Riverwind

*bump*

Some wanted to discuss this further. It might be interesting. Or, it could fizzle away again like many of the more intellectual threads seem to do.

Gamera

John 10:29 has variant readings in the mss:


Stephens 1550 Textus Receptus
o pathr mou os dedwken moi meizwn pantwn estin kai oudeiV dunatai arpazein ek thV ceiroV tou patroV mou

Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus
o pathr mou os dedwken moi meizwn pantwn estin kai oudeiV dunatai arpazein ek thV ceiroV tou patroV mou


Byzantine Majority
o pathr mou os dedwken moi meizwn pantwn estin kai oudeiV dunatai arpazein ek thV ceiroV tou patroV mou


Alexandrian
o pathr mou o dedwken moi pantwn meizon estin kai oudeiV dunatai arpazein ek thV ceiroV tou patroV


Hort and Westcott
o pathr mou o dedwken moi pantwn meizon estin kai oudeiV dunatai arpazein ek thV ceiroV tou patroV

So it can be: "My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand/ or my Father's hand."

What does the variant do to your theory?

judge

I think you need to exaplin why it is strange. If this is the starting point and you are now looking for confirmation via other internal evidence, then it just doesn't seem strong enough.

On what basis is this strange?

judge

Ok a couple of questions.
John's gospel is IMO quite different from the other canonical and even non canonical gospels (as far as I am aware), particularly when it comes to the dialogue.
If you concede this much then are you proposing two peculiarly "John type" sources?
Secondly how would one explain why someone combining two sources wouldn't "smooth things out", if as you suggest, is is "strange" to have both the and my in close proximity?
Where we see two sources combined in the HB there seems a very good explanation, at times, as to why there was no "smoothing out". They wanted to keep two groups who had different traditions both happy.

Who might the two groups be here (if such are required)?

Chili

Because the father and my father are different in that "my father" is personally known as the mansion wherein we live while "the father" is known to be but not as our very own mansion. The difference between these two is our knowledge of the woman (who came to be known as Mary) because she holds whatever is gathered along the river of life that we journeyed while outside of Eden.

It can be said that the father is mythology specific and therefore known to exist (as opposed to Buddha or Brahman) while my father is personally known via the mother who decorated our mansion in the collapse of the trinity when the dove descended into our fully exposed [topless] river barge.

gurugeorge

I think the change is also from personal to impersonal in a psychological sense. The Gnostic teaching is essentially about you -the reader, the listener - and your personal, individual relationship to the Divine (the spiritual Christ) in you (or rather, to be more precise, the relationship between the Divine in you and the unknown external Divine, beyond the bondage of this world).

Gnosticism is not an abstract teaching about something concrete that happened in the past that somehow abstractly shifted some theological chess pieces around, which somehow then impacts on you, requiring you to accept that it happened, and that it had such-and-such a theological impact on the theological abstracta; rather, Gnosticism is a direct teaching about you and your total situation, your very own intimate relationship with the Divine, your Father. Any explanation of the situation in terms of abstracta (Pleroma/Aeons, etc.) is subsequent to that, an attempt to make sense of the bondage/release (crucifixion/resurrection) in intellectual terms.

Picture the Gnostic teacher talking passionately about "my Father" to some ordinary Joe. The listener doesn't yet have a "my Father" relationship with God for himself, but he's caught up in sympathy with the Gnostic's charisma and passion, admires it from afar, and wants a "piece of the action" so to speak, wants to have his own "my Father" relationship with God. At that point, the lightning bolt strikes - YOU.

The transition from someone speaking about his own personal relationship with the Divine helps induce (by psychological sympathy) a personal relationship with the Divine in the listener.

In contrast, "the" is a theological, airy-fairy way of talking about it, putting Christ and God comfortably at arms' length. It can still be understood as true, but it's one step removed from being personal and intimate, from being direct, personal knowledge.

Chili

I never liked the -ism behind gnostic for that reason (God is a father but not grandfather). And of course, arms length cannot be conceived to exist without non-arms lenght in the "my father."

judge

Still, that does not make it strange unless you can show that the difference you propose (assuming it holds up) is "out of sync" with the context of the quotes in John.

seven8s

Or both were stubborn, meaning the past and future, holding onto what think is theirs by inheritance, equally rejecting? If a prophet is not received in his own land, could that simply mean time? If this is true, who does that refer to, the Jews, or all of us? Do you think that the possibility that Christians, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists, Hinduists, theists, atheists, scientists, male, female yada, yada, yada, could be included in that group?

Two, what makes you think it is two?

The past present and future. My Father, The Father/Farther past present future. If Jesus was a prophet a prophet predicts, if Jesus was the Son/Sun of God, those predictions would not only tell time, but more important, explain it, correct it?
There, tell/explain/correct. That would be a trinity, correct?


How would one smooth two sources that are opposites, if time heals all wounds? Slowly? Painfully slowly? How could one speed things up? God crosses over, but is he received? Are we stubborn? Ignorant, fearful? Have we been mislead? And if so, how, why? Does the past repeat itself, and if it does, do we learn anything from that constant repetition? Iow’s, it seems to me that if we are fearful, ignorant, mislead is it because those before us were fearful, ignorant, mislead.

If I am ignorant, wouldn’t a little instruction be helpful in understanding my ignorance? How about kindness, would kindness help?

gurugeorge

I think you can actually see a "distancing" process even within Gnosticism itself. The "explanation" starts to overwhelm the simplicity of the original message. i.e. instead of putting God at arms' length by putting his advent in the past, in history, as the orthodox did, the Gnostics' way of putting Him at arms' length was by putting forward ever more complex, grand philosophical/cosmological schemas that are so much more interesting and intellectually engaging to think about than getting down to the nitty gritty.