John and visions of Jesus

[rgprice]

This is just an observation and I'm not really sure where this is going yet, but just putting it out there for discussion.

John 1:
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.

Revelation 1:
1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.

Revelation 1:
9 I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 11 saying, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”

Mark 1:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

1 John 1:
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

1 John 2:
2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

I think most are agreed that the Revelation of John in its present form was produced in the early second century. Is there any basis for believing that the current Revelation of John may be based on an earlier source?

There appear to be many different but strikingly similar Johns in Christian lore. We have a John mentioned as one of the pillars by Paul, we have "John the Baptist" who announces the coming of Jesus Christ, we have a John who has visions of Jesus Christ, and we have the epistles of John that describe Jesus Christ as an atoning sacrifice who came in the flesh.

I wonder about the possibility that there was some real John who had one of the early visions of Jesus, and that the legacy of this real John is reflected in these later Johns.

It seems quite possible that "John the Baptist" is a Markan invention. There may well have been a real person known as "John the Baptist", but I find it doubtful that any such real John the Baptist had anything to do with Jesus worship. It seems that what Mark did was associate some real John figure from the Jesus movement with John the Baptist. Indeed, I think it quite possible that John son of Zebedee and John the Baptist are two different fictional character that both stem from the same real John. That real John, it would seem, would be some figure known for having had visions of the sacrifice of Jesus (Joshua) and his future coming to earth to pass Final Judgement.

To what degree can the various John traditions be assessed to be independent, or to what degree is is all just building off of later narratives?

[Giuseppe]

Specifically about the Book of Revelation:

the first chapters and the conclusion are easily seen as Christian additions.

But the rest is a Jewish text dating to 70 CE: a Zealot text.

When it comes to mark Jews with a sign to preserve them from extermination (7:4), the author draws from Ezekiel (9:4) the idea of a mark on the forehead, but he forgets to indicate that that sign is a cross.

It is a question of avenging the martyrs of the Jewish resistance who are invoked in heaven (6:10).

Thus the pseudo-John brings in the Book of Revelation the proof that, around 95, his Christ was not endowed with earthly life.

His legend is not yet humanized, it is still just a myth.

As to the question of the relation between Revelation and Mark:

• Revelation makes the celestial Woman an allegory of the Zealot community survived after the First Revolt. Hence the rivalry against the mother and brothers of Jesus in Mark is a way to say: who has to allegorize the entire community is not more the celestial Woman, but Jesus himself.

As to John the Baptist: the John of Revelation is probably a historical Zealot lived during the War. His legacy (essentially, his fanatical hostility against the Gentiles) was used by Jewish-Christians to combat the radical Gentilizers as Nicolas.

I think that proto-John is an anti-YHWH Gospel. So Turmel.

His John was an enemy of Jesus and of the god of Jesus.

When GJohn was catholicized, his John was made a precursor and ally of Jesus (adoring his same god) by connecting him with the John of Revelation.

[Giuseppe]

So essentially the Gospel John the Baptist, even if he existed, was a figure derived from Josephus (or invented ex novo by 'Mark') to eclipse the disturbing figure of John of the Book of Revelation: a Zealot figure (John of Giscala?) who adored a celestial Joshua who had to come during the First Revolt to kill the Romans in extremis.

ADDENDA: a not-crucified celestial Joshua.

[Bernard Muller]

I think most are agreed that the Revelation of John in its present form was produced in the early second century. Is there any basis for believing that the current Revelation of John may be based on an earlier source?

There is a lot of basis that Revelation first was totally Jewish (and written soon after 70 AD). That Jewish version got inserted with Christian interpolations before 96 AD.
All evidence and arguments here: http://historical-jesus.info/rjohn.html
And I don't think "most are agreed that the Revelation of John in its present form was produced in the early second century".

There appear to be many different but strikingly similar Johns in Christian lore. We have a John mentioned as one of the pillars by Paul, we have "John the Baptist" who announces the coming of Jesus Christ, we have a John who has visions of Jesus Christ, and we have the epistles of John that describe Jesus Christ as an atoning sacrifice who came in the flesh. Paul also tells us that John was among the three pillars of the Jerusalem church.

John the pillar and ex-fisherman had nothing to do with any of the so-call Johannine texts.
1 John and the gospel were written by a Gentile convert from Asia Minor, whose name was not likely "John".
However the gospel might have benefitted from the testimony of John the presbyter (mostly about geographical & architectural details). That John, was or rather pretended to be an eyewitness of the man Jesus, was the author of Revelation (both the Jewish initial one (before his conversion) and later, most of the Christian interpolations), and was the disciple who had just died in the epilogue of gJohn.
All of that is explained on my website, starting on that web page http://historical-jesus.info/jnintro.html

2 John & 3 John were probably not written by the author of 1 John.

Cordially, Bernard

[davidmartin]

Giuseppe you have a unique way of putting things!
I do see Revelation as basically a non-Christian Zealot text that got Christianised by some enthusiast in that wing of the church
But i recon the Christian additions riff on previous themes that do point to earlier times albeit heavily reworked
One thing that connects it with the gospel of John is the Song of Solomon references, the paradise theme and tree of life theme could be part of some earlier gospel and earlier John figure, in a similar way to how remote the Jesus of the gospels is from the character of Jesus in Revelation - if there's an earlier phase Revelation doesn't best represent it based on the other sources, even if it is representative of certain later forms of it

[Giuseppe]

I do see Revelation as basically a non-Christian Zealot text that got Christianised by some enthusiast in that wing of the church

before denigrated, then christianized.

Note the very bad treatment received by the Celestial Woman of Revelation in proto-John:

The Johannine Christ denies Mary.

The Johannine Christ begins his public life in attendance at the wedding of Cana (2:1-12). In the course of the meal, Mary, who is also present, warns him of the wine shortage. And Jesus responds: "What is there between me and you, woman?" Of all time this strange response has troubled the faith of believers. One is asked how an incarnate God could have spoken as such to whom he owes his human nature. Various artificial explanations led all to confuse the question or to displace it. However, Faith couldn't fail but to have the final word. Here, as elsewhere, it triumphed over the difficulty. But it didn't obtain its triumph outside of taking refuge in the mystery. One closed their eyes; one renounced at an understanding. One has to say that God must have had his reasons for speaking as he did. And, for those reasons, one adored them without having any pretension of understanding them.

The believers are not alone in being disconcerted by this response of Christ. The critics, these also, were struck by it of a stupor they couldn't conceal. Perhaps they are no longer held by a God truly made man; they had none other issue than with a fictional deity. But it was necessary for them to justify this fiction. They had to explain how a writer begins with presenting to us the incarnate Word, then places in his mouth some words of repudiation against his mother. They themselves did not set forth in quest of new solutions: they adopted explanations accommodated to believers, explanations of which the principal consists in stating that, in the Christ, the divinity is independent of Mary and that the saying: "What is there in common between me and you?" proclaimed this independence.

So the critics found nothing better for believers to account for the response of the Johannine Christ to Mary. But, while believers, set in the presence of a solution that they know is insufficient, renounce at understanding and take refuge in a mystery, the critics don't have this convenient resource. They do not shelter themselves behind the impenetrable counsels of providence; they don't have the right to the shutting of their eyes; they always have had to keep them wide opened and to declare pitilessly everything that is mere juggling.

We notice three things there: the thought which is expressed , the turn given to this thought, the absence of the word "mother" at the position where the word "woman" is presented. The fundamental thought is that the Christ is nothing to Mary, that Mary is nothing to the Christ. The interrogative turn given to the sentence is the process to which one resorts when one carries a challenge; it has here the sense of a provacation; and, consequently, in the place of attenuating the thought, it accentuates it.

Free of the interrogation which encompasses, the retort means: "I owe nothing to you", or "there is nothing in common between us". With the interrogation the sense is: "Prove therefore, if you can, that I owe anything to you, that there is something in common between us!" And, to complete the defiance, Mary is apostrophized of the name of a woman which implies here: "One regards you as my mother, but you know well that you are not". I said that this word completes the challenge. This is one, indeed, which closes the retort. In the end it is the motive; and the sense of the sentence is this: "You pass as my mother, and my historian himself bestows this name to you to conform to the common opinion that "the mother of Jesus was there" ; but, in reality, you are not my mother; I owe nothing to you".

One will say that I lead myself to an exaggeration. I respond that in theological matters the only exaggerated ideas are those which cannot be situated in history. I will search later whether my interpretation is destitute of attestation during the period of Christian origins. For the moment I have my text without troubling myself with the knowledge where this leads me. I have this, that is to say I march behind this, and I allow myself to be guided by it, and I abstain to supervise myself in the will of my fantasy. The one formal denial, vivid of the divine maternity of Mary. I have to conclude, unless indicated otherwise, that this denial expresses the thought of the author.

Where are these indications? It arrives oftentimes to the speakers being betrayed by the intoxication of words, and to saying what they didn't want to say. But we make issue here to the style of a piece of long studied; we do not have before us an oratorical improvisation. We also see all the day the uncultivated minds and the tired old man led astray in a vocabulary which they never possessed or of which mastery they lost. But the author of the Fourth Gospel knows how to clothe the most elevated ideas in their most delicate nuances.

How can it be believed, when wanting to teach a doctrine, that he had taught something else entirely different than what he had in mind? For this is the result at which one arrives as soon as one departs from the letter of the text. The Johannine Christ, asserts one, teaches us at Cana that Mary contributed nothing to his divinity in the sense of his thaumaturgical power. Granted. But to express this truth so simply, he is served by a turn of phrase which has muddled everything; he didn't know how to say what he wanted to say.

Others assure us that the rebuke of Christ himself was not addressed to Mary but to the synagogue, to his former alliance. I concur here. But one will agree with me that the author was very unfortunate in the choice of his formulas, and that the most ill-mannered clod would have been less clumsy. But then, if he wanted to put into the mouth of Christ some words of condemnations against the synagogue, might he had done this without burdening Mary to represent this moment-- even the synagogue? Didn't the most elementary decorum forbid entering the mother of Christ into this odious symbolism? On the other hand, no man was insane enough to ask if the Christ owes his divinity or his thaumaturigal virtue to Mary. None needed to be set on this point. And the Christ also, as the critics pretend as well as the believers, declares not to have possessed from Mary his divinity and his supernatural powers.
In a few words, the saying "what do I have in common?", such that one understands it plainly, beyond measure that it offends the laws of language, contains more an indecency and an insupportable triviality.

[Bernard Muller]

The Johannine Christ begins his public life in attendance at the wedding of Cana (2:1-12). In the course of the meal, Mary, who is also present, warns him of the wine shortage. And Jesus responds: "What is there between me and you, woman?" Of all time this strange response has troubled the faith of believers.

But the narrator of the marriage at Cana repeatedly featured that "woman" as Jesus' mother: Jn 2:1, 2:3, 2:5.
Another case of isolating a phrase (which can have a mythicist interpretation) while ignoring the context (even the most immediate) which set the passage as decisively "historicist".
That shows desperation of mythicists in order to support their opinion by imagining evidence when there is none.

Cordially, Bernard

[davidmartin]

hmmm, that woman had better be Jesus's mother and not Mary Magdalene or else people might think it was Jesus's wedding to Mary!
The gospel of John seems to hint at something along these lines then admonish you for even having such a thought

[Charles Wilson]

I think most are agreed that the Revelation of John in its present form was produced in the early second century. Is there any basis for believing that the current Revelation of John may be based on an earlier source?

Esteemed Poster Bernard writes above:

There is a lot of basis that Revelation first was totally Jewish (and written soon after 70 AD). That Jewish version got inserted with Christian interpolations before 96 AD.

I agree with Bernard for the most part (My Dates for Revelation places final Authorship and Redaction after ~ 110 since the "Holy Spirit" (Domitian) is Interpolated all through Revelation).

The Analysis of the middle chapters of Revelation start with Cross-References in Luke 2:

Luke 2: 36 - 38 (RSV):

[36] And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phan'u-el, of the tribe of Asher; she was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years from her virginity,
[37] and as a widow till she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.
[38] And coming up at that very hour she gave thanks to God, and spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

This is - without a doubt in my mind whatsoever - a spectacular identification in History with Salome. This is not "Salome Alexandra" but "Salome", wife of Alexander Jannaeus. As noted in Whiston's Translations of Josephus, Josephus implies, but no where explicitly states that Jannaeus participated in a Levirite Marriage following the death of his brother. Further, there is a Clue as to the nature of Salome, if the Link between Luke and Salome is True - She was virginal until living with Jannaeus for seven years.

The "84 years" statement identifies the year of the "Return Passover" in 9 CE. If we allow travel time from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Priestly Groups to get to Jerusalem for Passover at the 2 week Marker for the first month of the year, most of the Markers point to ~ 8 CE. Thus, 8 + (- 84) = (- 76) => 76 BCE, the year of the Ascension of Salome. I do not believe that this is "Numeric Nuttery". There are other Markers that point to the Jewish Mishmarot Priesthood (See: "It has taken 46 years to build this...", "The Woman Bent Over for 18 years" and etc.). The Original Story WAS a Jewish Story centered on the Passover Slaughter of 4 BCE. Eisenman and Wise (Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered) state that the Mishmarot Rotation repeats every six years. Two such rotations puts us at the Passover of 9 CE. NOW look at Jairus in Mark - The "Woman with the 12 year Issue of Blood" is combined with "Jairus' Daughter" ("She was 12 years old..") and now you know why. The Original was a Jewish Story, from a Jewish Perspective. The Character John is of the Mishmarot Group Bilgah and the Jesus character is a rewrite of a Priest of the Mishmarot Group "Immer", as in "Immar", as in "Lamb".

This entire History is a Sherlock Holmes moment of "The Dog Didn't Bark" variety. You may look and look and not see the elimination of events from Josephus and the Gospels but those events were there. Revelation references the Mishmarot Wing of the Jewish Culture and Revelation writes of the Affinity between the Jannaeus and Salome History and the Mishmarot Groups Jehoiarib, Bilgah and Immer. Immer is the important Group:

Revelation 5: 12 -13 (RSV):

[12] saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!"
[13] And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, saying, "To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever!"

Thus, the King (The Jannaeus Groups) and the Lamb (Immar => Immer => "The 16th Mishmarot Group" are linked (Remember, Hebrew Diacritical came AFTER the fifth-ish century. "Immar" and "Immer" are identical, providing a ready-made Word Play...)

It seems quite possible that "John the Baptist" is a Markan invention.

Yes and No. "John" may be an invention (I don't even want to take on Nicholas of Damascus right now...) but in the Original Story, "John" is of Bilgah. He was Priestly and the word "Baptism", as in Acts, may not mean what you think it means.

There may well have been a real person known as "John the Baptist", but I find it doubtful that any such real John the Baptist had anything to do with Jesus worship.

Yes. 'Zackly.

To what degree can the various John traditions be assessed to be independent, or to what degree is is all just building off of later narratives?

Start with 1 Chronicles 24!

Thank you for your time,

CW