The voice of the Master--Pure Style

The voice of the Master--Pure Style

by Lydia McGrew

(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)

In several places Michael Licona has pushed for a highly flexible view of John's willingness to change Jesus' words and even the events of Jesus' life. He calls it "adapting the traditions about Jesus" and gives the impression that it is widely granted among all Johannine scholars that John "adapted the traditions about Jesus," without specifying that the extent to which scholars think that John "adapted the traditions" varies widely and that the more controversial claims about John's "adaptations" are by no means universally accepted, especially among conservative, evangelical scholars.

Almost every time he argues for John's "adaptations," he will talk about the way Jesus talks in John, especially in the Greek. I've already quoted some of these statements in earlier posts, but I'm going to re-quote a couple of them here, because this post is going to be about geeky Greek stuff.

Here is one statement, from Licona's Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?

I have read John’s Gospel and 1 John many times in their original language, Greek. It is clear to me, at least, that the vocabulary and style of both strongly suggest that the same person composed them. If I am correct, one must choose either that John conformed his language to sound like Jesus in his letter or that John has recast Jesus’s teachings in his own words. Since Jesus in John’s Gospel teaches with an idiom that differs from how he sounds in the Synoptics about as much as British English differs idiomatically from the English of North Americans living in the Deep South, the latter option seems more plausible. (endnote 13, p. 239)

Of course, it scarcely follows from the fact that the same person composed John and I John that the author of John has done any sort of systematic recasting of Jesus' teaching in his own words. The entire force of Licona's argument here rests upon the latter part of the paragraph--namely, the claim that Jesus' own idiom in John is significantly different from that in the Synoptic Gospels and significantly the same as that in I John.

Similarly, in a post in the context of Craig Evans's controversial statements about the "I am" sayings, Licona said this:

To see [John's adaptation of the Jesus tradition] in action, I recommend reading through the Synoptic Gospels several times in Greek. Then read John’s Gospel and 1 John several times in Greek. (One can also observe this in English but it is far clearer and even more striking in Greek.) One will observe a few items relevant to this discussion: Although the message is the same, the way Jesus “sounds” in John is very different than the way He “sounds” in the Synoptics.The way Jesus “sounds” in John’s Gospel sounds very much like how John “sounds” in 1 John. That is, the grammar, vocabulary, and overall style of writing in both are strikingly similar.
Number 2 could be because John adjusted his style to be similar to his Master after spending much time with him. This would be similar to how some married couples adapt their laughs and expressions to one another over time. The other option and the one believed by most scholars is that John paraphrased Jesus using his own style. The reason scholars go with this latter view is because Jesus “sounds” so differently in John than in the Synoptics.

My approach to such claims has been an eclectic one. If you follow the other posts in this sub-series (here, here, and here) on "the way Jesus talks," you'll see how I have chipped away at these sweeping claims in various ways. I showed that Jesus actually often talks in the same way in John and the synoptic gospels, contra Evans and Licona. I showed that there are various allegedly "Johannine" words and themes that show up in the synoptics, and vice versa. I showed that some of the claims about distinctively "Johannine" phrases are actually just the result of scholarly illusion, since there isn't even a statistically significant difference between the appearance of the terms in question. (This is true, for example, of the allegation that it is "Johannine" for Jesus to address his disciples as "children.") And I discussed the way that selectivity of material and the desire to emphasize themes by selection (not by putting words in Jesus' mouth) can account for a great many of the alleged differences. In this regard I emphasized the importance of not thinking that John's or the Synoptists' portrayal of Jesus' teaching is presented as a representative sample of how often Jesus used a particular word or phrase or addressed a particular topic.

But what about all that Greek stuff? How can non-experts deal with the claim to esoteric knowledge if they don't read Greek? What about this claim concerning Jesus' "accent"?

Here we need to boil it down. It doesn't count as an "accent" for Jesus to talk about the concept of bearing witness to the truth or of others who bear witness to his mission from God. That's a thematic matter, though of course John might at times, in a normal, non-systematic fashion, have substituted a synonym in his description of what Jesus said. (So might the synoptic authors.)

What sorts of things are really left when we have dealt with scholarly illusions and thematic matters of emphasis and selection?

In this post I am going to give a sample of what's left. If I don't happen to include your favorite "Johannine" Greek idiom, please consider how my comments here (mutatis mutandis) apply to it. And here's the short version: These purely verbal matters are so trivial that even if the author of John had unconsciously tended to express Jesus' use of conjunctions or repetition in a way that was somewhat more characteristic of his own modes of speech than of Jesus' modes of speech, that could truly be a matter of minor paraphrase in a way that would leave Jesus' sayings completely recognizable and would not be anything remotely like the invention that is being foisted upon us under the phony aegis of the term "paraphrase." (See this post on the fact that a continuum issue should not be allowed to pressure people into accepting invention under the guise of "paraphrase.")

However (continuing the short version of what I'll be arguing here), there actually isn't any particular reason to think that John, more than the synoptics, paraphrased Jesus' idiom in such a way that Jesus "sounded more like" John himself than like the historic Jesus. In fact, given the Aramaic flavor of several of the characteristic "Johannine" verbal idioms, it's plausible that John is giving us something particularly close to the way that Jesus actually spoke, though often (perhaps) translated from Aramaic into an Aramaic-styled Greek.

Herewith, some examples.

Adversative kai

In John, we often find the Greek word kai (usually translated "and") used as an all-purpose conjunction, including in places where it seems to have the meaning "but" or "and yet." This is known as the adversative kai, and it seems to be much more prevalent in John than in the synoptic Gospels. It occurs both in Jesus' speech and in the narrator's voice. E.g.,

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. (John 1:10-11, NASB)

Obviously, the last "and" in each clause is meant to have a contrastive meaning. Despite the fact that the Word made the world, the world did not know him. Despite the fact that he came to his own, his own did not receive him.
Here is Jesus using the adversative kai.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit....Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. John 3:6,11

The contrastive meaning would lead one to think that verse 6 means, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit." The last "and" in verse 11 expresses the meaning "and yet."

There are quite a few more examples in John. Some occur in the one ambiguous segment (to which I'll return in my next post) where it is difficult to tell whether the narrator has taken over in John 3--e.g., 3:19, 32. Many more occur in words clearly being attributed to Jesus: 5:39, 43, 44. More examples: 6:36; 7:19, 30, 36; 8:52; 9:27; 10:25, 39; 12:34, 35, 47; 18:11; 20:29.

Now, if Jesus was not speaking Greek anyway in many scenes (though he may have been in the dialogue with Nicodemus), a decision made by John about how to render his conjunctions is a translation decision in any event, just as it is when Matthew, Mark, or Luke translates his conjunctions. There is no reason to think that the greater variety of conjunctions used in the synoptics is a better translation of Jesus' Aramaic than the ubiquitous kai in John. If John tended to use the adversative kai more often than Jesus did and hence tended to translate Jesus' contrastive meanings using kai particularly often, this is a perfect example of something so purely and trivially stylistic that it hardly should make us think that John is in any way less historical than the synoptics, Any translator may do such a thing.

But in this case there is reason to think that John's Greek is likely to be an especially good representation of what Jesus said. Here is Edwin Abbott's comment on this point:

[I]t is certain that our Lord, speaking in Aramaic, used the ambiguous vaw, capable of meaning “and” or “and yet,” and certain also that any Greek translators of Aramaic Christian traditions or of Hebrew Gospels would have the alternative of rendering vaw, when used in the latter sense, either literally by [kai] or freely by words meaning “but,” “however” etc. There results a reasonable probability that John, writing many years after the circulation of the Synoptic Tradition, which seldom uses the Hebraic [kai] in the sense of “and yet,” deliberately resorted to it as one of many means of forcing his readers to reflect on the many-sidedness of the Lord’s doctrine and on the occasional inadequacy of the letter o the earliest Gospels to reproduce the living word. Whatever may have been his motive, or motives, the fact remains that he uses--with a frequency and boldness unparalleled in the Synoptists--the Greek additive conjunction in a non-Greek adversative fashion to introduce adversative clauses with a suddenness that heightens the sense of paradox. Edwin Abott, Johannine Grammar, p. 139

In other words, there is a similarly all-purpose Aramaic conjunction, vaw or waw, which would function in the way that kai functions in John's usage. That is, it could mean either "and" or "and yet/but." And Jesus, when he was speaking Aramaic, would very probably have used that conjunction, making John's translation even more literal than one involving a greater variety of conjunctions in Greek.

Some scholars insist that there is a pun in Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus in chapter 3 (on the word usually translated "born again") that works only in Greek. This may be used to argue that John must have invented the scene (if we insist that Jesus wouldn't have spoken Greek), though it can just as well be used to argue that Jesus and Nicodemus (whose name is Greek) were indeed speaking Greek on this occasion. I myself am a tad dubious about the objective existence of the pun. Maybe it's there and maybe it's being read in.

But suppose that on that occasion Jesus was speaking Greek. Is it not fairly plausible that Jesus' own Greek would have been Aramaic-flavored? In that case, what is to hinder him from having used the adversative kai himself?

Once again, I am not saying that this has to be the case or that to concede otherwise would be to be forced into accepting all the other major alterations that go under the heading of "Johannine adaptation." Indeed, I insist to the contrary. Minor, recognizable verbal paraphrase is perfectly fine and very plausibly does happen in the Gospels, both for Jesus' words and for the words of others, and it's no big deal. What I am saying is that we have no more reason to think it's happening in the case of John's adversative kai and some reason to think that John may be giving us Jesus' words particularly closely by means of this Semitic-flavored Greek idiom.

Asyndeton

Asyndeton means the absence of a conjunction in a place or series of places where one would otherwise expect conjunctions. Simply put, asyndeton is a kind of choppiness of expression. It can sometimes be very effective rhetorically and is used by orators deliberately. One of the most famous instances comes from Winston Churchill:

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

The Gospel of John has a high degree of asyndeton, in the narrative itself, in the theological discussions by the narrator, and in the words of Jesus. I will even give an example below from someone else's words in the gospel. Asyndeton is statistically a good deal more frequent (here I am including the narrative of events) in John than in the other Gospels. Vern Poythress has a long, technical paper on the frequency of asyndeton in John here. My only complaint (as a researcher) is that he gives a lot of examples from the event narrative and virtually none from Jesus' words, but the latter are easy to find for oneself. Poythress says that asyndeton is almost a default form of connection in the Gospel of John, which is definitely not true of the other Gospels.

Here are instances from the narrator's theological discourse:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17)
No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side,he has made him known. (John 1:18)

Here's an instance from the confession of Nathanael when he first meets Jesus:

Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49)

Here are a few from well-known words of Jesus in the Gospel of John:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me." (John 14:1)

"Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful." (John 14:27)

"I am the vine; you are the branches." (John 15:5)

"Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth." (John 17:17)

It's even been said that John 15:1-17 can be seen almost as one long asyndeton, even though there are numerous uses of kai. The point is that that passage contains very few connectives in between Jesus' injunctions and comments to his disciples. Of course, the same is true of the beatitudes in Matthew 5, but one might expect more subordinating conjunctions in John 15:1-17 since it is not merely a list of blessings. Reading John 15 in a translation like the NASB gives one a sense of that choppy and also repetitive style, involving lots of "ands" and lots of places with no conjunction, that is often called Johannine. (I'll return to the repetition below.)

Once again, as I have said throughout this post: If the author of John tended to think and speak somewhat more choppily than Jesus did and eliminated some of Jesus' conjunctions in recounting his words, this would still fall well within the range of ordinary paraphrase, garden-variety paraphrase, and would hardly justify some general notion that the Gospel of John is less literally, historically faithful than the other Gospels in its portrait of Jesus. After all, the authors of the Synoptic Gospels also probably had to translate Jesus' words into Greek, and it's extremely difficult to find evidence that Jesus spoke less choppy Aramaic than John portrays in his Greek style.

But there is another point. As with the adversative kai, asyndeton is also more Aramaic than it is Greek. Leon Morris states,

Asyndeton...is common in Aramaic (though not in Hebrew, so this is an Aramaism, not simply a characteristic of Semitic languages). Studies in the Fourth Gospel, p. 222

The same point about Aramaic was also noted by C.F. Burney and used by him as part of an argument for the (almost certainly false) conclusion that the Gospel of John was originally written in Aramaic. That asyndeton is characteristic of Aramaic is noted as well by E.P. Sanders (apropos of the somewhat higher degree of asyndeton in Mark than in the other synoptic Gospels).

But once again, if asyndeton is characteristic of Aramaic, and if Jesus was often speaking Aramaic (or at times speaking a Greek which would itself have been influenced by Jesus' own Aramaic-speaking background), why should we think that the asyndeton in the words of Jesus in John is not literal and original? We should be all the more open to this possibility since these are sayings and discourses unique to John in any event, so there is not even a direct contrast or conflict between John's Greek version of Jesus' words at these points and a version in the Synoptics.

Just as...so

There are sayings by Jesus in both John and the Synoptic Gospels in which he makes a comparison: "Just as [this], so [that]." Here's one from Luke:

For as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. (Luke 11:30)

An oddity in John is that he will often (though not always) use a different word for "so" in this sequence than the usual Greek. The Greek for "as" or "just as" is kathōs, and John uses this. But the usual Greek word for "so" or "just so" in such a comparison--found in Luke, in the Septuagint version of the Psalms and Proverbs--is houtōs. Instead, John will repeatedly use (perhaps this will not come as a surprise) his all-purpose kai. Stylistically, this creates a situation in which "so" is rendered as "also."

For example, here are Jesus' words in John 6:

As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. (John 6:57)

And a more rigidly literal translation of the Greek into English would leave out the word "so" altogether.

Other examples in Jesus' words occur in 13:15, 33; 15:9; 17:18; 20:21. (But in Jesus' words in John 15:4--" As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me"--John uses the more normal Greek houtōs for "so.") The kathōs...kai construction occurs also in I John 2:18 and 4:17. In I John 2:6 John uses both kai and houtōs (he is repeating his meaning) to convey the concept of "so," presumably for variety.

It is worth noting that the use of kai after kathōs in the sense of "also" is not unique to John. It is also found in Paul's writings, though Paul tends to put the two words right next to one another in his Greek:

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Ephesians 4:32Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:25)

In both of these the meaning "just as, so also" is conveyed by the phrase kathōs kai. So by no means was the idiomatic use of kai unknown outside of John to express this meaning of "so" or "even so." I have not been able to find clear evidence that it is distinctly Aramaic or Semitic (unless Paul's use of it is considered such evidence).

In any event, once again, the sayings of Jesus in which this construction occurs are unique to John, and since we are merely talking about Greek synonyms in a context where Jesus was probably not originally speaking Greek in any event, what we seem to have is a translation choice for a slightly unusual translation on the part of John where we would expect, say, Luke to have made a different translation choice. John's certainly cannot be taken to be less historical or more "adaptive" than Luke's.

Verily, verily

It is well-known that in the Synoptics Jesus will introduce a saying with "Truly" (sometimes translated "verily") whereas in John he will introduce sayings with this same word doubled--"Verily, verily." Both are the Greek transliteration of Hebrew "amen." Jesus follows either of these with, "I say unto you."

Here we do indeed have a statistical pattern. Jesus uses the "verily" expression many times both in John and in the Synoptics, but he always says it only once in the Synoptics and always says it twice in John. The material is not overlapping. That is, the Synoptics and John are telling about different sayings. Nonetheless, the characteristic stylistic pattern is quite consistent in each and is different. The example references are too many to type out. Here are a few of each:

Single "verily":

Matt. 5:18, 10:15, 18:3, Mark 3:28, Luke 4:24, 23:43

Double "verily":

John 1:51, 5:29, 8:34, 10:1, 16:20, 21:18,

and many more of each.

So which is it? Did Jesus always say, "Verily, I say unto you" or "Verily, verily, I say unto you"? Did the Synoptic authors drop one, or did John add one? Or did Jesus sometimes do it one way and sometimes the other? (I note here that this isn't a matter of Jesus' allegedly "sounding like John." We don't find "verily, verily" either in the narrator of the Gospel or in the Johannine epistles but only in the words of Jesus.)

Before we get fixated on the trivial difference between one and two "amens," we should notice that this is actually a similarity of style, considered even at a slightly broader level, between the "synoptic Jesus" and the "Johannine Jesus." After all, it's a pretty striking thing for this man to go around introducing his own sayings in this emphatic and distinctive way, whether he says one "amen" or two at the outset. The voice of Jesus is notably similar in both. And the sheer number and variety of contexts in which John and the synoptics show him doing so shows agreement between them that he did it a lot.

As to one "verily" or two, here is some interesting independent evidence (mentioned in an earlier post) that at least sometimes he doubled introductory words for emphasis: In the Synoptic Gospels Jesus twice repeats the name of someone he is addressing at the beginning of an earnest statement to that person. In Luke 22, Jesus is addressing Peter:

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you (pl.), that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31-32)

Something similar happens with Martha:

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)

There is, in fact, something rather Semitic about the repetition of the names and also about the repetition of "amen." While not used at the beginning of a saying, "Amen and amen" is used several times for final emphasis in the Psalms: Psalm 41:13, 72:19, 89:52.

While it is possible that John added a second "verily" to some of Jesus' sayings, it is also entirely plausible that Jesus emphatically used it twice on various occasions.

Redundancy

There is no doubt that when Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John he is repetitive, and repetitive in a distinctive way. Jesus' redundancy is probably part of what has given rise to the Myth of the Monologuing Jesus, which I'll address in a later post. It is not true that there are more "long, long discourses" where Jesus "goes on and on for many verses" in John than in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, in particular). There are at least as many long sections of Jesus' speech in the Synoptics (if not more) than there are in John. But it is true that Jesus in John speaks in a peculiarly thematically repetitive way when speaks for a segment of verses. In fact, one might almost say that the relative lack of subordinating logical connectives in the style of Jesus' discourse in John is made up for by thematic repetition. This makes what Jesus says both cohesive and emphatic, but not hierarchically structured. He just comes back to the same words and phrases over and and over again. At times (particularly in the Farewell Discourse) one word will be introduced while he's still discussing a different theme, and then the new word will be repeated as he moves into a section focused on that theme. (For example, "commandment" is introduced in John 15:10 while "abide" is still a thematic word. Then "commandment" takes over for several verses, though "abide" crops back up in vs. 16. "Fruit" was a major theme at the beginning of the section, fades in importance for a bit, and comes back into view in vs. 16 along with "abide.")

A long quotation is perhaps in order here. One cannot exactly say that Jesus meanders, but he does repeat himself. Reading aloud makes the stylistic point even clearer:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another. (John 15:1-17)

Similarly, notice in John 6:35ff how Jesus keeps coming back to the phrase "raise him [or it] up on the last day"--four times. Or look at John 5:19-30 and the repeated use of the word "judgement" and of statements such as that the Father has given the Son the power of judgement and that the Son will raise the dead at the last day. There is a circular quality to Jesus' speech in these places. He says the same things again and again in (very) slightly different ways or in a different order.

In Matthew 5 (to take one example) Jesus' sayings are briefer, more memorable, and more aphoristic. They are pithy. Even if he repeats similar concepts (famously in the Beatitudes but also in thematic sections like 5:17-20) he does so in ways that vary so clearly and memorably that there is no sense of circling. He may make his point twice about entering into life maimed rather than having all one's members and going to hell, but in one verse he'll do it with a hand illustration and in another verse with an eye.

Moreover, just to keep on going as far as one can with this, there is something of the same circling, repetitive style in the epistle of I John. Like here:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. (I John 1:1-3)

Or here:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. (I John 2:19-24)

The stylistic similarity is unmistakable, and presumably this is the kind of thing that has impressed Licona so much and caused him (and many others) to conclude that John in particular has made a major "adaptation" of the voice of Jesus to make it more like his own--more so than the synoptic authors. Once one thinks of such a stylistic adaptation as large-scale enough, that loosens up (though even then it need not) one's willingness to accept John's making other changes--inventing dialogue, inventing sayings as inspired by completely different sayings, making up speeches, and so forth.

Now let's look at an alternative theory. The obvious alternative is that John's style (and themes--see the reference to "abiding" in I John) were influenced by Jesus rather than that John makes Jesus sound like himself. Strictly speaking, the two are not entirely mutually exclusive. Jesus may have been, historically, much more redundant than in the discourses in the Synoptics, and hence have spoken more like I John, but that doesn't preclude John's having remembered and reported him as repeating a phrase or a point on a given occasion somewhat more often than he actually did. Most of us would be hard-pressed to remember precisely how many times (was it three or four?) a teacher repeated the injunction to read the syllabus before e-mailing him.

In any event, Licona rejects the hypothesis that John sounds like Jesus rather than vice versa because of the difference from the Synoptics:

The reason scholars go with this latter view [that John paraphrased Jesus using his own style] is because Jesus “sounds” so differently in John than in the Synoptics.

Again, this wouldn't be such a big deal if "paraphrased using his own style" meant just what it sounds like and no more, but as we have seen again and again, it is used to mean much more. In fact, in the very context of that last quote, Licona is discussing the theory that many of the "I am" statements did not occur in an historically recognizable way as found in John.

But consider the following points: If one were trying to memorize and write down what Jesus said in a memorable form, would one be likely to include redundancy? Wouldn't that be the first thing to go in an oral memorization of phrases?

It's particularly remarkable that those like Licona and others who often talk about "the gist" (and then use it to justify all sorts of major inventions) should think that John is the one who has probably adapted the voice of Jesus here. Indeed, it's a sign of the power that sheer bias against John exercises in New Testament studies. For if we are to speak of writing "the gist" of what Jesus said, surely the elimination of redundancy would be a perfect technique for that purpose. Suppose, just as a thought experiment, that when Jesus spoke of cutting off your hand and cutting out your eye so as to enter into life, as found in the Synoptics, he actually gave a several-verse short discourse, "Johannine" in style, in which he said several additional times that it is better to enter into life maimed than to go to hell with all one's members intact. If his disciples were memorizing "the gist" of what he said, something like what we find in Matt. 5:29-30 is exactly what we might find--quite faithful to what he did say, recognizable and historical, only shorter.

I find it rather surprising that this point isn't made more often. Good teachers often repeat. Ordinary people often repeat. (Notice some time how often you repeat when speaking.) Great preachers often repeat. Repetition is natural in ordinary language and is also a known technique to impress a point upon one's audience. It is antecedently not improbable at all that Jesus was far more repetitive, historically, than he appears to be in the discourses in the Synoptic Gospels, and hence more "Johannine."

One person who has made a somewhat similar point is Richard Bauckham.

The way [the Synoptic Gospels] represent what Jesus said on such occasions is mostly by means of a collection of Jesus’ aphorisms and parables, sometimes with explicit thematic structuring of the material, sometimes more loosely grouped according to topic or catchword.A point that historical Jesus scholars rarely make is that this cannot have been how Jesus actually taught. If Jesus did, as Mark represents (4.1), address the crowds from a boat on the lake of Galilee, he cannot have spoken merely the three parables Mark attributes to him on this occasion or even the larger collection of parables that Matthew provides. The issue here is not what Jesus said on a specific occasion, but the way in which Jesus generally taught. He must have taught in a much more discursive and expatiating way than the Synoptic Gospels attribute to him. The aphorisms and parables were the carefully composed distillations of his teaching, put into memorable form for hearers to take away with them. They could not have been more than a small proportion of what Jesus actually said (and writers and hearers/readers of Gospels would readily understand this). But not surprisingly they were what were remembered and were available to the Gospel writers. It was these that they therefore used when they wished to represent Jesus engaged in teaching....
Formally, [the] teaching or discourse material [in John] is quite varied, but it has in common the negative characteristic that it does not consist of collections of the kind of aphorisms and parables the Synoptics provide. Aphorisms and short parables, even sayings we also find in the Synoptics and sayings that would not have been out of place on the lips of Mark’s, Matthew’s or Luke’s Jesus, are found,
but they are scattered through the discourse material and in many cases embedded in it. The main point to be made here is that, formally speaking, Johannine discourses and dialogues could well be regarded as more realistic than the typical Synoptic presentation of his teaching. ("Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John," pp. 31-32)

Someone may look up the article and find that Bauckham isn't entirely agreeing with me, either. So I wouldn't want to seem to be quoting him out of context. In keeping with a fact I have noted before, that Bauckham's work is a mixed bag and that he sometimes partially undermines his own excellent points, Bauckham exaggerates the artificial nature of both John's and the Synoptic authors' process of composition. For example, eliminating redundancy in Jesus' teaching would not make the Synoptic discourses "carefully composed" in the sense that Bauckham seems to intend. And he later says, "In one sense, John’s presentation is more realistic than theirs, but at the same time it required much more than theirs did the putting of words into Jesus’ mouth." (p. 33)

But why should it? That statement is especially surprising coming from Bauckham, who has done so much to defend the conclusion that the author of John was an eyewitness of Jesus' ministry! If, as Bauckham says, "As representations of the way Jesus taught, the conversations, dialogues and discourses of John’s Gospel are quite historically credible" (p. 33), why should they not simply be historical, full stop? Historical in the sense that a faithful report from a truthful witness with an excellent memory is historical. That need not mean that they are verbatim, but we are certainly in no position whatsoever to say that they are in any important sense "artificial" (a term Bauckham uses for both the Synoptic and the Johannine representation of Jesus' speech) or that they required to any especially great extent "putting of words in Jesus' mouth." They could well be the Beloved Disciple's quite close, even if not tape-recorded, memories of how Jesus really taught.

In any event, while Bauckham himself is apparently not willing to draw this conclusion, his argument tends to support it. Discursive, repetitive speech is quite normal in good teaching and preaching, and there is no reason to take John as less historical for attributing it to Jesus while the Synoptic authors present a more aphoristic style. Surely we should not be under the impression that Jesus always spoke in aphorisms.

The most likely scenario is an eclectic one. Jesus probably spoke differently at different times. (Leon Morris expressly considers the possibility that Jesus sometimes spoke more aphoristically to make his sayings easier to memorize and spoke more discursively at other times. Studies in the Fourth Gospel, pp. 133-137) The Synoptic authors probably eliminated Jesus' redundancy in some places. And John may have added some redundancy in his memorial reconstructions of Jesus' teachings on different occasions from those reported in the Synoptics.

Conclusion

Too often, the fact that the Bible was written in unfamiliar languages is used to silence non-experts. If you don't read Greek fluently, how can you possibly be qualified to question the conclusions of the experts? When the experts want your opinion on the literal factuality of the Gospel of John, they will give it to you. This insider-outsider thinking has made it difficult for others even to find out the meaning of, much less question, the claim that John must have heavily adapted Jesus' speech, or even more broadly must have adapted "the Jesus tradition." In this way non sequiturs are allowed to flourish unchecked by outside questioning. (Let me add here that I strongly encourage readers to look into my own claims in this post. I'm not telling you just to take my word, either. I can't recommend too highly on-line Greek tools such as the Greek text analysis tool at Biblehub.com.)

In this series I have anatomized and classified various things that might be meant by "Johannine idiom." Different themes, characteristic words, and here (allegedly the part that outsiders aren't qualified to discuss) Greek idiom and other purely stylistic features. I have tried to point out what evidence there really is for a difference in Jesus' speech, especially in this post.

What we have seen is that, when it comes to an argument for a significantly more "adapted" and less literally historical "Johannine Jesus" (than Jesus in the Synoptics), due to the way Jesus talks, there is no there there. Looked at in its detail, the argument that John is much more "interpretive" and hence less historical than the Synoptics dissolves. Sometimes the points can even be turned on their heads, and we have reason to believe that John's portrait of how Jesus spoke may well be the closest of all to the literal voice of the Master. In other cases, where there may be different translation choices made on the part of John or the Synoptic authors, there is no reason to think of theirs as canonical or more historical while John's are more interpretive. And none of the points in any event support larger claims such as that the "I am" sayings in John are "paraphrases" (i.e., theologically inspired, ahistorical inventions) based upon different historical events as shown in the Synoptics.

In the next two posts I will be examining in more detail two myths about Jesus in John. The first I'll debunk is the myth of the sock puppet Jesus--the claim that we often find it difficult to tell in John whether Jesus or the narrator is speaking. The next will be the myth of the monologuing Jesus--the claim that Jesus in John "goes on and on for many verses" more than in the synoptic Gospels.

Posted by Lydia McGrew on July 26, 2018 9:17 AM | Del.icio.us | Permalink

Tags: (Gospel of John) (Licona) (New Testament)