Michael BG wrote: ↑Sat Jun 16, 2018 10:23 am
I don’t think Bultmann sees a Gnostic proto-John. I thought he saw a “Signs Gospel” as one of the sources of John’s gospel.
April DeConick in her article “Who is Hiding in the Gospel of John” (
https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/ ... sAllowed=y), which is the one referred to in the Vridar article you referred to earlier, does not talk of a proto-John, ...Did you actually read her article?
I find you resistance against the obvious fact very irrational and disturbing.
I quote directly April DeConick,
The Gnostic New Age, Columbia University Press, p. 141:
Clearly, in our earliest primary sources, there are Gnostic footprints circling the fourth Gospel. In fact, one of the most famous interpreters of the Gospel of John, Rudolph Bultmann (1971), was convinced that the fourth Gospel is dependant on Gnostic sources. Although Bultmann's commentary is well known, he certainly was not the first to note such footprints. As early as the nineteenth century, scholars had already conjectured along these lines.
But what does this primary evidence mean? If the footprints came late, then we might have an Apostolic Catholic Gospel that was simply reinterpreted by Gnostics in aberrant ways, as most historians suggest (see Hill 2004; Keefer 2006; Rasimus 2010). But if they came early, then we might have Gnostic sensibilities woven into the very fabric of the fourth Gospel. If this is the case, then the fourth Gospel would have had his origin outside the Apostolic Catholic movement, in a religious buffer much more complicated than we have been able to imagine previously.
Could it have emerged in a moment when Gnostic spirituality collided with emergent Christian mythology and the Jewish scriptures? If this is what happened, then its orthodoxy would have come later, as the result of a secondary interpretation that was imposed upon the Gospel by Apostolic Catholics who read into it their own view of the biblical God. If so, this would have ended up domesticating the Gospel, taming its wild Gnostic proclivities and bringing it in line with Apostolic Catholic Christianity.
(my bold)
I hope that now you realize that we are talking about
proto-John as the Gnostic Gospel.
But what is more disturbing about your vain apologetical resistance (your and Ben's,
surely), is that even if I concede you that you are right about John as a Catholic Gospel later gnosticized, even if I ignore entirely the John or proto-John as evidence for the my case, ...
....the
fact remains that Tertullian despised the marcionite Christ as a ''robber":
Then the things which the Father delivered to the Son are good, and the Creator is therefore good, since all His things are good; whereas he is no longer good who has invaded another's good (domains) to deliver it to his son, thus teaching robbery of another's goods
(As I wrote earlier I found the idea of a Marduk myth as the foundation for the narrative of Jesus’ death and resurrection interesting. I didn’t dismiss it out of hand as you seem to believe I do with all ideas which are new to me. I was so interested that I found an English translation of the tablet concerned so I could consider if the theory was plausible.)
Couchoud rejects the hypothesis Marduk, and I too. So please ignore Marduk.
You seem to be appealing to authority figures here rather than presenting the evidence! As I have pointed out DeConick appears to see our version of John’s gospel as being Gnostic.
As quoted above, DeConick is open to any possibility about John (from a Gnostic Gospel to a Catholic Gospel or vice versa).
But I address you again to Couchoud's article. He gives evidence that Barabbas is an interpolation in the Fourth Gospel:
The episode of Barabbas appears in all four Gospels. But one
recognizes easily that in the Fourth Gospel it is a later addition, as
well as the scene of insults which follows it. The secondary character
is apparent. The Jews shouted according to John 18:40, whereas with
Mark they did not yet shout. Before the enclave Pilate declares to the
Jews: “I do not find in him any crime,” (18:38). At the end of the
enclave Pilate repeats the same thing in the same terms: “I do not find
in him any crime”, so as to bring the answer which, in the original
text [John 19:7], came immediately: “He must die because he made
himself the Son of God.” The interpolation with reprise [1] is hardly
contestable; it is recognized by Schwartz, Wellhausen, Loisy,
Delafosse. It is one of these many final improvements which harmonized
the Gospels and complicated the task of criticism.
Originally the episode of Barabbas belonged only to the Synoptic
Gospels.(p. 142, my bold)
But then
again: it is not necessary for the my case that proto-John is a Gnostic Gospel.
Tertullian calling 'robber' the marcionite Christ is sufficient.
Clearly you believe this, but you don’t have “proof”; you have a theory which you seem to have trouble defending.
As I have already pointed out Barabbas is not needed to counter a Gnostic John either in John’s gospel or in the Synoptics.
You continue to show ignorance of the Couchoud's argument. I explain it again:
1) Marcion preached that his Christ
really suffered and
really was crucified, even if he was not recognized as the Messiah of an alien God, but as the Son of YHWH.
2) To confute point (
1), the Judaizers behind the our Gospels (at least in their last redaction) introduced the figure of Jesus Son of Father, aka
Jesus Barabbas, to make the point that who was crucified really is the Jesus called Christ, and not the marcionite Christ.
3) as mere corollary of point (
2), you have the marcionite Christ reduced to the role of
a robber and brigand, just that Christ who considered the old Prophets of the Demiurge
as robbers and brigands.
4) as corollary, you have
this my optimal exegesis of Mark 14:48-50. Sincerely, I don't know other better explanations.
This theory is the best explanation in absolute terms for the simple reason that it is able to explain what otherwise seem
too much enigmatic disiepta membra of sediction, or very strange theories about the ethymological meaning of Barabbas etc.
This theory is the best explanation in absolute terms because it was argued by the Mythicist J. M. Robertson the basic point that the Barabbas episode could be inserted there (I mean: just the idea of an evil person called ''Jesus Son of the Father'')
only to confute a dangerous misunderstanding of identity about the Jesus of the Christians. But note the great difference between Couchoud's theory and the Robertson's theory or the Zealot theory:
1) Robertson was not able to give contemporary evidence of a ''Joshua Son of Father'''s cult, with which the Jesus Christ could be identified by not-Christians.
2) prof Bermejo-Rubio and our John2 and our DCH, even with all the sympathy I have for the theory of a seditious historical Jesus, are not able to give extra-Gospel evidence of a historical Jesus who was a seditious rebel.
3) differently from point 1 and point 2, the great Mythicist scholar Couchoud is extremely able to give us the evidence of another Christ ''Son of the Father'' with which the Jesus Son of YHWH could be exchanged (and note that
Secret Alias thinks that even Celsus exchanged the marcionite Christ for the Christ of the Catholics,
using against the Catholics the criticisms used by the Catholics against the Marcionites!).
If you don't concede me at least this point (of the
qualitative difference of the Couchoud's theory in comparison with the Robertson and Bermejo-Rubio's theories), then I can only call you (and Ben) a fool Christian apologist.
Of the all the explanations given by Couchoud and Stahl for having both Jesus and Barabbas my preference is for theory that it goes back to the two goats of Leviticus 16:7. Using the Epistle of Barnabas (7:8) as evidence of this link along with the idea that Easter replaces Passover and the Day of Atonement. I am not sure how plausible it is though.
Note that Couchoud quotes that theory in order
to confute it.