Random question

[anotherusedpage]

directed at the Christians/theologians on my flist. Not for any good reason, I'm just interested.


So Rosie's been watching Jesus Christ Superstar, right? And we were having conversations about which of the disciples got the decent solos, and I said, didn't John get one? and she said, no, he's already been beheaded.

(And at this point I realised I only have a second hand account of Jesus Christ Superstar and my own dodgy translating from German of the Matthew Passion along with some general cultural whatsit as the main sources my understanding of the gospels is based on, and I feel somewhat ignorant. At some point in the future, I will rectify this by actually reading the new testament (or at least singing the John Passion).)

But for now, what I'm actually interested in is more the authorship and authority question...

Was John the Baptist the same guy as John the Evangalist?

And wasn't John the Baptist beheaded before the death of Jesus in the other gospels?

So... how is this reconciled?

Have I missed or misunderstood something, or is this just another contradiction that I'd not noticed before?

Comments

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

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.

[thalassius.livejournal.com]

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).

[sea-bright.livejournal.com]

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...

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Thank you, that's interesting.

[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.