Clivedurdle

Peter Cave in Humanism (or via: amazon.co.uk) p24 writes:

Is it possible we are completely misunderstanding gJohn?

I am suggesting it is a profoundly Greek document, inspired by the interaction - then three hundred years old and having resulted in civil wars of Judaism and the Greek world, complete with Gymnasiums in Jerusalem.

Mark and its sister documents Matthew and Luke are one set, probably based on an epic tragedy.

John is a Greek philosophical work, probably akin to xians discussing Quantum mechanics, but actually based on a reasonable god.

It begins with logos and ends with 153.

I think these are quite deliberate motifs, almost gnostic, in the pythagorean tradition but with a wonderful dose of mumbo jumbo and magic.

Might it be an attempt from a Jewish mindset brought up as a Greek to bring together these philosophies and meld Yahweh and reason.

In this unholy union the mumbo jumbo has won for a long time!

Elijah

:clapping: I agree, sounds very reasonable to me.

gentleexit

Philo made Yahweh reasonable, logos making (or he's the first name we know. He himself mentions predecessors). John is in the line of high-end Diasporan/Greek Judaism.

Which came first for John - the Jesus or the Logos? Probably the Logos ala Philo. Did John write in Alexandria? Why adopt the Jesus-story? Maybe because here were fellow-travelers, Jews castigated for flouting norms being set in stone by the Rabbi's - isn't his the most "anti-Jewish" gospel? Maybe he melded two now unacceptable traditions. Maybe.

Clivedurdle

What does anti Jewish mean? Might it mean a Greek Jew anti a fundi talibanesque maccabean Jew?

What is a disapora Jew? Maybe the majority of Jews have always lived outside the coast of the eastern med?

Isn't Judaism first and foremost a Greek cult? What we think is true Judaism - some Hebrew based mythology going back to Adam, Moses et al - is really a fundamentalist fiction and reaction to the then Greek modernism.

gentleexit

Yes, yes and yes, though diaspora was on the coast of the eastern med, Alexandria, Antioch, Ephesus et al. In fact, look at where Christians were when Constantine gets east and guess who are there too? Jews. Christianity isn't an issue in the West outside Rome. The roots of Christianity isn't Jewish conversion but Jewish choice of one Jewish sect over the budding "fundi"s (Maccabee-like though ironically they rejected the Maccabee books because they were in Greek).

"Logos" speaks to Philo-Judaism, men speaking Greek to Moses. Its last remnant after the temple's fall and a "back to basics" backlash. It sailed off in Jesus' ship.

bacht

Are you including the years from Cyrus the Great to Alexander? Isn't this supposed to be the time when normative 2nd temple Judaism developed? I can accept that the production of the Septuagint in the 3rd C bce was a big step, but was there really nothing before that?