Dancing with the distinguished professor--Post III--Back to the positive evidence
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
It was a notable feature of my recent debate with Craig Evans (podcast here) that I dealt in details and new information, whereas Evans dealt mostly in generalities, repeated over and over again, and occasionally false specific statements. (See my earlier posts on the debate here and here.)
I want at this point to return to some of the specific things I said in the debate, defending the reliability of John, which I hope to return to in later posts and discuss at more length. I won't transcribe all of those comments but will give times for them and summaries so that readers can go to those places and listen. At minute 37:50, I talked about the artificiality of the distinction between John and the synoptics concerning the length of Jesus' discourses. I mentioned there a chart (see here) by the unitarian James Drummond in which compares the length of Jesus' uninterrupted speech in Matthew to that of Jesus in John and shows that the "Jesus who goes on and on for many verses in John as opposed to the synoptics" is an invention of scholarship rather than a fact of what we actually find in the text.
At minute 38:30 I talk about an article by Richard Bauckham in which he points out that a more connected speaking style would appear more realistic in any event. We should certainly not think that Jesus spoke always in aphorisms! That article is called "Historiographical Characteristics of the Gospel of John" (unfortunately not available in full-text to the public) and contains a lot of other interesting information about the apparent historicity of John, including the fascinating remark that, in John more than in the synoptics, we always know precisely where Jesus is located. I want to emphasize again, as I did in the debate, that I'm not trying to "appropriate" Bauckham in such a way as to imply that he and I would agree concerning the recognizable historicity of all that Jesus says in John. But Bauckham's arguments are what they are and may well support a stronger position than he is personally willing to endorse.
Beginning at about minute 39 I mention several aspects of the Farewell Discourse that are paralleled in the synoptic Gospels, even verbally. Nor are these the only interesting verbal and close conceptual parallels between Jesus' sayings in John and in the synoptics. I was able only to give a couple of examples. I pointed out the double undesigned coincidence connecting the foot washing in John to Luke concerning the Last Supper, which I discuss in Hidden in Plain View. I point out the parallel between Matthew 7:7 and John 16:24, which (as I mention) is right smack in the middle of the longest uninterrupted discourse spoken by Jesus in the entire gospel:
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Matt. 7:7)Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:24)
I also compare these:
And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. (Mark 13:13)Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15:19)
I then squeezed in, before Justin moved us on, the fact that when Jesus said, "I am the true vine" in John 16, he may have been walking past vineyards in Jerusalem.
At minute 48 I referred to Craig Blomberg's interesting discussion in The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel (p. 127) of the historicity of the Bread of Life discourse, on which all of Craig Evans's remarks in this debate cast doubt. Blomberg suggests that Jesus may have given an organized, midrashic commentary on Old Testament passages, starting at vs. 31 with the crowd's own Old Testament citation, plausibly of Psalm 78:24, and continuing in vs. 45 with Jesus' own citation of (probably) Isaiah 54:13. As Blomberg points out, the fact that here Jesus is teaching in a synagogue makes it all the more plausible that he historically gave a sermon substantially like this one on this occasion. He also mentions that the synoptics never even attempt to tell us what Jesus said when he preached in the synagogues, though they confirm that he often taught there. (Mark 1:21-22, Luke 4:16-21 and elsewhere.)
At about minute 53:55 I point out that, so far from confusing his own interpretive words with those of Jesus, the author of John is repeatedly scrupulous to distinguish his own gloss from Jesus' words. Here are several examples, though I had no time to give these in the debate:
John 2:18-21 The narrator stops in an aside to explain that Jesus was speaking of the Temple of his body when he told the Jewish leaders, "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The narrator does not put an explicit reference to the resurrection into Jesus' mouth but leaves the allusion cryptic, as Jesus presumably intended it to be.
John 7:37-39 Jesus invites anyone who is thirsty to come to him for rivers of living water springing up from within. The narrator pauses to explain that Jesus was referring to the Holy Spirit, whom those who believed would receive later. Even though he believes that this was Jesus' meaning, he does not put it into Jesus' mouth.
John 13:10-11 Jesus says, "You are clean, but not all." The narrator explains in his own voice that the "not all" was referring to Judas Iscariot.
On this topic I have an excellent quotation from D.A. Carson:
More important, there is quite substantial evidence not only that Jesus spoke cryptically at times, and that his cryptic utterances were not properly understood until after his resurrection/exaltation and his sending of the Paraclete; but also that John faithfully preserved the distinction between what Jesus said that was not understood, and the understanding that finally came to the disciples much later (e.g. John 2:18-22; 7:37-39; 12:16; 16:12f., 25; 21:18- 23; compare Luke 24:6-8, 44-49). It is not at all obvious that John is confused on this matter. One might even argue plausibly that anyone who preserves this distinction so faithfully and explicitly is trying to gain credence for what he is saying; and if he errs in this matter it will be because of an unconscious slip, not by design. D.A. Carson "Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel," 1981
At about 1:07:50 I let rip with a comment that is worth transcribing. This is the part that Evans then referred to as a mere assertion (!) that the portrait of Jesus in John is clearly the same person as the portrait of Jesus in the synoptics:
The nature and personality of Jesus are clearly the same in all four Gospels. And I have many, many examples of this but here in the time we have I can’t give them in detail. His use of sarcasm, his modes of thought, his rapier-sharp wit, his love for his friends, his weeping with compassion, his ability to read thoughts, even his characteristic metaphors and turns of phrase, his use of object lessons. John’s presentation of Jesus is actually very strikingly the same as the synoptics. And the differences between them are exaggerated and incorrectly stated by critical scholarship. By the use of vivid vignettes, John shows us not an allegorical abstraction but a solid and intensely real person, and he is the same person we meet in the synoptic Gospels. And we can tell that by reading them. That’s not just something we believe by faith. That’s actually right there in the text and in the documents.
Later I hope to elaborate on all of these points in other posts with specific examples. These are all supportable by specifics. I squeeze in a couple of examples at the very end (1:10:09). One is Jesus' way of talking about Sabbath controversies in Luke 13 and in John 7. I discussed that in detail in a post here. I also mention Jesus' physical gesture of looking up to heaven in prayer--a characteristic Jewish gesture that Jesus makes into a personal indication of his relationship with the Father. See Mark 7:34, John 11:41, John 17:1.
Finally, I mention these pages in Stanley Leathes's book, which were invaluable to me in prepping for this debate. All of my older sources were given to me by Esteemed Husband, who (as all know well) is a great advocate of reviving the heritage of the past in biblical studies.
There is much else I could comment on concerning the debate, including Evans's strange attempt at patronization (about minute 45ff, where he suggests that I have never heard of the theory of Markan priority and the two-source hypothesis) and my response, but I'll leave those to interested listeners to find for themselves.
The Gospel of John is a wonderful, historical resource. It is not the problem child of the New Testament but rather an intimate portrait of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I am grateful to God for the gift of the Gospel of John, not solely as a theological meditation but, perhaps even more importantly, as an historical source. Defending it as such would not be an unworthy life's work.
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