly a fundie

I've read a few books on this subject, including "The Mythmaker" By Hyam Maccoby (B&N press, they make some odd books) that tends to Jive with some of the holy grail books (Bloodline of the Holy Grail and Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and I find the alternative tellings and the coptic/gnosticke tellings to be more in line with a real story. Not really supernatural for the most part. No miracles, and they give some interesting angles on the Lazarus being raised from the dead (secret society ritual similar to the skull and bones) and producing wine (he "produced" wine from the basement because it wis HIS wedding, and that is the bridegroom's job!) and so forth.

Interesting reading, and it lead to me doubting divinity and understanding better the church's power in these matters of dogma.

The wine that Jesus made refers to the second half (6 is midlife) of life being much better than the first. The wedding in Cana is a union with the divine and hence the 'who's my mother" bit etc.

Amos

James Still

An eyewitness would have known that Jesus and his followers were allowed in synagogues. But in one of the six miracle stories, we find that the parents of the boy who was born blind,

"were afraid of the Jews, for already the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue" (9:22).

Likewise, the author tells us "because of the Pharisees they [the leaders] would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue" (12:42; see also 16:2).

The problem is that the expulsion from the synagogues didn't occur until after the fall of Jerusalem in about 85 CE, a fact which the redactor seems unaware.

So if the whole text was written by a single author then it was written very late, hence not by an eyewitness. We can salvage the situation (as you suggest) by conceding that the canonical gospel underwent redaction but that there is an "original source" to the text. (By this I take it you mean the Signs Gospel.) It could very well be that the Signs Gospel was written by an eyewitness although we have absolutely no evidence to suggest that it was. I'm willing to admit that it is very early, even that it is contemporaneous with Q, since the Signs Gospel and the Q Gospel are not radically different. (What I mean by that is the "divine man" motif of the canonical John is wholly absent from the Signs Gospel.)

Bede writes:

"The lack of early quotations is an argument from silence. We have reason to believe GJohn was treated as suspiciously gnostic and was accepted as orthodox rather late. Your point on the commentary in Egypt reinforces this."

When someone employs an argument from silence in one of Paul's letters (say to the empty tomb) then I agree that such an argument is very weak. But in this case we have several church fathers and three letters, all of which fail to cite or mention anything from John. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Now, if they were only aware of the Signs Gospel and not the canonical text we know today then that wouldn't strike me as odd. But it seems too fantastical to believe that Justin Martyr or Bishop Papias would not mention the canonical John since it is such a radical departure from the Synoptics. If they were suspicious of the text all the more reason to mention it in order to discredit it.


Bede writes:

"Your final point is quite invalid even on a rationalist basis. People with incredible charisma have had very odd effects on their followers. With decades of reinforcement from the burgening Christian cult I don't think that the writer of GJohn, though an eye witness, could not have ended up with a divine view of Jesus."

This just doesn't seem plausible to me (but perhaps I'm not understanding your point). You're suggesting that the eyewitness employed the divine man motif in his writing. Yet, surely he was aware of the other three gospels (as well as the larger oral tradition all around him) so that he had to know that his viewpoint was very different from everyone else's understanding of Jesus. Wouldn't it seem likely that he would seek to correct those other accounts, especially given that he is an eyewitness and believes himself to be right (and them wrong)? Even if you're correct we're left with a situation in which different eyewitnesses came away from their experiences with very different understandings of Jesus and his ministry. The skeptic is likely to say, "look at Luke and John; they or their sources can't agree and it seems so subjective why should I take it seriously?"


Bede writes: "The internal evidence is that the redactor thinks the Gospel he's editing is primary and says so (or he's lying in which case classical history is impossible). He is in a much better position to know this than we are. Also, the Gospel insists it is a witness to the crucifixion."

Yes, the epilogue does say this but it reminds me of chain letters where a fantastical claim is made in the body of the letter and then at the closing the writer says "this is all true, don't change a word and make a bazillion copies and pass it on." All the scholars I've read consider the epilogue to be tacked on by someone in the Johannine community very late. This person would not be in a position to know whether the events described in the gospels were historical or not.


Bede writes: "The circumstantial evidence that shows the writer was familiar with pre 70AD Jerusalem and Galilee, I mention is passing as it reinforces the case. Finally, the date of the crucifixion (Nisan 14) is right in John and wrong in the synoptics. An independently collaborated correct detail that contradicts other sources is highly suggestive of primary evidence."

The details you mention do make a strong case for an early John. However, these details are located within the Signs Gospel and not in the later layers of the text.

Another argument against John of Zebedee, from Robert Price's review of Eiseman's James the Brother of Jesus at http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rpeisman.html

"As for the designation "bar Zebedee," I wonder if we can kill two birds with one stone. In The Essene Odyssey, Hugh Schonfield puzzled over the inclusion of one "Yochanan ben Zabda" (=John bar Zebedee) as
the partner of physician Asaph ben Berechiah in the ancient Sepher Refu'ot (Book of Medicines), a writing with Qumran affinities. Schonfield wondered how this Christian character wound up in such a Jewish writing. I wonder if it might not have been just the reverse: if Yochanan son of Zabda were already renowned as a Jewish healer in the early Christian period it is easy to see that, once Christians began to try
to distance Jesus from his relatives, another identity would be sought for his brother John. And so he became (con)fused in the early Christian mind with a (possibly contemporary) Jewish healer named Yochana ben Zabda."

Michael

James Still

Now that's fascinating turtonm. I'm going to have to go back and re-read Eisenman's book; I'm not sure I gave it a fair reading the first time.

Actually, I believe that is Price speaking, not Eiseman. He is merely following the trail Eiseman blazed in figuring out who is who. The review is good, though.

Michael