spin

Here's a puzzle: in Luke 1:60 Elizabeth is certain that her son is to be called not a name from her husband's ancestors, but "John". Can anyone see from the narrative why she did so?


spin

andrewcriddle

I think the narrative allows two possibilities.
a/ Zechariah has previously informed Elizabeth (presumably in writing since he is currently unable to speak) of what the angel had told him.
b/ Elizabeth (who has already prophesied earlier in the chapter) has received her own revelation about her son's name.

Andrew Criddle

spin

Considering the narrative as we have it, what do you think about these two allowed possibilities, Andrew?


spin

Loomis

Have you read Robert Price’s article on this subject?

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_zachar.htm

Honestly - I just discovered it after I discovered this thread, so I haven’t had a chance to read it. But I’d bet the farm that there’s good info there.

If you are genuinely interested in this subject then why not read Price’s article and tell us what you think about it? :wave:

JoeWallack

JW:
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/...1&byte=4782437

JW:
There's an implication that Elizabeth knows the name is supposed to be "John" from [the] holy spirit. Not to derail the Thread but I think the better question here is why the name is "John" in the first place per the text. In the classic The Birth of the Messiah, Brown does his best Peter Falk imitation from the classic The In-Laws (pun intended) and answers, "I don't know. Whatcha got, I'm open?" There appears to be about as much thought into why the name "John" in "Luke" as Bluto gave when giving Pinto his name:

http://www.acmewebpages.com/midi/pinto.wav

The author of this Infancy Narrative appears to be simply accepting the tradition of John the Baptist and providing him with an Infancy Narrative to complement Jesus' Infancy Narrative. What's important to this author is that Jesus had an Infancy Narrative since the Exemplar, "Mark", did not, which favored Marcion. The author did not bother to provide the reason for the specific name, such as the meaning of the name and it's related context, since the primary motivation was just to present an Infancy Narrative and the secondary motivation was for a female author to use the name to discredit the male (Zechariah) and credit the female (Elizabeth).



Joseph

spin

For me the crux is in the question I asked. The difficulty in answering it points to a problem in the current form of the narrative.

Interestingly, I think it's the other way around: the JtB birth narrative provided the Lucan writer with a model for his Jesus birth narrative. One of the stunning issues is that the JtB narrative is much longer than that for Jesus, considering the latter is only 2:1-21 plus what is now 1:26-38. Think of the Zachariah incense story and the naughty angel striking him dumb because he was slow on the uptake. They add nothing to the Jesus story.

I don't think the evidence is straightforward with regard to what the author provided. I'm still coming to grips with it. For instance the song of praise starting at 1:46 -- usually given to Mary -- is given to Elisabeth in the early Latin tradition as well as some more exotic sources.


spin

andrewcriddle

Tentatively I think that Luke intended b/.
a/ is maybe a little banal, whereas b/ makes Elizabeth's desire to call her baby John and the confirmation by the dumb (and apparently deaf) Zechariah into independent witnesses to God's will.

Andrew Criddle

nickpecoraro

Elizabeth was barren...Luke 1:7

So the birth of John was special....Luke 1:13-17

The name John, means "Yod He Vav He has shown favor"

So the name John was appropriate to his special birth


nickpecoraro

Toto

off topic posts split and moved to E

Toto

Anything by Robert Price is worth reading. Robert Price has also written a clever article that "proves" that Jesus is indeed John the Baptist returned from the dead (until the end, when he claims that it was all a literary exercise.)

From this article, I get the impression that the original question should not be why Elizabeth named her son John, but why the author of Luke (alone among the gospel writers) claimed that John was the child of Elizabeth and Zacharias.