John at SBL in San Diego

[Adam]

Tom Thatcher emailed 7 papers to be presented Nov. 23, 2014 in San Diego at the Society of Biblical Literature seminar on Johannine Literature. The schedule lists a lot more besides these.
Jonathan Bernier, Aposynagogos and the Aims of John [the Critical Realist Revolution]. Refutes the contention that "aposynagogos" necessarily dates John late.
This paper aims to present a condensed version of the arguments advanced in my 2012 dissertation.2 The central argument is that contrary to a virtual scholarly consensus on the matter,3 John 9:22, 12:42, and 16:2, collectively designated as the aposynagōgos passages by their use of that term, are better understood by the historian as data relevant to the study of events surrounding Jesus’s life and the period shortly thereafter than as data relevant to the study of a putative Johannine community later in the first century.4

Matthias Konstadt, Jesus as the Royal Messiah...in Matthew and John.

Peter Lanfer, Reading John from the Margins...Judean Priority of the North: Ephraim, Galilee vs. Judeans

Stanley Porter, John's Gospel and the Criteria for Authenticity

Reinhard Pummer, Samaritans, Galileans, and Judeans

Beth M. Sheppard, History, Historical, Historiography...the Fourth Gospel

A lot of these tie in to themes here at ECW apart from the Gospel of John. I could send any of interest. If you want them all, try
tom.Thatcher@ccuniversity.edu

Judith Stack-Nelson. The Holy Spirit as Witness...Matthew and John

The first listed, by Bernier, is a summation of a 2013 book Aposynagogos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages, Leiden.

[Adam]

Huller might be interested in the Pummer article on the Samaritans. Did Jesus think of himself as more a Samaritan than a Judean?

"Pointing to the scene in the Synoptics in which Peter in the court of the high priest was recognized by his accent as a Galilean (Matt. 26:73 // Mk. 14:70 // Lk. 22:59), Rudolf Macuch thought the Judeans took Jesus for a Samaritan because he spoke an Aramaic dialect different from theirs. Although they had no difficulty conversing with Galileans and Samaritans, they were aware of the phonetic differences between their own dialect and that of the former two groups, but they could not hear the differences between the two northern dialects.66 Then again, it may be that behind this designation lies a dispute as to which community is the true heir of Abraham – the Samaritans or the Jews. Several times in the pericope Jn. 8:33-47 the Jews speaking to Jesus emphasize that they are descended from Abraham (vss. 33, 37, 39), but Jesus contradicts them: “If you were
Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did” (vs. 39b). "

But Pummer winds up dismissing Samaritan influence on the NT.

[Adam]

Thatcher sent more papers today, pre-publication. Score two for (or against) the academic establishment and against me. One argues Matthew was used in writing GJohn. Then Chris Keith goes farther to dismiss all source theories within John in his “The Competitive Textualization of the Jesus Tradition in John 20:3-31 and 21:24-25”.

First, Johannine scholarship has witnessed a turn away from source-critical hypothetical reconstructions of GJohn’s sources. Source-critical reconstructions of the tradition-history of GJohn, whether Bultmann’s three-source theory,45 Fortna’s Signs Source,46 Brown’s complex multi-stage community development theory(ies),47 or any modern variants,48 gain(ed) currency from a form-critically-inspired and historical-positivist era of New Testament scholarship. In this era, scholars have had great confidence in their abilities to stratify layers of the gospel tradition and assign them to corresponding stages of a community’s development. This source-critical procedure and the concomitant Gospel community hypothesis it requires, however, have both received strong criticism. Scholars working in media studies (orality, texuality, and memory) have increasingly eroded confidence in the criteria by which scholars identify earlier (often oral) traditions in written texts.49

As an aside he also attacks Synoptic source theories:

(One can observe similar erosions of scholarly confidence in the ability to mine and recover earlier states of the gospel tradition from the written Gospels in the demise of the criteria of authenticity in historical Jesus studies and the increased popularity of the Farrer-Goulder solution to the Synoptic problem.)50
50 On the former, see Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: T&T Clark, 2012). On the latter, see Mark S. Goodacre, The Case against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2002); Mark S. Goodacre and Nicholas Perrin, eds., Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique (Downers Grove: IVP, 2005); John C. Poirier and Jeffrey Peterson, eds., Marcan Priority Without Q: Explorations in the Farrer Hypothesis (LNTS; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), forthcoming.

To me this looks like evangelical distaste for sources within GJohn. Also lined up against me from the other side are the hard academics who presuppose there can be no eyewitness accounts within GJohn. So there I go again, I think I’m right and everyone else in wrong.

[Adam]

(I forgot to add to my OP what I wrote later that same day):
As it happens, keeping up with the latest scholarly works (even as yet unpublished), I have come across strong support for my early date for the Gospel of John (with its four eyewitnesses). Scholars have been in the habit of viewing the term "aposynagogos" in John as a slip-up that pertains to the time John was written, not an event in Jesus's lifetime. This is based on a word "Birkat ha-minim" that is now known just to apply to removal of a reader from his liturgical duties--in Ephesus and Athens. It does not pertain to expulsion from attendance at a synagogue in Palestine. It's just not relevant. Or so argues Jonathan Bernier. Current consensus accepts that the Gospel of John is late because of the term “aposynagogos” in three places, thought to refer to a decree late in the First Century. The Christian community is thought to have read back their situation into events in Jesus’s time. This two-level theory was championed by Louis Martyn and accepted by Raymond Brown. When facts on the ground on the ground countered this, John Kloppenborg nevertheless rationalized its continuing role in the consensus that John was late.
However,Berniers's 2012 dissertation has been published as a book: Jonathan Bernier, Aposynagōgos and the Historical Jesus in John: Rethinking the Historicity of the Johannine Expulsion Passages (Brill Biblical Interpretation Series 122; Leiden: Brill, 2013). Fortunately he has summarized it in a paper to be presented at the November 2014 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting. He writes:

The central argument is that contrary to a virtual scholarly consensus on the matter, (3) John 9:22, 12:42, and 16:2, collectively designated as the aposynagōgos passages by their use of that term, are better understood by the historian as data relevant to the study of events surrounding Jesus’s life and the period shortly thereafter than as data relevant to the study of a putative Johannine community later in the first century. (4)

(3) The classic articulation of this consensus is to be found in J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (3rd ed.; Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003 [1968]), 35-68. For a fuller treatment of the history of scholarship cf. Bernier, Aposynagōgos, 1-18. Notable recent dissent from this consensus is to be found in Edward W. Klink III, “Expulsion from the Synagogue? Rethinking a Johannine Anachronism.” Tyndale Bulletin 59/1 (2008): 99-118.

(4) The viability of approaching John’s Gospel as the history of a Johannine community has come under sharp critique since the publication of Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998). For responses, positive and negative, to this critique, cf. Philip F. Esler, “A Response to Richard Bauckham’s Gospels for All Christians,” Scottish Journal of Theology 51 (1998): 235-248; Tobias Hägerland, “John’s Gospel: A Two-Level Drama?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 25/3 (2003): 309-322; Thomas Kazen, “Sectarian Gospels for Some Christians? Intention and Mirror Reading in the Light of Extra-Canonical Texts,” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 561-578; Edward W. Klink III, ed., The Audience of the Gospels: The Origin and Functions of the Gospels in Early Christianity (London: T&T Clark, 2010); Edward W. Klink III, The Sheep of the Fold: The Audience and Origin of the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Margaret M. Mitchell, “Patristic Counter-Evidence to the Claim that the ‘Gospels Were Written for All Christians,’” New Testament Studies 51 (2005): 36-79; David C. Sim, “The Gospels for All Christians? A Response to Richard Bauckham,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 84 (2001): 3-27.

That puts an end to the last supposedly good scholarly reason for dating John late. Of course, even Christian orthodoxy has made a habit of attributing to the Apostle John in his old age. The devout and the skeptics will likely continue their alliance for late dating of John, but that’s not even what external criticism says. The Muratorian Canon tells us that other apostles were still alive when John put out his gospel.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Adam,

You're talking about the Muratorium Canon that has recently been redated from the Second century to the Fourth century. Why should anybody believe that this fragment contains any reliable information about events in the First or Second Century at all?

Warmly

Jay Raskin

That puts an end to the last supposedly good scholarly reason for dating John late. Of course, even Christian orthodoxy has made a habit of attributing to the Apostle John in his old age. The devout and the skeptics will likely continue their alliance for late dating of John, but that’s not even what external criticism says. The Muratorian Canon tells us that other apostles were still alive when John put out his gospel.

[Adam]

Who redated it? Sundberg in 1973 is not "recent" and has not been generally accepted. Does he prove that the stated recent popes is an interpolation? You have a record of preferring the latest possible dates.

[steve43]

One can have a lot of fun speculating on who the author of the Gospel of John was.

When I get to my main computer, I will excerpt a portion of Hagan on the subject.

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Adam,

In 1992, Geoffrey Mark Hahneman argued for a fourth century dating (The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon [Oxford: Clarendon, 1992].

In 2008, in an article in Vigiliae Christianae, entitled "Victorinus of Pettau as the Author of the Canon Muratori," J.J. Armstrong attributed it to St. Victorinus who wrote 270-305 CE

And from 2002, we have this point from Annette Yoshiko Reed: ΕΥΑΙΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ: Orality, Textuality, and the Christian Truth in Irenaeus' "Adversus Haereses"
Annette Yoshiko Reed, Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 11-46

Even if Hahneman's thesis does not prove wholly conclusive, many scholars now agree that his arguments are convincing enough that we can- not base our reconstruction of the early development of the NT canon too heavily upon this one document (e.g. Lee M. McDonald, The Formation of the Christian Biblical Canon [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995] 209-20; Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels [London: SCM Press, 1990] 243). Without the corroborating evidence of the Fragment, however, it becomes problematic to assume that Irenaeus simply presupposes an established "Canon of the Four Gospels"-rather than attempting to defend the authority of these texts (see Hahneman, Muratorian Fragment,1 00-105).

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Who redated it? Sundberg in 1973 is not "recent" and has not been generally accepted. Does he prove that the stated recent popes is an interpolation? You have a record of preferring the latest possible dates.

[steve43]

As promised.....Hagan "fires of Rome" page 124

"...There is no reason why the disciple who knew Caiaphas and the disciple whom Jesus “loved”–both found in the Book of John–could not be one and the same person. This disciple could have also been the young man who lost his linen during the fracas of Jesus’ arrest, as described in the Book of Mark. Three mystery figures all rolled up in one individual–a neat solution! Decades later and after many other adventures with his fellow Christians, this disciple settles down to write his Gospel, the Book of John, in the Greek-Asian city of Ephesus and becomes known as John the Evangelist.
To speculate even further, could this John originally have been from an honored and wealthy Jerusalem family with strong ties to the High Priesthood, perhaps from the extended family of Ananus himself? Furthermore, could the last supper have been held in John’s house, located in the High Priesthood residential district of the upper city of Jerusalem?
If so, then a fourth mystery figure is now identified: the “master” of the house of the last supper is the future John the Evangelist. After Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples and the women of the Ministry were welcomed back in the house of the last supper. The early Christians (Nazarenes) would stay in that house for months afterward as they prayed and waited for Jesus’ return.
Years before, a younger John, training for the priesthood, would have been fascinated with the ministry of John the Baptist, just as he would later become drawn to the Ministry of Jesus. Young John would have made every effort to meet John the Baptist and probably did. This would account for the lengthy quote from John the Baptist in the Book of John, the only Gospel that quotes John the Baptist directly. Nicodemus, also interested in John’s ministry and later with Jesus’, would have naturally become acquainted with this younger John within the close-knit community of the Jerusalem power elite..."

[Adam]

Lots of supposedly challenging thinking here, steve43,
But it winds up quite conventionally without good reason. In paragraph one Hagan lumps together as one person what could be three different persons. The first two of these are almost always regarded as identical by conservative Christians. Later, in the final paragraph he follows convention again in assuming that the eventual John the Evangelist was the one in John 1 fascinated with John the Baptist. Closer study of John 1 would reveal that besides Andrew the other of the two disciples of John the Baptist is the man Jesus went and found, Philip. It would be one of these two who wrote this part of John--I attribute the whole Signs Source to Andrew.

I notice that Hagan never identifies this "John the Evangelist" as John the son of Zebedee. It would seem much more likely that this John in paragraphs two and three is John Mark. He is indeed conventionally regarded to be your first paragraph "young man who lost his linen". He would also make a better candidate for "the disciple known to the high priest".
I see three people where Hagan sees one, and only the Beloved Disciple might be John the son of Zebedee, who is a very poor candidate for originating much of GJohn. He is not even in the opening verses of John 20 (20:2 is a gloss per Teeple), which just leaves him in John 13 and 21.

Hagan does lots of "supposing", something I do lots of myself. However, I follow the best academic studies whereas Hagan apparently just rationalizes tradition.