Cesc

That opens up a whole can of worms. You do know that "son of man" is an Aramaic/Hebrew expression most likely from the book of Daniel? gJohn also says that Jesus is the son of man. The role of the "son of man" in christology is... complicated. It obviously doesn't just mean "a human being" in christology.

Heretic!

Cesc

It's not complicated? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So God was with himself? Sounds complicated already in the first verse. Jesus is the preexisting Logos, the son of man, the son of God, he is sent from God and sent by God, and he is God. Either it's just alot of religious concepts put arbitrarily together, or it's complicated religio-philosophy.

So how do you think it happened according to the author of gJohn?
I think it's possible the author does say how it happens, in 1:32.

Cesc

Many scholars agree, I believe. But if one scrutinizes the gospel, I think one finds several passages that refer to the prologue, such as Jesus saying he’s the light of the world. Also 12:35f where the darkness cannot ”overtake” the light (καταλαμβανω both in 12:35 and 1:5) and 12:44-50 where you have the λογος that judges.

But not about λογος being Jesus explicitly. The closest thing to that could perhaps be JtB identifying Jesus as "the lamb," possibly an oft-overlooked aramaic wordplay: "lamb" in aramaic, 'immer (אמר), and the "Jewish λογος," 'omer (אמר) or memra (מאמר from the root אמר) in Hebrew, or m’emar (מאמר also from אמר) in Aramaic, whereby the hellenistic philosophical concept of λογος becomes the Jewish atoning sacrifice.

If you take out from the prologue the verses concerning JtB (6-8 and 15) then it looks alot like a hymn seperate from the narrative of gJohn.

tanya

Forgive my ignorance, here, Cesc, but, in Daniel, does "son of man" invariably mean "GOD"?

What would we have written, in Koine Greek, if we had meant to communicate, that anthropos meant human, rather than divine? We already have confusion with kurios, applied equally to humans and deities.

Did the native Greek speakers of two thousand years ago, also refer to other divine beings as "anthropos". We know that Hercules was a demigod, of human origin, and subsequent divine stature, having ascended to heaven. Was he a unique case, or does "anthropos" cover a spectrum of meaning, in general, including both human and divine entities?

My suspicion is this: I think that the author(s) of Mark, intended the readership to understand that Jesus was a human demigod, a la Hercules, NOT theos, i.e. YHWH, himself. John, on the other hand, written, I believe, later, maybe even decades later, adopts a more aggressive attitude, insisting on the divinity of Jesus, even identifying him as logos, and theos. Those two descriptors are absent from Mark's description of Jesus, so far as I am aware.

I am not looking to Daniel, or any other book of the Tanakh, for an explanation of any of the gospels. To me, one profits more from reading about Hercules, than the book of Daniel, in seeking to understand the origins of Christianity. I don't accept that this is a fundamentally Jewish derivative. It is, like Islam, a bastardization of Judaism, but not in a positive manner. I think that the original elaboration of the religion may well have drawn from many books, not just those of the Tanakh. The goal was to reach paradise, where a lot of famous people were sitting about, including Hercules. Give me your money, and I will sprinkle some water, and spread some incense, and chant some proverbs, and you will soon be sitting right there in heaven, happy as a lark. Oh, and if you don't mind, please donate today, right now, so that I need not cut off your head, as a dissolute pagan.

aa5874

Again, the philosophical concept that the Logos is God is extremely easy to understand.

1. The Logos, the Word, is a product of God.

2. A Son is a product of a Father.

3. A Son and a Father are of the Same Nature.

4. The Logos, the Word, and God are of the same Nature.

5. The Logos, the Word, is the Son of God and the same Nature as God.

6. The Logos, the Word, is God.

7. The Logos, the Word, manifested himself in the LIKENESS of the Son of man.

Daniel 7:13 KJV It is extremely important that you recognise the word "LIKE".

Jesus, the Logos, was LIKE the Son of man.

Jesus, the Logos, APPEARED LIKE the Son of man.

Now, in gJohn Jesus WALKED on the sea for 3-4 Miles [25-30 furlongs]

John 6:19 KJV It is clear that the Johanine Jesus is NOT actual Flesh but Only Appeared LIKE Flesh.

Real Flesh cannot walk 3-4 Miles on water.

The Johanine Jesus, the Logos, is NOT from the ancient Jewish Community.

The Johanine Jesus story appears to be a Myth Fable like those of the Greeks and Romans.

Cesc

In Daniel "son of man" means a "human being," in a classificatory sense as apart from a god or an animal, like "sons of God" means "(lesser) gods." But in Christianity the expression seems to have gotten a life of it's own. So you can't seperate ανθρωπου from ο υιος του ανθρωπου cuz it's a whole concept of it's own. The phrase "son of man", υιος ανθρωπου, doesn't mean anything in itself in Greek as far as i'm aware, only in Aramaic and Hebrew, בר אנש and בן אדם.
The LXX translates it as υιος ανθρωπου, "a son of man", and almost exclusively in the Christian texts does it have the definite article, ο υιος του ανθρωπου, "the son of man," which might indicate that it refers to a specific "υιος ανθρωπου", namely that of Dan 7.

You should look to Daniel and the rest of the Hebrew Bible for an explanation for the gospels but not the whole explanation. I don't mean to say that Mark understands Jesus as God, but gMark's Jesus acts like a Jewish prophet from the OT in many ways, not least as a mouthpiece for YHWH. The same way Jesus acts as God's instrument on earth in gJohn, the Word God has sent down to do his will and enlighten the people. The narrative in gMark seems to be modelled to some extent on that of the stories from Kings and Chronicles about Elijah and Elisha.
I do agree with you that mythologies such as that of Hercules could play a rahter big part in Christianity. But I don't see any reason to suspect organised sinister motives on part of the infant Christianity such as the ones you describe here.

Cesc

How do you get from 5. to 6. without it being complicated? That's where the chain snaps. I'm also the same nature as my father following your logic, but I am not him and he is not me.

Jesus isn't mentioned in Dan 7 and the word "like", ὡς, doen't appear in the gospels.

So, what do you think it means that "the Word became flesh"? It's a later addition?

Horatio Parker

It's the difference between transcendence and intelligibility. It's abstract but not complicated.

Put in mythical cosmological terms, the Son is the Thought in the Mind of God. God, in creating the universe, first had to conceive it. The sum total of that intelligibility, all that can be communicated in words, is the Son.

Adam

Too bad, Cesc, you weren't following BC&H in 2011 when I presented my Gospel Eyewitnesses thesis that developed the Johannine Discourses as the first written about Jesus, with internal evidence that it was written while Jesus was still alive. I reached a climax at Post #450 :

(See same link as for Post #436 below)

Here's a list of my main posts towards my thesis of seven written records by eyewitnesses to Jesus:
[Above from my Post #436 here]
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....nesses&page=18

Naturally, running counter to FRDB beliefs was unpopular. I made the mistake of retreating to an easily provable position that the case for for MJ had now been rendered impossible to prove. Even this failed to impress MJ partisans in my various posts presenting my Gospel According to the Atheists in such posts as #526, 534, 561. People just don't change their minds, no matter the evidence. (Just to be clear, I was not saying that MJ could not reasonably be believed, just that it could not be held as probable, because we now have too much evidence of HJ, that Jesus existed.)

Apparently no one has told you yet that rational discourse with aa is impossible.

Duvduv

http://www.forananswer.org/Top_Uni/ECF_Jn1_1.htm

Notice on this list of early church writers that the mentions of the Logos expressed in John 1 are few and not very important in terms of theology and doctrine overall. Other references are not necessarily invoking anything from John 1. And of course we know that the author of GJohn himself does pursue the doctrine and its implications in the rest of the gospel.

Also notice two allusions suggested in Romans 11 and 1 Corinthians 8, which themselves say nothing referring to the Logos concept that emerged in the (probably later) GJohn.

In Romans 11 the name of Jesus or Christ is mentioned not even a single time, while in 1 Corinthians 8 only twice as well (verses 11 and 12), clearly indicating interpolations of Christ ideas into a pre-existing Jewish-friendly text having nothing to do with Christianity.