One for Biblical buffs; the quote comes from the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Honest Hearts, spoken by a Mormon character when you side with him to destroy an enemy tribe (the other guy, the John, wants to evacuate rather than kill them). I thought my Bible knowledge was pretty good but this one has me stumped; I wasn’t aware of there being any rift between John and his fellow apostles. What’s he referring to?
My guess is that it means taking a different perspective. There are four gospels in tbe NT, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The first three are remarkably similar in content, structure, and style; so much so that it almost universally accepted that they are based on the same source material. John, however, takes a complelety differnt approach both thmeatically and styleistically.
No rift that I know of; it’s possible some of the actual writers didn’t even meet. I think it may be a reference to the synoptic Gospels.
Three of the Gospels are very similar, almost parallel (the technical term is “synoptic”); the closest two, and the two which are… less literary, shall we say, are Mark’s and Matthew’s. Luke’s is the third parallel one but Luke was hellenized and a doctor, and it shows; he writes better than the other two, he’s less interested in showing connections to the Prophets, and he’s more interested in healing miracles. John’s is different enough to be studied separated from the other three; he’s got a stronger focus on the message. Where MML may say (example taken out of my left elbow) “and then one day we went fishing to the usual spot and we couldn’t get a fish for hours and then the Teacher said ‘toss the net on the other side’ and we did and the nets came out full”, John may skip that story altogether or have a more detailed explanation of “and this means that it is important to get out of your ruts”.
The word I was groping for is “straightforward”. Matthew and Mark tend to be as straighforward as a ton of bricks, John is the subtlest and most complex of the four. From the description in the OP, that fits… the “Mathew and Mark” reckon that the best path between two points is the straight line even if there is a canyon in the way, the “John” looks at other possibilities.
I don’t know if this is what was intended, but John is also known as a redactor. He “clarified” and extended the stories first expressed in the other gospels, possibly by making stuff up.
Incidentally, Mark and Luke were not apostles (i.e., their names are not among the twelve apostles named in the gospels or even the two more named as apostles in Acts), and although there were apostles named Matthew and John, it is far from certain that the Gospel of Mathew was written by the apostle Matthew, and reasonably certain that the Gospel of John was not written by the apostle John. The traditional term for the gospel writers is the “four evangelists.”
I was also going to point out that the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John whose names adorn the Gospel chapters were not disciples. In fact it’s probably the case that none of the Gospels even had a single author; they were probably written in stages, by different authors, with passages jumbled around between them a bit for good measure. There were disciples called Matthew and John, but they’re not considered to be the writers of either of those Gospels. It is possible that some of the disciples may constitute the sources for some of the Gospels (Paul in Rome, for instance), but probably not the disciples of those names.
As far as the quote you’re wondering about, John is a very different Gospel to the rest. Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels because they are very similar in many ways - they progress in very similar ways, with similar stories and use similar turns of phrases. They are generally considered to have been copied from each other in some way. The most common theory is that Mark was the first Gospel written, and that Luke and Matthew were then copied partly from Mark and partly from another source which has been lost (called the “Q” source). Matthew and Mark, in particular, are very similar. The Gospel of John, by contrast, is very different from the Synoptic Gospels - it tells some stories that aren’t in any of the other Gospels, omits stories that are common to all three of the others, and uses very different phrasing, style and emphasis. Scholars almost unanimously believe that John was written later.
Essentially the quote you’ve put in the title means “he’s part of our group, but while you and I are peas in a pod, he is noticeably different”.
I think you meant to say “not apostles”. “Disciple” is a very broad term, and one could consider all Christians ever to be disciples of Jesus. The apostles were a much more exclusive group, consisting of the original twelve plus possibly a handful more.
Thanks for the replies; for some reason I thought it was referring to a specific disagreement between the three which I hadn’t heard about.
Well, John is known as the “gnostic” gospel and that salvation comes solely through the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. And also that there is a separation between the soul and the body.
And the gospel is sometimes perceived as preaching a “more forgiving” theology, in that:
“everyone receives eternal life the moment they believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and Lord.” - Wiki “Free Grace theology”
Not, sure exactly what Joshua Graham meant when he said that exactly. I assume it was a reference to his belief in divine retribution vs that other guys forgiving nature.
John is also the “God is love” author (1 John 4:8). Given the context of characters debating whether to kill or evacuate, this makes the most sense to me.