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John--The Man Who Saw, now at RC

I have a new blog post on John's reliability as a guest blog post at Ratio Christi. In the interests of time, I'm not going to cross-post the entire thing, with links, but I will post the beginning here and put it under the "John" tag so that readers who browse the "John" tag here at W4 will find it.

In case you haven’t heard, the Gospel of John is different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But then again, maybe you’ve noticed this already! The other three Gospels often tell the same stories, sometimes even in similar words, while John goes his own way, often giving us information about what Jesus did and said that is found nowhere in the three Synoptic Gospels. Most of us who think of ourselves as evangelical Christians, especially if we self-identify as conservative Christians, never thought that that made John less historical, though. Not even a little bit. But you might be surprised at how widespread that view is, even among some scholars normally thought of as evangelical. For example, Craig A. Evans has said, when challenged by skeptic Bart Ehrman,


I suspect we don’t have too much difference on John. My view is the gospel of John is a horse of another color altogether. It’s a different genre.... So, I don’t disagree with you too much on that point. I think John is studded with historical details. Maybe you called them nuggets. That’s not a bad way of describing John. But I think the Synoptics are more than just some nuggets.

Evans has also said,

The principle source for material from which we may derive a portrait of the historical Jesus are the three Synoptic gospels--Matthew, Mark and Luke. They are called Synoptic because they overlap a lot, and we can see them together, which is what the Greek word means, see them together in parallel columns. John’s Gospel is another matter. What genre is it? It’s not another Synoptic Gospel, as some would like to think. All agree that there is some history in John, but is it primarily history, or is it something else?

See more here.

These questions about John’s robust historicity are understandably troubling to Christians for whom the Gospel is no less beloved than the other three, and often regarded as a great favorite. Do we really have to place these kinds of brackets around John because he might be of a partially non-historical genre?

For that matter, the Synoptic Gospels haven’t fared all that well when it comes to scholarly claims that they contain deliberate historical alterations. I have documented and rebutted such claims extensively, some of them from evangelical scholars whose names might be surprising, in my most recent book, The Mirror or the Mask. But John definitely comes in for an extra helping of doubt.

The wonderful thing is, though, that all this skepticism is misplaced. In fact, John demonstrates his historical intention constantly, both in his explicit statements (e.g., John 19:35) and in many subtle details.

Rest of the post is here.

Comments (17)

Glad to see somebody appreciates the Morris essay on John's being an eyewitness as much as I do! His volume of studies on the fourth gospel is best $5 or $10 I ever spent for a used book.

I appreciate his carefulness, sobriety, and willingness to let the evidence speak for itself, without trying to bolster up whatever fashionable critical theories/fads were around in his day.

Between the prologue to the fourth gospel and 19:35, it seems apparent that the writer or writers of the fourth gospel (who I think are St John and possibly others) are trying to convey truth to us. One can argue that what they write is true or not true, but the intent to tell the truth is there at the very least.

Glad to see somebody appreciates the Morris essay on John's being an eyewitness as much as I do! His volume of studies on the fourth gospel is best $5 or $10 I ever spent for a used book.

I appreciate his carefulness, sobriety, and willingness to let the evidence speak for itself, without trying to bolster up whatever fashionable critical theories/fads were around in his day.

Between the prologue to the fourth gospel and 19:35, it seems apparent that the writer or writers of the fourth gospel (who I think are St John and possibly others) are trying to convey truth to us. One can argue that what they write is true or not true, but the intent to tell the truth is there at the very least.

Somehow I got double-posted.

I also wanted to add: because of the prologue and 19:35, we can't wave away whatever perceived difficulties exist in the text (e.g. the hours of the trial and crucifixion) and say "literary device!" --- we have to face the difficulty head-on. And I'm totally fine with that, much more than if somebody cooked up some critical theory to explain the difference.

Yes, and 21:24 as well. Even if one regards those last two verses as written by another hand, the emphasis upon truth is very strong *at least* in the first audience.

Richard Burridge has a lot of prestige that then gets put behind some very dismissive comments he makes about John's references to truth. I quote these at length in The Mirror or the Mask. Burridge tries to give the impression that the word "truth" in such statements in John should receive an asterisk and doesn't mean what "we" mean by it, because of different "ancient views of truth." Burridge does not adequately support this attempt to asterisk John's own claims to truth--nor anywhere near. Nor does he refute the ample evidence of John's entirely historical intention. He merely looks like he is trying to foist his own views off on John and other ancient authors. And no amount of credentials and prestige can make that attempt convincing.

As far as "ancient views," Origen is an outlier here. In Book X of his Commentary on John, Origen does express views about truth that sound in places positively postmodern. But if anyone would be cherry picking, it would be someone who would attempt to treat Origen's comments there as representative either of the church fathers, ancient Christians, or ancient people generally. Very much to the contrary.

My survey of ancient views of truth, by the way, was closely modeled on that by Darrell Bock in a paper he gave to the ETS, which can be downloaded from their site. In fact, in The Mirror or the Mask I credit that paper with giving me a line on many of my references (though I believe I actually have a few more) in my chapter "Let Ancient People Speak For Themselves." Surprisingly, Bock seems to conclude at the end of his paper that the strong ancient view of the importance of literal historical truth that he rightly documents and emphasizes is compatible with the views of Licona, but that is a place where I simply disagree with his evaluation and have argued strongly to the contrary. The quotations are what they are.

Although scholarly skepticism of the Gospels is clearly motivated by ideological prejudices, I wonder if this skepticism isn’t also a consequence of the fact that there is no consensus on how to assess the historical value of ancient sources. A generation ago scholars touted various “criteria of authenticity” as a mechanism for making such judgments, but that way of thinking no longer seems to carry as much weight as it once did.

Andrew, I haven't dabbled much in the works of recent historians, so I would not have seen this phenomenon by direct observation. If it really happening, I would conjecture that it is a natural outflow of the loss of underlying principles and, especially in the humanities, a loss even in a belief in truth as such, which has infected the universities. How can you even talk about criteria of historical veracity when it is so hard to even have an agreed-upon lexicon of what "true" shall be taken to mean (with "values of true" thrown in)? When you have the university authorities mandating that if a person who used to be a woman now says she is a man, that this is "true", and when the entire university rears up on its hind legs to shout out "we won't listen to you" to anyone who mildly asks "might there be some way in which it isn't actually true?" This sort of thing filters out of the hallways and into the lectures (including those outside of the "gender studies" venues, and then into textbooks, with great speed.

To which I would say: they will reap what they sow. Like with the babel that eventually becomes explicit and manifest at N.I.C.E only after years of babel that they had fostered without admitting to its farcical nature, eventually people will stop taking them seriously. It may only happen some great catastrophe (like the original Babel), but it must happen, because eventually it gets so bad that you simply cannot live that way. (The ones who insist, being insane, will darwinize themselves out of the gene pool.)

I had hoped that conservative NT writers would have (so far) avoided that level of nuttiness.

Lydia do you know what Bock's paper was titled as? I'm not a member of the ETS so it looks like I'll have to email him for a copy.

BTW, i have TMOTM. Fantastic. So tightly argued I couldn't help but agree with Tom Gilson that it's convincing.

Callum, here's the recording of Bock's paper. The last few pages he couldn't read in the time all the way through, but you can tell from what is recorded that he is saying that he thinks Licona's views are compatible with what he's been reading from the ancient sources. I mainly followed up on his references, not (of course) agreeing with that conclusion. I found all the references for myself, including the contexts, and sometimes selected a different translation to quote. (Licona has recently publicly referred to my work on ancient authors as "downright sloppy," though without details. That careful use of Bock's paper is an example, I suppose, of my "sloppiness.")

You don't have to be an ETS member to get the recording of the Bock paper. I found his research helpful in finding these ancient writers.

https://www.wordmp3.com/details.aspx?id=23790

Andrew, the "criteria of authenticity" are still used. Some of them are highly problematic, particularly the "criterion of double similarity and dissimilarity," now renamed ambitiously the "criterion of historical plausibility," which really makes it much worse! This has to do with Jesus' teachings or actions being "plausible in its historical context and demonstrate some influence in earliest Christianity, while at the same time disclosing Jesus’ individuality within his original context and with some tendency to cut against the grain of later Christian theologizing." You can just imagine how this is used to cut out Jesus' claims to deity in John!

While the criteria of authenticity get touted as a way of avoiding historical skepticism, they are so skeptical in their initial approach, basically consigning passages to agnosticism (at the least) if they don't "pass the test of the criteria," that I think the most we can say is this: A few of the so-called criteria, e.g., the criterion of embarrassment, constitute a type of positive evidence for historicity of particular incidents. But they have to be *supplemented*, actively and intentionally, with other kinds of evidence and with a broader historical approach *to* evidence, or we will never get to the point of affirming the reliability of any document as a whole (unless it consists of just one passage!).

I'm going to have more to say about the criteriological approach in The Eye of the Beholder.

Thanks for the link Lydia. Much appreciated.

I can say from the twittersphere that people reacted to your recent Unbelievable episode with eagerness to see a debate on the topic, regardless of whether they agreed or not.

I'd imagine Licona will have to substantiate his criticisms sooner or later.

At the moment I'm harping on to anyone who will listen just to read the book.

I continue to think that a scholarly exchange in the pages of a journal like Philosophia Christi would be a good venue for Licona and me to dialogue. I will not have such a dialogue by proxy, though. (As Licona has suggested. This suggestion seems to me to be a proposal of an unprofessional arrangement. A living scholar with a written corpus whose views have been criticized should defend his own views, not "tag" a follower to defend his views in a debate type of format. The latter arrangement introduces far too many potential distractions from direct discussion of the ideas and theories in question.) I think such a written exchange would be much better than a live debate of any kind, in any venue.

In all honesty, I am far more focused now on doing my own work and making it available to others for them to decide for themselves. I have *never* been seeking a debate with Licona as an *end in itself*. I think at times that Licona and his followers have not understood that, though I've said it often enough.

It is strange that he should dismiss your work because you recieved a PhD in English, or haven't had the requisite degree. Does he thinks he can see through your work in a way that the scholars who give blurbs for it can't? Sure they might not agree with everything, but if Licona was right in saying, 'So read her work very skeptically,' why does Blomberg, for instance, think there is a good deal of value in it?

But you're right that credentials and debates dont matter: the work itself is the thing.

Does he thinks he can see through your work in a way that the scholars who give blurbs for it can't?

Yes.

Presumably he's hitching his wagon to Richard Burridge and Christopher Pelling and perhaps Craig Keener as well. Lydia disagrees with these scholars, who agree with Mike. These scholars have been working in this field with the ancient literature "for decades." Lydia has not been working in this field for decades. (Though actually, I *was* working on Augustine as well as various Greco-Roman literary themes, such as the Epithalamion tradition, in graduate school, which *is* decades ago. Mike seems to have little understanding of what could have been included in a "PhD in English." But I digress.) Therefore, she is almost certainly wrong. As for "sloppy," who knows precisely what he has in mind. I would only be guessing. But I think it's a fair conjecture at this point that anyone who didn't have all the degrees and number of decades Mike has now stipulated and who publicly disagreed with him as broadly as I do and who gave alternative interpretations of the ancient literature would receive *some* sort of derogatory epithet such as "sloppy." Or perhaps "fundamentalist" or "rigid." He might apply those epithets even if the person *were* credentialed in the fields he has stipulated. No matter how obviously careful and thorough that person was in the course of disagreement.

This whole thing makes me think of a music video with a rapping Richard Dawkins declaring how much better than everyone else he is because he has a science degree. It's a pretty humorous video made in a style similar to the Jib Jab parodies.

I've seen it. A shame that any Christian would ever appear similar to that. But remember: Lydia is the one with "bad tone."

Lydia is the one with "bad tone."

That's funny, because I have already noted more than once Lydia using a mild, reserved, non-polemical tone where I probably would not have been able to resist descending into some kind of cutting remark. And I am less than half the way through. I don't know whether her editor or publisher told her to keep it toned down, or what, but there are PLENTY of places where even a mild jab would have been not out of order even for a Christian scholar.

I suspect that what is going on is that at least in some circles, there are scholars (or, I should say "scholars") who are simply unable to tell the difference between tone and substance. They find someone like Lydia taking issue (politely, calmly, with evidence and argument rather than with insults and polemics) with their theses, and that mere fact sends them off into a rage about being "attacked" and "insulted". It would not be surprising to find these same individuals also claiming foul on account of lack of credentials, but there is something rather obtuse about such an assertion: what we have found is that the problem is so common that it undermines the value of the credentials - indeed, the evidence seems to be saying that the institutional pressure is forcing people to agree to nonsense on account of credentialing. If it weren't for credentialism, the problem wouldn't be so prevalent. So, the CURE can hardly be MORE credentialism, but something quite other.

I've seen it. A shame that any Christian would ever appear similar to that. But remember: Lydia is the one with "bad tone."

The fact he's saying you are the one with the "bad tone" feels like something out of Bizarro World. I haven't read your new book, but I've read much of your blog on the subject, and many of your facebook posts on the same. Seems more like he's using the whole Geisler thing to paint any kind of push against his ideas as backwards and downright mean. At least that is how it looks to someone on the outside.

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