gnosis92

What is the scholarly relationship between Pauline thought and Johanine?

Paul's letters are almost universally regarded as predating John's Gospel. John's Gospels it appears to me to contain much Pauline thought for example,

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." john 316

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
Romans 6:4-6

Would it be fair to say that the community of Jesus believers that produced John were Paulinists, and if so, it's rather surprising there's no mention of Paul in John, unless he's the beloved disciple.

neilgodfrey

You would be interested in Alfred M. Perry's 1944 article in Journal of Biblical Literature (63, 2, Jun 1944, pp99-106), Is John an Alexandrian Gospel?

Perry finds the differences between Paul and John "far more significant" (cross versus incarnation and revelation; personal mysticism vs sacramental mysticism; traditional eschatology vs spiritualized eschatology; idiosyncratic metaphors of the new life (e.g. adoption) vs language of the Mysteries to describe it (e.g. new birth).

He sees the style, the Philo comparisons, the gnostic influences, the anti-semitic flavour, 2 and 3 John being more comfortably fitted in an Alexandrian setting, -- as pointing to the Gospel of John as being most likely originating in the Alexandrian church rather than anything associated with Paul. (The traditions of authorship of the 4th gospel he sees as too late to have any significance and the alt tradition of the early martyrdom of the son of Zebedee as being too weak to mean anything.) (& if Egyptian, this would also knock a few backward years off the calculations of those who like to originate the gospel in Asia Minor and taking x amount of time to migrate to Egypt where the P52 fragment was found.)

Neil Godfrey

http://vridar.wordpress.com

yalla

Here try this one on for size.
G'John' says something about 4 months from seeding to the harvest.
[Somebody can doubtless supply the reference].
So I thought "Gee that's quick".
So I looked up agricultural methods etc in the Near East circa 1st century.
And for most crops its about 6 months.
But irrigated agriculture along the Nile is about 4 months.
Bingo!
"John' is familiar with irrigation style agriculture, he's from Egypt/Alexandria!
Bit shonky I know.

yalla

Before the storm of criticism breaks, here's another.
The Samaritan woman is fetching water from Jacob's Well.
She is drawing water from a deep well ['John' 4.11] with a water jar [4.28].
One writer [I think it might have been Ernst Haenchen] notes that deep wells in that area are lined with rocks and that a ceramic jar would be useless because it would smash on the side of the well.
Waterskins would be used.
Bur apparently jars can be used on the alluvial floodplain along the Nile region [this titbit is not from Ernst].
Cute.

Doug Shaver

You mean it would hit the wall no matter how carefully you lowered and raised it?

Amaleq13

I think it means that folks with that sort of well would likely not be so stupid as to employ so fragile a bucket that would require so much care in raising it. Especially if they had other materials handy that would not have such an inherent weakness.