It is pretty well accepted that John had some awareness of some synoptic traditions, although it was composed independently. Basically, the belief is that the synoptics influenced oral tradition before John. Spong is really fairly mainstream as to Historical Jesus scholarship. He is quite out of the maintream as far as Anglican bishps go, though.
This is simply not true. They think no such thing. On the contrary John is regarded as the least historical of all the canonical gospels. It’s the last written, has the least Jewish Jesus and has the most obvious signs of fictionalization.
Not really. The hypothesis that John had any origin in apostollic oral tradition has pretty much fallen by the wayside. It’s too Gnostic and too Greek. Whatever scraps of authentic apostollic oral tradition which may be embedded in it are negligible at best.
What scholars would those be? By far, the consensus is that the last supper was a fiction in the first place (at least the eucharistic elements) and that John placed it a day earlier because he wanted the crucifixion to coincide with the slaughter of the Paschal lamb. It was purely a theological and literary decison. I’m not aware of any serious scholarship that takes it as historically authentic.
And apart from popular books he’s written, where would one find some of Spong’s peer-reviewed articles in Biblical journals?
You’re arguing against the straw man argument “John is not the least historical gospel.” Would you be a dear and please quote back to me where I said that?
My point was that some of the details of the Passion (and events elsewhere in the gospel ocurring in the greater Jerusalem area, such as in Bethany) are regarded as having a pretty high degree of reliability. Such as the point about the Last Supper not being a Passover meal. Though a later Gospel, and yes, with a high amount of redactory theologoumenon, the oral tradition from the Jerusalem disciple gives more historical accuracy of the events around Jerusalem than the Synoptic traditions which has as its source the Galileean disciples. That doesn’t take away from the overall greater reliablility of the Synoptic tradition regarding events in the greater Galileean area and in the actual sayings and teachings of Jesus.
Well, gee. Here you are siding with John as being more accurate than the Synoptics (since John didn’t have any Eucharistic elements at his Last Supper). Hmmm. (For all you playing at home, John’s Eucharistic theology is found in the sixth chapter.)
The so-called consensus that the institution of the Eucharist is a fiction is not mainstream biblical scholarship. It represents the more extreme liberal demythologizing branch of Christianity. We go back again to the above quote from Paul in this thread, but, you, unlike the majority of Pauline scholars, see his Eucharistic institution narrative as a later non-Pauline insert. Very convenient. But there’s no good argument to be made that that passage is not in the orginal text, exept by those who don’t want it to be.
I’m just talking about whether his views are inside or outside the mainstream of contemporary scholarship. He may seem “liberal” and extreme to you, but his popular books are in step mainstream reasearch.
There is no compelling evidence at all that anything in John derives fom apostollic tradition. The fact is that almost nothing of the acts of Jesus in any Canonical gospel can be confirmed as historically authentic. You’re arguing from tradition only, not objective scholarship.
It’s all fiction. John is equally as fictional as the synoptics.
“Extreme liberal” scholarship is code for scholarship which is purely objective and makes some attempt at empirical analysis. Yes, some scholars think that Paul’s eucharistic reference is an interpolation. Since it’s essentially Hellenistic and non-Jewish both in its ritual and its language I would tend to agree. It’s the one and only time that Paul quotes Jesus and it’s a quotation which has everything to do with Greek mystery cults and nothing to with any Paschal tradition.
If ones believes John then I would have thought “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14 : 6, would be pretty blaspemous to a Jew?
If Jesus of Nazareth could somehow have been made aware of the multitudes of his brethren who would be slaughtered down the centuries by Gentiles purporting to follow his teachings, I think he would be more than a little peeved.
In fact, if he is the Son of God, consigning people to Heaven or Hell at the Last Judgement, I think it’s pretty clear where he’ll be sending the Christians.