jakejonesiv

You don't have eyewitness testimony of any definition.

Jake

Sheshbazzar

An eyewitness account is one made by the eyewitness, not one fabricated and 'reported' by some second, third, or fourth removed unidentified and totally uncorroborated writer, editor, or redactor. Particularly when this 'someone else's work' 'report' is also filled with claimed magical and supernatural incidents.
There is no rational reason for anyone to accept or believe that igsfly: without personally seeing igsfly:
Even if there were 'eyewitnesses' their 'reports' would be no more credible than those of our present-day 'alien-abduction' "eyewitnesses"
And your protracted arguments here can do nothing to increase the credibility of these old and silly half-baked fairy tales.

If you could take out all that ridiculous 1st century CE magic and superstitious religious crap, and high sounding nonsense, you might have a 'report' worth giving some credence. But then it would simply be an utterly boring anthropological report about the social carryings on of these ignorant and dull primitives.

Even if there were 'eyewitnesses', their 'reports', by inclusion of these supernatural occurrences would be no more credible than those of present-day 'alien-abduction' "eyewitnesses" or those jackasses that report Benny Hinn's magical healing abilities.

dockeen

Of course, we also have a studies done over the last few decades that show that
eye witness testimony is pretty darn unreliable anyway.

tanya

How does Mr. Robinson explain
αποσυναγωγος
in John 9:22? (i.e. expulsion of Christians from synagogues, as noted by Robert Kysar in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.)

Chili

Well that is rather simple as it is not a good idea to be both Christian and a Jew as that would make one a 'saved-sinner' which is not a good thing to be with one leg in heaven and one still on earth and so be a squacker in mid-heaven as those were in Rev.14:6-12 but not 13. Just ask the Catholics here who are right beside you in that, and neither Jew nor Christian but as Catholic as they can be.

Now I understand also that apologetics translates this to mean 'the midst of heaven' but that is just a patient endurance rhyme for them.

Adam

That comes up in the next in the serializations. Basically it's that these limited portions of gJohn correspond well to the Johannine epistles (unlike the high Christology of the Discourses, which argues against John as author of the whole gospel).
Nothing, it's just in response to Shesh's #61.
And here's my 6-line summation of my article:

Significance of John shows that several 1970’s scholars’ source-criticism of John derived sources, but without considering whether they were written early or by whom. The Signs Gospel is the narrative in John 1-12, revolving around Andrew and Philip. The Muratorian Canon names Andrew in addition to the Apostle John (under his name, perhaps as Editor) among a team of apostles writing John. The other earliest source is the Passion Narrative told from Peter’s point of view. Teeple labels the Discourses also a source. If so, Nicodemus seems the best candidate for the author of that.

Adam

[Brackets denote what I would now insert]{Ellipses I would now delete}
[Continuing my #1, #2, #13, #30, #45, #57, #59, and #63 and related links in #50 to my Noesis articles.]
Just as the Beloved Disciple strand would require a book to comment upon, so also the next two editorial layers. I must forego most of the analysis. Here again, I must rely upon Teeple’s analysis of the Redactor R as the basis for my conclusions. Once again, Teeple is merely the starting point, however. My analysis of the textual problems has to be reserved for a book.
Cutting through all the argumentation, my position is that John the Apostle wrote the Beloved Disciple strand. {Then he turned the project over to John Mark to finish

to which I assign the MLM strand. However, for a transitional period the two Johns worked together on chapters 13 and 21 and caused a flurry of textual discrepancies by working on two texts concurrently.} [Foregoing two sentences superceded. The final Redactor was not John Mark, but may have preserved some of his recollections and interpretations.]

That the Beloved Disciple strand was written by John is easy to justify, because the words, style, and themes of the Johannine epistles agree best with the BD strand. (The epistles also share some similarities with the discourses in general. The common ground is far too little to indicate that the writer of the Discourses also wrote the Epistles. Some literary influence or scribal identity is the probable explanation.) The later MLM (Martha, Lazarus, and Mary) strand is profuse with the names of Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. John Mark was apparently this Mary’s son, and was also the “disciple known to the high priests.” (This cannot be proven, but compare John 11:1 with Acts 12:12 for this Mary as his mother. John Mark as cousin of Barnabas, a Levite, seems to have been of a priestly family. See Col. 4:10 and Acts 4:36.) John Mark has also been identified as a bishop of Alexandria, and the Neutral Text from Alexandria may trace back to him.

Before turning to John Mark’s MLM strand itself, chronological sequence heretofore followed leads us to the Transition strand. Fifty pages of textual study would be necessary to support this adequately, but any conflict between the Sinaiticus and other Neutral texts I regard as indicative of this strand. Before John stopped working on John and after John Mark started, they kept parallel copies. They added verses per oral conversation; John in anarthrous style, John Mark in his uniformly arthrous style.
The stray verses resulting from this collaboration of John and John Mark could be the following: John (1:46b; 2:24; 3:23-24; 5:14; 6:7, 43, 70a; 7:16a; 8:12a, 39b; 9:28; 10:23a-23b, 25; 11:1, 14a, 21, 40,46 12:1c-2a, 3b, 7, 12b, 22a; 13:10a, 23c, 26a, 27, 29a, 29b, 36b, 37; 20:16, 17,21, 8, 9; 1:1, 10, 12-14.

The addition of the above created the 4th Edition of John. The above verses in parentheses are regarded as probably chance textual irregularities. Only the concentration of “errors” in John 12, 12, 13, 20, and 2 do I regard as significant. Only in John 12 to 21 is the Sinaiticus text in these variances quite regularly in conflict with P66, P75 and Vaticanus. (Only at 11:14, 21, 40; 12:2a, 3b, 7; 13:10a, 23b, 27, 29a-29b does Sinaiticus obtain support from one of the others. P66 and P75 both have lacunae in John 20:16, 17 and 21:1, 12-14, however, so the probabilities are merely strong, not astounding.) I regard the conflicts in John 11 as due to the relatively great activity of John Mark in John 11 in the later final version.

IV. MLM Strand and Summary
The final Redactor of John is the most tedious of all the editors to enumerate, yet of little trouble for scholarly documentation because my version largely follows Teeple’s R. Teeple distinguished the rigorously arthrous style of R and his relatively higher Greek style. To the criteria Teeple enumerated, I would assign the characteristic words “Passover.” “Feast of the Jews,” and the names forming the acronym MLM: Martha, Lazarus, and Mary.

I depart from Teeple’s R primarily in John 11. Teeple attributes about eight verses to the Redactor. As I believe John Mark to be the Redactor and that this Mary was his mother, I add a number of additional verses; John 11:4, 19, 25b-7, 39b-40. These additions do not violate Teeple’s rules except that in verse 19 I hold that even R’s rigidly arthrous style permitted him to omit the article before the second of two names linked by kai.

arnoldo

Paul Anderson, in his book entitled, Riddles of the Fourth Gospel (pg.142-143) (or via: amazon.co.uk) presents four reasons why the gJohn may’ve been finalized by someone other than the “Beloved Disciple”
1. John 13:23 presents the Beloved Disciple in the third person.
2. John 21:23 implies that the Beloved Disciple has died
3. The Beloved Disciple is cited as a source in the gJohn.
4. Added material(s) to the gJohn varies from the rest of the Gospel but is similar to the Johannine Epistles

Anderson presents that John the Elder finalized the gJohn sometime after the death of the Beloved Disciple “whose testimony is true.”

Adam

Yes, the verses attributable to the Redactor will be specified in the top paragraph of my next in the series. They include the verses you specify above. He probably did not know Jesus. He does materially advance the story, however, in John 19:31-37.

Adam

[Brackets denote what I would now insert]{Ellipses I would now delete}
[Continuing my #1, #2, #13, #30, #45, #57, #59, #63 and #77 and related links in #50 to my Noesis articles. [This completes the posting of my peer-reviewed article. I will follow with my summation and reconsiderations, some of which I already included on this thread.]
The MLM Strand, my revision of Teeple’s R, is as follows: John 2:23-23, (3:23-24,) 4:39; 5:2-3a, 18, 36; 6:4, 54-57, 58b-59; 7:2; 10:22; 11:2-5, 18-20a, 26-27, 30-32a, {39c-40;} 45b; 12:6, 9b-11a, 17b-18a; 13:18-19, 23a, 25a; 17:12c; [18:9;] 19:5b, 13d-14a, 17c, 20, 24b, 28b, 31-37, 42a; 20:9; 21:2c, 7a, 15, 17b, 18-24.

I do not hold to precision in this delineation, because the P-Strand and MLM Strand are so stylistically similar. MLM in general must follow the BD Edition, however, whereas the P-Strand must precede it, even if the same author {presumably Mark} wrote both P-Strand and MLM Strand.

(The stylistic criteria used by Nicol in his “Source-Critical Separation” table have to be given the utmost weight ((Nicol: 19-21). Quick scanning of the lists refutes any idea that the supposed uniform Johannine style was laced in everywhere by the author. That many consecutive verses are devoid of any of the 82 elements of style proves that the final editor did not rewrite everything in his style. Nor are the sections without Johannine style later additions which escaped the process; all source-critics agree that these Signs stories are very early. Indeed, I have shown that they survived four later layers of insertions without contamination of style. This non-contamination principle forces respect for all other elements of style which are present—they must be due to the writer who added the words. Clearly distinct styles exist between the Beloved Disciple Strand use of criteria 2, 62, and 76as against the Redactor’s style using 9, 10, 42, 45, 55, 65 69, 76, and 2 (but 2 much less as compared to the BDE Strand). The P-Strand has its own distinct style: 2, 10, 17, 55, 59, 66, 69, 73, and 76. (Nevertheless, the P-Strand and Redactor seem like the same writer as a less skilled and later as a more skilled Greek writer.)

Indeed, the style of R is so very Johannine that the author of R has to be the first choice as scribe of all the Core Gospel, except for the Signs. { I thus arrive at the astounding proposition that John Mark was the scribe for the early stages of both Mark and John, but also the final Redactor of both.} He was the scribe for Peter in 44 A. D. to write Aramaic Ur-Marcus. Sometime later he aided Andrew in preparing the Core Gospel in John in Greek, which included rewriting the Discourses for his use. Then he added the small passages of the P-Strand. John Mark did some work concurrently with him. { John Mark prepared the final redaction after the death of Peter and perhaps of John.}

V. Dating
In summarizing the order of composition of John, I will also suggest dates. The dates are far earlier than traditional or radical critics allow, but many recent scholars likewise suggest dates before 70 A. D. John A. T. Robinson’s Redating the New Testament came out in 1976 to bad reviews, but the early dates [were soon] given very serious consideration, as by E. Earle Ellis in 1980 in New Testament Studies.

The Discourse Source was written by Nicodemus before the Crucifixion, about 30 A. D. It was first translated into Greek. Andrew, in adding the Signs, started to use this first translation, then had John Mark rewrite for his use. The Signs may have been written before 44 A. D. {The Signs incorporates Twelve-Source or Q, but excludes Ur-Marcus. The scribe for the Twelve-Source must have been Andrew’s scribe, because all the Signs are in Synoptic style. This was the First Edition.}

The P-Strand does include Ur-Marcus, which was written in 44 A. D. This was the Second Edition, all written by John Mark. The First and Second Editions together comprise the Core Gospel.

The Third Edition of John was the work of a wholly new author and scribe (unless the scribe was the first translator of the Discourses). The author was John the Apostle. {Before he finished, however, John Mark was again working on John, using a different copy of the manuscript.} This gave rise to the Transition Strand of textual conflicts between Sinaiticus and other texts. Lastly, [a Redactor] completed John, the Fifth Edition.

Source Material
Black, Matthew. An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts. 3rd Ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1967.

Carson, D. A. “Current Source Criticism of the Fourth Gospel: Some Methodological Considerations. Journal of Biblical Literature. 97 (1978), 411-29.

Cullman, Oscar. The Johannine Circle. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.

Ellis, E. Earle. “Dating the New Testament.” New Testament Studies. 26 (1980), 487-502.

Fortna, Robert T. The Gospel of Signs. Cambridge: University Press, 1970.

Freed, Edwin D. and Russell B. Hunt. “Fortna’s Signs Source in John.” Journal of Biblical Literature. 94 (1975), 563-579.

Howard, Wilbert F. The Fourth Gospel in recent Criticism and Interpretations. 2nd Ed. London: Eppsworth, 1935.

Kysar, Robert. The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 19j75.

Nicol, W. The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel. Leiden: Brill, 1972.

Parker, Pierson. “John and John Mark.” Journal of Biblical Literature. 79 (1960), 97-109.

Robinson, John A. T. Redating the New Testament. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976.

Sanders, J. N. “St. John on Patmos.” New Testament Studies. 9 (1962), 75-85.

Teeple, Howard V. The Literary Origin of the Gospel of John. Evanston Ill.: Religion and Ethics Institute, 1974.

Temple, Sydney. The Core of the Fourth Gospel. Oxford: Mowbray’s, 1975.

Von Wahlde, Urban C. The Terms for Religious Authorities in the Fourth: A Key to Literary Strata?” Journal of Biblical Literature. 98 (1979), 231-253.

Zimmerman, Frank. The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels. New York: KTAV, 1979.

Dale C. Adams [565 Fountain Way, Dixon CA 95620]
[Above from pg. 13. This bibliography is not complete; it includes books I found helpful for either the history of source criticism of John or for the source criticism itself, for analysis or creative insight. I omitted books that I read but found unhelpful for me. Thus Raymond Brown and Barnabas Lindars are not on the list, although in retrospect I cannot say that their views are wrong, just that they have no evidence.]