JonA

I doubt you even know the meaning of the phrase.

Quite simple: the apostle John was not only not the most recent editor, but there is no evidence whatsoever that he was even a source for the material in the gospel.

The issue isn't what John left out; it's what the synoptics left out. There is a lot of theology essential to Christianity in John that is not in the synoptics; in fact, almost all of the essential theology is in John. Is there any good reason the earlier writers would have left out all of that important stuff?

Did that; twice now. It's time you addressed my counter argument.

Why? It is entirely unrelated to anything.

There is no evidence that Jesus said that the Son of Man has eclipsed God in the power of forgiveness or invalidated God's power. I think an 'also' is implied, and had the Jews understood it differently their reaction would not have been what it was.

That's really irrelevant. The scribes do not accuse Jesus of thinking he is God, so whether or not Jesus corrects their claim (which is never made publicly, mind you) has no bearing on whether we have an instance of Jesus implicitly or explicitly declaring himself God.

It is actually meant to be a helpful tip; I think reading the texts would help you avoid all of the silly reading errors you've been making.

But yes, feel free to ignore the advice and go on looking ridiculous.

Jon

Vorkosigan

The writer of Matthew is different from the writer of Mark and expanded the passage. So what? Both are completely fictional. The crowd is fictional, the statements are fictional, and the Jesus of each is fictional. The author of gMark had one take, of gMatt, a more expanded one. I'm not even sure what your point is any more. If you wish to read Jesus as saying he was god, go ahead, I'll give you His answer in Mark 15.2: that's what you say. But your theology is not the theology of the author of Mark.

Vorkosigan

aa5874

You have NOT presented any evidence at all that Jesus said anything in the Gospels or that the Jews could have thought about things that never did happen.

Have you forgotten that the NT is an UNRELIABLE source?

It is the unknown authors who wrote the Jesus stories and their stories are filled with implausibilities which even the very characters, like Jesus and the disciples, did PARTICIPATE in the very implausibilities and witnessed them.

mrsonic

combing the 2 versions together we read

And behold, they brought to him a paralytic, lying on his bed, and when Jesus saw their faith he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, my son. Your sins are forgiven." And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, "This man is blaspheming. [Who can forgive sins but God alone?]" But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, "Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, "Rise and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins," he then said to the paralytic, "Rise, take up your bed and go home." And he rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were in awe, and they glorified God who had given such authority to MEN." (Matthew 9:2-8; Mk 2:7).

why would a god need to give himself authourity to forgive sins and why would the people assume it is mere man doing the forgiving? "given such authourity to men" does not mean given such authourity to god.


the synoptic writers didn't think that jesus' " i am" statements were important but jesus' deciples plucking grain on sabbath day was important to mention.

Vorkosigan

It hadn't been invented yet.

aa5874

The gospels according to gMatthew and gMark are NOT about Salvation for the JEWS at all they are about the fulfillment of so-called prophecy concerning the DESTRUCTION of the Jews.

The Jesus of gMatthew and gMark was NOT a SAVIOR or Messiah to the Jews.

Examine gMark 4 This is the MOST significant passage in gMark and the ENTIRE NT.

Jesus SECRETLY TOLD the disciples of his DEVIOUS Plan.

Jesus was NOT a Savior for the Jews in gMark and gMatthew.

Jesus did NOT come to SAVE the Jews in gMark and gMatthew

Jesus came to MAKE SURE the SINS of the JEWS would NOT be FORGIVEN in gMark and gMatthew

Jesus came to MAKE SURE the JEWS were DESTROYED in gMark and gMatthew.

Again, this is the MOST IMPORTANT information in the EARLIEST gospels according to gMatthew and gMark.

Jesus was NOT a Savior to the Jews. Jesus came to MAKE SURE the Jews were DESTROYED.

Jesus the SAVIOR of the the JEWS is a LATE invention.

We can DATE all the writings of the NT using gMatthew and gMark.

All writings in the NT which describes Jesus as a SAVIOR of the Jews are AFTER gMatthew and gMark.

gJohn and the Pauline writings are AFTER gMark and gMatthew.

John 3:16 - Romans 1:16 - The authors of gJohn and Pauline writings RE-WROTE or CHANGED the Jesus story.

Jesus came to MAKE SURE that the JEWS did NOT get any SALVATION in the EARLIEST gospels of the NT.

Matthew 13 The SALVATION story of the Jews was INVENTED in gJohn and the Pauline writings are AFTER the EARLIEST Jesus stories in the NT.

Diogenes the Cynic

John is not written as a memoir and does not contain any characteristics of that genre. That's a genre designation that was retrojected onto it by later tradition, but in point of fact, it's not a memoir and doesn't claim to be (the later emended epilogue notwithstanding).

John is theologically different from the synoptics in that John sees Jesus as the preexistent Logos (a concept from Hellenistic philosophy which got into Judaism via Philo). In Alexandrian Judiasm (i.e. Philo), the Logos was an intermediary figure between man and God - a bridge. John seems to call the Logos the same as God (θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος,), but it's unclear from the grammar whether he was saying "The Logos was God," or "the Logos was a god (especially since the preceding phrase is λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν - "the word was with God"), but no matter since John's claim that the Logos was coexistent with God is, in itself, a departure from the adoptionist theme of the synoptic (especially Mark), which see Jesus as having become imbued with the Holy Spirit after his baptism by John the Baptist (and mark and Matthew see the Spirit as abandoning him on the cross). the synoptocs also make it clear that they see God and Jesus as separate entities by virtue of the fact that it depicts them as having separate wills ("not my will, but yours be done"). It would make no sense for them to have Jesus praying to God to "take this cup from me" if Jesus WAS God - for that matter, why would God ever pray to himself at all?
John is not from the inner circle, is not a memoir and is not presented as such.
First, the phrase "Son of Man" did not refer to God. While there is more than one way that phrase could have been used in that time and place, a synonym for "God" was not one of them. Essentially the phrase (from the Hebrew ben Adam, Aramaic bar enosh) just referred colloquially to human beings in general (ben Adam is literally a "son of Adam" - Adam means "man"). The book of Daniel, though, makes reference to the Messiah as being "one like a son of Adam" (i.e. a human being) who will descend from the clouds. Therefore, the phrase "son of Man" could have also been seen as an elliptical reference to the Messiah (perhaps analogous to how modern English speakers might refer to an important person as "the Man").

The synoptics appear to be using the phrase in its titular, Messianic sense (though that doesn't necessarily mean that Jesus did - theoretically, a historical Jesus could have simply been saying that human beings have the right to forgive each other), but here's the thing - in Judaism (both then and now) The Messiah is not God. Claiming to be the Messiah was not a claim to be God, and (despite what Mark says) was not blasphemy.

Yes Mark has the Sanhedrin convict Jesus of "blasphemy" based on his claim to be the "Son of Man" All this shows is that Mark's trial is fiction (this is only one of several legal and procedural errors which show that Mark's trial could not have been historical). There could not have been a conviction for blasphemy based on that claim, because claiming to be the Messiah was not a claim to be God and was not illegal at all under Jewish law. Any Jew (then and now) is allowed to say he's the Messiah. he might be WRONG, but he's not breaking any Jewish law.

The synpotics see Jesus as the Messiah (Mark seems to think Jesus preached the coming of the Son of Man, but Mark claims that Jesus kept it a secret that he WAS the son of man) who was going to return, Daniel style, from the clouds in glory. John basically abandoned the concept of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah for a new theological interpretation of Jesus as the Logos (which in previous Jewish thought was NOT the same as the Messiah).

davidstarlingm

I would have thought that assuming good faith would be a common standard here. We don't have to insult each other or make accusations of stupidity in order to discuss a couple of questions.

I don't see how this is relevant. Even if the entire book is completely fabricated, it can still be written in the form of a memoir. This is a question of textual and stylistic criticism, not content or authorship. I listed a variety of stylistic attributes that are consistent with John being cast as a memoir; I am simply wondering whether this is an accurate approach or not. Can you give feedback on that?

The only way I can address your "counter argument" is to point out that it has nothing to do with the validity of my own. Of course calling oneself "son of God" does not automatically constitute a claim to divinity. My argument has been that Jesus must have meant something different than "son of God just like any human being" because he told his disciples not to tell other people, and because people reacted....poorly....whenever they heard him say this.

If Jesus had meant "son of God just like any other good rabbi", he would have had no reason to tell his disciples not to pass it on, and no one would have reacted to it. Does that make sense?

Indulge me. I don't think that either of those scenarios are particularly likely, which means that our last remaining alternative is that the account wasn't fabricated.

The passage does not record the reaction of the scribes, only the reaction of the crowd that saw the man healed. And of course Jesus didn't say that the Son of Man had invalidated God's power -- where did you get that?

Okay, now I think I see your argument: if John contains essential theology that was not implied by or consistent with the synoptics, then John probably isn't writing about the same historical individual as the synoptic authors. Is that right? If so, it's a fair assertion. Thanks for your input.

Even if both accounts are completely fictional (which is a separate question entirely), we can still evaluate the accounts to attempt to determine what the author was trying to convey. I think it is significant that both authors repeatedly insist that everyone thought Jesus was declaring himself to be divine. Don't you?

Very good point; clearly the crowd who only saw the man healed did not automatically recognize any claim to divinity at this point. Thanks for making that clear.

The vast majority of the "I am" statements were made in private, to the apostles alone (see John 16). There is no reason, then, to suppose that the authors of Luke or Mark would have had access to those, as they would not have been publicly attested. This ties in with my earlier assertion, that the synoptic gospels were biographies of the public ministry of Jesus and John is a memoir of the immediate experiences of one of the apostles with Jesus.

Awesome -- that's exactly the kind of claim I was looking for. I mentioned several characteristics that I would expect from a memoir-cast document: the thread of self-reference, the theologically-oriented beginning and ending, and the preeminence of role-oriented declarations made to the disciples in private. I'd be curious to hear how you think these (and other characteristics of John) differ from the "memoir genre". What would we expect from a gospel written as the experiences of a particular disciple?

Objective is good.

The classic interpretation of Mark as adoptionistic isn't particularly consistent with passages like Mark 2:28, where Jesus declares himself to be "lord of the Sabbath", a title that necessitates coexistence/preexistence with YHWH.

This is not only reflected in the Synoptics, but in John as well. Hence the explicit departure from strict monotheism that shows up as early as Paul's epistles.

You may have misunderstood my initial claim; there was nothing that revolutionary about Jesus' claim to be "son of man" -- this title was also taken by Ezekiel, so there's nothing divine about that. Nor is there anything necessarily divine about the title "son of God", except that the way Jesus uses it leads us to the conclusion that it means something more. And that's the basis of my question. As you pointed out, merely claiming to be the Messiah does not constitute blasphemy; the fact that the Sanhedrin condemns Jesus for blasphemy on the basis of his claim to be "the Christ, the Son of God" means that he's claiming something more than Messiahship. Even if these accounts were fictional (which, again, is a separate question), the authors clearly intended "the Christ, the Son of God" to mean something more than Messiahship (otherwise they would have had him condemned on some other count).

The Jews' attitude toward Jesus's claim of "son of God" in the synoptics is the same as that reflected in John 5:18 and John 10:33.

As far as concerns your assertion that the OT did not predict a divine Messiah, I think it is evident that the Jews did not expect a divine Messiah. However, whether the OT predicts a divine Messiah is a different question. Keep in mind the supposed preexistence of Jesus in this passage from Matthew:

Diogenes the Cynic

He didn't. The Messianic "secret" is Mark's invention, not something that actually came from Jesus. Mark was trying to contrive an explanation for why nobody knew Jesus was the Messiah while he was alive. Anything any of the Gospels say Jesus said "in secret" is stuff that was made up by that author (or by that author's source).
We would expect it to be a first person, eyewitness account. A memoir, by definition, is an account written from personal memory. Nothing in John comes from anybody's personal memory, nor does it claim to. It was not written by an eyewitness, nor does it claim to be. It basically doesn't have a single defining characteristic of a memoir.
But Jesus DOESN'T say that. he says that "the sabbath was made for man," and that "the son of man" is Lord of the sabbath. That means that Mark is either saying the Messiah is the Lord of the sabbath or that human beings are, but the "Son of Man" never means 'God," so Mark could not have been saying that Jesus thought he was God in that passage
No, Mark just didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He thought claiming to be the Messiah was blasphemous under Jewish law. John makes a distnictly different claim than mere messiahship for Jesus. The synoptics do not.
Once again, Mark didn't know what he was talking about. He needed to invent a reason to shift blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews, so he made up the trial before the Sanhedrin and the blasphemy conviction. This does not mean that mark thought Jesus was God. He plainly did not.
You are misinformed on this, I assure you, but feel free to show the evdience that the Jews ever had any expectation that the Messiah would be God. No, it's THE issue if you want to make inferences about the use of Messianic allusions in the synoptics.
How does this imply pre-existence?

mrsonic

but mark has jesus explain things to the deciples in a house in private.
luke said,

1 Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled[a] among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.


also , how did matthew find out that jews created conspiracy theory about deciples stealing jesus' body?