Not surprising and that's OK.
You are one the Giants on this site and I respect your work greatly.I have done plenty of questioning of the unity of the figure whom we know as Simon Peter (= Cephas, = Symeon).
Here, I ask for explanations. "Synthesis" as in Kantian "Analytic-Synthetic" or that John was a cooperative venture after the dissemination of Mark? Plz explain.But the gospel of John is part of the synthesis side of things, not part of the analysis side.
Let's slow down a bit and test our terms. John appears to be an amalgam of rewritten and redacted parts. Teeple appears to have the largest collection of authors for John and there are many others in the Criticism Movement who see redactions, redactions and rewrites. See also: Genesis. I'm not on thin ice here.I disagree that he was writing in the code that you attribute to him, a code so subtle that it took two millennia and singular mind to crack it.
Is it Code?
If "Code" is a pejorative here, then, NO, it is not "Code". The entire NT is in Code. Daniel is in Code. Revelation is in Code. Code, Code, Code. Aphasia beckons. No, there is something more than Code. For what purpose was the NT written?
My Thesis all along has been that there was a Story found, either in the debris of stolen Booty from the Destruction of the Temple or from the pen of Nicholas of Damascus, Mucianus or others, including late work from people who survived, maybe Zakkai. Mark was first of the Gospels with a story of a savior/god. Someone flashed on it and "amended" it for use by the Roman Court, which was given power to deal with outside religions. There is a story here of the Paulines, which show influence of Mucianus and the Gospels, which writes a history of the savior/god by relating stories and events.
At some point, the Tract was seen as something to be manipulated to get the Jews to accept Roman Rule - The Roman Thesis. Father, Son and Holy Domitian. Only there was a Minority Report. Mark is flawed and his story has huge holes. The Crucifixion. Peter's Denials. Geography. Too many clues pointing to an Original, Jewish Story.
John writes corrections that tell the "Proper, True Story" but within the strictures given by the Roman Court. "Code"? Yes, but not in a pejorative way, not in the pejorative way you seem to imply.
John tells of the Second Crucifixion and the believers and later Critics immediately glom onto some explanation - "Oral Tradition!" - without seeing How this Set of Stories could be possible without contradiction. Similar to the Empty Tomb: The Story of the Empty Tomb is without Contradiction if you use the sun as an Objective Marker to correlate the events.
The solution is simple: There were 2 "Crucifixions", one Symbolic, the other actual. The Symbolic Story, with understanding from Poster FJV, is centered on the Temple Slaughter of 4 BCE. The Actual Story is of the Priest who survived the 4 BCE Atrocity, only to die by Crucifixion 12 years later, finally explaining the Cryptic Scream,
"My God, my God, for this was I spared?"
I trust this is not an insult, Ben. The text is not so subtle as to be indecipherable to any but me. As I have stated at various times, the text almost screams at me. "It's there, it really is there"....a code so subtle that it took two millennia and singular mind to crack it
It's not anything special about me. I was trained in Language, Truth and Logic (See: A J Ayer for the joke). I dropped the apparent requirement that discussions about the NT were discussions about a person, a person seen as a savior/god. "If we drop the Metaphysics of a savior/god, what is left?"
A lot.
Almost 15 years of work on this. It's still there. Mishmarot has not been looked at, the Transvaluation of Culture has not been analyzed yet. "Why would Jews want to believe in a savior/god when God has already told us about the necessary worship techniques?"
It ain't me and it ain't Code, if Code is a pejorative.
CW