Previously Unconsidered Evidence for John 8:1-11

[Nazaroo]

When we look at other structures, like the OT Quotation structure, we find the same thing again. They would be damaged by the removal of the sections, but not obliterated or removed.

The analogy would be this:

Imagine a group of mechanically inclined apes, randomly assembling car-parts, until they have put together 7/8 of a car. Then along comes the genius: He strides over, slaps on a carberator, and miraculously, the car starts.

Of course this would be ridiculous. The only person who can be held responsible for all the deeply embedded structure in John's Gospel is the final editor. But he must also have been the one who put it all there in the first place.

There is no plausibility in such structures coming pre-made and 'partially constructed', so that the final editor only needs to add a piece or two to polish it until it shines.

The only portions of John that can be part of a plausible 'proto-John' are those which are NOT part of the structural system and which could have been 'fallen through the cracks' in the assembling process. These would be short segments that escaped modification. In John these are virtually non-existant.

 

[Nazaroo]

When we turn from structural features to stylistic features and content, we find much the same picture.

Looking at a sample of some of the more common and easily recognized Johannine features of content and style, we see that they are more or less spread in a pepper-spray pattern all across the gospel. While there are concentrated clusters in the discourse/dialogue sections (where notably important features mostly reside,) almost every important section of John has both content and style belonging to John. Yet if there were later additions, even by John's peers or his community circle, we would expect this spread to have some large holes in it betraying foreign insertions.

This is simply not the case. In fact, one of the most intriguing and frustrating things about John is the fact that whatever can be identified as 'Johannine' style or content is permeated throughout the entire Gospel. Whatever potential sources, material or influence may have been available to John (the final redactor), they are impossible to isolate from John's own work.

While there are less stylistic markers in the 'Sign' sections generally, this is easily accounted for by the fact that it is narrative after all, and the original material in almost all cases was ancient authentic tradition, independant of John, and even occasionally used by other evangelists. Thus, although the signs in chapter six seem to have largely escaped the influence of John's hand, the same can be said for the 2nd and 3rd signs in chapters four and five. There is nothing here to distinguish chapter six, and had we not been looking sideways at Mark, no suspicion would have fallen on this section at all, at least by factors of internal evidence.

Nor are these charts really representative, let alone complete documentations of John's style and content in the Gospel. Many more examples could have been added to the chart, filling out other sections here.


Last Column: The Link to Revelation

Note particularly the last column in these charts. It doesn't matter which book was written first, or even whether they are by the same author. In any case, either the author of Revelation had a copy of John pretty much exactly like the one we have now before him, or else the Evangelist had a copy of Revelation. But the point is, every part of John is covered, and in pretty much the correct order! Neither author shows any knowledge of a 'Proto-John' missing large blocks of text.

 

[Nazaroo]

The idea of reconstructing hypothetical previous 'editions' of John's Gospel is what is called Redaction Criticism. And it is important to understand exactly what such exercises can accomplish, and what they can be used for.

For all NT books there are features, apparent anomalies, that we don't necessarily understand, or that seem to require accounting for. These features may not be wholly or satisfactorally explained by other methods of exegesis and commentary.

Here and there a feature may be simply accounted for by the mechanical process of assembly, or minor editorial work by later scribes.

But no matter how elegant or plausible a theory of construction or editing process may be, it will have a very limited impact upon the final and accepted Gospel that the Evangelist has already gifted us with.

This must necessarily be the case. For why insult our benefactor by demanding his 'rough notes' or circumventing his best judgement? After all, he has chosen for us what he truly believes to be essential, and given us his personal best. And the church has received it, as the inspired and authorized work of the Holy Spirit, for our edification and blessing.

If we were to watch a full-color movie of John composing his gospel, would we really be any better off? Would this give us a much deeper understanding of its content? Not really. Because it is the content after all which matters in the end, not the papyrus he used, or those he cast away.

Likewise, even if some well-meaning disciple carefully salvaged all of John's notes and sermons over the years, and placed them in a cave for us, and there was found an early sermon or chronology which John may have used as a base for his Gospel, of what real value can those things be?

Imagine we were to find an old chest buried in the backyard of Mozart's house, with some early attempts at his great works. What would we really do with them? Play them? How could they compare to the finished work of the master, who has already given the world his 'final cut'?

It still appears to us that we truly *have* John as John meant us to have it. Surely we can try to appreciate it as it is. Perhaps a spot here and there has suffered a mis-copying, or some word has been mis-spelled along the way. But the glory of the Christ as John's vision was able to capture it seems essentially intact.

And it is *this* John after all, that Christians have known and loved in every age.

 

[Nazaroo]

But no matter how elegant or plausible a theory of construction or editing process may be, it will have a very limited impact upon the final and accepted Gospel that the Evangelist has already gifted us with.

Because any theory (at least resembling the ones so far proposed) of a 'Proto-John' seems really to be just a description of one or two hypothetical stages in the production of the final work, at best it can really only be discussed in a footnote, or presented briefly in a commentary or exposition about John.

It can hardly have any significant effect on how bibles are printed, or the form in which the Gospel of John is presented in copies of the New Testament for Christian use in study and evangelism.

The whole issue of the 'pre-history' of John really began with notice of the absence of the Pericope de Adultera in some copies. From there, people noticed apparent 'seams', such as the appendixed 21st chapter, and anomalies like the ending of chapter 14.

In the deeper ongoing study of John's content, it was noticed that only the Feeding of the 5000 and Walking on Water miracles were duplicated in other Gospels. (This focus on 'miracles' ignored other overlaps of material, such as the Temple Cleansing, Triumphal entry, call of the disciples, John Baptists testimony, Passion account etc.!)

Bultmann went on to attempt to discover a 'Signs source' that could account for John's unique collection of miracles/signs. Others attempted to extend this by an analysis of narrative versus discourse, assuming again two different sources. (John as a source was apparently excluded!)

Anderson (noted above) continued to develop a 'two edition theory'. (This sadly was not engaged using a detailed structural and stylistic analysis of John, which would have more realistically limited the possible differences between the two.)

Finally, with John Dominic Crossan we ended up with a proposal for four distinct layers:

1st Stratum: (30-60 A.D.) a 'Miracle Collection' that lies behind the Signs Gospel and Mark (and Secret Mark)

2nd Stratum: (60-80 A.D.) The 'Signs Gospel' embedded in John...

3rd Stratum: (80-120 A.D.) '1st Edition' of John, and first letter of John...

4th Stratum: (120-150 A.D.) 2nd Edition of John (our extant version).

While we have shown that there is no credible evidence for two 'Editions' of John, others have shown that there is no credible evidence for a separate 'Signs Gospel' or 'Signs Source'. (The stylistic and grammatical features do not support a clear distinction between either the first 12 chapters and the rest of John, nor do they support a clear distinction between the narrative and discourse.)

The entire edifice has been built upon finding what the critics wanted to find, and seeing 'evidence' they wanted to see.

So far, there is only hard evidence for *one* Gospel of John.

Let me now relate my own experience, for the benefit of others. I too quite early on in my Johannine studies had the 21st chapter of John brought to my notice. This was twenty-five or thirty years ago, so I no longer recall whether it was through a commentary or other discussion that it caught my attention. But after that, I did not think much about it until I began serious detailed analysis of John.

Then gradually, but in the end quite firmly, the evidence began to accumulate for me that John was all of a piece, woven of one garment as it were. Like others, I eventually found that,

In fact, one of the most intriguing and frustrating things about John is the fact that whatever can be identified as 'Johannine' style or content is permeated throughout the entire Gospel. Whatever potential sources, material or influence may have been available to John (the final redactor), they are impossible to isolate from John's own work.

This was at first disturbing, because it seemed to support the many variations of the following thesis, that I kept running into everywhere in Johannine studies:

Namely, that John was a 'late production', and that the discourses of Jesus in John were 'creative' excursions of John. Similarly, the 'signs' and miracles of John were according to critics largely 'fictional'. In fact, from the time of Bultmann onward, many if not most 'scholars' had relegated John to status of 'theological fantasies about Jesus'.

Yet this simply in the end could not be reconciled with my own actual hands on experience of John:

(1) Above all things, John and John's Jesus were obsessed with the issue of 'truth'. Yet what critics were proposing was that 'pious' or not, John was not a Gospel at all, but the largest Christian 'fraud' on record.

(2) Large portions of the narrative which was found in other gospels was meticulously accurate and where it differed, John continuously appeared primitive and authentic.

(3) While the Large Discourses of Jesus could have been somewhat customized and were weakly connected to their immediate context, they clearly belonged to and were entrenched in John's narrative, and belonged to it.

(4) The shorter discourses of Jesus were plainly primitive and as authentic as anything in the Synoptics. Jesus throughout John's Gospel argues and frustrates His opponents in the most embarrassingly realistic dialogues to appear in any Gospel.

(5) The total lack of 'demon possession' and other subjects difficult to take as literally accurate made John appear not as a flight of imaginative fancy, but rather the most well-grounded and reliable of all the Gospels.

(6) If anything, it appeared to me that John had been abbreviated or that things had been left out of John's final account, not added later. The only item involving real textual evidence, the Pericope de Adultera was obviously from the most primitive 'layer' of tradition, and could hardly be a 'later' invention or addition

(7) All of the unique geographical and cultural features in John turned out to be authentic. Only someone who actually lived in Jerusalem before 70 A.D. could have known key details about its layout and culture that were destroyed afterward by the Romans. Over and over again, archaeology confirmed John's version of things.


All of these factors made me suspicious of the conclusions and claims that critics were making about John. They just didn't hold up to my experience, and the evidence in front of me.

But the biggest blurb of all against the 'critical-eye' view of John is this: The very claims they were making about John defeated any rational case, even for the last chapter to have really been a 'later edition' by the Johannine community (wherever, whenever, or whoever that occurred).

If John really was some kind of late 'pseudo-gospel', full of forged incidents and speeches, why not a forged 'appendix'? How could the alleged 'post-death' epilogue be anything but another part of the same forgery?

Once everything INSIDE the Gospel was potentially either a plagarized prop, or a real-live forgery, how could the evidence for an 'appended' chapter have any credibility whatever? Why wouldn't it be just one more 'feature' added by the master forger?

This would be like asking a known liar to tell us all about himself. One would have to be a lot more sophisticated at interrogation than modern critics, in order to get reliable information of any value from that scenario!



So even the alleged minor 'changes' in diction between the final chapter and the rest of the Gospel became as suspect as everything else in John.

But who can fail to see that this completely undermines any and every claim of 'multiple layers' or editions of the Gospel? If we can't trust the contents of John at all, how can we believe in the 21st chapter?

And without the 21st chapter, there can be no credible theory of 'two editions' of John.

 

[Nazaroo]

Here are some exerpts from:



Food for Thought:
The Bread of Life Discourse (John 6:25-71) in Johannine Legitimation ...


by James F. McGrath
Durham, England
Published January 10, 1997.

Full address for this page is http://private.fuller.edu/~talarm/iss2a4.html
Theological Gathering 2, Winter 1997

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/info/john-food.html
This web page was originally here:

http://private.fuller.edu/~talarm/iss2/iss2a4.html Terry Larm remains the author and copyright holder.

...

Sources and Composition


There are essentially three main views on the origin and composition of this chapter (ch six):

(a) The whole chapter (except perhaps for vv51-58) is an integral part of the original Gospel (although perhaps displaced from before chapter 5).

(b) The traditional material (vv1-21) was included in the original Signs Source, while the rest comes from the Evangelist.

(c) The whole chapter was composed and added to the second edition of the Gospel, not having been included in the first.

It would obviously be possible to distinguish variations within these headings, as indeed we felt compelled to do in the case of (a) above. For our purposes, however, this oversimplified sketch will be more than adequate.

The big question here as everywhere in the Fourth Gospel is that of what criteria may be used to distinguish between source and redaction.

It is always best to move from that which is more certain to that which is less.

To begin with, there can be little doubt that the material contained in the first section of John 6 the author inherited and did not simply compose himself.

Secondly, the transition from chapter 5 to chapter 6, which jumps from Judaea to Galilee without warning, can hardly be said to be smooth, and the result has been the appearance of a number of displacement theories.

These two points seem fairly certain, but several different interpretations of this evidence would appear to be possible.

While source theories rightly draw attention to the traditional nature of the material in John 6:1-21, this on its own does not prove that this material was actually written down in the Gospel of Signs, as Fortna suggests, rather than having been added together with the discourse material to the last edition of the Gospel, as Lindars suggests.

It cannot be stressed enough that the age of material does not automatically determine when it was written down.

On the other hand, Lindars' point about the function of this chapter as proof that Moses wrote concerning Jesus (John 5:46f) does not necessarily disprove or exclude Fortna's source theory, nor his suggestion that the disjunction between chapters 5 and 6 are due to a rearrangement not of the Gospel in its present form by a redactor, but of the source by the evangelist. It is possible that both are correct. The evangelist may have moved this material from the Signs Source to its present position in order to use it to illustrate the point made in the discourse material he added in John 5:46f, namely that Moses wrote about Jesus.

In showing that these two views are not incompatible, our intention is not to provide a comprehensive synthesis of the various suggestions which have been made. For the purpose of this study it is sufficient if we have found some indication of the origin of the material found here, and in doing so can perhaps detect some of the logic which may have moved the evangelist to finally put this chapter in the form that he did.

The miracle which precedes the discourse is clearly traditional, and the discourse material bears the hallmarks of Johannine theology, whether that of the Evangelist or of a redactor. Beyond this it is unnecessary for us to speculate at present.




Background








The most significant contribution which has been made to the interpretation of this chapter is certainly that of P. Borgen. Borgen was the first to convincingly demonstrate that what is going on in the discourse of John 6 is essentially exegesis of the Jewish Scriptures, following patterns and principles of exegesis which are widely attested in the sources available to us. The key to understanding the discussion is thus to realize that the various words and phrases, many of which are difficult to understand or interpret, are derived from, and will thus only be understood in light of, the Old Testament text or texts being discussed. The key passage in John 6 is the Old Testament paraphrase (it is not identical to any exact citation),

"He gave them bread from heaven to eat",






​

and in Borgen's view, Jesus is suggesting an alternative reading of the Hebrew text, in good rabbinic fashion: 'Do not read 'he [Moses] gave', but 'he [God] gives'.

The whole discussion between Jesus and the crowds is then to be regarded as following the typical course of such exegetical discussions.

Building on such insights, Barnabas Lindars has pointed out that the discussion follows the pattern of a synagogue homily, a suggestion which is not at all surprising or implausible, since the evangelist tells the reader that this discourse took place in the synagogue at Capernaum (6:59).

Regardless of whether any historical veracity is to be granted to the statement, the Bread of Life discourse was at the very least recognized by the evangelist (and probably also his readers) as reminiscent of the genre of the synagogue homily.

The two passages, Exodus 16:4 and Isa.54:9-55:4, which play a central role in this chapter, are thus to be regarded as the seder and haphtarah texts for a homiletic exposition of the Jewish Scriptures.

It would appear reasonable to follow Lindars in regarding John 6 as essentially an attempt to demonstrate the truthfulness of the statement made at the end of John 5: Moses wrote concerning Jesus, and what he wrote finds its fulfilment in him.

The stories concerning the feeding of the multitude and the crossing of the sea John inherited from the Christian tradition, very possibly as part of the Signs Document. More needs to be said about a number of other issues, such as the relationship between this part of John's Gospel and the practice of the Christian sacraments, in particular the Lord's Supper. However, such issues are best dealt with in the course of an examination and consideration of the text itself, to which we will shortly turn.


Structure and Genre

The discourse material in this chapter begins in a way reminiscent of John 4, where Jesus discusses living water with the Samaritan woman. Both conversations begin with a reference to ordinary food or water (4:7-9; 6:26 in the context of the earlier feeding), to which Jesus responds by referring to the need to be concerned with eternal food or drink (4:10; 6:27).

Jesus' interlocutor(s) then ask(s) for this eternal water/bread, yet still understanding it as a permanent form of ordinary food/drink (4:15; 6:34). In both cases, the water or bread is referred to in terms of 'life' and/or its cognates ('living water', 'bread of life'), which is said to provide eternal life. It may also be noted that both conversations take place in the context of a particular OT tradition (in John 4 Jacob's well, in John 6 the manna).

There are also significant similarities between this discourse and the discourse with Nicodemus in John 3. In both cases Jesus' interlocutor misunderstands him, and responds with a question containing pws dunatai (John 3:4; 6:52), to which Jesus responds with a double 'Amen' and a saying beginning with 'unless' (ean mh_; John 3:5; 6:53).

We thus are confronted here with another example of the Johannine dialogue, which takes a misunderstanding, usually caused by Jesus' use of a term which can have more than one meaning, and elaborates it.







In the context of Jesus' words about the need to be concerned about food that endures for eternal life, and the crowd's request for a sign comparable to that given in the time of Moses, an inexact quotation from Exod.16:4, or perhaps from Ps.78:24, is given:

"He gave them bread from heaven to eat".






​

We have already noted the importance of this quotation as providing both the basis for and the background of the discussion which follows. In the first part of the discourse, the discussion takes its starting point from the words in the citation, 'He gave'. It then continues by expounding the whole citation, in light of the specific understanding of 'he gave' and of the further text from Isaiah that is also in mind.

The whole is thus to be read primarily, as we have already suggested, as a homiletic exposition of the Jewish Scriptures.

...

[end quote]



The Essential Point:

What we see here remarkably, is that not only is John chapter six indistinguishable in content and style from any other part of John, but that it is embedded in its context in precisely the same way as other 'Sign' material and discourse. Again there is no evidence for 'two editions'.

There is only an abrupt transition from one location to another between the chapter and the previous one. But this kind of abruptness is not only common in John, but also in the Synoptics. We have nothing special or particularly troublesome here.

This following exerpt is as apt as any to explain the minor disjunction between chapter 5 and 6:


[ quote ]
6:1 metaV tau'ta

...Again, we are faced with a vague temporal reference. How Jesus got from Jerusalem to Galilee is not explained, which has led many scholars (e.g., Bernard, Bultmann, and Schnackenburg) to posit either editorial redaction or some sort of rearrangement or dislocation of material (such as reversing the order of chapters 5 and 6, for example).
Such a rearrangement of the material would give a simple and consistent connection of events, but in the absence of all external evidence it does not seem to be supportable.


R. Brown says that such an arrangement is attractive in some ways but not compelling, and summarizes well:

"No rearrangement can solve all the geographical and chronological problems in John, and to rearrange on the basis of geography and chronology is to give undue emphasis to something that does not seem to have been of major importance to the evangelist."

​

- from
Exegetical Commentary on John 6
By: W. Hall Harris III , Th.M., Ph.D.
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1313

[ /quote ]

 

[Nazaroo]

One of the more fun things you can do with the Pericope de Adultera, is to see if you can actually match every phrase in it to something in John elsewhere. And incredibly, this can just about be done for 80% of the text!

(gee, that couldn't be a hint, at least to the creativity of the author of the pericope...again damning evidence AGAINST its supposed 'Lukan' character...)

You NEVER get exact matches, but always just a subtle variation or word-play upon the content in the Pericope...who's style could that be??

Take for instance the following verses:

"This is the witness of John..." (Jn 1:19...the narrator or the Baptist?...)

"You will be called Cephas ("Kaifa"), which is translated,a stone..." (Jn1:42)

"Jesus knew all men, and needed not that any should TESTIFY of man; for He knew what was in man." (2:25)

"Rabbi, we know that you are a Teacher come from God..." (3:2)

"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.." (3:17)

"You have well said, 'I have no man.', for you have had five men!..." (4:18)

"His disciples marvelled that He talked with the woman,
but no man dared say, 'Why are you talking with her?'"(4:27)

"Sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee." (5:14)

"As I hear, I judge, and My judgement is just." (5:30)



"And Jesus went up into the mountain." (6:3)

"And Jesus said, "Make the men sit down." (6:10)

"He departed again into a mountain Himself, alone." (6:15)

This is the Father's will who has sent Me:
that of all those He has given Me, I should lose nothing,
but raise them up again on the Last Day." (6:39)

"This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?" (6:60)

"Didn't Moses give you the Law, yet none of you keeps the Law?" (7:19)

"Judge not according to appearances,
but judge righteous judgements." (7:24)

"Behold! He speaks boldly, and they say nothing to Him!" (7:26)

"And the Rulers and Pharisees said 'why haven't you brought Him?' and the officers answered, 'never has a man spoken like this Man!'" (7:45,46)

"Does our Law judge a man before hearing him, and knowing what he is doing?" (7:51)

...just a few samples!

 

[Nazaroo]

It would not do, to leave the discussion of alleged 'additions' and 'editions' of John without discussing the almost famous rearrangements proposed by Bultmann and others, in their effort to reconstruct 'sources' for John's Gospel. These conjectural switcheroos have actually been incorporated into bibles, such as the Moffat Translation.



BULTMANN'S REARRANGEMENT OF JOHN

1.1-18 Prologue
1.19-51 Testimony of John the Baptist

​

I. The Revelation of the Glory before the World (chapters 2-12)

2:1-22 Preliminary revelation

A. The Encounter with the Revealer

2.23-3.21 1. Jesus and the teachers of Israel
3.31-6
3.22-30
4:1-42 2. Jesus in Samaria

​

B. Revelation as Judgement

4:43-54 1. Healing of the Royal Officer's Son
6:1-59 2. The Bread of Life
5.1-47 3. The Judge
7.15-24
8.13-20

​

C. The Revealer in Conflict with the World

7.1-14 1. Hidden, Contingent Revelation
7.25-9
8.48-50
8.54-5
7.30
7.37-44
7.31-6
7.45-52
8.41-7 2. A 'Fragment' (?)
8.51-3
8.56-9
9.1-41 3. The Light of the World
8.12;
12.44-50
8.21-9
12.34-6
10.19-21

​

10.22-6 4. The Good Sheperd
10.11-13
10.1-10
10.14-18
10.27-30 Conclusion

​

D. The Revealer 's Secret Victory over the World

​

10.40-2 1. The Decree of Death
11.1-54
11.55-12.33 2. The Way of the Cross
8.30-40
6.60-71 Conclusion

​

II. The Revelation of the Glory In the Community (chapters 13-20)

A. The Departure of the Revealer

​

13:1-30 1. The Last Supper
13.1 2. The Farewell Prayer
17.1-26

3. Farewell Discourses and Sayings (13.31-16.33)

13.31-5 a. Departure and Empowering
15.1-17
15.18-16.11 b. The Community in the World
16.12-33 c. Eschatological Future of Believers
13.36-14.31 d. Communion with Father and Son

​

B. Passion Narrative and Easter
18.1-20.29
C. Gospel Conclusion
20.30-1




​

 

[Joey44]

"The author is the apostle John, 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' (13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20,24). He was prominent in the early church but is not mentioned by name in this Gospel--which would be natural if he wrote it, but hard to explain otherwise. (From the NIV Bible Commentary, page 1588)"

They claimed that it was John.
When one reads this gospel, he would immediately notice that it was not written by John. Let us look at the following verses from the gospel:
"And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? (From the King James Version Bible, John 1:19)"
"John answered them, saying, I baptize with water: but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; (From the King James Version Bible, John 1:26)"

 

[Nazaroo]

Since Joey44" the apparent troll has been removed from the forum, and his post #128 has dissappeared,
I have revoked this reply, which now has little context.

 

[Joey44]

Are you really so lacking in understanding that you don't know the difference between:

(1) John the Baptist, who was beheaded before Jesus did signs in Jerusalem, and
(2) John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, and one of the Twelve chosen disciples, and
(3) the third John, John the Elder, presbyter over the churchs in 'Asia' (modern Greece and Turkey), and
(4) John the Seer, who wrote the Book of Revelation?

"....Unlike most NT letters, 1 John does not tell us who its author is. The earliest identification of him comes from the church fathers...(From the NIV Bible Commentary, page 1904)"

"The letter is difficult to date with precision....(From the NIV Bible Commentary, page 1905)"

If the Book's author is not known, then why assume that it was Saint John who wrote it?

"Four times the author identifies himself as John (1:1,4,9; 22:8).....In the third century, however, an African bishop named Dionysius compared the language, style and thought of the Apocalypse (Revelation) with that of the other writings of John and decided that the book could not been written by the apostle of John. He suggested that the author was a certain John the Presbyter, whose name appears elsewhere in ancient writings. Although many today follow Dionysius in his view of authorship, the external evidence seems overwhelmingly supportive of the traditional view. (From the NIV Bible Commentary, page 1922)"

Again, we don't know who wrote the Book of Revelation.

 

[Nazaroo]

Again, since "Joey44" has apparently been removed from the thread, I have deleted this reply to his message # 130.

 

[Nazaroo]

In order to understand exactly what Bultmann was selling concerning an earlier 'rearranged' Gospel, it is important to see his whole plan. Bultmann proposed not just a 'proto-Gospel', but also an even earlier 'Signs Source', used by John (or 'Proto-John'!) in composing his Gospel.

How did he arrive at this extended '3-stage' process, with (1) an early 'Signs Source', (2) an intermediary 'proto-Gospel', or 'Ur-John', and (3) a Final Redaction (our Greek John)?

He noted that the Gospel of John neatly falls into two halves: a public ministry, which extends over about a three-year period (the first 12 chapters), and a second half: the 'Last Supper', Passion Account, and Resurrection stories. John uniquely treats Jesus' miracles as 'signs', and these all fall in the first half of the Gospel (ignoring some obvious miracle-signs, like Jesus' own ressurrection!,and a miraculous draught of fish in another post-ressurrection appearance!).

Bultmann used the 'new' (and just about the only critical tool of that time) Source Criticism as a means of explaining such features. (as opposed for instance to allowing the author of the Gospel some organizational skills, or the requirement of a change of pace and content for the two halves of the story...)

This approach appears rather myopic nowadays, but its force is still felt in critical circles, because a few basic observations of Bultmann and others have withstood objections to other aspects of his work.

Even men such as Dodd recognized a certain attractiveness to solving most of the Gospel's structural features/'problems' using the method of rearrangement and deletion (obviously powerful tools for fixing problems, real or perceived, when other explanations were not yet discovered or available).

In any case, lets have a look at Bultmann's proposed original 'Signs Source', to see what we are buying with Bultmann's solutions:

Bultmann’s ‘Sayings-Source’
The Logos............................................. 1.1-5, 9-12, 14, 16
Flesh and Spirit...................................... 3.6, 8, 11-13, 18, 20-1, 32-6
The Water of Life.................................. 7.37-8
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.13-14
The Bread of Life.................................... 6.27, 35, 48, 47, 44-5, 37
Father, Son, and Eternal Life................. 5.17, 19-21, 24-5;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11.25
The Glory................................................ 5.31-2, 39-44;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.16-18;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.14, 16, 19;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7, 28-9;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.50, 54-5;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.33-4;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.43, 42, 44, 47,45,46,51
The Light of the World.......................... 8.12;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.44-5;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.39;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.47-50;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.23, 28-9;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.5,4;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.9-10;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.35-6
The Shepherd-Door.............................. 10.11-12, 1,4,8, 10, 14-15, 27-30, 9
The Coming of the Hour........................ 12.27-8, 23, 31-2
Freedom through Truth.......................... 8.31-2, 34-5, 38
The Revelation of Glory........................ 17.1, 4-6, 9-17;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.31-2
The Vine and the Branches.................... 15.1-2, 4-6, 9-10, 16
Departure of the Revealer/
Arrival of the Paraclete.......................... 15.18-20, 22, 24, 26;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.8, 12-14, 16, 20, 22-4, 28;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1-7, 9, 14, 16-19, 26-7 (18.37?)

 

[Nazaroo]

The first thing we may notice when we look at Bultmann's version of a 'Sayings Source', is how tiny it is. When we glance at his 'intermediate stage' proto-Gospel (post #127 of this thread), we were perhaps not immediately aware of just how much of John's material was being jettisoned: The first four chapters suffer relatively little loss or even rearrangement. It is not until the Passion Section (chapters 18-21) that Bultmann begins throwing large sections overboard, and this is partly explained away by the fact that chapter 21 has the appearance of an appendix or add-on. Then Bultmann proposes that the whole Passion (the Betrayal, Arrest, Trial, Crucifixion, Ressurrection Appearances etc.) was simply for the most part adopted from the Synoptics or early tradition.

That is, quietly near the end, Bultmann has removed the whole orthodox Christian understanding of what a Gospel is: namely the story and theological explanation of what the crucifixion, death and ressurrection of Jesus means. Instead, Bultmann wants to replace all this with a simpler, 'realised eschatology', by which he means a 'gospel' without a ressurrection, or a sacrificial surrender by Jesus to the will of the Father in order to purchase the salvation of His flock and potentially the world.

The Gospel of John in its proto-stage becomes a kind of 'Thomas-like' mystical document gutted and disembowelled of all of its gritty historical and true eschatological content. This 'proto-John' wrote a kind of gnostic tale, far removed from the historical Jesus of the Gospels, including our Gospel of John.

When we turn to the actual 'Sayings Source' itself, we see that Bultmann has further gutted his own conjectural 'proto-John' and stripped it down to a small collection of sayings formed by completely snipping the discourses of Jesus into tiny 'sound-bytes' (and discarding most of them), leaving a 'swiss-cheese' like skeleton of Jesus, disembodied from any real historical context, and turning into something like a primitive Thomas or gnostic 'Q' like document.

This, Bultmann wishes to convince us is the authentic 'source' of the Gospel of John. A Signs-Source, or list of Jesus' miracles something like Mark, and a Sayings-Source made up of gnostic mysticism.

But worst of all, of course, in the process the Gospel of John has shrunk to a third of its size.

 

[Nazaroo]

In examining Bultmann's 'proto-John', the first thing we can note is that his rearrangements leave the O.T. Quotation structure largely intact, since he doesn't significantly rearrange the passages which quote the O.T.

On the other hand, his elimination of virtually the entire Passion Account chops off the last three O.T. quotations, and damages the second chiastic pattern around the Great Commandment. This is unfortunate, for Bultmann's proposal for a 'proto-John' does not remove the structure, but only damages it moderately.

This means that if there were a 'proto-John' roughly along Bultmann's lines, it must have contained the O.T. Quotation structure, and Bultmann is simply wrong in eliminating the bulk of the Passion Narrative!

So much for Bultmann's proposal concerning the original 'ending' of John.

 

[Nazaroo]

So much for Bultmann's attempt to clip off the Passion account for 'Proto-John'. If Proto-John is anything like his proposal, then the Passion narrative should be left where it is.

Bultmann actually rearranges the contents for his 'Proto-John' in two separate steps.

(1) He rearranges the Last Supper Discourses.

(2) He rearranges the first half of the Gospel, the 'Book of SIgns', chapters 1-12 according to Dodd.

This is a bizarre methodology, since the whole point of reconstruction should be to recover this elusive 'Signs Source', which Bultmann doesn't succeed in doing at this stage.

The 'Signs Source' (if it ever existed as a separate document) is still firmly embedded in his proto-gospel, yet he is treating the rearrangements (between this stage and the FINAL John remember) as if there were two separate halves or books. All of the rearrangements he proposes in the first half (the Signs part) stay within these boundaries, as though he was wearing 'secret agent glasses' while trying out his shuffling of the material.


Let's look at (1) The Last Supper rearrangements first:

a) Bultmann proposes that the Final Farewell Prayer (John 17:1-26) be inserted in the very beginning of the Discourse(s) at 13:1.

b) Bultmann also takes the four exchanges with the four apostles and places them at the very end, where the Final Prayer was.

What is the purpose and effect of this?

Well it seems to remove a 'seam' at 14:30,31, and place it at the very end of the discourses, giving a kind of absolute sense to the suggestion that Jesus will not 'talk too much after this'.

But is it necessary to move everything from 13:36 all the way to the end of chapter 14, just to smooth an apparent wrinkle caused by the two verses?

The material moved is clearly meant to be at the beginning of a discourse, not at the end of one. Each of the disciples in turn questions the Teacher, and gets an individualized response, which clearly must have taken place before the grand statements and assurances in the Final Prayer. These may be 'last minute lessons', but they could hardly have come at the end of other deep teachings which convince the disciples that they finally know the secrets the Messiah has planned to give them.

Wouldn't it be easier to simply move the two offending verses (if they are so problematic), and place them at the end of chapter 17, if we feel such a strong need to do so at all? Or better, at least from a form-critical point of view, simply delete the second round of talks (chapters 15-17) as an addition, as our previous friend has done?

But the two verses are hardly attached any more strongly to the previous section than to what follows. It may seem inexplicable to some modern readers why John would place these verses here, if he intended to write or include more discourse. And of course one apparent solution is to assume that John is using a 'source', and blindly copying it in chunks, not fully realising the difficulty he causes by not amending his source at this point.

Yet this flys in the face of everything we know about John, and by this I mean the final author/editor/redactor. Everything we know points toward him as a rather careful structure-builder, fully aware and sensitive to every word and phrase he so carefully assembles.

If anything, (since it is all conjectural anyway, and without any textual existance), we might simply propose a scribal dislocation or gloss of these two verses. This is certainly the simplest and most likely assertion, if the verses were miscopied in one very early exemplar.

So Bultmann's solution for the Second Half of John has been dismissed by almost all other critics as the wrong answer, even if some answer is still required.


What is even more troublesome for Bultmann's conjecture is its self-inconsistency. If the proto-Gospel ended with an anecdote about John entering the High Priest's house during the interrogation of Jesus, then it all falls apart. For this story can hardly have stood alone without the surrounding Passion narrative and have any meaning or connection to the rest. And if the troublesome verses caused no trouble for the author of proto-John when found between unrelated sections, why should the final redactor of John have cared?


The whole exercise has been one of trying to please the sensibilities of the modern critics as to what John would have or should have done in composing or arranging his Gospel material. But the best attempts at reconstruction produce a 'proto-Gospel' with the exact same kinds of problems as the original. One can hardly be impressed. Surely the initial complaint and the resulting activity, no matter how artificial, should have produced a 'proto-Gospel' minus these very flaws, said to have been introduced by a redactor in the first place. We can't undo a knot by adding more knots.

Whatever the true solution is, it can hardly be Bultmann's, and it looks like it can never be arrived at by these arbitrary and non-sequitous methods.

SUMMARY:

To sum up then, the entire case of problems found in the last half of John amounts to a total of two(!):

(1) A pair of verses (14:30-31) could possibly be out of place, causing a kind of 'sky is falling' panic among the chickens with smaller brains in the henhouse.

(2) The ending dialogues/discourses seem rather long, and appear to be composed of two sections (13:1-14:31 and 15:1-17:26), possibly the testimony of two different apostles, or meant to be used alternately in private/public reading or service.


An additional self-contradicting and confusing charge, based upon an impression which has become a dogma, runs something along the following lines:

(3) John is completely different than the other three Gospels.

a) John is so different, that it can have no connection to or dependance upon the others.

b) So in order to make 'a)' true, in case anyone notices it really isn't very true at all, we must rip out the entire Passion narrative and Ressurrection appearances.





​

It probably won't take a rocket scientist to see that this 'crisis' is largely self-generated by the complete ignorance of modern critics as to how and why John composed his gospel the way he did. And the argument from silence being put forward isn't really that deafening.

​

 

[Nazaroo]

Bultmann leaves the first four chapters of John pretty much intact. However, he does feel compelled to propose a switcheroo between the two halves of the second passage of John the Baptist's testimony about Jesus. We'll see why in a moment:

At first glance, this looks like pure insanity: The first part of JB's testimony carries its own introduction, and is integral to its composition. It can hardly be the 'second half' of a section. The second half (as it stands in the gospel as we know it) also is clearly not a beginning, but a secondary commentary on previous material.

The madness is explained this way: The second half of John's testimony isn't John's at all! It is the second half of the speech found in John 3:16-21, a speech often attributed to Jesus and alleged to have taken place in His dialogue with Nicodemus the previous week or so! Of course this isn't all Bultmann's imagination, or entirely his fault.

If you look in a few different 'Red Letter' Bibles, you will find the words of Jesus in the New Testament are conveniently printed in RED for easy finding and to give them special authority. Yet there is some debate in a few cases (especially in John!) as to where the speech of Jesus ends, and the narrative or explanatory material of John begins! This is one of those cases.

Some Christian scholars honestly feel that Jesus' speech in this section ends at verse 3:15. John (the Evangelist/author, not the Baptist!) then begins his interpretive commentary in the narrative, beginning at 3:16, and continuing until verse 21. There are many reasons to hold this view. One important one is that partly because of this kind of confusion, many people have raised charges against John, that he rather freely put words into Jesus' mouth which Jesus didn't actually speak, making the Gospel of John a *very* interpretive document to say the least.

Of course these features are minimized and the charges of John putting words in Jesus' mouth are easily refuted when we properly divide the narrative portions from the dialogue. The reason this confusion is even possible is that quotation marks, punctuation, even spaces between words were often missing, and largely not even invented yet at the time of Jesus.

We personally can agree with Bultmann and many others that Jesus' speech probably ends at verse 15. Choices like this go a long way toward being able to differentiate the speech and personality of Jesus and other characters like John the Baptist from the speech and character of John the Evangelist (or whoever the author of John is). When we allow for this and apply these beginning and end-points properly, it becomes clear that John is not a 'made up theological document full of long discourses'. It is a primitive eyewitness account and a true Gospel as authoritative and accurate as Mark.

What Bultmann is proposing is that the second half of John the Baptist's testimony (3:31-36) really belongs to John the Evangelist, and is actually the second half of (3:16-21). This almost makes sense when you examine the content of the various sections. Except for one thing.

There is no need to move the author's commentary in the narrative at 3:31-36 at all. It can be quite adequately and clearly connected directly to the preceding testimony of John the Baptist in exactly the same manner as the previous commentary (3:16-21) can be simply related to Jesus' speech to Nicodemus.

That is, we can easily recognise and admit that this section is another short commentary by John the Evangelist on the preceding section (the Baptist's speech), without succumbing to a clumsy urge to 'group like things together'. This is just what an editor/compiler like Matthew might actually do, but is the opposite of our stated goal of reconstructing the ORIGINAL layout.

In this case, since there is a total lack of evidence for some different arrangement, and the passage makes perfect sense where it is, we assume it is exactly where it belongs.

Bultmann's urge to connect the narrative comments of John together is wrongheaded for this obvious reason: The whole thing about these discourses of Jesus being too long was solved by recognising the existance of additional commentary by the Evangelist. Once this is done, long speechs are no longer the prominent feature that we thought they were, and now we have no reason to believe John's commentaries were long rambling monologues either. So why artificially join them together to create long rambling monologues by the Evangelist?

Once again, an assured methodology of a textual critic has resembled a cowboy shooting himself in the foot while attempting to draw his weapon.

The simplest and best solution here is just to leave the first four chapters of John the way we find them, since they stand without variation in the textual tradition, and they make perfect sense as they are, whether or not we allow for narrator providing explanatory comments.

 

[Nazaroo]

It should be noted that these kinds of errors are common, and almost inevitable whenever a 'new tool' for textual criticism is invented and proposed. It seems unavoidable that such tools are at first over-applied, and that people will attempt to apply the tool to every unsolved problem (real or imagined) in the New Testament.

We can hardly fault these pioneers too greatly, when after all, the methods are untested and their scope and relevancy is unknown until they are experimentally applied and critiqued.

 

[Nazaroo]

Well, Bultmann's handling of the beginning and ending of the Gospel is disappointing.
Let's see how he does for the middle.

The first thing Bultmann does is tear out the entire chapter six of John, rip this in two, and place the first half before chapter five, and the last half at the end, after chapter twelve, Jesus' Triumphal Hour.

The supposed motivation here is that John's chronology is problematic in comparison to the Synoptics: John's schema is as follows:

4:43,46 Jesus departs from Samaria to Galilee, entering Cana. From there Jesus heals the Nobleman's son.

5:1 Jesus goes up to Jerusalem on a feast and heals a cripple, and has a discourse with the Judeans.

6:1 Jesus, back again in Galilee near the Passover, passes over the Sea of Galilee, feeding the 5000, and walking on water.

6: 24 After refusing the kingship, Jesus returns to Capernaum, followed by crowds, apparently largely Northern Israelites (6:31).

6:25,31,41,52 Clearly those questioning and disputing with Jesus in Capernaum (6:59) were mainly Judeans from the South, or of the tribe of Judah living in Capernaum.

7:1, 7:9 Generally after this Jesus lives and travels in Galilee, but not in Southern Judea.

7:2 Again Jesus visits Jerusalem on the Feast of Tabernacles, and stays on the Mount of Olives, debating and teaching in the Temple.

Thus John paints a scene of Jesus mainly living and teaching in Galilee, but visiting Jerusalem on important Feast Days, and performing signs there also.

In John's schema, the ministry of Jesus extends over about a two or three year period, with Jesus visiting Jerusalem on multiple occasions. By comparison, the other gospels simplify or telescope Jesus' ministry down to only about one year, and seem to record only one 'official' visit to Jerusalem.

Yet this should not be exaggerated. All the gospels mention the fact that 'Jesus did many other miracles and signs' and often simply summarize long periods in Jesus' ministry with a few sentences.

A hundred years ago, when many textual critics believed that John was a 'late, non-historical' pseudo-gospel, it was assumed that the Synoptics gave a more accurate picture of the travels of Jesus and the length of His ministry, and could be taken quite literally as more or less 'complete' sketchs of His travels. But that was before the interdependance of the Synoptics was fully appreciated, lessening the force of their seeming agreement against John.

Yet again, John's chronology is also loosely connected, just as it is in the Synoptics. There are large segments of time which are omitted or summarized, and the more detailed 'chapters' are rather vaguely joined. This is what allows the book to fall naturally into chapters, and also for their rearrangement, without causing total havoc at the 'joints'.

So it probably seemed sensible at the time to try to rearrange John to correspond to a single extended journey through Galilee and Samaria, and ending in Jerusalem. Of course this blueprint failed, because John provides extensive and careful notes throughout the incidents and discussions he chooses to detail for us.

These notes concentrate on geographical and physical details that appear to be extremely accurate, and many have been recently confirmed by archeaological digs in Jerusalem etc. Far from John simply inventing these details, it turns out that he must have had intimate knowledge of Jerusalem before it was burnt down.

Again, the same reason that Mark is held to be the first and primary Synoptic gospel can be applied to John. Many verbose details and incidental facts suggest an original eyewitness document. Typically, when these testimonies are re-used and edited, the unimportant details are the first things to go, and the actual historical situations are lost or generalized. John's narrative however, is rich with historical details that are unlikely to have been invented.

Nowadays, there's far less reason to believe that John has the chronology 'wrong', and we should give precedence to the Synoptics. Although John presents us with a very definite 'schema' and pattern of Sign/Discourse, certain key features of the chronology show that John is not willing to chronologically rearrange his own chosen material in favour of his own schema.

For instance, looking at the chart above, it will be seen that the 2nd Discourse and 2nd Sign are 'out of order'. Rather than postulate a clumsy mis-arrangement however, it would be far more plausible to just admit that John is not sacrificing chronology to form, especially when he goes to so much trouble to provide geographical and chronological detail.

One of the big problems with Bultmann's rearrangements is that he utterly fails to take into account the schema of John. Here was a perfect opportunity to propose a 'rearrangement' which would at least have a surface plausibility, namely to switch around the 2nd Sign and 2nd Discourse to follow the pattern in the rest of John. Other possibilities could have been tried also, in the later miracles and discourses.

Instead, Bultmann makes a crude cut and paste which does more harm than good. Now (in his proto-Gospel) the 5th Sign and 5th Discourse are further apart and disconnected from each other than ever. Nor does his placement of the 'dispute' and turning away of many disciples and Peter's testimony have any real appeal. The segment undoubtably is a 'summing up' and an ending to the section involving the feeding of the 5000. But to try to make it act as the ending to the entire 'Signs Gospel' is hopelessly inept. The features (and perceived problems) of the segment have once again been overblown and over-treated.

Nor does Bultmann's rearrangement really solve the problem of Jesus coming to and fro from Galilee to Jerusalem. While the incidents in Jerusalem are moved a bit closer to one another, the basic incongruity between John and Mark remains about the same in scope and severity.

In the end there is no real support or justification for Bultmann's handling of chapter six. It exaggerates the difficulties in John, ignores what is known of John's schema, and doesn't really fix anything, while causing new problems.


We may note the following additional weaknesses as well:

(1) (as can be seen in the diagram above) there are really multiple incidents of disputes with the Judeans following Jesus' signs and discourses. More could have been noted and added. Moving just one of them to the end of the Triumphal Hour (ch 12) is inadequate and wholly unconvincing. This is especially true when John repeatedly insists this exchange took place in Capernaum.

(2) At the end of chapter 12, the passage just becomes an 'anti-climax', completely out of sync with the fact that finally, all the people are behind Jesus, including the exiled and excommunicated Greek Israelites. In the basic story in all four gospels, Jesus' crucifixion was a result of betrayal at the peak of His popularity, not abandonment by the multitudes.

(3) And this places Jesus away from Jerusalem again, instead of where He must have been for His arrest. This really is a cheap shot against all four gospel accounts.

(4) While some motive can be assigned for the Final redactor to place the 5th Sign and 5th discourse closer together, why would he have moved the sections in large chunks of multiple sections?

(5) Most importantly, if most of the actual pairing of Signs and Discourses is plainly preserved in Bultmann's proto-John, surely they predate proto-John! This pairing could hardly have arisen accidentally in unconscious stages over multiple redactions later. But Bultmann gives no explanation for how they got out of sync at all, before Final John 'corrected' them. He has left too many loose ends dangling to grant his reconstructions any credance.

Bultmann has just given in to his own aesthetical demands that John's march of signs be a progressive march of 'bigger' and better in the eyes of the critic. But John's interest lies rather in presenting an escalating series of disputes and conflict between Jesus and the Judean hierarchy based upon their longstanding rejection of both Jesus and John the Baptist. The evangelist hasn't time for Bultmann's artistic sense.

 

[Nazaroo]

Next Bultmann has a go at the 'Light of the World' cluster of discourse and exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees at the temple. (John 8:12-59).

Again, the surgery appears far more drastic than the mild symptoms seem to call for. If Bultmann was a doctor, he'd be a millionaire-cosmetic surgeon, gifted as he is at selling needless extras that will make the Gospel appear more 'perfect and beautiful' than ever before. The problem is, we only have to look at Michael Jackson to ultimately judge on why too much surgery is not necessarily a good thing.

Lets have a look at Bultmann's idea for this section:

First off, he sticks 7:15-24 at the beginning, and follows it with 8:13-20.
Next comes 7:1-14, and 7:25-29.

Then he snips out 8:48-50, and 8:54-55 and places them between 7:29 and 7:30.
After 7:30, he inserts 7:37-44 between 7:30 and 7:31-36.
Then follows 7:45-52.
Now comes the remaining 8:41-47, 8:51-53, and 8:56-59.

After this comes 9:1-41, with some of the leftovers from chapter 8 being interspersed with bits from chapter 12.

Here's how it fits all fits together in Bultmann's mind:

(the following rearrangement of ch 10 will be considered later.)

First lets look at the grouping of 7:15f and 8:13f. This arrangement does have a superficial appearance of connection: In 7:16 Jesus makes a vague reference to His own activity, and this seems to loosely connect to 8:13. But how can this precarious thread compare to the original context of 8:12, where Jesus clearly testifies of Himself, plainly and quite sensibly provoking the accusation of the Pharisees?

The separation of 8:12 and 8:13 is violent, and its only point is to allow 8:12 to be teleported away to act as a preface for 12:44f later, where Jesus again refers to Himself as the Light of the world on a different occasion. Its as though we chopped off a perfectly good finger and sewed it to the foot to give some imagined potential advantage there. But the plan is dubious and support is lacking, just as in the surgical metaphor.



Now follows the statement,

"After these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Judaea because the Judaeans sought to kill Him" (John 7:1,forward)


​

According to Bultmann, we are supposed to believe that this split is the result of the rather minor exchange of words in 8:12-20.

What has apparently been 'overlooked' is that the drastic split between Jesus and the Judaeans is already explained plainly and quite plausibly in 6:15-66. It is the result of His refusal to accept the 'Kingship' under the conditions offered by the apostate Judaeans, who accepted free food but not the Word of God He was sent to deliver.

Now lets look at the damage that the dislocation of 7:15-24 causes. Now the two sections (7:1-14 and 7:25-30) clap together hollowly, because Jesus' actual speeches, referred to in both 7:14 and 7:26 are never given. Yet the section clearly comes to an end in 7:30.

Are we supposed to believe that John the author (even as 'proto-John') would have composed such a pericope, totally lacking any profound teachings, but including only the vague remark in 7:28-29?

Perhaps Mark could have produced such a segment, lacking spiritual bread, but this bit comes just after the great 'My doctrine is the Bread from Heaven' speeches! Are we really to suppose that the composer of the previous sections (even as Bultmann presents them) would invite everyone to dinner and leave the table empty?

 

[Nazaroo]

Before dealing with Bultmann's shredding of chapter 8, lets examine the final reversal of the two sections, 7:31-36 and 7:37-44.

The first thing that strikes us is how can this man plausibly make the cut between verse 30 and 31, when it is blatantly obvious that verse 31 really belongs to the previous bitter dispute, 7:14-30?

And the answer isn't some profound secret only recently discovered by the brilliant tool of 'source criticism', but it turns out rather lame: Because if the section is cut at its natural point between 31 and 32, then it would be impossible to join A to the end of B, for this would appear completely absurd:

" ...and some of them would have taken Him, but no man laid hands upon Him. (v44, leading into...
The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things (the disputes in verses 40-43?) and so the Pharisees and chief priests sent officers to take Him. ..." (v32 etc.)





​

Well, obviously in order to swap the two sections, Bultmann has to do some trimming off of the ends here, or else make a new cut at 30 and leave verse 31 dangling from the beginning of 32-36.

This not only places the 'Ye shall seek Me' speeches a day later, but also delays the sending of the officers to arrest Jesus until the last minute, leaving them looking implausibly foolish at being bamboozled by some doubletalk from Jesus, and immediately returning to their mob-bosses, without any worry of a charge of complete disobediance.

Is it too unreasonable to ask why the original version of the story isn't far more plausible even as a story?

The (non-Bultmann) Version:

In the original order, Jesus teaches publicly, and many are turning to Him to follow Him. THIS would be the obvious reason for the Pharisees and chief priests to send an arresting party, which in turn gives the reason He doesn't appear again until the Last Day of the feast.

Yet that party may not have been able to organize that quickly or do anything for at least a day because of the crowds alone. Earlier, the Pharisees dared not speak against John the Baptist for the very same reason: the people believed he was a prophet.

In this scenario, Jesus naturally escapes at the end of the day, and returns again on the Last day of the feast (v37). Thus Jesus, after His surprise visit in the middle of an 8-day (or two week) festival, leaves the arresting officers hanging for days, as they stand around like idiots hoping to see Him again.

Now on this Last Day, even though the enthusiasm begins to turn to confusion and division after some difficult words, it is still unsafe for a handful of guards to dare an arrest.

They return empty-handed finally after at least trying for 4-7 days to arrest Jesus, protected as He is by His disciples and the (out of town) crowds.

Even the guards have waivered plausibly: Why? because according to the original arrangement, they've been listening to Jesus teach for two or more days!

Not everybody will be happy with the historical plausibility of the original arrangement. But all can agree that it is far more credible as the version John would have written than Bultmann's silly story!

In summary then,

(1) Bultmann's 'swap' must involve some clearly artificial surgery in order to allow any kind of 'fit'. And so rather than SOLVE existing 'seams', real or perceived, Bultmann has had to actually invent NEW seams where they previously had no existance at all.

(2) Bultmann's result is a limp-wristed story that simply doesn't have any realistic coherence or plausibility.


Granted that the gospel stories involve miraculous events and sometimes even puzzling perpexities of detail, Bultmann's *new* story reads more like the surreal dream of an opium addict than a primitive gospel account. He seems to have anticipated John Allegro's "Sacred Mushroom" cult theory by almost 50 years! Perhaps Allegro arrived at his own unique ideas by reading Bultmann's version of John!