Heard, I mean really heard, this verse Sunday morning in Church:
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ὅτι ἑώρακάς με πεπίστευκας; μακάριοι οἱ μὴ ἰδόντες καὶ πιστεύσαντες.
John is writing to those who had already believed, and maybe were facing tough times, but hadn’t seen Christ. Second generation?
I mean, honestly, only the disciples had seen Christ at this point in the story.
Good stuff…. too bad John copied a lot of stuff, except everything, from Mark.
Sorry about not posting this earlier, but going through the mail…
Throughout much of the twentieth century the Fourth Gospel took a back seat to the Synoptics when it came to historical reliability. Consequently, the contemporary quest of the historical Jesus discounted or excluded evidence from the Fourth Gospel. The question of the historical reliability of John’s Gospel is well overdue for a thorough reinvestigation and reassessment. In this foundational study, Craig L. Blomberg sheds new light on persistent questions. He presents his conclusions largely in commentary form, following the principal scenes of the Gospel. His introduction frames the pathway into the discussion, taking up critical issues such as
- authorship, date and provenance of the Fourth Gospel
- sources and omissions of the Fourth Gospel
- points where John’s Gospel interlocks with the Synoptics
- general indications of historicity
- literary genre and unique audience of this Gospel
- burden of proof and criteria of authenticity
In his commentary examining the text of the Fourth Gospel, Blomberg asks two essential questions. First, using the recently nuanced criteria of authenticity, “What positive evidence do we have that the actions or words of the characters in John’s narratives are indeed historical?” Second, “Is there anything in the text . . . that is implausible within the historical context to which it is attributed, particularly if we assume the general historical trustworthiness of the Synoptics?” The result is a seminal work for the present day–one that affirms the historical reliability of John’s Gospel with intelligence and sure-footed care.
In my church parish, we celebrate Jesus washing the disciples feet at mass on Holy Thursday, as many other parishes do. Over the course of the next several days, I will be posting excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s newest book – Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week – on some of the major events. Here is a passage that struck me in his reading of the washing of the feet; it is the conclusion of the section:
Looking back over the whole chapter of the washing of the feet, we may say that in this humble gesture, expressing the entire ministry of Jesus’ life and death, the Lord stands before us as the servant of God–he who for our sake became one who serves, who carries our burden and so grants us true purity, the capacity to draw close to God. In the second Suffering Servant Song from Isaiah, there is a phrase that in some sense anticipates the essence of John’s theology of the Passion: The Lord “said to me, ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified’” (49:3; the Greek word in the Septuagint version doxasthesomai).
Indeed, Saint John’s whole Passion narrative is built on this connection between humble service and glory (doxa): it is in Jesus’ downward path, in his abasement even to the Cross, that God’s glory is seen, that the Father and, in him, Jesus are glorified. In a brief scene on “Palm Sunday”–in what might be termed the Johannine version of the Gethsemane story–all this is summed up: “‘Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again’” (12:27-28). The hour of the Cross is the hour of the Father’s true glory, the hour of Jesus’ true glory.
In reading the the Gospel of John, I find that several interactions between Christ and the other people in the story can easily be seen as liturgical – a sort of call and response. I might actually get around to posting a few of those instances – chapter 6 is a pretty good one to start with – as a series, but for now, consider this example:
Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.”
“Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.”
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[e] Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?”
“Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God.” (John 11.23-27 NLT)
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” (NASB)
Around the time John was written, the belief of the Resurrection was becoming solidly codified in developing Judaism. I am not at home, or I would pull out the name of the ‘creed’ which Jews had to affirm in order to be counted among the synogogue. (William Wright wrote the book to which I am referring too, and i reviewed it.) Here, John has Christ (perhaps the elder of the Congregation) ask Martha (the catechumen or maybe the congregation?) about the Resurrection. The response is given –
“I believe”
There are more examples in John’s Gospel of a call and response pattern developing in the early Church. Maybe I will get around to them later.
What do you think?
This is the third in a series of posts in which I am reviewing Essays on John and Hebrews by Harold Attridge from Mohr Siebeck. The previous two posts have dealt with the author and contents.
As a doctoral student who has focused on Biblical Hebrew and Applied Linguistics, I am an expert on neither the Gospel of John nor the Epistle to the Hebrews. However, as someone whose masters work was in Biblical Studies more generally, I am well-versed enough to be acquainted with some of the more important issues within the scholarly study of those two books and to be able to recognize a high quality work when I see one. In my estimation, Essays on John and Hebrews is a well-balanced and expertly written text that any scholar should very much like to have as a part of their library.
The text is clearly well-balanced throughout, and a couple of easy examples spring to mind from the essays dealing with the relationship between the Dead the Scrolls and early Christianity. Whereas more sensationalist authors often attempt to show some kind of direct link between the Qumran community and early Christianity, most of the more sober scholarship that one reads suggests otherwise. Attridge fits squarely within the sphere of this well-balanced scholarship. Rather than suggesting a direct link, Attridge surveys the Qumran material concluding that it sheds light on Judaism in the first century. Thus, the Qumran material sheds light on early Christianity in the sense that Christianity emerged in a first century Jewish context, yet he does not propose a direct link. This balanced approach is representative of the approach taken throughout the rest of the essays.
In addition, the text is quite clearly expertly written. This is obvious enough from reading the essays themselves; however, the easiest illustration of this for the purposes of this review comes in the extensive bibliography and wealth of material in the footnotes. The bibliography is 36 pages long and consists of primary and secondary sources in a variety of different languages. Thus, the author’s perspective is not limited by the sort of English language bias that hampers some works. In addition, one could gain a great deal of information about John’s Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews just from the footnotes, though it could also be easy enough to get bogged down there. As one example, page 142 of the text consists of only 6 lines of main body text, whereas a good 4/5 of the pages actually consists of footnotes. This is truly the stuff of an expertly written scholarly text.
If I had to pick out essays that I thought most helpful in my context, I would say that “Johannine Christianity,” “The Restless Quest for the Beloved Disciple,” and “The Gospel of John and the Dead Sea Scrolls” are good candidates. Incidentally, these are the essays on introductory issues, which serve to help me, since in the area of New Testament studies I would only deal with general issues. In terms of sheer interest, I found the essays “‘Seeking’ and ‘Asking’ in Q, Thomas, and John” and “An ‘Emotional’ Jesus and the Stoic Tradition” to be enlightening. My only study of Thomas and stoics came in the form brief treatments in New Testament survey. So, getting to take a deeper look was beneficial. Some of the other essays did not capture my own particular interest so much, for example reading about “The Cubist Principle in Johannine Imagery” didn’t do that much for me. But, I cannot say that there was any particular essay I read that seemed poorly written or poorly researched.
The bottom-line here is that this is, at least in my mind, the kind of book that any serious scholar on John’s Gospel or the Epistle to the Hebrews would love to have in their library. But, this does bring me to the one fairly serious downside of the text. Though this is a text any scholar might love to have, the cost of the text would put it out of the reach of many, at least in terms of having it in one’s personal library. The lowest price on Amazon is right around $170, and Amazon’s own price is $257.50. Thus, for many scholars, this might be the kind of book that you would want to request that your university or seminary library purchase. However, if you can afford it, I highly recommend purchasing it for your own collection.
Image by Michael 1952 via Flickr
A question this week was in regards to the enigmatic Jesus. You know, something along the lines of Why is the Jesus of John so difficult to grasp, then and now.
Some thoughts:
Jesus doesn’t care if you are rich, is the thought which keeps popping into my head as I read John 6 and listen to commentators teach that Jesus will provide. I think they miss the point, and the more so when they use this passage to explain their position. Of course, they stop at verse 14, ignoring the fact that in John, one has to read the Evangelist’s commentary to fully appreciate the sign which had just happened.
In verse 14, the exuberant cry of “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” is made. Surely, he was the prophet like Moses, but Jesus was something more, and by stopping at this verse without the first Commentator’s remarks is to leave Jesus only as a prophet and nothing more. Verse 15 is equally important as the people were about to make Jesus be a king. Yet, we know that later he is crowned a King, again by force.
The people wanted to be fed and want to be led. That was not necessarily the physical mission of John’s Jesus.
Jesus rebukes us today, especially those who seek after so-called miracles as tests of one preacher’s righteousness or anothers, or those who seek prosperity or even those who seek God to put food on their table. He rebukes his disciples for looking for earthly food and earthly means, telling them that he has something more for them, hidden though, ready for them to find it. The juxtaposition is that what is earthly is only a shadow which perishes in the light of the Sun. What is then revealed is that Christ is the real bread which feeds the crowd and what he seeks is for us to believe upon him.
This entire chapter is framed by this discussion. First, Christ feeds the crowd and then rebukes the disciples for believing that this is the real thing. The only thing real is the teaching of Jesus. This is then rebuked by the Jewish synagogue of our author. I mean, imagine telling your religious leaders that what they are teaching is perishing, but what you have inside of you is eternal life. It is difficult to grasp today because people tend to stop after the sign (no miracle) and use that to teach that God will take what little we have and make it abundant. Yet, Christ himself condemns this thought, teaching us that instead, we have to look up to the one who came down.
All of this is concluded with liturgy by John regarding the Christian meal, which many still do not understand. Here again, Jesus is as mysterious as the sharing of his blood and flesh.
This is a continuation of my review of Essays on John and Hebrews by Harold Attridge and published by Mohr Siebeck. As suggested by the title, this book is a collection of essays on these two books Biblical books.
In terms of the division of the contents, the essays are not quite evenly split between John and Hebrews. The main body of the text is right around 350 pages, with around 200 devoted the Gospel of John and around 150 devoted to the Epistle to the Hebrews. This is somewhat reflective of the length of John as compared with Hebrews.
Each of the essays in this volume has appeared elsewhere. This may make the text less valuable for those who may only want to read one or two of the essays. They might be able to xerox a hard copy or get electronic versions through a library. Yet for those who rely heavily on Attridge’s work this text puts many of his important essays in one place.
The essays range from fairly general introductory matters to fairly specialized matters. For example, the authorship of the gospel of John is the focus of one of the essays. For someone like myself, who, either in the context of the university or even in the context of a church parish, sometimes has to give general introductions to Biblical books, essays like this one should be very helpful. I have had the opportunity to read through that essay, so far, and Attridge appears to summarize much of the important literature. As an example of a more specialized essay, Attridge looks at matters like the relationship between logos in the Gospel of John and in Philo. This essay and ones like it may or may not prove useful to me in the contexts in which I teach, as most of the people that I deal with may not want to delve quite so deeply.
With this said, this book could prove helpful for the generalist and the specialist alike. To conclude, I’m also providing the publisher’s description below:
Harold W. Attridge has engaged in the interpretation of two of the most intriguing literary products of early Christianity, the Gospel according to John and the Epistle to the Hebrews. His essays explore the literary and cultural traditions at work in the text and its imaginative rhetoric aiming to deepen faith in Christ by giving new meaning to his death and exaltation. His essays on John focus on the literary artistry of the final version of the gospel, its playful approach to literary genres, its engaging rhetoric, its delight in visual imagery. He situates that literary analysis of both works within the context of the history of religion and culture in the first century, with careful attention to both Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds. Several essays, focusing on the phenomena connected with “Gnosticism”, extend that religio-historical horizon into the life of the early Church and contribute to the understanding of the reception of these two early Christian masterpieces.
This is the first time that I’m reviewing a book for Joel’s blog. But, in seminary, I was taught that a book review should consist of information about the author, an overview of contents, and a reaction. In this post, I’ll give a bit of background information on Harold Attridge whose essays fill out this collection of Essays on John and Hebrews from Mohr Siebeck.
I am not a New Testament scholar, but my first acquaintance with Attridge’s work was in the HarperCollins Study Bible for which he was an editor. When I was looking for a Bible to require for students in an Old Testament introductory course in a situation where the goals were more critical, this is the one that I decided on. Knowing that Attridge had a significant role to play in that work gives me high expectations for Essays on John and Hebrews.
For those who may not be familiar with Attridge’s background, a great deal more information can be found HERE. As a few highlights, Attridge has BA and MA degrees from Cambridge University, and his PhD is from Harvard. He is currently on faculty at Yale University Divinity school as the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament. He has served as the president of the Society of Biblical Literature. His list of publications is pretty incredible, though some of us might not be terribly familiar with them, as some of them seem pretty specialized. At a more general level, his commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Hermeneia series may be most widely known.
In light of Attridge’s background, if you are looking on a volume on John and Hebrews by a top-notch scholar, this text seems to be a very good candidate. Up next, I will post an overview of the contents of the book.
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First, in John, especially in John, read the entire section, chapter or passage and not just the miracle story. Anyway, in Sunday School class yesterday, we were discussing the miracle of the feeding of the 5000. Like the rest of John, you have to read the rest of the chapter. When you do so, you find a strict commendation of a lot of things, namely the Prosperity Gospel and believing that Christ came hear to give you anything by salvation and eternal life:
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you understood the miraculous signs. But don’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that the Son of Man can give you. For God the Father has given me the seal of his approval.”
They replied, “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?”
Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.” (Joh 6:26-29 NLT)
Go ahead and read the entire chapter, I’ll wait.
Okay, so you see why you should just stop at the sign – not a miracle per say. It is to show who Christ is and to encourage His disciples to find the reality of the sign. It wasn’t about God providing abundantly, but about Christ being the bread of life, and the understanding that the only work needed was to believe.
Christ didn’t come to give us earthly goods and riches, but to bring eternal life.
As a side note, I think John is interpreting his follow Evangelists, but that is another matter.
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We are currently in study of our way through the Gospel According to John at a small group study at Church. Last night, we were discussing, among other things, chapters 14-16. We got into a good discussion about the indwelling of the Spirit of God, etc…
“I have spoken of these matters in figures of speech, but soon I will stop speaking figuratively and will tell you plainly all about the Father. Then you will ask in my name. I’m not saying I will ask the Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from God. Yes, I came from the Father into the world, and now I will leave the world and return to the Father.” (Joh 16:25-28 NLT)
So, here’s my question to all of you scholars of John – where did the figures of speech begin? I mean, Christ has just finished speaking a pretty significant discourse aimed at the Spirit, the power of the Church, heaven and the such. Um… was none of this supposed to be taken literally?
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