Sheshbazzar

Wordy exercises in circular reasoning.

Just because you compose masses of writing, it does not serve to make their contents valid. And linking to them does not serve to make them authorative.

You have as yet failed to produce, or to establish even one bit of actual evidence for your imaginative claim that Nicodemus ever wrote any 'Discourses', or even so much as one single word of the NTs texts. Nothing is to be found within any of those texts that suggests, indicates, or establishes any such thing.
The rest of your imaginative assertions are just as empty of any substance or any actual evidence.

Get a clue Sherlock. Good textual research and scholarship does not consist of simply inventing shit to twist the content of the texts to conform to whatever
'guesswork-cum-theory' of yours that you would like to make it to fit.
You are going about your 'research' in a manner worthy of earning the coveted 'Ron Wyatt Biblical BS Award'. and no, I don't mean Bachelor of Science.

Yer just trying to blow a lot of smoke up our asses with all of this. And it isn't going to work no matter how much more of it you post.

ששבצר העברי.....
.....Sheshbazzar the Hebrew
('Respectfully' will come only if you earn it.)





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Vorkosigan

Do me a favor. Dig out the exact ARGUMENT from these texts that shows that a particular passage goes back to John Mark.

Vorkosigan

Adam

For the love of Mike!
Don't be so uptight!
We're not deriving a new Theory of Relativity, it's all a matter of probabilities.
And we both know I have less chance of changing your mind (whatever "argument" I present) than of getting a Fundamentalist to believe the Apostle Matthew did not write the entire canonical gMatthew without using any sources.

jakejonesiv

Hi Adam,

You have had more than enough opportunity to produce something of substance on Nicodemus to be taken seriously. Since it hasn't happened yet, it is never going to happen.

Jake

Sheshbazzar

But what you are proposing is improbable.
The only way you could even begin to propose it is by first tossing rationality out the window by setting up asinine qualifiers like this;
WTF kind of looney-tunes approach to 'historical' scholarship is this ?
You proceed on the ridiculous assumption that the supernatural elements in these texts were actual events? that actually took place? just so that you can accept the characters, settings, and situations presented in these fanciful fairy-tale narratives as being factual accounts?

Are you simply too dumb to even realize that any non-theist, or unbiased person is going to object to that kind of irrational approach to determining 'history'?

You set up a precondition to accept these supernatural elements, and highly improbable situations, and you are not doing 'history' or determining anything to do with historical facts. All you are doing is playing make-believe with your favorite fairy tale.

Of course we realize both your tale, and your support of it demand that you maintain these irrational elements and claims, else you got nothing.
And in the final analysis that is exactly what you got; Nothing.

I have been considering taking your articles and analyzing them sentence by sentence, on this forum, examining, questioning, and discrediting your premises and statements one by one. And I can do it. But I'm certain that any other clear thinking skeptical person is capable of doing the same.

I am rather surprised that a organization that prides itself on its level of intelligence, would not realize that the paper you presented would not stand up to even a cursory examination by any truly skeptical person.
Perhaps it is because they are all so busy playing to their own choir, and applauding and praising themselves on how smart they are, that they cannot see how incredibly self-important, vain, and stupid they really are?

My kindest advice to you Dale, is to wake up and smell the coffee.
Hang up that dead phone line to your sky-daddy and buddy zombie jebus, and find yourself a real world life.
This world can be a wonderful and beautiful place, it has been around for billions of years, and is going to be around for billions more. Learn to live within and with it, and love both it and your fellow man
No zombie Jebus is ever going to show up to torture everyone that has ever disagreed with you, nor be around to wipe your ass for you every day forever and ever.

ששבצר העברי

Vorkosigan

I'm not being uptight. How is asking you for a clear argument "uptight"? You CAN change minds with good arguments.

Vorkosigan

Adam

So far (in my #1, #2, #13, #30, and #45 and linked Mega Society articles 1st and 3rd) I have made clear statements for sources going back to Peter, Andrew, and Nicodemus in a tangled web in gJohn. Peripherally I have gotten into the P-Strand of editorial additions, and I get into the thick of that in this post. It's very detailed and not particularly recommended and I would not necessarily now defend all of it, but I wrote it when I was younger and optimally hypomanic, so the insights may still be valuable. I have tried revising it, but only come to mildly different conclusions that may be less valid than the original, so I'll leave off with just a few [brackets] for new insertions and {ellipses} for what I would now prefer not be stated.
The Core Gospel continued right through chapter after chapter. The components are often difficult to identify. The first miracle story, the Wedding at Cana, is easy to identify as from Signs, however, because of its non-Johannine style. The cleansing of the Temple, John 2:13-21, is from the Synoptics. Along with the Following Chapter 3, it is in [mild] Johannine style. John 3 is from the Discourses, however. [The Discourses seem to have been translated into Greek with the mild Johannine style also found in a later edition of John.]

Chapter 4 returns to Signs style, but contains several small chunks from the Discourses, in Johannine style. Careful analysis of the particular Johannine characteristics here reveal that the P-Strand characteristics usually present in the Discourse are absent in 4:31-38. Evidently the Signs editor obtained these quotations directly from the Discourses. The larger public Discourses sections have been mediated through the P-Strand editor. The text available to both was Greek, the common Johannine style proves, but the P-Strand editor extensively rewrote the large Discourses.

Regardless of the above surprise about John 4:31-38, the other Discourses quotation does show P-Strand characteristics. Verses 20-24 exhibit the typical blend of Nicol’s criteria which appear in the larger Discourses. Now these verses are clearly an insertion into the story of the Woman at the Well, a disparagement of Samaritan theology. The P-Strand editor was able to work upon the Signs after they were finished.

The Discourses in John 4:31-38 which are not in P-Strand style were added when Signs was written. The perhaps most characteristic Signs word is used to introduce this section, the word “rabbi,” is used at John 1:38, 49; 3:2, 26; 4:31; 6:25; 9:2; and 11:8. It is used with passages simply from Signs, simply from the Discourses, or most characteristically at point of transition from one to the other. The use of the word “rabbi” is strong evidence the Signs passages were the work of an editor, rather than Signs being a source.

The Signs editor did not merely bring Discourses material into his Signs. He also brought Signs stories into the Discourses. John 5 and 9 are the examples of this phenomenon. The Discourses must originally have had some explanation of the miracles which occurred. Nicodemus may have written something on this order; “A man came to us claiming to have been healed of paralysis by Jesus.” The present John 5:5-9, 16-17, was substituted, probably by someone who, unlike Nicodemus, had seen the healing. In Chapter 9 the new verses substituted were verses 1-2, 6-7, 14, 16b, and 18-19. The rest of John 5 is almost all from the Discourses. The rest of John 9, however, includes significant sections from the co-edited P-Strand. John 9:13-16 (and 40a) includes the word “Pharisee,” and 24-28 in similar [mild] Johannine style seems to continue the same insertion.
The reader may have noted a paradox. Whereas in John 4 the Signs editor used Discourses directly without P-Strand mediation, in John 5 he inserts his story into P-Strand rewritten Discourses. It cannot be that the P-Strand editor incorporated the Signs into his own book, because he always re-styled everything he rewrote. P-Strand must here have preceded the Signs. Signs and P-Strand do not have a simple First and Second Edition relationship. They were concurrent. The Signs writer who incorporated John 4:31-38 Discourses evidently decided to commission the P-Strand writer to write down for him the rest of the Discourses he wanted to use. Then he inserted his own Signs where appropriate. Later, the P-Strand writer got his chance to add his own material and whatever Discourses had not already been worked in.

The Discourses in John show intractable textual difficulties. The reason may be that after the P-Strand writer rewrote them {for use by the Signs editor}, some later scribe went back to the original as the basis for much of his copy of those chapters.
From John 5, the thrust of the text skips to John 7:11. Chapter 5 concluded with almost 40 verses from the Discourses. The Discourses continue almost without interruption. Insertions of the world “Pharisee” identify John 7:31-32, 43-49; and 8:13 as P-Strand, as also is probably the case with 7:25-27. Chapter 9 has the insertions described in the previous paragraph, but John 10 is almost entirely Discourses.

John 11 is quite complex. Some verses from the Discourses are embedded by the Signs editor; verses 9b-10 are prefaced by “rabbi” in verse 7. The basic story is from Signs; John 11:1a, 3, 6-8a, 13, 20-25, 35-36, 38b-39a, and 41-45. This Raising of Lazarus is followed by the consequence that the high priests plot to kill Jesus; from the P-Strand comes John 11:46-50, 56. Here is evidence that the P-Strand is later than the Signs, because the Signs story is presupposed. It is true that this section is necessarily later, but the Signs may nevertheless be later than the underlying materials apparently prepared for Signs by the P-“Strand editor. The other verses in Chapter 11 are from later editions.

John 6 is out of order in the present text. It possibly belongs after 10:19 or even 10:21, but the common agreement is that it belongs before John 5. The result is a simple chronological progression; an April Feast of Passover, John 6, an October Feast of Tabernacles in John 5; 7-10:21, and a December Feast of Dedication in John 10:22-39. The narrative in John 6 is largely Synoptic, yet the style is less Johannine than the main Synoptic passages in John (2:13-25; Ch. 18, 19, 20). The Feeding of the 5000 in 6:1-25 is thus either from a different source (presumably the [scribe of Ur-Marcus]) or was incorporated into John by the Signs editor, not the P-Strand editor, or both (my position). The names Andrew and Philip are inserted into the Synoptic story, again indicating Signs. The name Andrew was apparently only hinted in the text, anonymity being dropped at verse 8 the next edition of John. (Once again, this points to Andrew as author of Signs.) The characteristic Signs word “rabbi” precedes at verse 25 the Discourses section which runs from John 6:26-53, 58, 63. Signs resumes at 7:66-67, 70-71.

John 12 parallels John 6 in having a Signs-style Synoptic story preceding a major public discourse by Jesus. Nowhere else in John is a public discourse at one occasion almost a chapter long, but no longer. John 12:1-8, 12-15 is low in Johannine style; about half is from the [Ur-Marcus] used by the Signs editor. The P-Strand also appears at verses 12, 17-19. The names Andrew and Philip identify the next three verses as from Signs, however. (For the only time in John the name Andrew is preceded by the Greek article, indicating that the name stood in the text of this edition rather than having been inserted by a later editor. However, if the Signs preceded P-Strand, the P-Strand editor could have added the name. Most likely, the name Andrew was substituted for a noun which was preceded by the article.) John 12:42-43 is P-Strand.

The Farewell Discourse in its entirety was brought in during this Core Gospel editing, as were all the Discourses. John 13 was not yet included.
The Passion Narrative was largely included within the Core Gospel of John. This came from translation of an underlying source, Aramaic Ur-Marcus.

jakejonesiv

I take this thread as evidence that an IQ of 175+ does not guarantee any meaningful commentary on the gospel of John.

Adam

[As I stated about the article text posted in #57, The P-Strand detail would be tiresome, so the lack of comment was expected. The pay-off is of more significance, that the P-Strand continues into later chapters. On my analysis the P-Strand continues into John 20, the Resurrection. As my alternate view, I see key passages such as John 20:2b-8, 11b-14, 26-27, and 30 as already there from the Aramaic Ur-Marcus source. I now regard either one as the work of John Mark, an eyewitness. Either way, something worth studying Following that is the start of the tie-in of the P-Strand to the subsequent editions of John.]
The Resurrection stories have been variously accepted or rejected as simple continuations of the Passion Narrative. A core is similar to the Synoptics, but the stories flesh out in divergence from the Synoptics. Much of the divergent material can and should be held to be from the Core Gospel, however. The style largely corresponds with the source as variously developed by the source critics. This basically traces to the “other disciple” who ran with Peter to the tomb in John 20:2-10. This disciple was not the beloved disciple, that notation in John 2):2 being most likely a later gloss (phileo is used instead of agapeo). He could not have been Peter or Thomas, both named in this chapter. His anonymity implies his participation in the production of John. His intimacy with Peter suggests a fellow apostle or close associate. Many scholars believe that the home in Bethany where Jesus and his followers stayed belonged to John Mark’s family. I believe that John Mark was this “other disciple” at the tomb. The verses he contributed in the P-Strand were probably 20:2b-8, 11b-14, 26-27, and 30. [Or some or all of these could have been already there from Ur-Marcus.]

The primary edition of John (the Core Gospel which resulted from the Signs and P-Strand additions to the Synoptic and Discourses sources) contains so much of John that the question arises as to whether the rest of John can also be encompassed within it. I acknowledge that the general style of the remainder of John is not very different from the larger part of the Core Gospel, except for the Signs. It is this similarity which has misled scholars to view the Signs as a source which was incorporated unchanged in to whole of otherwise Johannine Style. The very latest editorial insertions into John show a very Johannine style, identified in Johannine studies as from the Redactor. How to distinguish such later insertions from earlier material would seem hopeless, except for wherever the changes were made into the Signs.

Only very recently has the impasse stated above been overcome.
General style of John is similar, but detail style is radically different. The discovery of excellent papyri in Egypt has rendered older scholarship obsolete. The texts of P66 and P75 were published only in [1962]. The first challenging new use of them came in 1974 when Howard M. Teeple published The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John. These two papyri (plus the fragmentary P45) together with the two best uncial manuscripts give a new exactness as to the precise letters used in John. Copyists are less careful about one letter words and about double consonant spelling than they are about more substantive matters. Nevertheless, these are very important in determining sources and editorial strands. Teeple showed by comparison of P66, P75, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus that one editor of John never used the Greek article before proper nouns, whereas all the other writers did so to some degree. Very usefully, it turned out the last editor, the Redactor, always used the article, whereas the next to last main editor never used the article. Because the later changes have not been blurred by a multitude of later writings, it is the last two layers which can be identified in the most detail as compared with earlier materials. The core Gospel can be separated rather well from the later two major editions, because the stylistically similar Redactor is separated from it by a layer in-between which is very distinct from either. Further the last two major editions are both quite distinct from the Signs, which is a major section of the Core Gospel in which both later editors made insertions.

Adam

This goes back a while, and skips between two threads. In the Gospel Eyewitnesses thread Oct. 22 in Post #184
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=306983&page=8
I quoted a section from my OP there and supported it with further arguments. You responded there only to the two pericopes, complaining that the rest of the text in block form was thereby unclear. So let me post it here with spaces between paragraphs:


The above still needs a response from Vorkosigan, except for the later sections on the pericopes. The Argument for Vork is to too much of the above text to simply bold it, but putting {ellipses} around the less consequential risks leaving out evidence. In addition to my OP in Gospel Eyewitnesses you may have also overlooked the first six paragraphs in my first article in Noesis, to which I gave above in error the link to my third article.
http://megasociety.org/noesis/181.htm#Common