davidstarlingm

This is a public opening of a discussion I was having with another forumgoer in the comment thread of this post.

There seems to be a couple of common beliefs in many circles concerning the gospels: one, that the Jesus of the Synoptics is a markedly different character than the Jesus of John, and two, that the Jesus of the Synoptics never asserted divinity. These beliefs are often provided as premises in order to refute anyone who attempts to discuss Jesus using a mixture of passages from both John and the Synoptics.

Anyhow, I find myself questioning the basis for both of these beliefs, and I would like to hear how they might be defended by you guys.

On the first point, any honest reader would immediately agree that John presents a markedly different perspective than the other three gospels; there is no disputing that. However, I cannot think of why this would be unexpected, or be taken to mean that the author of John made sweeping modifications to the character of Jesus. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are written as biographies, relating the public ministry of the rabbi Jesus. John is written as a memoir of one of the rabbi's companions, focusing on the shared experiences within the inner circle of disciples. One would expect, then, a significant difference in perspective, even if both John and the other gospels were as accurate as the authors could make them.

Given that the synoptic gospels are public-ministry biographies and that John is a memoir from the inner circle, can the argument still be made (just on these stylistic/content grounds) that the author of John must have significantly modified the character of Jesus from the one presented by the Synoptics?

I am sure that a biography of Bill Clinton written by Hillary would show a very different perspective than a biography written by Robert Rubin (Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary), even if both biographies were entirely accurate.

On the second point, I freely admit that Jesus never said "I am divine" anywhere in the Synoptics. However, considering the way blasphemy was viewed in the first-century Jewish culture, I would think it highly irregular for such claims to be made in a public setting, such that they would end up in public-ministry biographies. Nevertheless, the Jesus of the Synoptics consistently has people around him thinking he has declared himself to be God. Although he referred to himself as the Son of Man in public on many occasions, he told his disciples not to tell other people that he was "the Christ, the Son of God" (Mark 8:30, 9:9, Matthew 16:16-20, Luke 9:18-22). If “son of God” carried merely an adoptive implication, as in other instances, there would have been nothing to hide, but for Jesus it was apparently something very different.

It was on the basis of Jesus declaring this title for himself ("son of God") that the high priest declared him to be a blasphemer and ordered his execution (Mark 14:61-64, Matthew 26:63-66, Luke 22:67-71). One could hardly imagine that a rabbi would have allowed such a misconception to go uncorrected if, in fact, it was a misconception.

Consider also Mark 2:5-10, where Jesus tells a man his sins are forgiven, then perceives the bystanders thinking within themselves that he had blasphemed “because only God can forgive sins”. If the intent was not for Jesus to declare himself divine here, he could have easily corrected them (regardless of whether this account is actual or fictional). If he was merely a man, he could have quickly explained that he was not God, and that his power to forgive sin was not his own. Instead, he does the opposite, telling them that they need not question whether he is a blasphemer, for he indeed does have that authority.

Let us lay aside for the moment the question of the historicity of these passages; the passages in which surrounding individuals take Jesus to be a blasphemer are the most consistently reflected passages throughout the Synoptics, and are thus the least likely of any to be later interpolations. There is little likelihood that these statements are merely myth or legend.

So this is the second question: If Jesus did not declare himself to be God, then why does everyone in all the gospels consistently think he does?

I'd be happy to clarify anything that is unclear. I'm interested to see what everyone comes up with.

JonA

I'd say that this is false. John does not present a different perspective on Jesus; John presents a different Jesus.

Since John's Jesus makes no sense whatsoever, it seems likely that, if there were an historical Jesus, John drastically modified the tradition of this man.

Not really. They are, like almost all Christian writings, propaganda.

It really isn't. Jesus talks a lot to his disciples in John, but there is still a good deal of interaction between Jesus and the world outside of the 'inner circle'.

No. One would not expect this at all. There are many public sayings in John that are key to later Christian theology. Had Jesus said or done the things attributed to him in John, it really seems unlikely that all three earlier authors would forget that Jesus had said/done such and such of oh so great importance.

Sure, because neither of your two 'givens' are actually true.

Is the gospel of John written by Jesus' wife?

More so that it was the 'way blasphemy was viewed in the first-century Jewish culture' that would discourage a Jewish man—an historical Jesus—from ever making such a ridiculous claim of being God.

Really? Where?

Messiah ≠ God.
Son of God ≠ God.

Son of God was a standard label for people in general in the Jewish Scripture who were all 'children of god'. Pagan heroes, of course, were also often considered to be the sons of gods in a literal sense. I think the tradition of Jesus being the 'son of God' has both these layers to it; part of the references are in rather the Jewish sense, part in the pagan sense.

Alternatively, the entire story here is likely fabrication and has little bearing on the true character of the historical Jesus.

That's not exactly how it goes down. The scribes believe that only God has the power to forgive sins; Jesus tells them not that he is God, but that the 'Son of Man' also has authority to forgive sins. Jesus makes no claims to being divine; he just mentions that not only God has the power to forgive sins.

Done.

I thought you just said 'let us lay aside for the moment the question of the historicity of these passages'. Now you actually do want to talk about their historicity? There are many reasons why the gospel writers would invent stories of other Jews calling Jesus a blasphemer. Suffice it to say that your analysis doesn't even come close to settling the matter of historicity.

Wrong. As you said already, the synoptics do not record a tradition of Jesus declaring himself to be God. They record a tradition of Jesus being called a blasphemer, and there is more than one way to skin that cat. Declaring oneself to be God is not the only way to commit blasphemy, and the synoptics are clear on the type of 'blasphemy' Jesus is accused of.

Excellent, because I do have one more question for you:

Have you read the gospels?

Jon

aa5874

It is really irrelevant what you BELIEVE the supposed Jesus should have said.

We have a written source, gMark, which claimed Jesus acknowledged he was the Son of the Blessed and was condemned to be guilty of death.

Why are you reading into the passage what is not there?

Vorkosigan

Orz Orz Orz

Let me add....from my Commentary (http://www.michaelturton.com/Mark/GMark02.html)

Further, many scholars interpret the phrase "But you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" as an authorial aside to the reader (Donahue and Harrington 2002, p96) since the Greek reads more smoothly that way. Note that in Mark Jesus does not say "I am the Son of Man, therefore I can forgive sins." He just states that the Son of Man can forgive sins and leaves the reader/hearer to draw their own conclusions.

Discussing the fourteen Son of Man sayings, Boring (1999) writes:

"...Even more striking: no statement continues the suffering-dying-rising schema to affirm that this same Son of Man will come on the clouds at the eschaton...There are no 'pre-existent' sayings. The Son of Man has a 'post-existent' glory, but there is no indication of a pre-existent glory; the 'chronology' begins with the story of the earthly Jesus and proceeds to heaven, not vice versa."(p454)

Fletcher-Louis (2003) argues persuasively that Mark 1-6 presents Jesus as a High Priest, based on a priestly reading of Dan 7:13, where the Danielic Son of Man is given the authority to behave as a priest. Texts such as Exodus 28:36-38 and Lev 10:17 are straightforward OT precedents for the authority of the priest to remove sins.

Whether Jesus, or anyone else, ever referred to himself as "Son of Man" in some titular, messianic sense is controversial. The phrase never occurs in Paul, nor did it ever become part of the Church's confession about Jesus.

Vorkosigan

davidstarlingm

And we're off to a rocky start. It's never a good sign when one begins by begging the question. What's more, this statement is entirely unnecessary: if John presents a different Jesus, then certainly the perspective is different. Needless question-begging contradiction at the outset does not promise much.

Citation needed. No, seriously. This statement is neither self-evident nor universally believed, so some citation and/or explanation would be nice.

Again, we have more unnecessary contradiction.

The statement "no, they aren't biographies, they are propaganda" is as useful as saying, "No, that's not a truck, it's a Toyota." Biographies can be (and often are) intended as propaganda. What's more: "propaganda" is merely communication intended to change someone's mind or further a particular idea. The undisputed fact that the entire NT constitutes propaganda doesn't do anything to answer the question of whether the synoptic gospels are biographical in nature. Admitting that they are structured as public-ministry biographies says nothing about the accuracy of these texts.

When I say "written as a memoir....focusing on the shared experiences", I'm talking about the thread of self-reference ("the disciple Jesus loved"), the theologically-oriented beginning and ending, the preeminence of role-oriented declarations made to the disciples, and the assertion in 21:24 that the gospel is, in fact, the memoirs of this disciple. In short, virtually everything that distinguishes John from the synoptics is similar to what you would expect from a personal memoir. Those are the things you will want to address if you intend to question the claim that John is written as a personal memoir.

Let's back up a bit. Remember how the synoptic gospels are public ministry biographies? They share a great deal of source material, and only one of them is even attributed to one of the twelve apostles. If Jesus really existed, then he no doubt said many things in public that were not recorded. That John (the personal memoir) contains public statements not found in the synoptics (all compiled from the same publicly available sources distinct from John) should not be surprising in the least. You ask whether the "three earlier authors would forget" these things, but only one of the three supposed authors was even an apostle; how could Luke or Mark "forget" what they had not seen?

So I'll ask my question again: given that the synoptic gospels are biographies compiled from public sources and that John is cast as a personal memoir, what exactly is unexpected about the differences between John and the synoptics?

Congratulations. You have demonstrated a logical fallacy that I have never before seen; that's hard to do. Separating the two premises from each other and then attacking the conclusion on the basis that neither premise supports the conclusion on its own....well, that's quite original. There's probably a name for it somewhere; if I had paid more attention in classical logic I'm sure I would know.

But that's what you've done; you took my first premise and said that it doesn't support the conclusion, then you took my second premise and said that it doesn't support the conclusion, and then you thought yourself finished. Very smart, sir; very smart.

Here's the argument, just in case you missed it (and no, it's not in formal form).

First premise: Jesus said he was the son of God.
Second premise: Jesus told his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the son of God, and people tried to kill him and accused him of blasphemy whenever he said he was the son of God.
Conclusion: When Jesus said he was the son of God, he must have meant something other than "the standard label for people in general", as you claim.

Better now?

Which of the following do you think more likely: that this account was fabricated by the author of Mark early in the mid first century and thus was duplicated into everything that used Mark as a source, or that "Pauline Christians" a century or so later added careful variations of this account into all the existing copies of all three synoptic gospels? I'm genuinely curious to know what you think.

I don't mean to be unoriginal here, but that's not exactly how it goes down. You emphasized the word "also" despite it not being in Mark 2:10. Were you aware of this? Jesus didn't say, "Yes, God has the power to forgive sins, but so do I." He said, "You think it is simple to forgive sins? The Son of Man does indeed have the power to forgive sins, and I'll prove it by healing this guy." That's the statement that needs to be evaluated, not the fictitious "also" statement you made up.

Pardon me; I was merely pointing out that from a purely textual basis, these statements are the most consistently reflected and so they are most likely to be accurate, if any of the gospels contain anything accurate. I was explaining that I'm laying aside the question of historicity because we'd first have to evaluate the gospels themselves, which we don't have space for here.

Perhaps you could explain what sort of blasphemy Jesus was being accused of, and how the synoptics clearly assert this?

When I have two independent sources about a historical individual, and one source says the individual was called a blasphemer, and the other source says the individual was called a blasphemer for declaring himself to be divine, it makes sense to conclude that the reason for the charge of blasphemy was the same in both, unless some strong evidence indicates otherwise. You seem to have such evidence?

Moving on....

Thanks for your input, Vorkosigan.

I see two issues with this: first, interpreting "But that you may know...." as an authorial side has a significant problem; the word "that" (Greek ἵνα, or hina) conjoins this phrase with the preceding address to the listeners, locating it temporally within the event itself. This is not evidential of an authorial note; Jesus is saying "Which do you think is easier? In order to prove to you that I have the power to do one, I'll do the other." Here I've used the synonymous "in order to" as the conjunctive phrase; it is easy to see the effect it has.

The other issue is the last bit -- that the reader/hearer is left to draw their own conclusions. I agree with this entirely. While we may draw alternate conclusions about whether Jesus was declaring himself divine, the context and placement of this statement makes it clear that this was the conclusion of the hearers. Which brings us back to my original question: why was this conclusion encouraged rather than corrected, if the gospels are not meant to assert Christ's divinity?

One example where Jesus both asserts his pre-existence and does something very non-high-priestly is also found in that same chapter; Jesus declares himself "Lord of the Sabbath" in v. 28. It was YHWH alone who had ordained the Sabbath and instituted the rules for keeping the Sabbath. This was perhaps the most blasphemous statement (from the Jewish perspective) recorded in the synoptics. YHWH was the only lord of the Sabbath; no high priest or human messiah had ever taken this title upon himself.

This attitude of lordship over the Sabbath is reflected throughout the other gospels, as Jesus consistently draws criticism for performing miracles on the Sabbath.

Vorkosigan

Jesus does not declare himself pre-existent in v28, the whole phrase is:

"so the Son of man is lord even of the sabbath."

He says the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath, many possible interpretations, but since it completes the thought that the sabbath was made for men, it could well be that Jesus was simply saying that mankind was lord of the sabbath.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

What is really remarkable about the Jesus stories in gMatthew and gMark is that the Jews did NOT even realize that Jesus was Christ or the Son of God.

Although gMatthew contains 12 more chapters than gMark with far more additional information we still have essentially the same story.

In gMatthew, Herod the King thought he had killed the supposed predicted King of the Jews when he killed the children of Judea.

The Jews had NO idea at all that Christ, the king of the Jews, the Son of God was living in Nazareth for about 30 years

davidstarlingm

I find that interpretation to be a little tenuous. Consider the expanded version of this account in Matthew 12:
The word for "lord" means possessor, disposer, controller. If Jesus is declaring himself to be greater than the temple and to be in full control of the Sabbath, I hardly think he is speaking of what is common to all men.

And even if this had been the intent, there is no way that the Jews would have interpreted such declarations as anything but declarations of divinity.

This has been my point all along. We can take any single statement and find a way that it might not have been a declaration of divinity. But there is no escaping the conclusion that everyone around Jesus thought he declared himself to be God. My only question is: why?

JonA

Huh? What nonsense.

A Jew who declares himself God and then says he must die is nonsense. It may have meaning for early Christians, but it can hardly be attributed to an historical pre-Christianity human being. To think that John's Jesus could represent a truth of Jesus in its entirety is nonsense.

There is no self-reference in John to the 'disciple Jesus loved'; even at the last paragraph of the gospel, the authors reference themselves and make clear that the gospel has not been written by 'the disciple Jesus loved'.

Go ahead and continue to make that claim; just don't expect it to be any more true every time you do, though.

It would be surprising if: (1) some of the most important theological sayings are only found in one account, and/or (2) in general there is little to no overlap in sayings between the accounts. It is hard to imagine a situation in which Jesus' followers spread his sayings without sharing some of the sayings in common; unless, of course, one or more accounts of the sayings simply don't reflect sayings of the historical figure.

None of the authors were apostles. Thus, if we follow your logic that apostolic authorship is required for accuracy of a gospel record, then we'd have do declare that none of the gospels are accurate in any way.

Like I just said: It would be surprising if: (1) some of the most important theological sayings are only found in one account, and/or (2) in general there is little to no overlap in sayings between the accounts. It is hard to imagine a situation in which Jesus' followers spread his sayings without sharing some of the sayings in common; unless, of course, one or more accounts of the sayings simply don't reflect sayings of the historical figure.

Can you explain why we should expect this? Why shouldn't it be unexpected?

Doesn't matter. No matter how blasphemous it might have been to call himself a son of God (which, actually, was not blasphemous at all), it is not the same as calling himself God, and the Jews would have recognized this. You have not yet presented any evidence that the Jews thought Jesus had called himself God in the synoptics.

It doesn't matter. In both of your scenarios it's a fabrication.

This doesn't address any of the points I raised.

My guess is that your hesitancy to evaluate the gospels stems from your hesitancy to actually read them.

I did already; we discussed the story of Jesus forgiving sins. This was clearly blasphemy, and it was clearly not a case of Jesus declaring himself to be God.

No; it doesn't. There are independent reasons for the charge of blasphemy in each case.

Just read the accounts.

That's just the point others have been trying to make: not all of the gospels 'assert Christ's divinity'.

I noticed that you neglected to respond to my final question:

Have you read the gospels?

I think an answer to that question becomes more important with every word you type.

Jon

davidstarlingm

Repeatedly begging the question is not an effective mode of contribution. Please refrain.

Can you address the main examples I gave there (bolded for your convenience), rather than belaboring the obvious point that the actual apostle John was not the most recent editor of the gospel of John?

A painfully simple explanation is that the author of John wrote later than the authors of the synoptic gospels, had access to them, and did not feel the need to repeat what had already been communicated. Does that stretch your imagination too terribly?

I'm afraid I have absolutely no idea where you have acquired the patently foolish notion that that is "my" logic. Wherever did I say "apostolic authorship is required for accuracy of a gospel record"? Please try to avoid red herrings.

Can you address the argument?

I'm aware of this. However, I'm incredibly curious to know which scenario you think it is, because neither of them seem particularly likely. Can you enlighten us?

Guess I must have missed them; the initial insertion of "also" was too good a gem to pass up. Can you address whether A: my paraphrase above is an accurate representation of the passage and if so B: how the Jews would have interpreted it?

How was this inherently blasphemous? As Vorkosigan pointed out, forgiveness of sins could be a priestly role under certain circumstances. The problem is that Jesus doesn't correct their misconception when given the opportunity.

I am unsure whether your repetition of this question is intended to be humorous or simply some kind of taunt. As it has nothing to do with reality, and I am powerless to understand why you repeat it, I'll continue to ignore it.