Layers in the gospel of John (for Bernard).

[Ben C. Smith]

Hi, Bernard. I have looked over this page of yours before (more than once), but am doing it again as part of yet another inquiry on my part into the gospel of John: http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html. There is much very good information there, I have to say. I was originally disposed to regard the position of the temple cleansing as original to John, but I think I may be very close to being persuaded of your thesis that it originally fell closer to the Marcan order, making room for the raising of Lazarus to be the single most important reason for Jesus' arrest (11.53).

I wanted to comment on this, however:

Jn18:13 "And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year."
Comment: Annas is not called a high priest here, but Caiaphas is. Furthermore, Jesus is brought to Annas first (and interrogated then) because of the later being the 'father-in-law'! This is rather unconvincing.
Jn18:24 "Then Annas sent Him bound to Caiaphas the high priest."
....
Conclusion: Jn18:24 was added on and also the middle part (shown in Italics) of Jn18:13. The original version had Caiaphas (correctly) as the only high priest. Then came GLuke ...

Some operation as you describe here may be possible, and I completely agree that something seems to be going on here, but it is not quite as simple as you portray it, simply because "Annas" is in the accusative, while "Caiaphas" is in the genitive, making it impossible in Greek to remove exactly those italicized words with no further changes:

καὶ ἤγαγον πρὸς Ἅνναν [accusative] πρῶτον· ἦν γὰρ πενθερὸς τοῦ Καϊάφα [genitive, inappropriate as the object of the verb ἤγαγον], ὃς ἦν ἀρχιερεὺς τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ ἐκείνου.

An originally accusative "Caiaphas" may have been turned into the genitive with the addition of Annas, I suppose, requiring the removal of just one letter, though if one starts rewriting the grammar one may be able to fix anything a bit too easily. Just a heads-up there.

Regarding your proposals about the original and progressively extended endings both of Mark and of John, do you see the progression of belief about Jesus' ultimate fate as running roughly as follows?

1. Jesus dies and his spirit/soul is ushered directly into heaven.
2. Jesus dies, his body is buried, and then his body is resurrected, the only proof being the empty tomb, implying a heroic assumption into heaven.
3. Jesus dies, his body is buried, and then his body is resurrected, the proof being not only an empty tomb but also resurrection appearances.

Cheers.

Ben.

[Bernard Muller]

to Ben,

Hi, Bernard. I have looked over this page of yours before (more than once), but am doing it again as part of yet another inquiry on my part into the gospel of John: http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html. There is much very good information there, I have to say. I was originally disposed to regard the position of the temple cleansing as original to John, but I think I may be very close to being persuaded of your thesis that it originally fell closer to the Marcan order, making room for the raising of Lazarus to be the single most important reason for Jesus' arrest (11.53).

Good

I do not see a problem with "Caiaphas" going from accusative to genitive: that could have been done by the one who added words to the passage.

1. Jesus dies and his spirit/soul is ushered directly into heaven.
2. Jesus dies, his body is buried, and then his body is resurrected, the only proof being the empty tomb, implying a heroic assumption into heaven.
3. Jesus dies, his body is buried, and then his body is resurrected, the proof being not only an empty tomb but also resurrection appearances.

Yes, I agree.

Cordially, Bernard