I Guess I Never Learn . . .

[indianasmith]

Today I sat down and started writing another novel.  I finished my prologue and am nearly done with Chapter One now.
It's called THE GNOSTIC LIBRARY.

This is number five now.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

As opposed the the Agnostic Library, which is written in Wingdings.
Good Luck!
-Ed

[lester1/2jr]

was the "doubting Thomas" part of the gospel of John a diss to more liberal Christians who followed the Gospel of Thomas? http://news.stanford.edu/news/2004/february4/pagels-24.html


I listened to the Super Gospel a while ago. it's a compendium of alot of the new Testament apocrypha

http://youtu.be/yUiAViBLg7Q

I tend to use apocrypha and gnostic interchangeably in regards to the NT but I guess technically thats not true

[indianasmith]

Since John predates the G.o.T. by about sixty years or so, I rather doubt it.
I've read a good bit of the NT apocrypha, though.  While I don't believe the Gnostic Gospels to be as accurate or trustworthy as the canon, I do find them to be interesting reading.  I'll have to re-read all of them to research this book.

[sprite75]

Since John predates the G.o.T. by about sixty years or so, I rather doubt it.
I've read a good bit of the NT apocrypha, though.  While I don't believe the Gnostic Gospels to be as accurate or trustworthy as the canon, I do find them to be interesting reading.  I'll have to re-read all of them to research this book.

Did anyone ever nail down when John was written?

[indianasmith]

The earliest copy we have is from around 125 AD. (one of the earliest Gospel fragments known).
It was found in southern Egypt, hundreds of miles from the traditional site of the Gospel's composition in Ephesus.
Reasonably speaking, that makes the traditional date of composition (85-95 AD, when John was a very old man and
the last surviving Apostle of Jesus) seem about right.

[lester1/2jr]

"Since John predates the G.o.T. by about sixty years or so, "

were you there?


" when John was a very old man and
the last surviving Apostle of Jesus)"

All the gospels were anonymous. most experts agree that John did not write the Gospel of John.

[indianasmith]

"Since John predates the G.o.T. by about sixty years or so, "

were you there?


" when John was a very old man and
the last surviving Apostle of Jesus)"

All the gospels were anonymous. most experts agree that John did not write the Gospel of John.

Those experts are guessing 2000 years after the fact.  Virtually EVERY Second and Third century source attributes it to John, and I prefer their testimony, since they were within living memory of folks who knew the author.

Also, the writer of John gives more clues to his identity than ANY of the other Gospel writers.

[sprite75]

The earliest copy we have is from around 125 AD. (one of the earliest Gospel fragments known).
It was found in southern Egypt, hundreds of miles from the traditional site of the Gospel's composition in Ephesus.
Reasonably speaking, that makes the traditional date of composition (85-95 AD, when John was a very old man and
the last surviving Apostle of Jesus) seem about right.

I actually got to see Ephesus when I went to Turkey in 2012.  That was a highlight of a great trip, seeing the city.

[lester1/2jr]

John would have been about a hundred years old in a time when the average life span for a male was 30 years. He was also from a region that was mostly illiterate and that spoke Aramaic. the original language of the gospel is in Greek.


"Virtually EVERY Second and Third century source attributes it to John,"

even back then it was called "the spiritual gospel" meaning it wasn't meant to be taken literally. You can't or you would have to discount the other ones which it contradicts.

There was no such thing as independent Christian theology the early church fathers were devout Christians. the line between belief and fact is blurry.


and of course, none of the apostles claimed to know Jesus when he was a boy so those stories can't possibly be first person accounts.


also from Livy's history of Rome

He writes that at Placentia a notorious woman, with whom Flamininus was desperately in love,2 had been invited to dinner. There he was boasting to the courtesan, among other things, about his severity in the prosecution of cases and how many persons he had in chains, under sentence of death, whom he intended to behead. [3] Then the woman, reclining below him, said that she had never seen a person beheaded and was very anxious to behold the sight. Hereupon, he says, the generous lover, ordering one of the wretches to be brought to him, [p. 359]cut off his head with his sword.

this describes an incident that takes place in 184 bc


Indiana I totally respect your belief system but this is mine. It's based on my perception of what I think the bible is about. Not trying to be obnoxious or anti Christian.


Last night I was talking with a friend and described the bible as 1000 pages about puppetry then in the last chapter someone invents television. I don't know how that fits in here but ....

[sprite75]

John would have been about a hundred years old in a time when the average life span for a male was 30 years. He was also from a region that was mostly illiterate and that spoke Aramaic. the original language of the gospel is in Greek.


"Virtually EVERY Second and Third century source attributes it to John,"

even back then it was called "the spiritual gospel" meaning it wasn't meant to be taken literally. You can't or you would have to discount the other ones which it contradicts.

There was no such thing as independent Christian theology the early church fathers were devout Christians. the line between belief and fact is blurry.


and of course, none of the apostles claimed to know Jesus when he was a boy so those stories can't possibly be first person accounts.

I went to some bible study sessions in college sponsored by the seminary attached to the University I was attending.  I remember the seminary student leading the studies said that what had happened was that the followers of Christ thought he was going to be coming back pretty soon so they didn't need to write it down, passing it all down orally.  As the years went on the early Christians and it started to get 60, 70, 80 etc years after the birth of Jesus Christ they started to realize that maybe he wasn't coming back any time soon and they better start writing it down before they got too far away from when Christ was on Earth.

And you're right, by then most of the people with first hand knowledge of Jesus Christ were dead.  John the Apostle was supposed to be the youngest of them, and believed to have outlived all the other apostles.  The rest of them met with rather violent endings.  John was supposed to have died in about 100 AD in Ephesus and was buried in the nearby town of Selçuk.  The early church fathers may have said that the author of the gospel, revelations, and the apostles were all the same John but modern theologians believe there were 2 or more separate individuals.

[indianasmith]

There are several early accounts - Papias, for one, who knew John when he was a young man - which testify that John lived to an extraordinary old age.  Even in the Gospel, there is a comment in the last chapter where the author has to dispel a rumor that he would live on until the Lord returned, which his longevity had caused to be circulated in the church.

Greek was the universal trade language of the Mediterranean world.  I would not be unusual for commercial fishermen to be pretty fluent in Koine Greek, especially since there were several Greek communities (the Decapolis referred to in the NT) directly across the Sea of Galilee from Capernaum where James, John, and Peter lived.

I've studied the history of the NT for my entire life.  What it boils down to is that there are three proposed dates for every one of the synoptic Gospels:  The early dates, generally from 55-65 AD, which is held by conservative scholars like myself who believe that the traditionally ascribed authorship of the Gospels is correct.
The intermediate dates, like Lester cites, which place the synoptic Gospels between 70-90 AD and assume that, while they were not necessarily written by the traditional authors, they do preserve oral traditions associated with those individuals, and finally, the extremely late dates, which say that all the Synoptics (that's Matthew, Mark, and Luke, BTW) were written well after 90 AD, that they were not in any way associated with the individuals whose names they bear, and that their content is almost entirely myth, legend, and third or fourth hand testimony and therefore utterly unreliable.  That is the position taken by the more radical atheists who doubt that a historic person named Jesus of Nazareth even existed.
   Having looked over the evidence for all three, I think that the latest dates are altogether unsupportable, and that there is at least as much good evidence for the early dates as there is for the intermediate ones.

Oddly enough, John is the one Gospel that nearly everyone agrees on the date:  conservatives and skeptics alike assign it to the 90's AD, although conservative scholars believe it was written by the Apostle John himself, while others say it was either another follower of Jesus by the same name (a person for whom there is not any real evidence at all) or that it was entirely pseudepigraphic (someone else deliberately writing in John's name).  But again, the earlier sources, who were much closer to the actual events than us and whose motivations were not clouded by a fanatical desire to prove the Gospel's contents false, ALL attribute the Gospel to John himself.

[lester1/2jr]

"would not be unusual for commercial fishermen to be pretty fluent in Koine Greek,"

it would be highly unusual for them to be able to write it or even be literate in their native Aramaic though


your paragraph about the dating is wrong. There aren't 3 groups of people and their beliefs don't reflect their faith.

Believing the gospel of Mark was written in 65 rather than 90 ad doesn't mean you believe that it was written by Mark, it just means you think it was written in 65 ad rather than 90. Many historians of all different religiosities believe that date is relatively correct.

Paul of course doesn't reference any of the gospels so it wouldn 't make sense to place any of them in his time frame. at any rate, if they were written later that wouldn't alone be enough to disprove them. everyone agrees they were written long after Jesus death and in a different language.


and again, the John the Baptist story appears as happening to other people in The History of Rome and more to the point the order to kill all the first born males appears in the story of Moses in the same book. they are meant to illustrate the vindictive nature of Herod and prove prophecy respectively.  how would any of Jesus' followers know what happened in a private moment between the King and a woman and her daughter years before it meant anything to them?

incidentally The only date I do wonder about is Revelation which is much more apocalyptic and Jewish than the Gospel of John which it is generally claimed was written around the same time

[indianasmith]

the John the Baptist story appears as happening to other people in The History of Rome and more to the point the order to kill all the first born males appears in the story of Moses in the same book. they are meant to illustrate the vindictive nature of Herod and prove prophecy respectively.  how would any of Jesus' followers know what happened in a private moment between the King and a woman and her daughter years before it meant anything to them?


Just because similar incidents happened - it doesn't mean they were all referring to the SAME incident.  And Herod's execution of John happened at a public party in front of many witnesses, so it would easily have been known and talked about.  The elder Herod's murder of the infants at Bethlehem is certainly in character with the many stories of that bloodthirsty monarch's reign.  However, since Bethlehem was a town of 200 people, the number of children killed may have been less than a dozen - which was probably why the event escaped the notice of Josephus and other historians, but was preserved in the members of Jesus' family.
   One last note - while it is true that illiteracy was widespread in the First Century AD, it was much less so among the Jews.  They were a "People of the Book," after all, whose faith required them to read and learn the Scriptures at an early age.  And the Greek translation of the OT (the Septuagint) had been around for some time at that point, and Jesus often quoted it, so that shows that his audience did have some knowledge of Greek.
   One last thing - every commentary I have read says that there are generally three different ranges of dates given for the Gospels by different groups of scholars, so I stand by that statement. 

[lester1/2jr]

It was your characterization of the proponents of those dates that I disagree with. Believing in a later or earlier date wouldn't make someone less or more religious. Historically speaking though the earlier text would tend to be more reliable, obviously.

Just because similar incidents happened - it doesn't mean they were all referring to the SAME incident.

The elder Herod's murder of the infants at Bethlehem is certainly in character with the many stories of that bloodthirsty monarch's reign

he would have been completely insane and Jesus would have been the only male in all of Bethlehem who was his age. There's also no reason the family would have gone from Nazareth to Bethlehem for a "census" the goal of which was to collect taxes. either of these decrees would have resulted in total chaos.

but was preserved in the members of Jesus' family.

Peter, who the church says was the source for the gospel of Mark, was a figure in the early church even writing epistles I think he would have known those stories and recorded them in his gospel.

There were different traditions in early Christianity though. Paul believed strongly in the resurrection and in it's centrality to Christianity, but he admonishes people who did NOT in I can't remember which epistle. that's just to say people calling themselves Christians at the same time had heard something else. The original Mark contains no description of the resurrection. Not to open that whole can of worms just to say the basic message of Jesus' ministry is intact in all the gospels, the facts maybe are subject to human mistakes and biases a little more.