As I said above John is a eye witness. How much of his Gospel is his own writing is debatable.
We have had the same thing here where anyone who runs a bible doubting atheists web-blog is called a scholar.
ooh, touchy!
I assume you are trying a dig at Diogenes the cynic.
But, no, usually they are just known as ‘knowledgeable’.
“Scholar” is mostly used as an attempt at argument from authority.
Alas, having read the bible back to front twenty odd times and knowing several quote numbers by heart does not make you an authority on the history of the bible.
Not according to most scholars, as I pointed out in post 86:
I have no idea who DrDeth was referring to, I don’t think that DtC runs a blog. By scholar, I mean academics who research the Bible. I think there are good arguments for the various dates, authors, etc of the NT, one of which I mentioned earlier, so I’m not entirely appealing to authority in my posts either.
I guess I should have written part of that post in a larger font and have made amends in this repost. To cite a page that quotes reputable scholars means I condone all the “scholars” quoted on that page? Good to know for future debates.
Uhh… Parts of the Gospels especially the weird Nativity add-ons occuring in only one or two Gospels are fictional? Do we have to repeat this obvious fact in every post here? :smack: If George W. didn’t really chop down a cherry tree does that mean he didn’t exist either? 
Be careful, some scholars expert in reviewing historical narratives, really are experts. Does anyone here claim as much expertise as Nicholas Sherwin-White or C.S. Lewis?
I fully expect someone to point out that C. S. Lewis was (gasp!) a Christian! … who wrote (gasp!) fiction! Go ahead, I’ll not post further.
I’m not arguing that he didn’t exist - I’m arguing that your criteria does seem to fit - or if it does fit, it’s so vague that nothing can be made of it.
But just like the cherry tree - we can accept that as fictional, how about the resurrection narratives?
I disagree with CS Lewis. I think it reads like ancient miracle tales. The miracles of vespasian, among others. Is there a historical core? I would and have said yes, but I do not think the evidence is overwhelming as some Christians try to maintain. I just think it’s convincing.
As to White’s claim:
So what are we to make of the books that are not Canon? How about the other sects of Christians that floated around during the first few centuries?
I don’t care if he’s a Whirling Dervish; his logic sucks. To say that the alternatives he gave are the only two possibilities for the gospels, when it’s known that they were just four of many candidates that ran the gamut from tepid collections of sayings to extravagant fantasies, IMO makes all his conclusions suspect.
It is my impression that the consensus of scholars still favors the idea that Christianity first spread among the lower classes. I think the fact that the evidence isn’t sufficient to resolve questions like this indicates just how difficult it is to draw any firm conclusions about the origins of Christianity, including what parts of the gospel stories are rooted in history.
I agree that the mythicists have a lot of work to do and I think that the sources are just as problematic for them as they are for the historicists.
The quote from A.N. Sherwin-White is as follows: “*t can be maintained that those who had a passionate interest in the story of Christ, even if their interest in events was parabolical and didactic rather than historical, would not be led by that very fact to pervert and utterly destroy the historical kernel of their material.” That hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement of the authenticity of the gospels. At best he seems to be saying that there might be some historical information in there somewhere.
Somebody other than the author of the bulk of the gospel seems to have added a note saying that the author had been an eyewitness. I don’t know that this constitutes persuasive evidence.
I haven’t done a lot of reading on this topic, so please don’t consider that claim to be in any way authoritative. FWIW though, here is a cite from the PBS webpage, Paul’s Congregations: Often portrayed as appealing only to lower classes, Paul’s Christian communities actually attracted people who were “upwardly mobile.” Professor Wayne A. Meeks: The traditional view of the composition of the early Christian communities – and the ones we know anything about are the Pauline communities – is that are from the proletariat. …
But if you actually look at the Book of Acts, and you look at Paul, and you begin to collect the people who are named…
So you begin to get the impression that you have quite a variety of different social levels represented in these early Christian communities. Not people at the absolutely top level; you have, with the exception possibly of Erastus, no one from the aristocratic orders - no one who would be a member of the city council. You have no agricultural slaves, are at the bottom of the hierarchy. But, in the rest of the social pyramid, everything in between, you seem to have representatives in these early Christian groups.
I was half surprised Vidal didn’t sue the historians who wrote the papers claiming Zoroaster lived much earlier just for inconveniencing them. Instead, when questioned about it he just made some bitchicism about quasi historical characters being well suited subjects for quasi historians or some such.
Indeed, as said before your own cite and post makes my point.
“In view of this complex and multi-layered history it is meaningless to speak of a single “author” of John, but the title perhaps belongs best to the evangelist who came at the end of this process.” Unless you don’t know that by “evangelist” they are referring to John aka *John the Evangelist. *
You are confused. The quote is saying that the authorship of the document should go to the person who put together the final text - as opposed to the source various authors of the source material. The ‘title’ refers to authorship, it doesn’t have anything to do with being an ‘evangelist’.
As pointed out further in that post, most scholars do not believe that the Gospels go back to a historical Jesus.
sigh
“Raymond E. Brown, among others, posit a community of writers rather than a single individual that gave final form to the work.[56] In particular, Chapter 21 is very stylistically different from the main body of the Gospel, and is thought to be a later addition (known as the appendix). Among many Christian scholars the view has evolved that there were multiple stages of development involving the disciples as well as the apostle; R.E. Brown (1970) distinguishes four stages of development: traditions connected directly with the apostle, partial editing by his disciples, synthesis by the apostle, and additions by a final editor. At the very least, it seems clear that in chapter 21 someone else speaks in the third person plural (“we”), ostensibly as the voice of a community that believes the testimony of this other person called the “beloved disciple” to be true.” italics mine
*
By “the apostle”, RE Brown is speaking of The Apostle John*. If you read Brown directly, which I have, this is very clear.
So, both wiki cites use Brown as the major source. Brown sez that John was the source of the original material, John possibly added a later synthesis, but other sources (likely John’s disciples) edited the material and added materials after the death of John. Thus, indeed there is material added to the Gospel after the death of John, there is little doubt of that. And, true, this later editing and additions do make it unclear what words come from John and what words do not. But, Brown- and most other scholars- say that the original source (in some way shape or form) was the Apostle. How much of Johns actual words remain is debatable and unknown.
if you want a source other than Brown:
“The resulting revolution in Johannine scholarship was termed the new look by John A. T. Robinson, who coined the phrase in 1957 at Oxford. According to Robinson, this new information rendered the question of authorship a relative one. He considered a group of disciples around the aging John the Apostle who wrote down his memories, mixing them with theological speculation, a model that had been proposed as far back as Renan’s Vie de Jésus (“Life of Jesus,” 1863).”
Again- the source of the original material was the Apostle. Again- not all the Gospel is in Johns words. No serious scholar claims the Gospel is entirely in Johns words. But in general, the consensus is that the final writers started with Johns memories.
Two things:
- Raymond Brown was not the source of the quote you are responding to. Lindars is, and in the notes, it’s made clear. So you can ‘sigh’ all you want, but your initial inference was incorrect.
“It is the evangelist who comes at the end of the process who is the real author of the Fourth Gospel”
- Raymond Brown is not the end word on scholarship. The majority view holds that it comes from a Johannine community and not by any eye witnesses.
Further your source says that, at most, it’s the traditions connected with the early apostle that were passed down - not anything like eyewitness testimony.
Yeah, no, this seems a strained reading of the text, just like you strained Lindars work to try to support your contention that ‘Evangelist’ was the same as saying ‘John’.
But let’s suppose that this mangling does mean that John collected and edited the text (something that both our sources go out of their way to deny). All I can say is good for the minority view held by Brown if this is what he actually means (which seems unlikely given the context). This is not what the majority believes and for good reason - some of which I’ve put forth in this thread.
Now you are waffling. You admit that we don’t know how much, if any, of the words are johns. Further, Both places list a Johnnanine community, not John himself. Neither place support your initial contention that the Gospel was dictated by John.
One thing is clear though, no eye witness wrote/dictated it and it grew in the telling.
Let’s remember your initial claim:
Followed up by:
(Steps 1&2 are: An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus;
A structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources)
This is not what your sources OR mine are saying. Both are saying that the Gospel had it’s origins in the traditions of a community. Mine in particular, which the majority of scholarship hold to, deny that there was any eye witness testimony involved.
My initial claim was that:
You are now essentially admitting this - even going so far as admitting that we don’t know how much, if any, of gJohn is original with John.
Frankly I’d like a source that actually supports your initial claim.
And his reasons for this, assertion?
Also, if we accept this, then we have to reject your Brown quotes AND your early position in this post that “And, true, this later editing and additions do make it unclear what words come from John and what words do not. But, Brown- and most other scholars- say that the original source (in some way shape or form) was the Apostle. How much of Johns actual words remain is debatable and unknown”. You are simply trying to find any scholar who agrees with any smallest bit of your proposition and then throwing it out there to see what sticks.
How about we just go with the consensus of scholarship, shall we? gJohn wasn’t dictated by John.
“Again”, this is not what you initially said, as I showed. The ‘source’ of the material could be said to have been Jesus, that doesn’t mean squat as far as what the material actually is - which is not an eye witness account.
No serious scholar claims that it is Johns word. I can’t find many scholars at all that suppose that it started with Johns “memories” and certainly not the majority of scholars and certainly not Raymond Brown - who you have had to discard in order to favor Robinson. There is good reason for this and I’m sure you are going to drop these claims like you did your earlier claims about what we should expect from ancient skeptics.
I don’t claim to have as much expertise as Sherwin-White, but I can claim that I actually read the book that apologists love to quote mine so much and it’s pretty clear to me that you haven’t.
- Lindars was writing about Brown. My original quote, taken from your cite was :
“The Gospel of John developed over a period of time in various stages,[26] summarized by Raymond E. Brown as follows:[27]
An initial version based on personal experience of Jesus;
A structured literary creation by the evangelist which draws upon additional sources;
The final harmony that presently exists in the New Testament canon, around 85-90 AD.[28”
italics mine.
Brown may not be the final authority but he’s widely regarded but Lindars uses Brown and I then quoted John A. T. Robinson.
2.* You* keep saying that but *I keep quoting paragraphs *that say the opposite.
When you are i talking about the Apostle John the Evangelist, in that context when you use “the Apostle” or “the Evangelist” you are talking about the Apostle John the Evangelist. Just like here in this thread, when we use the term Jesus, we’re not talking about Jesus Garcia.
More later.
Okay? That still doesn’t clear up what you actually confused:
*"but your initial inference was incorrect.
“It is the evangelist who comes at the end of the process who is the real author of the Fourth Gospel”"*
The passage was not saying that John was that evangelist. The passage was saying that the final editor/writer should be said to be the author.
You specifically said:“Unless you don’t know that by “evangelist” they are referring to John aka John the Evangelist”
Which is mistaken.
Where have you done so? I’ve quoted places that say that the majority doesn’t believe that John was either written or dictated by John. You have been making mistakes in reading what your sources are writing.
From here:
You keep confusing a Johnnanine community with John either writing it or dictating it.
This, of course, is nonsense as I cleared up: Evangelist, in context, was simply referring to the Christian who produced the ‘final product’. Ie, in the notes of the wiki:
““It is the evangelist who comes at the end of the process who is the real author of the Fourth Gospel””
Your initial assertions have been refuted, by both me, and your later post where you grasped for any other scholar to hold to your view and came up with the paradoxical (to your initial position) Robinson.