Roland

Bede -

Why should we believe that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness? This writer never includes a single quote found in the other three gospels. Is he the only one who heard Jesus make all his amazing and self-revelatory "I am" declarations, or is he just the only one who thought them important or interesting enough to include in his biographical account?

Didn't Peter remember any of them so that he could tell them to Mark? And didn't "Luke" interview anyone who might have heard them either? What about the author of Matthew? Was he also ignorant of all those statements, or just similarly disinterested?

Bede

Hi Roland,

I rather doubt Jesus made the I AM declarations. John puts them in his mouth as an expression of his own philosophy. Plato, undoubtedly an eyewitness to his master, does the same thing with Socrates ad infinitum, Thuycidides does it with Pericles and there are many other examples. That's why we can't rely on John alone for a tradition, we need to hear it from the other Gospels (or at least another source) as well before we can chalk it up as possibly historical.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Roland

I'd be curious to know if Plato said that Socrates walked on water, raised people from the dead or rose from the dead himself. And, if he did say such things, would we have any reason to trust his eyewitness accounts? As an "eyewitness," John does make claims such as these regarding Jesus. Now, I suppose Jesus COULD have done all these things, but I somehow doubt it. I guess my point is, what is the value of an "eyewitness" account that is so patently unreliable to begin with? And why isn't it just simpler to believe that "John" is relating a fictional tale PRETENDING to be an eyewitness observer?

Ted Hoffman

Toto
I second that and would like to add:

1. AFAIK, Luke does not mention that Paul was a letter writer. Being a letter writer is a sine qua non Pauline attribute and its suprising that the author of Acts did not mention or know about the presence of Paul's letters.

2. The 'we' passages can be explained as:
(a) literary style/genre as Vernon Robbin's explained or

(b) symptoms of 'editorial fatigue' which is a peculiarity resulting from the process of literary borrowing and dependence.

3. IIRC, Paul's theology and manner of teaching is centered on revelation and a resurrected Jesus. Acts potrays Paul as close to the Jerusalem group and is also unabashed about a Historical Jesus and his earthly presence and deeds. Pauline epistles never once refer to Jesus as 'son of man' or refers to Jesus' miracles or his teachings, or even that Jesus was tried while on earth. He resorts to the OT - if he knew a HJ existed, Paul would at least have used his sayings or teachings in his letters or speeches. He does not do this.

4. Paul shows no knowledge of an Apostolic Tradition in his epistles. We see no mention of such a Tradition in Paul's ministry (as in Hebrews, Galatians and Corinthians), Johannine epistles or in Didache (and more sources can be cited, but in Chapter 4 of the Jesus Puzzle, Doherty doesn't).

There is no mention of the apostles as an authority on Jesus' sayings/teachings. Paul believed true doctrine comes directly through the spirit and receives directly from revelation and passes on to the communities. Neither a historical Jesus, nor the apostles, is cited to have taught anything. Instead, the people rely on revelatory sources / 'God'.


To illustrate the literary borrowing argument, Acts 20:7-12 is written:

Why has the author abruptly switched from 'we' to 'they'?

Dennis R MacDonald : The passage begins in the first person plural, e.g. "we convened," but switches to the third person in vs. 9. The narrator retains the third person throughout the story and reverts to the first person in vs. 13: "But going ahead to the ship, we set sail for Assos." Such changes of voice from first to third and back to first person is common in ancient texts, but Luke could easily have maintained the first person plural throughout and for some reason chose not to do so.

MacDonald then proceeds to illustrate that Luke's Eutychus was onomastically derived from Homer's Elpenor through what literary critics would refer to hypertextual transvaluation, a common literary strategy for replacing the values or perspectives of an earlier, targeted text (the "hypotext") with alternative values or perspectives in the hypertext. He illustrates this by explaining the peculiarities, in the passage above and illustrates remarkable parallels between Odyssey 10-12 and Acts 20:7-12. Some examples of parallesl between the two passages (some of which are 'peculiarities' in Acts because they dont fit the context):

NB: The * in the list below refers to Acts.

1. Odyssey 10-12 Odysseus and crew leave Troy and sail back to Achaea Acts 20:7-12 Paul and crew stop at Troy, having left Achaea to sail back to Jerusalem

2. First person plural (most of book 10) * First person plural (20:1-8)

3. After a sojourn, a meal (10.466-77) * After a sojourn, a meal (20:6,7,11)

4. Circe's "dark halls" (10.479) * There were plenty of lamps in the upper room. (20:8)

5. Switch to third person (10.552) Switch to third person (20:9)

6. Elpenor fell from a roof (katantikru tegeos pesen, 10.559=11.64) * Eutychus fell from the third story
(epesen apo tou tristegou katô, 20:9)

7. Delay in burying Elpenor until dawn of the next day (12.1-15) * Delay in raising Eutychus until dawn
of the next day (20:11)

He concludes "The parallels between these stories are more lexical, more detailed, and more sequential than the rewritings of the Elpenor story by Plato, Plutarch, Virgil, and Apuleius discussed earlier."

About the we passages as a genre/ literary style:

Vernon K. Robbins: "The coincidence of sea voyages and first person plural narration in Acts is striking. There are four we-sections in Acts: 16:10-17; 20:5-15; 21:1 -18; 27:1 -28:16. In each instance, a sea voyage begins as the first person plural narration emerges. While this observation can lead the interpreter in various directions, it points vividly to accounts of sea voyages in antiquity. Sea voyages are often couched in first person narration. Either the author narrates it as a participant (I sailed to Byblos ... .) or the author stages a participant recounting the voyage (he then said, "As I was sailing to Byblos ...."). Sea voyage narratives in Greek and Roman literature, however, become a distinct genre. One of the features of this genre is the presence of first person plural narration."

Now, we have been down this road before. Kirby argued that "Since sea voyages are always undertaken with others, it is expected for the narrator, if already speaking in the first person, to use the first person plural"

I challenged this claim by providing evidence that the narrator doesn't have to shift to first person plural as we see in The Journey of Wen-Amon to Phoenicia and The Story of Sinuhe where the first person singular is used throughout the sea voyage.

Now, to this day, I have not found anyone that has refuted Vernon Robbin's thesis. What that means is that we cannot conclude, based on the 'we' passages alone, that the author of Acts was a companion of Paul.

About editorial fatigue.

Mark Goodacre, in Fatigue in the Synoptics, states that "Editorial fatigue is a phenomenon that will inevitably occur when a writer is heavily dependent on another's work. In telling the same story as his predecessor, a writer makes changes in the early stages which he is unable to sustain throughout."

He proceeds to explain peculiarities in the synoptics for example, he explains, "In Matthew's version of the story [The story in Mark is that Herodias wanted to kill John because she had a grudge against him], this element [that Herodias wants to kill Mark] has dropped out: now it is Herod and not Herodias who wants him killed (Matt [47] 14.5). When Mark, then, speaks of Herod's 'grief' (perilupoV) at the request for John's head, it is coherent and understandable: Herodias demanded something that Herod did not want. But when Matthew in parallel speaks of the king's grief (kai luphqeiV o basileuV, Matt 14.9), it makes no sense at all. Matthew had told us, after all, that 'Herod wanted to put him to death' (14.5)."

He provides ample examples of editorial fatigue in the article and a full reading is recommended. IMO, some of the abrupt 'we' passages and peculiarities in Acts could be explained as symptoms of editorial fatigue. Thus we are not compelled to take the 'we' passages alone as evidence that the Author of Acts was a companion of Paul yet we know he fabricated the story - like the poisonus snakes in Malta and miraculous accounts, we know he most likely copied Josephus on certain sections and was not interested in writing History.

By Land and By Sea: The We-Passages and Ancient Sea Voyages
Luke's Eutychus and Homer's Elpenor: Acts 20:7-12 and Odyssey 10-12
Kirby on Robbins : Is the Sea Voyage Genre Theory Shipwrecked?
Flipping Layman's Frazzled Factoids: Earl Doherty and the Apostolic Tradition

ichabod crane

Here's the best argument I've come across so far for dating Matthew in the 1st century. I've emailed it to Earl Doherty to see what his response is. I'd be interested in your responses:

The writer of Matthew presents Jesus on several occasions as predicting an imminent end of the world (i.e. in the lifetime of his hearers). For example, 10:23, 16:28, 24:34. The book also places Jesus chronologically in the first part of the 1st century. It doesn't matter whether he really existed, the point is that is when the book of Matthew claims that he existed. Now, this seems to me to imply that the book of Matthew was written within a lifetime after that time. Why? Because otherwise, the writer would be aware that Jesus' prophecies of an imminent end of the world did not come true. If someone was writing a history of Jesus in the early 2nd century, would they be likely to put in his mouth the claim that the world was going to end during the first century, when by that time it had become patently obvious that such an event never occurred?

Roland

Actually, I read that in Doherty myself and agree it makes a powerful argument. I just wonder, though, why it took such a long time for these gospels to be "discovered" by the early Christian writers.

Bede

Roland,

The trouble with your idea that John's author is pretending is that he does it so subtlely that it becomes pointless. I know of plenty of first person fiction but nothing like the artless switch to 'we' in Acts or John's 'beloved disciple'. You can believe what you like, but I fear that many people think they have seen amazing things and you are simply saying 'I would not believe this' and ignoring the cultural context where unusual matters were reported, believed and even seen. Is John's belief any odder than the zillions of people who think they have been abducted by aliens? Again, we need at least double attestation but we can't go around disbelieving things when they are also confirmed elsewhere. Incidently, while I'm happy to talk, I will not bother defend anti-MJ positions. You seem to be veering towards all of the Gospels being fiction. If you do, our conversation will be over.

BTW Jacob, Robbins and MacD have been completely refuted on this list. That you (and some others) have refused to accept this shows that you are not interested in sensible debate. These are like the Eusebius the Liar myth that we have also utterly trashed but still Toto refuses to admit it. We even found there are no poisonous snakes on Malta so the story of Paul's bite is confirmed.

I think Robbins and MacD are the perfect litmus test to distinguish people who will believe anything to support the Jesus Myth and those who are capable of critical thought.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Amaleq13

"Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee? Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." (John 21:20-24, KJV, emphasis mine)

That is about as "subtle" as a brick to the head.

Roland

Fine.

Toto

Which way does that cut? Do you know of any first person narrative that has no clue of the narrator except for an "artless" switch to first person plural?

We can certainly disbelieve things that have insufficient evidence, even with two unreliable confirming sources.

That's ok. The gospels are so clearly fictional that it is pointless to discuss the issue.

Robbins has not been refuted. (I notice that you are not linking to the thread so people can see for themselves.) MacDonald has not been refuted. Eusebius is an unreliable source at best, and wrote with approval of Plato's royal lie. We have found that there are no poisonous snakes on Malta so the story of Paul's snakebite is probably fictional.

Both Robbins and MacDonald are practicing Christians who are not followers of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Both have scholarly reputations and both have done interesting analyses of Christian gospels as literature. I am sorry that you are unable to appreciate the nuances of their work.