Johnny Skeptic

Hello everyone,

I did quite well with this topic at the Theology Web. Even James Holding gave up contesting my argument. Following is what I posted at the Theology Web:

John 21:24 says "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." Some Christians claim that the verse reasonably proves eyewitnesses testimony. It actually does nothing of the kind. First of all, a good deal of scholarship states that the authorhsip of John cannot be reasonably proven. Second of all, most scholars state that the book of John was released at least 50 years after the supposed facts. That was much too late for adequate investigation of the claims. Third of all, who "we" is is not stated, and in a court trial an unidentified "we" would be of no value whatsoever. Fourth of all and most importantly, the word "testifieth" is the key word in the verse. The first definition given for the word "testify" in Merriam Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary is "To make a statement based upon personal knowledge OR belief." Therefore, by defnintion John 21:24 could have been based upon belief, not knowledge.

Luke 24:33-34 say "And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon." Even though virtually no one initially believed that Jesus would rise from the dead, not only the disciples but "them that were with them" believed that Jesus had risen from the dead based upon the testimony of only one man, only to later have doubts about their conclusion. Matthew 28:17 says "And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted." Would any Christian in this forum believe that Jesus had returned to earth based upon the testimony of one person, even a relative or close friend? I doubt it.

Even more embarrassing for Christians is the fact that there aren't even any reasonably provable examples of second hand or third hand testimonies in the Gospels. End of quotes.

Holding criticized me for using an English dictionary to define the Greek word "martureo," which means testify, but the definition from a Greek dictionary that Holding cited also said that one meaning is something that is heard, just like the Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary says. When I brought this to his attention, he didn't make any more replies in that thread.

S.C.Carlson

An article relevant to this topic is H. M. Jackson, "Ancient self-referential conventions and their implications for the authorship and integrity of the gospel of John," Journal of Theological Studies, 50 (1999): 1-34.

Johnny Skeptic

S. C. Carlson wrote: An article relevant to this topic is H. M. Jackson, "Ancient self-referential conventions and their implications for the authorship and integrity of the gospel of John," Journal of Theological Studies, 50 (1999): 1-34.

Johnny: Thanks very much for the reference, but I don't have the book, so will you please briefly tell me what the book says about the authorship of John. The Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2005 says that most scholars will not defend John the disciple of Jesus as being the author and offer some alternate theories. The alternate theories are in the encyclopedia article that I read.

S.C.Carlson

It's not a book; it's an article in a journal.

It has been a while since I read it, but IIRC Jackson compares the ending of John with the Greek papyri that has been discovered over the last century and concludes that it most resembles the formulae at the end of legal of documents, in which a witness endorses an account of his testimony written up by someone else. (Even today, it is unusual for affiants to write their own affidavits; these documents are typically prepared by attorneys for witnesses to sign.)

Thus, if his comparative material holds up, Jackson has shown that the ending of John would have been understood as the testimony of a witness that was prepared by someone else but nevertheless endorsed by the witness.

gregor

While I haven't read the article, if the point is that the reference is a legalistic device, it doesn't negatively impact the point of the OP. The device does not sound like it defines what it means to be a "witness." Rather, it seems more like device to aver to the faithfulness of the transcription.

Using your affidavit analogy, when a notary notarizes a jurat, they simply acknowledge that the witness was before the notary, in person, and swore that the statements contained therein were true. Given this, then the final two versus would seem to only state "this is a faithful recitation of what a follower of Christ told us and we wrote down, and he verified that we wrote what he told us." It doesn't seem to imply first-hand attendance by the speaker at any of the events recounted in the gospel; it merely seems to imply that the speaker verified that his narrative was trascribed correctly.

And given the apparent interpolation of Chapter 21, even the faithfullness of the transcription is questioned.

Johnny Skeptic

S. C. Carlson wrote: Thus, if his (Jackson's) comparative material holds up,

Johnny: It obviously has not held up well since the Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says that most scholars will not defend the author of the Gospel of John as being John the disciple of Jesus and instead offer alternate theories.

Carlson: Jackson has shown that the ending of John would have been understood as the testimony of a witness that was prepared by someone else but nevertheless endorsed by the witness.

Johnny: But upon what evidence did the witness base his endorsement? Did he testify what he saw or what he heard? The Greek word "martureo" (testify) mean what is seen or what is heard.

S.C.Carlson

Encyclopedia articles are usually out-of-date. Did it specifically reference Jackson's article?

The witness obviously did not personally witness John 1:1. In fact, he doesn't really appear until halfway through the book. So, even a naive reading of John should not lead someone believe that the entirety of it is "eyewitness testimony."

Johnny Skeptic

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

S. C. Carlson wrote: Thus, if his (Jackson's) comparative material holds up,

Johnny replied: It obviously has not held up well since the Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says that most scholars will not defend the author of the Gospel of John as being John the disciple of Jesus and instead offer alternate theories.

S. C. Carlson: Encyclopedia articles are usually out-of-date. Did it specifically reference Jackson's article?

Johnny: No, nor did it specifically mention every other of the hundreds of articles on the subject. You said that the article by Jackson was in the Journal of Theological Studies, which is obviously biased against mainstream scholarship towards claiming that the author of the book of John was John the disciple of Jesus. I did a word search on H. M. Jackson at Amazon.com and he is not mentioned. He is also not mentioned at James Holding’s web site or Glenn Miller’s web site. It is probable that no major encyclopedia even knows that Jackson exists, much less anything that he wrote.

My quote was actually from the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. I quoted the 2005 update. Surely you must know that research staffs at encyclopedias can't read every book and article on every topic that they write about, and that they seldom if ever state minority opinions. If encyclopedias were known for publishing minority opinions, they would have gone out of business long ago.

The Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says “Although the Gospel is ostensibly written by John, ‘the beloved disciple’ of Jesus, there has been considerable discussion of the actual identity of the author. The language of the Gospel and its well-developed theology suggest that the author may have lived later than John and based his writing on John's teachings and testimonies. Moreover, the facts that several episodes in the life of Jesus are recounted out of sequence with the Synoptics and the final chapter appears to be a later addition suggest that the text may be a composite. The Gospel's place and date of composition are also uncertain; many scholars suggest that it was written at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, in about AD 100 for the purpose of communicating the truths about Christ to Christians of Hellenistic background.�_

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnny Skeptic

Carlson: Jackson has shown that the ending of John would have been understood as the testimony of a witness that was prepared by someone else but nevertheless endorsed by the witness.

Johnny: But upon what evidence did the witness base his endorsement? Did he testify what he saw or what he heard? The Greek word "martureo" (testify) mean what is seen or what is heard.

Carlson: The witness obviously did not personally witness John 1:1.

Johnny: And possibly not anything else.

Carlson: In fact, he doesn't really appear until halfway through the book. So, even a naive reading of John should not lead someone to believe that the entirety of it is "eyewitness testimony."

Johnny: John 21:24 says "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true." It seems to me that there are only two possibilities here, that "the disciple" is the writer talking about himself, or that the writer is talking about someone else. A consensus of modern scholarship refutes the first possibility. Regarding the second possibility, the writer of the book of John is not provably claiming that "we know" was based upon someone being an eyewitness to something or hearing about something. The Greek word "martuero" (testify) can refer to something that is seen or heard. So, John 21:24 can also be written as "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things THAT HE HEARD, and wrote these things: and we know that WHAT HE HEARD is true."

Luke 24:33-34 say "And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon." Here we have a perfect example of an entire group of people testifying that Jesus rose from the dead based solely upon what they heard, not what they saw, or even provably that Simon said this himself, the testimony of one man, even though initially, virtually no one believed that Jesus would rise from the dead.

Chris Weimer

Alas, why is John even being discussed without it being fully analyzed first? Where did spin go?

S.C.Carlson

If you would like to make credible statements about what kind of scholarship the Journal of Theological Studies represents in general or what specific claims are made in Jackson's article, it might help to actually read them rather than rely on inferences from what Microsoft's encyclopedia did not say.