[Oe List ...] 8/05/10, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXII: Introducing the Johannine Material

Thu Aug 5 11:54:33 CDT 2010

Thanks Ellie. I often brush over these, but I read this one. Spong continues
to stick it out there in people's noses, no holds barred. I can benefit from
his forthrightness. I'm not sure of his effectiveness for many people. He
lacks the generosity of Borg in my view. 

Further, he has little concern for creation spirituality and creation . . .
at least in the small parts of his work I am familiar with.

Any comments?

Do keep me on your list.

Herman

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Subject: [Oe List ...] 8/05/10, Spong: The Origins of the New Testament,
Part XXXII: Introducing the Johannine Material

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Thursday August 05, 2010 

The Origins of the New Testament, Part XXXII:
Introducing the Johannine Material

The last series of books that I will consider to complete our study of the
Bible's origins is referred to as "The Johannine Literature." It consists of
five books: the Gospel of John, the three epistles, I, II and III John, and
the Revelation of John. There was a time when people generally assumed that
these five books were the products of the same author. That point of view
has long been abandoned in academic circles. There are connections that bind
the Johannine material together to be sure. I John and the Gospel of John
are quite similar in content, style and word usage, sufficient to cause some
scholars to assume common authorship. Others suggest that the author of the
first epistle of John was writing a treatise on the gospel from which he
quoted liberally and that this accounts for the similarities. There are more
questions about II and III John, the texts of which claim as their author
one who was known as "The Elder." Almost no one today believes that the Book
of Revelation and the Gospel of John are products of the same person. 

There appears to have been a school of Christian thought near the end of the
first century organized around a man known as John the Elder, who himself
may have been a disciple of John Zebedee, which opens us to the possibility
that these five books are the products of different members of that
Johannine School. If that is so, it would account for the similarity found
in these works as well as for the obvious differences. Although one can only
be speculative about first century authors, this proposition makes more
sense to me than anything else and I have adopted it until further study
offers a better possibility. 

Without doubt the crown jewel of the Johannine literature in the Bible is
the Gospel of John, frequently called the "Fourth Gospel" in academic
circles. It is clearly the last of the gospels to be written. It is
dramatically different from the first three, Mark, Matthew and Luke, which
are known as the "synoptic gospels" and are deeply interdependent and bound
together. John's gospel, however, has exercised a disproportionate influence
on the development of the Christian creeds and the doctrines that define
"orthodoxy" in the western Christian Church. It is probably the favorite of
most people who sit in the pews of our churches if they had to choose a
favorite. It contains many passages with which church people are familiar.
The Prologue, a hymn of praise to the "Logos," translated as "word" in most
English Bibles, has been the most frequently used part of the New Testament
in Christian liturgies. Passages from John are the assigned reading in
almost every Christian funeral - "In my Father's house are many mansions"
being the most familiar funeral line. 

The Fourth Gospel has created unforgettable characters that dot the
landscape of the Christian imagination. One thinks of doubting Thomas, the
Samaritan woman by the well, Lazarus who was raised from the dead, Mary
Magdalene, alone and weeping at the tomb on Easter Day, Nicodemus who comes
to Jesus by night, and the man born blind who is the hero of a long and
detailed narrative. All of these figures are made vivid in our imaginations
through the literary genius of the author of the Fourth Gospel. With the
exception of Mary Magdalene, they are not mentioned in any other gospel, and
she stands out in John in a way quite different from the synoptic accounts. 

Was the author of the Fourth Gospel familiar with the earlier gospels?
Certainly there was a common body of tradition from which each of the gospel
writers drew. We know that both Matthew and Luke incorporated great portions
of Mark into their work. John certainly reveals a familiarity with the story
line followed by the synoptics. All four gospels begin with the story of the
adult Jesus in the presence of the figure of John the Baptist. In Mark,
Matthew and Luke, John actually baptizes Jesus. John introduces John the
Baptist in the proper place, but then only has him point to Jesus as the one
who must increase as he decreases, but John never baptizes Jesus in the
Fourth Gospel. All of the gospels conclude their narratives with a triumphal
entry that we associate today with the Palm Sunday procession. The passion
story of each has the account of a betrayal, arrest, crucifixion and
resurrection. In Mark, Matthew and Luke, however, the only time Jesus
journeyed from G alilee to Jerusalem was at the time of the crucifixion,
while in John Jesus goes back and forth between Galilee and Jerusalem on
several occasions. Mark, Matthew and Luke treat the public ministry of Jesus
as something that is told over a one-year period. John suggests that the
public ministry of Jesus was up to three years in duration. We can find
references that appear to point to a rather specific connection between Mark
and Luke and the Fourth Gospel that suggests a possible dependence on these
two as sources for John's writing, but that is harder to do with Matthew. 

Yet despite all these similarities and connections, there are some very real
differences between John and the other three gospels. There is no story in
John of Jesus' miraculous or "virgin birth." On two occasions, in chapters 1
and 5, John's gospel refers to Jesus as "the son of Joseph." Jesus delivers
no parables in John. The teaching of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel comes in
long, somewhat convoluted theological discourses. John records no agony in
the Garden of Gethsemane, but rather has Jesus walk resolutely toward his
crucifixion, which he expects to be his moment of glorification. The "High
Priestly prayer" in John, chapter 17, appears to be John's version of Jesus'
prayer "Let this cup pass from me" found in the synoptics. There is no
account of the Last Supper in John; instead we read the story of Jesus
washing the feet of his disciples. John denies that the Last Supper was the
Passover, while the earlier three gospels claimed that it was. John is the
only gos pel writer who places the mother of Jesus at the foot of the cross
to watch the crucifixion. She is simply not present in the other gospels, a
fact that renders most of Mel Gibson's motion picture, "The Passion of
Christ," to be almost biblically illiterate and that also calls into
question the accuracy of most of the piety of the ages that revolve around
the Virgin Mary. Miracles present in the three synoptic gospels are turned
into "signs" in John. The resurrection of Jesus in John is quite physical,
sufficient to have Thomas be invited to touch the print of the nails in
Jesus' hands and feet and to thrust his hand into the wound in Jesus' side,
a wound that only John describes. In these details John is closer to Luke,
whose resurrected Jesus asked the disciples to handle him because ghosts do
not have flesh. This put John, however, into opposition with Paul, Mark and
possibly Matthew, all of whom suggest that the risen Christ represents a new
dimension of life and ev en of consciousness that transcends the realm of
the physical. Indeed, the differences between the Fourth Gospel and the
earlier three are so significant that a harmonization of the gospel
tradition into a single theology of Jesus is almost impossible. In common
language, Mark presents us with a fully human Jesus upon whom God's Spirit
was poured at his baptism, making him a God-infused, but still human life,
while John suggests that Jesus was the pre-existent word of God, enfleshed
in the life of Jesus. The Jesus of Mark can cry from the cross, "My God, why
have you forsaken me?" The Jesus of John ends his life with the
pronouncement, "It is finished," which replicates the original creation
story and portrays Jesus as the author of the New Creation. For John, Jesus
is never separated from God: "The Father and I are one," John's Jesus says. 

When the Fellows at the Jesus Seminar were doing their work aimed at
determining the authenticity of the words of Jesus recorded in the four
gospels, they came to and published their conclusion, that only 16% of the
words attributed to Jesus in the entire gospel tradition were actually
spoken by him, which of course means that 84% were not. It is of interest to
note that none of the words attributed to Jesus by John were deemed to be in
the 16% that they claimed represented the authentic words of the Jesus of
history. Yet, even if that judgment is correct (and as one fellow in the
Jesus Seminar, I find no reason to argue with that conclusion) I still
concur in the opinion that John's gospel captures the essence of the Jesus
experience more profoundly than any other part of the New Testament. That
experience, however, simply cannot be contained within the boundaries of
literalized human words. So I think of John as the least literal, but the
most profoundly true of the fo ur canonical gospel writers. I will return to
this claim in subsequent columns to put more flesh on its bare bones. 

I doubt if there is any biblical book about which we could say that we have
in the present, surviving text of that book the exact words the original
author actually wrote. Things hand copied over a number of centuries lend
themselves to the probability of having words edited, added and even
deleted. The Gospel of John is no different. There are three textual
conclusions about John that have gained wide, almost universal support. One
is that chapters five and six need to be reversed. In their present order,
they make no contextual sense. The second is that the beautiful story in
chapter eight of Jesus standing between the woman taken in the act of
adultery and her accusers is not and never was part of the original text of
John's gospel. The third is that chapter 21 is an appendix, an epilogue that
was added later to the gospel and was not part of the original. I assume the
truth of these three textual insights. 

With this introduction, I will turn now to look at John's gospel then I will
move on to John's epistles and finally I will close this study with a look
at the book the Revelation of John So stay tuned. 

- John Shelby Spong

  _____  

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Bert Knapp from Granbury, Texas, writes: 

I have just finished reading your latest book, Eternal Life: A New Vision
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iestock at aol.com&utp=&rd=http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/Eternal_Life.aspx>
. I believe the thought you stated, but I have been afraid and almost
ashamed to admit it. I am 81 years old and my journey of faith has involved
many changes. I certainly enjoy reading your weekly columns and look forward
each week to reading your latest series on "The Origins of the New
Testament." After reading your book, however, I am curious about your
position on prayer. I will appreciate receiving your thoughts. 

A grateful reader.

Dear Bert, 

Congratulations on reaching your 81st birthday. You are just a little ahead
of me! 

Thank you for your comments on my book and columns. 

I think about prayer frequently. I write about it seldom. I can, however,
refer you to two places. The first is in my first book, "Honest Prayer,"
originally published in 1973, but now back in print through St. Johan's
Press in Haworth, New Jersey. It is a book that was inspired by
conversations I had with a woman in the mountain town of Pearisburg,
Virginia, named Cornelia Newton, who was in her early forties, married to a
doctor and the mother of three young children. She was dying of an incurable
malignancy. It is what I all "early Spong," that is, it represented my early
attempts to make sense out of life's tragedies. I do not today disagree with
anything I said there, but over the years I have moved beyond where I was
when that book was written, not so much to a different place, but to a
deeper place. In 2002, I dedicated two chapters to the subject of prayer in
a book entitled, A New Christianity for a New World
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i%20%20%20estock at aol.com&utp=&rd=http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/A_New_Chri
stianity_for_a_New_World.aspx> . That reflects much more my present
understanding of prayer, but it is ever changing and ever growing. 

To respond quickly, the way one thinks about prayer is determined almost
100% by how one understands the meaning of God. For most people, God is an
external, supernatural presence, who can come to our aid, setting aside the
laws of the universe to accomplish a divinely inspired purpose. It is that
concept of God which, I believe, distorts human life again and again. That
understanding presents us with a parent God who keeps us in the status of
being perpetual, spiritual children. This is also an immoral God who has the
power to influence events in the world and yet seldom uses it. This is a God
who had the power to stop tragedy, but instead allows such things as the
Holocaust, the Bubonic Plague, the devastation of hurricanes and Tsunamis
and who even is said to use sickness to punish sinners. That definition of
God results in a chaotic world run by a capricious, but not necessarily a
loving, deity. I believe that this God has died in light of a new
understanding o f the universe brought about by Galileo and by our
understanding of how the universe operates developed for us by Isaac Newton,
Louis Pasteur and many others. That idea of God is little more than a wish
fulfillment deity, a supernatural being who lives above the sky ready to
spring into action whenever we ask this God to do so. Such a God definition
is no longer viable or believable. I do not believe in a God who will plug
the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico in response to our prayers. 

For many people, this recognition represents the end of religion. If the
supernatural deity cannot come to our aid then why should we bother with
religion at all? For me, however, this is nothing more than the recognition
that we must find a new way to think about God and thus a new understanding
of what it means to pray. To chart that new possibility is a major piece of
why I wrote Eternal Life: A New Vision
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. It also requires a new Christology, which I sought to develop in my book,
Jesus for the Non-Religious
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iestock at aol.com&utp=&rd=http://johnshelbyspong.com/store/Jesus_for_the_Non_R
eligious.aspx> . 

To say it briefly, prayer becomes something you are, not something you do.
Your life and consciousness become the channel through which the meaning of
God flows into human life. Prayer becomes the activity of opening your life
to this deeper presence, this transcendent power we call God. Petition
becomes the way you share life and love with others. Intercession becomes
your willingness to be involved in causes of justice that help to build a
world in which all people can live fully, love wastefully and be all they
can be. Thanksgiving becomes the constant awareness of the way God changes
lives. Meditation and contemplation become the means of spiritual growth and
the development of a God consciousness and the praying person becomes deeply
aware that God works through his or her life constantly. I think it is a
beautiful vision. I am still living into it. 

I hope this helps. 

- John Shelby Spong

  _____  

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