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Home Bible Study: John

  
  

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Princess
13:49 / 15.09.07
In one of the Genesis threads I threatened to start a discussion about one of the books in the New Testament. Mice reminded me and convinced me to go for John. It is, I have been told, a bit more woowoo and templey than Luke, which was my other gospel of choice.

Now, I haven't read John very much at all, so I haven't really got any idea how good this listof John related articles are. But there looks like lots of things to go through. Which is promising.

At the moment I'm trying to read the Bible slowly. I want to mull over the passages and really get the most out of them. So, apologies if my insights/commentary come chapters and chapters too late.

I've just opened my Bible (New Revised Standard Edition-Anglicized)to start reading John and the five verse are pretty full on. King James gives us:

1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2: The same was in the beginning with God.
3: All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4: In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5: And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Which, straight away, is making me think stuff.

Now, the word being translated as "Word" here is Logos. I'm sure there are people in the Temple much better suited than me for describing the compexity of that concept. In verse 14 we are going to be told that the Logos "became flesh"

So it looks like the Author (who may or not be John)is setting up a paradox. The word/Christ is at once God and God's creation. This line is one of the central "proofs" for the doctrine of the Trinity.

Verses three and four seem a bit harder to translate. In addition to the King James above, my NRSV give both:

3:All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
4:in him was life, and the life was the light of the people.

and

3: All things come into being through him. And without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of the people

I'm not sure why, but I prefer the NSRW. "By" sounds so distant, but "through" sounds more involved. I've got this growing idea that Christ is meant to represent all of creation. I'm not quite able to verbalise it yet. The cross is the earth and Christ is God offering himself back to himself from it? And as such, a way of describing how creation came from God and now has to return to him?

Ugh, it's all a bit beond words really. Does anyone else get what I mean?

Anyway, this is the thread to talk about John.
Go.
 
 
EvskiG
15:10 / 15.09.07
John!

The nastiest and most anti-Semitic of the Gospels. This should be interesting.

Probably written by one or more converts to Judaism around 80-100 C.E. -- members of a group of early proto-Christians who were at odds with the Jewish community of their city (possibly Palestine). After a series of clashes with Jewish leaders, the group was expelled from the synagogues and denied participation in common worship.

Accordingly, John is not fond of the Jewish community. It restyles the story of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) as a conflict between the close-knit group of Jesus's followers and the sinful opposition they encountered from the world around them. It also strongly focuses on the idea that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God.

It's generally accepted that the Prologue (John 1:1-18) wasn't in the original version of John, but was added to emphasize certain points of dogma: in John 1:1-5, that Jesus (the Word, see John 1:14) is divine and eternally and personally with God, that He is God's sole mediator of creation, and that He existed before creation and continues to exist. The Prologue is a poem or hymn of a sort (possible an adaption of a pre-Christian hymn), and quite beautiful.

John is going back to Genesis 1 here, and adding what he sees as a bit of detail about the world pre-creation. According to him, Jesus was around even then -- in a more abstract form.
 
 
grant
02:49 / 16.09.07
The nastiest and most anti-Semitic of the Gospels.

Weird - in Catholic school, they talked about Luke as being the "outsider" gospel, and played up the possibility that John was written by the "beloved disciple" who may have been Jesus' cousin (the possibility of the sons of Zebedee being brothers of Christ never came up). There's some evidence this was the case, but anything from that long ago is subject to lots of interpretation. Wikipedia has a whole article on the debate.

The interesting bits to me are the ideas of John being a kind of anti-Paul, or synthesis of Pauline "Gentile" Christianity and "Jewish" Christianity from James (and Jesus himself), OR as an anti-Thomas - that is, a strain of Christianity that opposed the Gnostics who went on to settle in Egypt & Northern Africa.

Either way, whatever its motives, as the first few verses show handily, it's a mystical book. Woo! Woo!
 
 
grant
03:02 / 16.09.07
I've got this growing idea that Christ is meant to represent all of creation. I'm not quite able to verbalise it yet. The cross is the earth and Christ is God offering himself back to himself from it? And as such, a way of describing how creation came from God and now has to return to him?

That's basically it, I think. Emanation from above into this plane, descent from the Kingdom into the World, the idea of the king walking among his subjects as one of his subjects....
 
 
EvskiG
14:13 / 16.09.07
To borrow a bit of comics terminology, I see John as a very deliberate retcon of the Synoptic Gospels -- an attempt to rewrite the other three Gospels (all of which share similarities and appear to be based on at least some common sources) to emphasize what John thinks is important about Christianity, and to place the blame for Jesus's death on John's political enemies.

As the Oxford Annotated Bible notes, "[t]he major concerns of [John] are engendering faith in the person of Jesus and discrediting the Temple-centered, hereditary religious authorities who present a collective obstacle to the acceptance of faith in Jesus."

as the first few verses show handily, it's a mystical book. Woo! Woo!

Well, it's trying to retcon Genesis. "Remember the creation story? Well, Jesus was there, too, and was just as important as God the Father. Forgot to mention that before. Oops."

(As we go forward we'll see how later scribes changed the text even more to advance their own agendas and dogma.)

Here's the Oxford Bible Commentary: "In a kind of overture the narrator gives his readers the impression that his story will be told 'from a transcendent and eternal vantage point.' The author uses subtle imagery to sum up main themes . . . light, life, and darkness . . . . the author alludes to Gen. 1:1, but describes what was before creation."
 
 
grant
23:57 / 16.09.07
Should we get into the divisions in Judaism during this time, or should we wait until the text brings it up?

I kinda know that there are Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes (who may or may not have been where Christianity sprang from, although I kinda lean toward they were just because I like the sound of it). Any details, I'd have to look up.
 
 
Princess
00:05 / 17.09.07
Well, I'm a bit frozen because I'm fairly sure I'm going to miss the historical details. If people want to flesh them out a bit first I'd be a bit less intimidated. (By the book, not them. You are all lovely)
 
 
EvskiG
01:16 / 17.09.07
Should we get into the divisions in Judaism during this time, or should we wait until the text brings it up?

I'm thinking we should move forward with the text at whatever pace Princess thinks is appropriate, and raise those issues if and when they come up. (I just couldn't resist starting with what I see as a quick overview.)

As far as the text so far (New Revised Standard Version):

1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2: He was in the beginning with God.

3: All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being

4: In him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

5: The light shines in darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

It's just so wonderfully evocative and beautiful.

I picture the universe before creation, with a single perfect light -- which in some way is both God and some abstract, not-yet-embodied form of Jesus, the Word -- in the middle of darkness, and containing "life . . . the light of all people."

Reminds me of an embryo floating in the womb, or a single star suspended in the darkness before the Big Bang, or a seed nestled in the earth. Pure potential.
 
 
grant
02:17 / 17.09.07
a single perfect light -- which in some way is both God and some abstract, not-yet-embodied form of Jesus, the Word

I think this is taken in Catholicism as the first clear enunciation of the mystery of the trinity - that God is three things at the same time, Creator/Embodiment/Inspiration, Light/Flesh/Word, Father/Son/Spirit. There are bits in the Tanakh (the Old Testament) that are retconned (hee!) into being trinitarian, but none are quite as specific about the triple nature as this bit of John.

I'm fairly sure I'm going to miss the historical details.

Would it help if you thought of this as a history? That's what it's meant to be. In fact, it's possible to read John as history itself, since it starts at the beginning and, depending on how your faith is structured, ends at the end - the defeat of Death.

But yeah, these gospels are meant to be records of events, and are generally thought of as the best-preserved accounts of this particular time and place. They're all from one small group, though, who definitely have an agenda as far as what gets remembered and what forgotten.

Heh - wish I'd checked the NAB before talking about what I remembered from high school. There's a concise, thorough introduction that describes much of the history Ev just brought up - especially the antisemitism. The Pharisees & Sadducees (the antagonists) are simply called "the Jews."

Happens as early as 1:19... but that's skipping ahead.

------

I wonder something now. Can the prologue be read as a kind of fractal version of the whole chapter, or possibly the whole book? Like - OK, 1:1, we start with the Word.
1:6, we get John, whose job it is not to redeem humanity, but to announce the coming of the redeemer. The Word before the Divine Presence, in other words.

1:5 is the light shining in darkness - 1:56 shows angels descending and ascending around the Son of Man as the sky opens. And we all kinda know how the whole book ends, right? The resurrection.

-------

Another historical thought just struck me. If this is being written around 90 CE, that's only 20 years after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. Maybe these Johannite Christians had a whole non-theological reason to point fingers toward Israel and say, in effect, "Jews? Why no, Mister Centurion, sir, we are not Jews! We stood against the Jews! You see here?"

This is just idle speculation on my part; I have no idea if anything in the historical record supports this.
 
 
EvskiG
15:38 / 17.09.07
1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . .

I think this is taken in Catholicism as the first clear enunciation of the mystery of the trinity - that God is three things at the same time, Creator/Embodiment/Inspiration, Light/Flesh/Word, Father/Son/Spirit.

I've heard that before, but I really only see two entities here: God and Word, Theos and Logos. Not surprising since the concept of the Trinity didn't really exist at the time.

If you want Biblical evidence of the Trinity, you'll probably want to look at the Johannine Comma in 1 John 5:7-8, probably added in the fourth century at the earliest. Or you can look at the (surprisingly few) Biblical cites offered by the Catholic Church.
 
 
grant
16:53 / 17.09.07
Yeah, that's pretty much my understanding of the Trinity as dogma (only hammered out in Nicea, 300-something). I didn't know about the Comma, but have already fought the urge to go off on a filioque clause tangent (as referred to in the notes on that Vatican site).

As a note, the Comma doesn't appear in the NAB, and isn't even mentioned in the notes to that chapter. But that's a different book anyway....

Here, John 1:9-13:

9
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
10
He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.
11
He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.
12
But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name,
13
who were born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God.

Note to vs. 11: Israel & Israelites are the "what" and "who" there, the NAB says.

Note to vs. 13: This is sometimes translated as a reference to Christ's conception & birth from a virgin ("born" also means "begotten" in the original), but seems more likely to be the origin of the concept of being born again.

I wonder about vs. 10... if that play with in the world, through him the world came to be is as close in the original language to the wordplay with the Word being with God and being God.
 
 
jentacular dreams
17:05 / 17.09.07
Verse 13 can be interpreted two ways - that the only way to be reborn is through God and that the choice to convert itself is an act of God.
 
 
EvskiG
18:37 / 17.09.07
Wait a minute -- you left out John 1:6-8 (about John the Baptist)!

Continuing from where Princess left off (NRSV):

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,

13 Who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

First we're briefly told (6-8) about John the Baptist, who was a divine messenger but shouldn't himself be deified. (A bit ironic, since some would say this about Jesus, too.)

This might have been a preemptive response to a roughly contemporaneous group that, if I'm not mistaken, tried to deify ol' Dunky John.

Then we're told Jesus (who is essentially equated with light (9)), who was in some way creator (or co-creator) of the world (10), manifested in the world (9-10), (2) was not recognized by the world or accepted by "his own people" (the Jews) (10-11), but gave people who received him and/or believed in his name (interesting question whether this is conjunctive or disjunctive) the power to become "children of God" (whatever that means, and too bad about the rest) (12), and that such people were born (or reborn) of God (13).

One thing I like here is the slow reveal -- how Jesus hasn't yet been named. Reminds me of the opening of an early James Bond movie, where you see Bond from behind, his hands, his voice, the baccarat table, and only then does the camera cut to his face for "Bond. James Bond."

Lots more to take apart here . . .
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
03:43 / 18.09.07
This might have been a preemptive response to a roughly contemporaneous group that, if I'm not mistaken, tried to deify the other John -- the Baptist.

The Mandæans, I believe. Gnostics from way back. The thread I linked to has a link to an essay about them that may shead some light on this idea.

The Gospel of John has long been my favorite of the canonical gospels. I'm going to re-read it tonight and come up with some thoughts.

...I say that a lot, but I swear I'm going to do it this time.
 
 
Andrue
07:32 / 18.09.07
This thread inspired me to head back into John -- I hadn't looked at it for a few years now. What's stricken me the most with the theological implications of this gospel is the sense of human self-reliance in it. The personalization of the individual's relationship to God seems to be of the utmost importance here, along with the implications of some of the metaphors and parables going on. For example,

The meeting with Philip and Nathanael

1:43-51 "The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth. Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael asked him, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

Beyond the fact that Jacob is one of my favorite Biblical figures, and he is heavily referenced here, Jacob's relationship to angels has always been very interesting to me. This line about the Son of Man replacing Jacob's ladder is also chock full of theological/metaphysical implications. As stated before, this is highly suggestive of a paradigmatic shift from outside to inside, from impersonal to personal, and from passive to active. But first let me explain my take on the Son of Man term used throughout the NT. It is often assumed that Son of Man refers only to Jesus, via the Daniel tradition of "one like the Son of Man riding in on clouds." But Jesus isn't referring to "one like the Son of Man" here -- he is referring to something much more benign and normal. From some research I've done on terminology during the time, Son of Man was a common term used to refer to ANY individual, or one's self, much like how in slang now we can call someone simply "man" or "brother." I, for the life of me, can't find the citation for this, but I believe it was either in a book by Jaroslav Pelikan or John Crossan. Regardless of the citation, I think that seeing this as a call to the individual to see angels of God to "ascend and descend" upon them is an inevitable conclusion of the Hellenizing of Judaism at the time, which was taking place throughout the Jewish communities in the Roman Empire, most obviously seen in Philo of Alexandria and Josephus Flavius. More importantly, we must look at Jesus in this context as an archetypal Messiah, as that was one of the main focuses of Hellenistic Jewish eschatology and mysticism. This idea of the archetypal man (archetypal Adam) and it's inevitable conclusion in the archetypal Messiah was not simply about the creation of one man, and then the redemption by one man. It was more about the creation of one man, and the spiritual evolution of all men towards this ideal messianic state. Paul's usage of Jesus in this manner is clear, but has been avoided like the plague by most of Christianity in favor of the "Jesus died for me so I don't have to do anything" trend.

The Wedding at Cana

Obviously, it appears that this is a parable about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in that day. As the steward says to the bridegroom:
2:10 "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now."

As the empty vessels for God's wine, the Jews were first filled with the less-fine wine of the Mosaic tradition, and then given the wine of the Johannine-Christian tradition. The interesting implications of this are that the Jews would then obviously be less likely to recognize the "good wine" due to being drunk on the "bad wine" first. This is probably due to the conflict between traditional Jews and the revolutionary Christian movement at that time, especially John-like Christianity, was trying to fully separate itself from the Jewish tradition. It's also interesting to read this as Jesus as the archetypal messiah again, as he is the vessel from which the good wine appears and is made available to all men, he can be seen as the archetype to follow beyond the flawed patriarchs of the Jewish tradition. In light of the preceding passage that references Jacob, the patriarch that gave Israel it's name, as deceitful, as he was, (it is a play on words, or a pun as is the general trend of the Bible, when Jesus calls Nathanael "an Israelite without deceit!" and then references Jacob a few sentences later), it is interesting that Jesus is now shown as being not only not deceitful, but forthcoming with the "good" wine when he could very easily deceive with "bad" wine.

The meeting with Nicodemus

3:3-15 "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered Very Truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is the flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is the spirit (spirit and wind are the same word in both Greek and Hebrew, and are heavily intertwined in all Mesopotamian mythology in relation to life). Do not be astonished that I said to you, "You must be born from above." The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered, "Are you a teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

Sorry for the long passage, but I felt it all must be included to round out my point here. Obviously this is a really hefty discussion going on between Jesus and a traditional Pharasaic rabbi, but it's not entirely obvious what they're talking about. To me, here, it relates heavily to a lot of Golden Dawn/Crowleian/general occultist theory. Most poignant to me is Jesus' replacing of the "snake" with himself, and of his talk of the wind/spirit as a free-flowing form that "goes as it will." I think it's obvious what I'm harping at -- the more "nice" interpretation of "Do as thou wilt." Replace yourself with the rod of Asclepius, or the Nehushtan, serpentine symbols of divine healing, replace the healing from the gods with your own will. Sacrifice the ego nature for the Great Work, and you will move through the aether without resistance.

Sorry if that was too long winded and rambling. I could go on forever talking about the logos, the Kingdom of God, and the Paraclete (especially in relation to PKD's Empire/Black Iron Prison thing) as well, as they're both heavily loaded terms that take a lot of unpacking, but I'm not sure that I'm for it at the moment, and I'll wait to see if what I've written so far is well received at all before trying to shove some more of my interpretation out there.
 
 
jentacular dreams
09:20 / 18.09.07
Ev: To clarify, whilst 1:6-8 is about John the Baptist, I don't think it was ever widely believed that he was the author of this gospel.

Where it is ascribed to a contemporary of Jesus, it is usually John the Apostle, brother of St James (who was an apostle, but is not referred to as James the the apostle, due to that title already being taken). However, according to earlychristianwritings.com which princess linked to upthread (looks like quite a good site, it has lots of links to online resources) this is based on a somewhat selective reading.

Outside of faith, it is often believed that the author (or the final author, as some believe John and the other gospels to be a synthesis of original testament plus additional material, edited to create a literary and evangelical whole) lived sometime in the second century. Most, including the majority of Christians believe that it was the last gospel written and in some ways was written as a counterpart to the synoptics. There's an alternative theory though are that John's gospel is largely composed of sermons that have then been set into a theoliterary framework.

There's an interesting article on John's gospel here. There's also a good breakdown of the material covered thus far here and here.
 
 
EvskiG
12:28 / 18.09.07
Ev: To clarify, whilst 1:6-8 is about John the Baptist, I don't think it was ever widely believed that he was the author of this gospel.

You're right, I muddled John the Apostle and John the Baptist in my above post.

Fixed it.
 
 
grant
17:15 / 18.09.07
This has become a fast-moving thread!

More importantly, we must look at Jesus in this context as an archetypal Messiah, as that was one of the main focuses of Hellenistic Jewish eschatology and mysticism.

Are you using "archetypal" here to mean "universal" - "for all humankind"?

Still chewing on the rest - it might be easier to take the parables as they come in sequence of reading, actually.

So before the Jacob's ladder bit, there's the antagonism with the Jewish establishment in 1:15-25 and the conversion experience/first disciples in 1:26-44.

----

I'm most drawn to this line, verses 26-7:
John answered them, "I baptize with water; but there is one among you whom you do not recognize,
the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie."

The note in the NAB reads:
[26] I baptize with water: the synoptics add "but he will baptize you with the holy Spirit" (Mark 1:8) or ". . . holy Spirit and fire" (Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16). John's emphasis is on purification and preparation for a better baptism.


What I find most interesting is the comparison between this and "the waters" absent from John 1:1, but in Genesis 1:2 (the chaos that God-as-light moved over to create the world, and how He remade the world in the Flood), and with the fire that pops up again and again in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas - in that book, Christ says he's bringing a purifying fire or turning the world to fire. As the note says, it's an image that's in the synoptic gospels, too.

Spiritual water preparing for spiritual fire - or, as the absence of "fire" (and presence of "but") here seems to indicate, something that ain't water.
----
Jacob's ladder, by the way, first appears in Genesis 28:12. The word "messenger" is the same as "angel" (see the etymology of "angel").

The passage is a restatement of the promise given to Abram that I just started talking about in the Genesis thread - "Your descendants will have this land!" This is, I think, the central promise of the Tanakh - to have a place to live.

The New Testament takes this promise and makes it metaphorical, with the concept of inheriting the Kingdom of God/heavenly reward. (The "Kingdom" in the NT isn't exactly what we think of as Heaven now, I don't think, but that can wait until it starts coming up in the text.)
 
 
grant
17:27 / 18.09.07
Now that I look again, John 1:32,
John testified further, saying, "I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from the sky and remain upon him.

I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'On whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the holy Spirit.'

Makes the Flood analogy much clearer, since the dove is the creature that let Noah know the Flood was over. The world is being remade again.
 
 
EvskiG
19:07 / 18.09.07
If we're still going in order, might as well run through the rest of the Prologue:

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

15 (John testified to him and cried out, 'This was he of whom I said, "He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me."')

16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

So John emphasizes that unlike God the Father, who no one has seen, Jesus was here, in the flesh, on Earth, in his glory. (14, 18) (Of course, by the time this was written no one alive had seen Jesus, either.) He beats us over the head with the father/son comparisons, emphasizing that Jesus is the ONLY son of God. (14, 18) He notes that this is the guy John the Baptist was talking about. (15) And he contends that while the law came from Moses (polite tip o' the hat to the Old Testament) humans have received "grace" (whatever that is) and truth from Jesus. (16, 17)
 
 
Andrue
19:17 / 18.09.07
Are you using "archetypal" here to mean "universal" - "for all humankind"?

Ah, sorry. I was pretty groggy when I was writing that part and didn't make myself clear at all. What I meant by archetypal was not universal or for all humankind, but more a parabolic/metaphorical messiah that represents the ultimate accumulation of personhood -- the perfect man within the Jewish tradition. So rather than looking at it as a "true" story or a historical account (which, as is stated in previous posts, doesn't appear to be what John was going for), the whole thing really is just a kind of Guide to Perfection.

What I find most interesting is the comparison between this and "the waters" absent from John 1:1, but in Genesis 1:2 (the chaos that God-as-light moved over to create the world, and how He remade the world in the Flood), and with the fire that pops up again and again in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas - in that book, Christ says he's bringing a purifying fire or turning the world to fire. As the note says, it's an image that's in the synoptic gospels, too.

Spiritual water preparing for spiritual fire - or, as the absence of "fire" (and presence of "but") here seems to indicate, something that ain't water.
I think it's also interesting to note the covenant between God and Noah (and therefore the rest of humanity) to never destroy humanity again by water. So Jesus is bringing fire rather than water, and it is a kind of new beginning similar to the Noahic rebirth. Also interestingly, the shift from water to fire seems to correspond with the cultural changes in the region. There's no real record of phoenix imagery in the Jewish or Mesopotamian tradition to my knowledge, but the rebirth-through-flood story was a ubiquitous one. Now we see a phoenix-style rebirth through fire via the Hellenistic infusion.

I'm not sure that it necessarily has anything to do with it, but we should also keep in mind that these gospels were written after the reign of Nero, when being burned to death as a Christian was just a matter of course. Might not be too important, but it may be a strong psychological factor at work.

Jacob's ladder, by the way, first appears in Genesis 28:12. The word "messenger" is the same as "angel" (see the etymology of "angel").

The passage is a restatement of the promise given to Abram that I just started talking about in the Genesis thread - "Your descendants will have this land!" This is, I think, the central promise of the Tanakh - to have a place to live.

The New Testament takes this promise and makes it metaphorical, with the concept of inheriting the Kingdom of God/heavenly reward. (The "Kingdom" in the NT isn't exactly what we think of as Heaven now, I don't think, but that can wait until it starts coming up in the text.)

Yes, the original Jacob's ladder symbol was far before any of the current conceptions we have of angels, even of Seraphim and Cherubim and all that -- those were mainly carry overs from the Babylonian exile. Interestingly, I'm not sure I agree with you about the central promise of the Tanakh being a place to live. I tend to take most of the Biblical stuff, especially the covenantal stuff, as metaphor, and therefore non-specific to something as concrete as the promise of a physical land. This is especially because of the relationship between God and the Israelites/Hebrews/Jews. By the end of the Tanakh, we see it's not the Babylonians that exiled the Jews again, but God, and we also see that it's not Cyrus that returned them to the land, but also God. This view of God working through foreign leaders, and particularly persecutive foreign leaders, is something that seems to have gotten lost post-Tanakh, and especially now. In my opinion, the real promise here is the creation and continuation of this relationship. A father-style God that keeps an eye on you, punishes you, but forgives you. And what Jesus is doing here is saying that this relationship is shifting.

Jesus is an embodiment of the Son in the relationship (and therefore the whole of the Jewish people), as well as the before-stated archetypal messiah, or perfect man, and he represents the new covenant available to everyone, rather than just the "promised" people, who have actually decided, according to John, to both neglect and kill this new covenant. To unpack this metaphor, it's really the Jewish people committing ritual suicide, but being reborn into something new through it. This is pretty accurate as to what happened in Roman Palestine at the time, but the outcome was something much less, shall we say, positive and universal, and much more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians. This is my biased take on Rabbinical Judaism, so forgive me.

The Kingdom of God thing is really interesting, and something that should probably have a thread devoted to it in and of itself. I'm not going to go there yet either, though, since we've got a lot more to cover before it comes up.
 
 
EvskiG
20:15 / 18.09.07
he represents the new covenant available to everyone, rather than just the "promised" people, who have actually decided, according to John, to both neglect and kill this new covenant. To unpack this metaphor, it's really the Jewish people committing ritual suicide, but being reborn into something new through it.

What a hideously unpleasant metaphor.

This is pretty accurate as to what happened in Roman Palestine at the time, but the outcome was something much less, shall we say, positive and universal, and much more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians. This is my biased take on Rabbinical Judaism

Sure is.
 
 
EvskiG
00:58 / 19.09.07
Let me offer a more detailed response.

First, since Jesus (assuming he existed) was a Jew living in and interacting with a Jewish community, it's clear that any discussion of John -- or any of the Gospels -- is to some extent going to address the Jews and Judaism.

No problem there.

And, as exhaustively discussed in books like The Origin of Satan, because the Gospels were written by members of a Jewish sect that was rejected by the majority of Jews, they're positively dripping with anti-Semitism, from John 8:44 ("You are of your father, the devil!") to Matthew 27:24–25 ("His blood be upon us and on our children"). Obviously, early Christians didn't take kindly to people who saw them as a heretical cult, and we'll see throughout John that their response was to call Jews evil, misguided, blinded by old or outdated dogma, or ready to be destroyed and replaced by believers in the new faith.

Hence Andrue's comment about "the Jewish people committing ritual suicide, but being reborn into something new through it" -- which seems to have gone beyond commentary about John into the realm of personal observation.

Um, no. Some Jews, like some non-Jews, became Christians. But "the Jewish people" didn't commit "ritual suicide" because of Christianity, and they're still around, if a bit diminished in numbers -- in part because of the Gospel of John.

As for Andrue's "biased take on Rabbinical Judaism," as noted by books like The Misunderstood Jew, there's a tendency for some Christian writers to caricature Judaism and contrast a grotesquely misunderstood, essentially fictional Judaism with Christianity to the benefit of the latter:

"A substantial number of . . . Christian students view Jesus as opposed to Judaism rather than as a Jew himself. They see Judaism as a religion of law as opposed to Jesus's religion of grace; they believe that Jews follow the commandments to earn a place in heaven; they suggest that Jews rejected Jesus because he proclaimed peace and love instead of violence against the Roman occupiers of Jerusalem. . . .

Church homilies . . . depict, both explicitly and implicitly, a Judaism that is monolithic, mired in legal minutae, without spiritual depth, and otherwise everything that (they hope) Christianity is not. . . .

This caricature of Judaism meets several needs. On the most crass level, it allows Jesus to stand out from, if not be unique within, his social context. . . . If Jesus is not the Messiah, 'the way and the truth and the life' or the 'Son of God,' then there is no warrant to follow him as opposed to following Gandhi, the Buddha, Hillel, or any other great teacher."

Seems to me that that's what Andrue has done when describing Jewish practice at the time of Jesus as "much more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians."

And, needless to say, I think that's a gross oversimplification.
 
 
Andrue
04:53 / 19.09.07

Hence Andrue's comment about "the Jewish people committing ritual suicide, but being reborn into something new through it" -- which seems to have gone beyond commentary about John into the realm of personal observation.

Um, no. Some Jews, like some non-Jews, became Christians. But "the Jewish people" didn't commit "ritual suicide" because of Christianity, and they're still around, if a bit diminished in numbers -- in part because of the Gospel of John.

I think my statement was wildly misunderstood. I don't know if this matters or effects the reading of my argument, but I'm a fully bar mitzvah'd Jew that spent most of my college studying religion, including Judaism. The Jewish people did commit ritual suicide, well before John wrote his gospel. It was called the Bar Kochba Revolt, when the Jews of Roman Palestine decided to rise up against the Roman Empire and were entirely wiped out of the region. This led to a total end to the Jewish world as they knew it -- the Temple was destroyed, many historical lineages cut off, and the connection to the land of Israel was entirely severed. This is when true Rabbinic Judaism started, which was an entirely new phenomenon in Jewish history, as the religion as a whole, rather than just for the upper echelons, began to circulate directly around the texts, both the Tanakh and Talmud, rather than around the Temple. In my mind, what I was saying was that John was writing from the perspective of another offshoot group, post-destruction, who was trying to become the true reincarnation of Judaism.


Seems to me that that's what Andrue has done when describing Jewish practice at the time of Jesus as "much more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians."

And, needless to say, I think that's a gross oversimplification.
I don't think you read what I wrote, I think you read what you were assuming I was saying due to the apologetics books you've read. I said multiple times that what Jesus was in these gospels was an archetypal messiah, a distinctly Hellenistic JEWISH idea. I was making a distinction between the Hellenistic metaphysical Judaism and Pharasaic (read: proto-Rabbinic) Judaism. If anything, you're the one oversimplifying Judaism into one unbroken tradition of Rabbinical belief that goes back to pre-destruction times.

Does anyone think that it's pretty damn ironic that we're discussing (as one poster put it) "the most anti-semitic of the gospels" and it's come down to me basically being accused of anti-semitism?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
06:24 / 19.09.07
Does anyone think that it's pretty damn ironic that we're discussing (as one poster put it) "the most anti-semitic of the gospels" and it's come down to me basically being accused of anti-semitism?

I doubt it.

But really, I don't think ze's basically accusing you of anti-semitism (I could be wrong, but I don't get that from hir post). Let's all take a deep breath before we offend each other. I'm really enjoying this thread and I don't want to see any scrappin'.



The thoughts on the new covenant v.s. old covenant, water and fire, etc. have all been voiced by various bible teachers and preachers I had going through my rather conservative protestant high school as well as several priests at my catholic church. One of the reasons I liked the Gospel of John so much when I was younger was because it provided a clearer picture of the "New Deal", as one teacher put it.

There was also a great deal of portaying the Jewish community at the time as misguided and foolish to the point of missing out on the Best Thing Ever, but I suppose that's to be expected from that enviroment, right along with the sexual repression and misogyny.

Not to veer the discussion off course, but a quick look through Wikipedia came up with this

Though not commonly understood as Gnostic, John has elements in common with Gnosticism.[30] Gnostics must have read John because it is found with Gnostic texts. The root of Gnosticism is that salvation comes from gnosis, secret knowledge. The nearly five chapters of the "farewell discourses" (John 13, 18) Jesus shares only with the Twelve Apostles. Jesus pre-exists birth as the Word (Logos). This origin and action resemble a gnostic aeon (emanation from God) being sent from the pleroma (region of light) to give humans the knowledge they need to ascend to the pleroma themselves. John's denigration of the flesh, as opposed to the spirit, is a classic Gnostic theme.[30]

It has been suggested that similarities between John's Gospel and Gnosticism may spring from common roots in Jewish Apocalyptic literature.[32]

That last bit is news to me. I know fuck all about Jewish Apocalyptic literature.

The "farwell discourses" have always been some of my favorite passages of the Bible, especially verse 18 of chapter 15,

If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.

19

If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.

Which, when viewed next to some other passages, does have a certain gnostic flavor. What strikes me as odd about the "farewell discourses" is that if they are secret teachings meant only for the apostles, as Wikipedia suggests (apparently based on Stephen L. Harris's Understanding the Bible, which I've never read), what of Jesus's remark in chapter 18, verse 20

Jesus answered him, "I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area 10 where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing.

What gives? Jesus caught in a lie! One could claim that he dispensed medicine according to the patient's sickness, to badly paraphrase a quote from Siddhartha Guatama, but I'm not sure I like that.

The top reason why John is my favorite gospel is easily the theme of love and duty, and the emphasis on Christ the Redeemer. John contains my other favorite passage, found in chapter 21 verse 15

15
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."
16
He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."
17
He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you." (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.

A sweet moment, despite the fact that a zombie-fied Christ is giving Peter his duty (and predicts his death in the next verse).
 
 
EvskiG
13:54 / 19.09.07
I think the Gnostic influences on John show up pretty clearly in the Prologue, which very well may be a Gnostic hymn adopted in its entirety. Best part of the book, I think.

And no, Andrue, I wasn't accusing you of anti-Semitism, but I don't think I misread you either.

I'm familiar with the Bar Kokhba Revolt -- essentially a war for independence from a colonial power -- and how it failed miserably, leading to the Diaspora and the rise of Rabbinical Judaism. But it strikes me as grotesque to describe this as "ritual suicide," which, by the very use of the word "suicide," suggests that the Jews intended to destroy themselves.

Christian commentators throughout the years have tried to tie the revolt and the destruction of the Temple to the idea that "the Jews" rejected Jesus, and were appropriately punished, and that the Christians carried the revised and corrected faith forward -- that Judaism, like Jesus, was "reborn." I agree that John saw things that way, but I'm comfortably sure that the Jews of the region didn't.

And unless I'm very much mistaken, you said that Rabbinical Judaism -- "the outcome" of the fall of the Temple, in your words -- "was something much less, shall we say, positive and universal, and much more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians." Again, I saw this as a stereotype common to much Christian teaching.

Yes, Rabbinic (essentially, post-Temple) Judaism strongly emphasizes law. Unlike a sovereign nation, which has its own (usually fairly detailed) laws, the Jews were in diaspora. If they didn't emphasize their own laws to maintain their own distinct culture they simply would have faded from existence and been absorbed into the surrounding nations, instead of lasting another two millenia (so far). (This is one reason the Dalai Lama has given the Jewish diaspora careful study.) But, at least personally, I don't see that as "neurotic and fundamentalist," much less "more neurotic and fundamentalist (read: Pharasaic) than what was being put forth by the Christians."

Now -- just a point of order, here. Am I correct that we're no longer going through the text in order?
 
 
Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero
15:32 / 19.09.07
I think the Gnostic influences on John show up pretty clearly in the Prologue, which very well may be a Gnostic hymn adopted in its entirety.

Mmm, yes, but I was looking for more evidence in John that would provide a more, I dunno, tangible link of the words and deeds of Jesus to Gnosticism, rather than just linking the author of John to Gnosticism. Gnosticism is sort of my thing these days, and somehow (I suspect drugs) I've missed the some of the less obvious gnostic leanings of my favorite Gospel. Sorry to derail the thread.

Best part of the book, I think.

YOU ARE SO ON DRUGS

Sorry, that was uncalled for. I grew up with the Bible but only in the past five years or so have I been made aware of the emotional profundity in much of it.

Forgive me for skipping ahead, I was anxious to take part in the thread but am bored to tears with stuff about the covenant and baptism of Christ. Carry on. I will wait untill we all get there, I promise.
 
 
grant
16:17 / 19.09.07
Back in order!

I feel ready to take on Chapter 2 now.

But I'm getting the feeling that it might be more productive to get just a little more into the strains of Judaism at this point in history, since that's kind of what the above discussion is about. (Kind of.)

OK, at this point I know the Jews had a temple in Jerusalem. THE Temple, in fact. It was here that sacrifices were offered directly to God. I'm not sure exactly how sacrifices worked at this point - in the Torah, there are a lot of rules around burning offerings and that.

I know that the Levites (who my NAB link with the Sadducees in the footnotes on John 1) were the priestly class in charge of the act of sacrifice and the maintenance of the temple.

And I gather that the Pharisees were something like the ancestors of the modern mainstream rabbinical tradition - teachers of the law.

That leaves the mystical sects of which Christianity seems to be the most successful, at least in a geopolitical sense. The Essenes may or may not be the sect from which Christianity sprang, and may or may not be the name by which the members of the community at Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found) identified themselves. But there was a separatist tradition in Judaism which involved things like ritual baptism, retreating into the desert, prophetic visions of God and radical reinterpretations of old prophecies - especially those having to do with the Messiah, a figure who was to come to deliver the Jewish people into an era of lasting peace and prosperity.


Is that clear and accurate enough?
 
 
grant
16:34 / 19.09.07
Ah, Wikipedia helps. From "Pharisees":

The first mention of the Pharisees is by the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus, in a description of the four "schools of thought" (that is, social groups or movements) into which the Jews were divided in the 1st century CE. The other schools were the Essenes, revolutionaries, and the Sadducees. The Essenes were apolitical; the revolutionaries, such as the Sicarii and the Zealots, emerged specifically to resist the Roman Empire.

and

In general, whereas the Sadducees were conservative, aristocratic monarchists, the Pharisees were eclectic, popular and more democratic. (Roth 1970: 84) The Pharisaic position is exemplified by the assertion that "A learned mamzer takes precedence over an ignorant High Priest." (A mamzer, according to the Pharasaic definition, is an outcast child born of a forbidden relationship, such as adultery or incest; the word is often, but incorrectly, translated as "illegitimate" or "bastard.")
 
 
EvskiG
18:10 / 19.09.07
But I'm getting the feeling that it might be more productive to get just a little more into the strains of Judaism at this point in history, since that's kind of what the above discussion is about. (Kind of.)

The four major groups mentioned by Josephus -- whose writings are not known for their accuracy or lack of bias -- are the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots.

Those links to the Jewish Encyclopedia -- each of which is huge -- might give a slightly different perspective than Wikipedia.
 
 
EvskiG
18:29 / 19.09.07
While I don't know if it's even remotely helpful, to gain a very rough understanding of these four Jewish groups you might relate each to one of the classical elements:

Pharisees: Air
Scholarly and intellectual. A bit legalistic and separatist. Had their heads in the clouds.

Sadducees: Earth
Materialist. Nobility, power, and wealth. No belief in resurrection or immortality.

Essenes: Water
Mystical. Investigated the magical properties of plants and stones. Focused on prayer and devotion. Bathed in cold water daily.

Zealots: Fire
Violent and energetic. Revolutionaries. Liked stabbing people.
 
 
grant
19:26 / 19.09.07
Heh - while we're there, which element is given to this gospel?

Matthew=Angel/Man
Mark=Lion
Luke=Bull
John=Eagle

In Wikipedia's "Tetramorph" article, it traces this symbolism back to Ezekiel using motifs from Babylonian astrology - Angel=Aquarius (Air), Lion=Leo (Fire), Bull=Taurus (Earth) and Eagle=Scorpio (Water).

(I remember Scorpio's also the three-form sign, with a lizard and the scorpion being other other two forms. Trinitarian.)

So this would be the Essene gospel, then, if this is a line worth pursuing.
 
 
EvskiG
20:02 / 19.09.07
That might be pushing it a bit.

I'm not familiar with any tradition associating these four groups with the classical elements -- I just offered it as a possible quick and dirty way to sketch out and distinguish them.
 
 
Hydra vs Leviathan
21:35 / 19.09.07
This is a complete tangent from the rest of the thread, I appreciate, but one of the things that always struck me about the first few verses of John is how well it fits with a mystical understanding of human evolution, based in a vaguely postmodern "gods are human-made, but still real (for certain definitions of "real")" kind of perspective...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God - if "God" is seen as Consciousness, Intelligence, that which can look upon the world and see that it is good (or otherwise), then that resonates really strongly with the "birth" of language in both phylogeny and ontogeny - how, both for the human species, and for the individual infant human, language created an utterly, profoundly new and revolutionary (possibly more revolutionary than anything else, ever) way of interpreting and understanding the world (I'm reminded of Genesis, and how God tells Adam to give names to all the plants and animals in the garden) - arguably the archetypal gnosis, in fact...

Perhaps the relationship between Logos and Theos can be interpreted as the relationship between Language and Consciousness?

I think there's something parallel in this retconning of Genesis to explicitly include the Logos element to the concept of Law being replaced by Grace - a kind of rationalist, liberatory mysticism. Make the human capacity for reason, for defining and naming things, for working it out for oneself, the Self as in, with and partaking of God, replace the absolutist figure of an Other-God whose dictates for morality are simply handed down and must be followed without question - which, on an ontogenetic level, is a pretty good metaphor for the awakening of reason in a child around the time of hir usual first use of language, leading to the realisation that parental power/authority is not an absolute, and on a phylogenetic level a reasonable (if rather more tenuous) one for humanity "collectively" realising that it's possible to alter one's environment rather than just live according to the "dictates" of it...

(Collective memory of the origin of language, reinforced by every individual human's memories (conscious or unconscious) of their own transition from a pre-linguistic to a linguistic state, is the origin of almost all "magic" and "religion" IMO, tho that's even further on a tangent from this thread...)

Hmmm, re-reading that it feels like my interpretation is actually Gnostic in a sort-of-Luciferian kind of way (but with Jesus kind of merging into the liberatory interpretation of Lucifer)...
 
 
EvskiG
22:02 / 19.09.07
Perhaps the relationship between Logos and Theos can be interpreted as the relationship between Language and Consciousness?

There's an interesting idea.

I think there's something parallel in this retconning of Genesis to explicitly include the Logos element to the concept of Law being replaced by Grace - a kind of rationalist, liberatory mysticism. Make the human capacity for reason, for defining and naming things, for working it out for oneself, the Self as in, with and partaking of God, replace the absolutist figure of an Other-God whose dictates for morality are simply handed down and must be followed without question

That seems to me an "Old Testament bad, New Testament good" ("absolutist figure of an Other-God" vs. "rationalist, liberatory mysticism") argument.

But I don't think the Gospels say that law is being replaced by grace as much as supplemented by grace.

John says "[t]he law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ," but that doesn't mean the law is invalid. As per the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:17-18): "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."

Of course, later commentators may have diverged from this a bit. To put it mildly.
 
  

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