anotherusedpage

I'm sure in about five minutes a competent theologian will come along and clarify this, but there are three (or four) Johns, two of whom may possibly be the same.

(1) John the Baptist (beheaded in the Salome incident)
(2) John the "most beloved disciple"
(3) John the Evangelist, author of the fourth (or conceivably first, according to a view

sea_bright can explain better than me) Gospel
(4) John the Divine, renowned user of magic mushrooms, under the influence of which he wrote the Book of Revelations (aka Jesus in the Sky with Dragons).

(2) and (3) may possibly be the same person. Again, ask someone more competent, but I believe it has something to do with the Gosp[el opf John never referring to that particular disciple except as 'the most beloved disciple'

And now I'm going to shut up and leave this to the experts - many apologies if I've got any of this horribly wrong!

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Oops, that is actually the Book of Revelation (no plural) which I typo-ed despite actually remembering this the first time round.

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synergetic.livejournal.com

he wrote the Book of Revelations (aka Jesus in the Sky with Dragons)

That has unbelieveably brightened my day and knocked me out laughing for a good minute :D

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kaberett.livejournal.com

Yes. I was going to ask:

I'm surfing friendsfriends, as one does, on account of being too tired to be bothered to go to bed...

... may I

metaquotes this?

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Hey, I can't see

thalassius minding, but you actually asked

synergetic who didn't come up with the quote. You wanna actually ask

thalassius you might wanna try again. Unless it was my permission you were after all along, I forget the rules, in which case, yeah sure...

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kaberett.livejournal.com

Sorry, lack of clarity: I was agreeing with

synergetic over the fact that it caused mad giggling, and was asking

thalassius if they'd mind.

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Fine, though if you could correct the typo that would be kind. Otherwise my inner pedant will start chewing desks and that's not good.

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kaberett.livejournal.com

*nod* Of course. :)

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John the Baptist wasn't the same guy as John the Evangelist. John the Baptist wasn't one of the twelve apostles: he started preaching before Jesus did - in fact, his main job was to tell people that Jesus was coming, and, as you note, he was beheaded relatively early (probably - trying to tie things down to a definite timescale is always tricky) in Jesus's ministry.

Just to confuse things even more, there's significant doubt about whether John the apostle was actually the John who wrote John's Gospel (some people think he was, some people think he wasn't, and some people think the Gospel was put together later by the community that John founded, but wasn't actually authored by him), and whether either of those Johns is the John that wrote the John's letters, and whether any of the above is the guy who wrote revelation...

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Seeing as Anselm has brought it up, why do you (or people) think of it as the first gospel then?

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Hmm... I see

thalassius managed to hit 'submit' before I did...

I'm not aware of a major view that holds John is the first Gospel, but I do know of a minority view (held by my college tutor and anyone she's managed to convince) that it was the third to be written. But then I haven't done any in-depth academic New Testament theology for some years now, and people are always coming up with new theories.

It's more or less the case that for any given possible theory about authorship/dating/sources/etc, there will be someone who holds it, though certain views are more fashionable at certain times (and in certain places). Some theologians also have a nasty habit of stating their view as though it's the only one a sane person could possibly hold, even if they are in fact in a minority. So in most cases, if anyone tells you 'Everyone knows that person x is/isn't the same as person y/person x definitely wrote/did not write text z', they're lying. Or at best misguided.

It's obviously a day for typos involving the title of the last book of the New Testament - as I now see I didn't give it a capital R.

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No, the order of the Gospels was my confusion - you told me that there was a minority view it wasn't the last, and my brain translated this somehow into it being the first instead, rather than the third, but you're the only person who's mentioned to me that it might be anything other than the last.

Apologies if I confused anyone with that (and by forgetting that there were letters involving a John as well).

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Well, if you're really interested in the dating of John... but don't say I didn't warn you if this turns into a waffle. :-)

The most common theory these days is that Mark was the first of the four gospels to be written, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark (along with other material) as a source. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known collectively as the synoptic gospels, and they have a lot of material in common. John, it's usually hypothesized, came later on, and may have been completely independent, or may have used either the synoptics or some of the same source material. The fact that John is generally believed to be quite late (early 2nd century, perhaps) is often cited as reason to believe that John the apostle (the beloved disciple) and John the Evangelist weren't the same person, as John would have been improbably old at the time it was supposed to have been written. (This is where the community idea comes in: one possible theory (and the one I incline to) is that the incidents described in the Gospel were well known in the community that John founded, but existed primarily as oral tradition, and were only committed to paper in an organized form when it became obvious that John wasn't going to be with them for much longer, or perhaps just after he'd died.)

However, my tutor (Barbara Shellard) holds the view that John was written much earlier than most people believe, and that Luke was in fact the last to be written, and, moreover, that Luke used John as a source. Her reasons for saying this are quite complicated and technical, and a lot of them rely on a much better knowledge of the original Greek than I have, but there is one bit of her theory that I do know about and rather like.

You may or may not know that the story of the woman caught in adultery (the one who's about to be stoned, but who isn't when Jesus says that he who is without sin should be the first to cast a stone) is a bit of a textual mystery: it doesn't appear in the earliest manuscripts of John, and it tends to move around a bit and appear in other places in the Gospel, and occasionally in other texts entirely, so no one is quite sure where the story originated. Barbara's theory is that the story was first committed to paper (I suppose by paper I actually mean papyrus, but you know what I mean) by Luke (and indeed, one manuscript of Luke's Gospel is one of the non-Johannine places the story appeared). This would make sense, as it's exactly the sort of story Luke would choose to record if he heard about it: it deals with his favourite themes of Jesus being merciful and reaching out to those who are excluded or looked down on. Barbara reckons that Luke had lots of notes for the Gospel he was writing, as one tends to have when one is about to embark on a major work, and took his bundle of bits of paper with him when he visited the Johannine community to read their Gospel as part of his research. She then thinks he managed to lose the bit of paper with the story of the woman taken in adultery on it, and left it behind at the Johannine community - possibly even rolled into the Gospel that he'd been reading. Her theory is then that later scribes found it when they were making copies, and incorporated it - which would account for it not being in early copies, and for it moving around once it does appear.

As I say, Barbara is one of a very few people to hold this theory, but I tend to think it works rather well - it seems to fit the available facts, and has a ring of plausibility to it on a human level. On the other hand, I'm not a New Testament scholar...

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Thank you, that's interesting.

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herringprincess.livejournal.com

Some people think John was the first written. I read stuff on it. Can't remember much of it. But it *is* an opinion that exists in theological circles.
Me does not reckon John-disciple wrote John, but it's tradition he did - that's why it's canonised.

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nellie-darlin.livejournal.com

thalassius and

sea_bright have covered most of it, I think, but I wanted to add my twopenn'orth. As far as I can remember, John the Baptist, the one who got his head chopped off by Herod for Salome, was Jesus's cousin. He was the son of Elizabeth, and was born a few months before Jesus (Mary goes to visit Elizabeth while they are both pregnant). Elizabeth was beyond childbearing age, so John's birth was seen as a miracle. John spent years in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey, and wearing a hairshirt (don't ask...). He is called "the Baptist" because he baptised Jesus in the River Jordan at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. Then he got beheaded. *ends potted history of John the Baptist*

And to clarify, the term "Evangelist" refers to any of the four authors of the Gospel, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. You say you know the St Matthew Passion - well, there is the part of the Evangelist in that, and he is sort of the narrator. So John the Evangelist refers to the John that wrote the Gospel of St John. There didn't seem to be many names in Galilee at the time, so there's a lot of confusion...

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kattahj.livejournal.com

He is called "the Baptist" because he baptised Jesus in the River Jordan at the beginning of Jesus's ministry.

Well, technically he was called The Baptist well before that and baptised a whole lot of other people. It was some sort of universal stain-b-gone for the soul, and as I understand it, people loooved coming over to have him verbally abuse them and then hold them under water.

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There didn't seem to be many names in Galilee at the time, so there's a lot of confusion...

Yes... most of the men seem to have been called John, and most of the women were Mary, leading to a lovely bit in Matthew's resurrection story where he talks about 'Mary Magdalene and the other Mary' going to the tomb.

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I'm a bit clearer about the Marys because I had to look that up last term; there's a mediaeval saint's life play that conflates the lives of several of the biblical Marys and deeply confused the people in the class who actually knew their theology...

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That seems to have happened a lot. There's a persistent popular belief that Mary Magdalene was a harlot before she met Jesus and reformed, but as far as I can tell, there's no Biblical justification for that, unless you're willing to conflate two Marys who are said to come from different places, and then one of them with another woman who's never given a name...

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