Transcript: Craig A. Evans--comments on the Gospel of John, 2012
(Originally published at What's Wrong With the World. Link to original post at 'permalink' below.)
In a few days, on May 19, the Unbelievable radio show will be releasing a podcast of my dialogue with Craig A. Evans on the historicity of John's Gospel. I have not yet heard that podcast myself. Due to some other things going on this weekend, I will probably be first posting and commenting on the debate next week, probably on Tuesday.
In the meanwhile, I want to post as background most of the statements that Evans made in 2012 about the Gospel of John in the course of two nights of debating skeptical NT scholar Bart Ehrman. There were others scattered throughout the debates, and some were revealing, but these are the comments of any length.
These are all available in video form. With each excerpt I will post a video link that is time-stamped, so that you can watch the discussion in context for yourself.
Some of these statements by Evans about the Gospel of John came to light last fall, in 2017, and at that time I wrote about those here. Rather to my surprise, at that time Mike Licona chose to step forward and defend Dr. Evans's statements about Jesus' claims to deity, though he almost immediately clarified that he is not committed to Dr. Evans's position. Since then he has made further statements indicating his own leaning in that direction, including very recently stating that that is the position he would take if a gun were pointed at him. (Minute 9:30 in this podcast.)
Be that as it may, Licona's own defense of what he perceives as Dr. Evans's position on Jesus' unique Johannine deity claims is quite revealing. The arguments themselves make it quite clear that, though Licona uses the confusing terminology of "paraphrase," the theory in question is in fact that of full dehistoricization of those unique claims. Licona argued on the side of Evans and "other scholars" that, if Jesus was secretive about his messianic identity, we "would not expect" to find him "claiming to be God publicly and in such a clear manner as we find John reporting." Of course, the public, clear nature of Jesus' statements in John is the whole point of those historical statements, leading to attempts to stone him on two occasions.
Since last fall, I have listened to the entirety of both nights of 2012 debate between Ehrman and Evans. These are available on Ehrman's Youtube channel. Rather astonishingly, even more explicit and lengthy dehistoricizing comments about the Gospel of John, from Craig Evans, came to light. So far from providing any mitigating "context," further knowledge of all that Evans said at that time reveals many more emphatic comments in the same vein. Again, please note: While some of these (the first segment below) are the same comments that were discussed last fall, the rest are additional and were not brought to light at that time.
This transcript will serve as useful background for the radio broadcast between me and Dr. Evans. I encourage you to read them and, if you have any doubts or questions, watch the video.
I have a few remarks following the transcript, but seeing/hearing what Evans actually said is perhaps even more important than reading what I have to say below, if you don't have time for both.
Emphasis added.
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January 19, 2012, at St. Mary’s University in Nova Scotia
First night of a two-part (actually, a reiterated) debate with Bart Ehrman on “Does the New Testament Present a Historically Reliable Portrait of the Historical Jesus?”
Ehrman:
Um okay, so, um, in the Gospel of John, Jesus … ah … says a lot of “I am” sayings, very famous sayings, “Before Abraham was, I am,” “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the father but by me,” I am the bread of life, I am the light of the world,” etc. These “I am” sayings, and, at once point, of course, he says, “The father and I are one.” So, my question to you is, do you think the historical Jesus really said these things?
Evans:
I think most of these things were not uttered as we find them by the historical Jesus. So I suspect we don’t have too much difference on John. My view is the gospel of John is a horse of another color altogether. It’s a different genre. John is often compared to the wisdom literature. It’s like Wisdom is personified. Chokhmah, lady Wisdom, or in Greek, Sophia. She wanders the streets. She calls out to people, she does things. Well, nobody would read that and think, “Oh, did you see Wisdom going down the street the other day.” Nobody would think that is a literal person. What is mysterious to me about John is that once you say that and say, “Okay, perhaps we should interpret the ‘I am’ statements as ‘He is’ confessions – ‘He is the light of the world,’ ‘He is the way, truth, and the life’, ‘He is the bread of life,’” a confession of the Johannine community that likely generated that version of the Gospel – About the time you think John is a gigantic parable, then along comes a scholar who says, “Y’know, it’s loaded with historical details, also.” And so that’s what makes John so tricky. There is a Society of Biblical Literature section devoted to John and the historical Jesus chaired by a scholar named Paul Anderson. So that’s probably more [of an] answer than you want. So, I don’t disagree with you too much on that point. I think John is studded with historical details. Maybe you called them nuggets. That’s not a bad way of describing John. But I think the synoptics are more than just some nuggets. And … but ..
Ehrman:
Okay, so let me just add to pursuing that … I mean John … I think both of us are agreeing that John is not historically accurate. It’s theologically been probably the most important of the Gospels, I would say, historically, and people relish the theological. But in terms of its historical accuracy, it’s … if you were there you would not have heard Jesus say these things, probably. It’s a later theological …
Evans:
No, not in so many words, not like that. I don’t think so.
Ehrman:
Okay, so if we toss John out …
[laughter]
Evans:
I’m not tossing John out. And by the way, Bart, I object to saying it’s not historically accurate. Well, if something that isn’t...isn’t exactly historical, how is it not historically accurate? It’d be like saying “You mean the parable, the parable was a fiction Jesus told? It’s not historically accurate?”
Ehrman:
Well we would have to argue what John was intending to produce, whether he was intending …
Evans:
That’s exactly what the question is.
Ehrman:
And we have no access to his intentions.
Evans:
Well that’s what … that’s true for anything in antiquity, I suppose. That’s why we do exegesis.
Ehrman:
So if we agree that John is not historically accurate, which one of the Gospels is?
Evans:
[Shakes his head in apparent disagreement]
Ehrman:
All right, you … you have said that Jesus didn’t say … Okay, you are not going to use John as a blueprint for writing the historical life of Jesus. Because you think it’s metaphorical.
[Evans nods]: Fair enough.
1:44:54
Question to Evans:
“In your book Fabricating Jesus, you discuss the criteria of authenticity that scholars use to reconstruct historical portraits of Jesus. Clearly these criteria cannot apply to every aspect of the life of Jesus. Are there any sayings of Jesus or activities in the Gospels that you are skeptical about?”
Evans: That’s a very good question. Yeah, the criteria by their very nature look, well, they look for sayings and sometimes they’re applied to deeds that can pass the test of the criteria. Some of the criteria are a little wonky, and some have been either modified or set aside.
For example, one criterion says, if the saying occurs in two or more independent streams of tradition, its claimed authenticity is strengthened, because it is not likely to just be a ringer that just floated into one stream. A ringer might get into one stream but would it get into two or three independent streams? It’s not likely. So anyway, and then on it goes. There are other criteria. So there are sayings attributed to Jesus, we’ll just stick with the sayings, that as far as we can tell don’t meet the criteria. And that is partly why the Jesus Seminar, Bart referred to it as regarding as uncertain or inauthentic like 78% of the gospel materials. And it’s because in large measure lots of materials don’t fit the criteria. (Now, I think they’ve had some of the criteria wrong, and there were other problems of context.)
So, yeah, like, I’ve already mentioned the Gospel of John as an example of that. It’s singly attested, so the distinctive material in John is not found in multiple sources but only in one. But also it’s the, um, it doesn’t fit the early first century Jewish setting oftentimes. It doesn’t agree with the synoptic Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke who talks a different way. And so the Johannine sayings, the distinctive ones, with a few exceptions, they’re the ones that look like, as I said earlier, a different genre altogether, something that only incidentally has historical material in it, but otherwise is a completely different type of literature, more like wisdom literature, where Jesus is portrayed as Wisdom personified and walks and talks like Wisdom.
Question for Evans:
“The Gospel of John seems to present a different Jesus than Matthew, Mark and Luke. Do you think John presents a reliable portrait of Jesus and should we trust that those long speeches in John actually originate from Jesus?”
Evans:
Well, let me elaborate on the answer I gave earlier, because I have already answered that, but let me re-state. On a historical level let us suppose we could go back into time with a camera team and audio and video record the historical Jesus and we followed him about throughout his ministry. I would be very surprised if we caught him uttering, “I am this” and “I am that” and one of these big long speeches that we find in John. Okay, so I’m just taking a different tack, but I’m saying the same thing I said before. This aspect of the Gospel of John I would not put in the category of historical. It’s a genre question.
The real question then would be, do these from a theological point of view reflect an accurate theological understanding of Jesus’s person, his accomplishment, what he’s achieved, what he brings to his believers. Is he the light of the world? Is he, y’know, the way, the truth, the life? Is he the bread of life? See? And that’s what Christians can affirm.
Now this difference of the portrait of Jesus in John compared to the synoptics, this was not lost on the early church. There were church fathers that had grave reservations about John. In their mind, John should have been a fourth synoptic gospel, but it wasn’t. And so they were advocating its exclusion from the collection of writings to be read in churches. That’s of course what eventually gave us the canon and what we call the New Testament.
So you could say, theologically, these affirmations of who Jesus is in fact do derive from Jesus. Not because he walked around and said them. But because of what he did, what he said, what he did, and because of his resurrection. And so this community that comes together in the aftermath of Easter says, “You know what? This Jesus who said these various things, whose teaching we cling to and interpret and present and adapt and so on, he is for us the way, the truth, the life, the true vine. He is the bread of life,” and so on. And so that gets presented in a very creative, dramatic, and metaphorical way, in what we now call the Gospel of John.
So I’m urging people here, traditional Christians or conservative Christians, to take a new look at John and not fret over how you can make it harmonize with the synoptic Jesus. That’s the way scholars usually talk. But to look at John as doing something else. It’s not a fourth synoptic Gospel, but it really is a different genre and has a different purpose and is going about the task in a very different way.
January 20, Part II, Acadia University Divinity College
Minute 04:50, Evans's opening statement
First, only a portion of the New Testament is concerned with history. The principal source for material from which we may derive a portrait of the historical Jesus are the three synoptic gospels--Matthew, Mark and Luke. They are called synoptic because they overlap a lot, and we can see them together, which is what the Greek word means, see them together in parallel columns. John’s Gospel is another matter. What genre is it? It’s not another synoptic Gospel, as some would like to think. All agree that there is some history in John, but is it primarily history, or is it something else?
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Some comments:
1) Many of Evans’s comments are clearly about the Gospel of John as a whole, not merely about some carefully circumscribed passages. Ehrman asks him about whether Jesus claimed to be God in the relatively more explicit ways found in John, and Evans answers both by agreeing with Ehrman that he did not and also by going farther and saying that John is a different genre, a “horse of a different color,” from the synoptics.
When Bart says that John is not historically accurate, Evans’s answer is not to defend its historical accuracy but rather to deny its historicity more radically, to say that it’s “not exactly historical” and that, as with a parable, historical accuracy is an inappropriate category to apply to the Gospel of John.
Evans expressly contrasts John with the synoptic gospels by treating it as not a source for the historical life of Jesus because, he implies, it is some non-historical “genre” and contains only “some history.” When Ehrman summarizes Evans’s position by saying that Evans is not going to use John for writing the life of the historical Jesus, because he thinks it’s metaphorical, Evans expressly agrees, saying, “Fair enough.” That he does not consider John a principle source for the historical life of Jesus is also emphasized by his opening comments on the second night.
2) Evans is emphatic about the lesser historicity of the Gospel of John as a whole from the synoptic Gospels. He even goes so far as to suggest that “conservative Christians” should not attempt to harmonize John’s Jesus with the synoptic Jesus and that he is attempting to move conservative Christians in this direction.
3) Ehrman is explicitly asking about Jesus’ claims to be God, both “I and the Father are one” and “Before Abraham was, I am,” and Evans says that he and Bart do not disagree much on this point--namely, that they are ahistorical, which is Ehrman’s point. That is the context of the initial discussion of the "I am" statements--not just the "I am" statements with predicates, such as "I am the light of the world," but Jesus' relatively more explicit claims to deity in John.
4) Evans emphasizes explicitly that the statements, “I am the light of the world,” “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and “I am the bread of life” and “I am the true vine” were not historically said by Jesus in any recognizable fashion but rather that the picture of his doing so was the “creative, dynamic, and metaphorical way” in which the Christian community expressed their theological understanding and that Jesus was these things “for us.”
If you followed Jesus around with a video camera, he insists, you would not find him literally saying these things. Not simply because the wording was slightly modified but rather because these sayings “derive from Jesus” only in a metaphorical and theological way and derive from the community’s understanding of his other teachings. They derive from Jesus, but not because he “went around and said them.”
5) Evans’s statement that there were “church fathers” who denied the canonicity of the Gospel of John is simply historically incorrect. He appears to be alluding to the Alogi, so called by an actual church father (Epiphanius). They were heretics of whom we know nothing except from those who oppose them. They apparently denied the Logos doctrine of John. There is some reason to think that they did use doubts about harmonization as part of their way of questioning the canonicity of John, but this was in the service of their theological agenda, and they were not church fathers. Evans has been careless here. Nor did the real church fathers answer them by stating that John is an ahistorical genre!
6) Evans’s repeated use of the phrase “a fourth synoptic Gospel” as if it is synonymous with “a fourth historical Gospel” is invidious. It gives the impression that those who try to harmonize John with the synoptics and who think of John as historical, as much so as the synoptics, are too ignorant to realize that John is different from the synoptics. Nothing is gained for understanding the Gospel of John by this manner of speaking.
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