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Can We Trust the New Testament? by J. A. T. Robinson

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  • Can We Trust the New Testament?
    Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


    For the past 150 years or so the Gospel of John has suffered from being isolated―almost insulated―from the others. Up to that time even so liberal a theologian as Schleiermacher could treat it on a par with the rest and indeed regard it as having priority for the picture it gave us of Jesus, since it was the one by the most intimate of his apostles. But over against the Synoptic Gospels John has been treated as the odd one out―in a minority of one to three, and doing a different job. In the hey-day of Liberal Protestant criticism, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Mark supplied the Jesus of history, John the Christ of faith. From the historical point of view, John was entirely secondary, dependent on the Synoptists for anything reliable that he incorporates. In space and time too he was far removed from any direct or even indirect contact with the person whose significance it was his contribution to draw out in the categories of Hellenistic (that is late Greek) mystical philosophy. In date he was put as late as 170. This last has at any rate been knocked out by the most direct piece of evidence possible, the discovery of an actual fragment of the Gospel dated by the paleographers from the first half of the second century―and time must then be allowed for it to have been copied and reached Egypt, in whose dry sands it was preserved. But this was only the first blow to an assessment of the Gospel which has become more and more incredible over the years.

    Comment


    • Can We Trust the New Testament?
      Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


      For one thing no one now believes in the simple view that Mark gives us the Jesus of history and John give us the Christ of faith. The tendency if anything is to believe that both give us the Christ of faith, with the Jesus of history a long way, perhaps irrecoverably, behind. That I am convinced is an exaggerated reaction. In fact it is becoming clear that Mark is much more theological and John is much more historical than was previously supposed. It is also becoming clear that the consensus is rapidly devolving that John is dependent on the Synoptics (or, more precisely, that he certainly used Mark, probably Luke and Matthew). This indeed has been one of the swiftest turn-abouts in critical history. For up to the publication twenty years ago of C. K. Barrett's valuable commentary on the Gospel of John he was in the great majority in holding this: now he is very much in the minority. John is increasingly seen to rest on independent tradition, which therefore, is potentially as near to source as any of the other streams of Gospel tradition (those represented in Mark, 'Q', special Matthew and special Luke) and must be considered along side them as part of the total 'synoptic' or stereoscopic picture of Jesus. One of the decisive reinforcements of this trend was Dodd's major study, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel. The effects of this shift and of other aspects of what I ventured, again nearly twenty years ago, to call 'the new look on the Fourth Gospel' (historians of women's fashion will be able to date it from 'the New Look'!) have been popularized in A. M. Hunter's According to John.

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      • Can We Trust the New Testament?
        Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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        The upshot has been to suggest that at many points both in the narrative and in the sayings of Jesus, John preserves tradition with as good, and often, better claim to take us back to source as comparable material in the other Gospels. Moreover, even the language of John, which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, is now seen to be neither so Hellenistic nor so late as was previously thought necessary. One of the by-products of the Dead Sea scrolls was to reveal that similar language was being used in the heart of southern Palestine by a strictly nationalistic Jewish group before the destruction of Jerusalem. The Gospel of John is now once again being seen as the very Jewish book it is (Lightfoot called it the most Hebraic book in the New Testament apart from the Apocalyse). That does not mean that by then the 'mix' between Hellenistic and Hebraic cultures was not far advanced. Indeed the Gospel is written in correct but simple Greek, with what might be called an Aramaic accent. It is addressed in its present form primarily, I believe, to Greek speaking Jews outside Palestine, probably in the area of Asia Minor around Ephesus. This location is borne out not only by good ancient tradition about John's presence in Ephesus but by the book of Revelation from the same area, which though almost certainly not from the same hand presupposes a 'Johannine' type of Christianity.

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        • Can We Trust the New Testament?
          Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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          All this is not incompatible with the view that the Fourth Gospel preserves and incorporates early material about Jesus but is itself written quite late, by someone who himself stood in a distant and external relationship to that material. Indeed this is what Dodd presupposed. He thought of an Ephesian 'elder' in the last decade of the first century (the now generally favoured date) who wrote up tradition that 'came down to him'. How they came down to him is indeed a relevant question. Attempts to analyze out written sources behind the Fourth Gospel have not been conspicuously successful. In fact such is the stylistic uniformity of the book that I would agree with the American scholar who said that 'if John used sources, he wrote them all himself'! Dodd presupposed that the traditions came down to the evangelist by word of mouth―yet in a form that time and again reveals them to be very 'primitive' and to carry marks not of Asia Minor in the 90's but of Palestine before the Jewish war of 66-70. But what was this invisible medium through which they passed uncontaminated for a full generation?

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          • Can We Trust the New Testament?
            Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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            Many attempts have been made to bridge the gulf between the original apostolic traditions (which could, it is agreed, well derive ultimately from John the son of Zebedee) and the evangelist and various redactors or revisers. There is no doubt that this Gospel, like the others, has passed through developing stages. For one thing, it is clear that the 'epilogue' of chapter 21 was added subsequently to the rounded close of 20.30f. I believe too that the prologue of 1.1-18 has been fitted on to, or rather round the original opening, like a porch. There are other signs of editorial touches and revisions (and lack of revision)―though I am not persuaded that any of the additions demand a different hand (except of course the certificate appended by the Johannine community in 21.24: 'It is this same disciple who attests what has here been written. It is in fact he who wrote it and we know that his testimony is true'). What seems to me much more questionable is to say that the main body of the Gospel itself represents the remoulding after a long interval by some totally unknown spiritual genius of traditions that themselves bespeak the conditions of a much earlier age. I would merely wish to ask whether this time-span and with it the separation of the evangelist from his tradition is really necessary―especially in view of the scale of development for which I argued in the previous chapter.

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            • Can We Trust the New Testament?
              Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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              The arguments for a late date for the Gospel of John may be summed up under three heads:

              1. There is the ancient tradition that John wrote 'last of all', though this goes with the theory that his object was to supply information that the others left out, which is hardly a plausible view of their relationship. It is bound up too with the tradition which is not itself incredible, that the apostle John lived on to the very end of the first century, though the common notion that he wrote as a very old man is is one for which the first evidence is quite late and unreliable. (In John 21.18 the old man is not the beloved disciple but Peter, who must have lived at most to his sixties.) But if what we have argued in the previous chapters is right, John's could still be the last Gospel and yet not be very late.

              2. If he is dependent on the Synoptists and if these were written towards the end of the first century, then of course he must be later still. But neither of these "ifs" seems to be necessary or indeed likely.

              3. John is usually held to come out of a situation in which the Church and Synagogue have irreparably split (as in the reconstruction I mentioned earlier of the blind man thrown out of the synagogue) and to reflect a Jewish ban against the Nazarenes which came into force in the late 80s. But any connection with this ban (which was against extreme Judaising Christians to whom St John's Gospel would have been anathema, who did not want to leave the synagogue and had to be 'smoked out') is very tenuous. Christians like Paul were already being thrown out of the synagogue much earlier. Indeed in 1 Thess. 2.14-16, in what is probably his earliest epistle, written about 50, Paul speaks in much the same external way as John does of 'the Jews' in Judea who 'drove us out'. In neither case does this imply a final breach. Excommunication was such a common discipline―for instance, as we now know, in the Qumran community―it is quite unreliable for dating.

              Comment


              • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                For the rest we are dealing with developments of doctrine and language which could be late, but do not need to be later than anything, say, in Colossian and Hebrews, which equally speak of the preexistence of the cosmic Christ but certainly, in my judgement, come from before the fall of Jerusalem. Indeed the Fourth Gospel, like the Epistle to the Hebrews, is a document where the argument would seem positively to invite allusion, however indirect (and John is a master of this), to the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple. Since the rejection of Jesus as the true Messiah, Shepherd and King of the Jews involves the inevitable judgement of metropolitan Judaism, the consummation of this in the doom of the capital could scarcely escape mention if it had occurred. Yet the only reference to it lies in the future, when in 11.48 the High Priest warns that if they do not do away with Jesus (and not, as actually occurred, if they do) the Romans will come and remove their temple and nation. The destruction of the temple, so far from being described physically in the light of events of 70, is seen as fulfilled spiritually in the death of Jesus in 30 (2.19-22). Nor is there any hint of later conditions being read back. In fact in 5.2 the evangelist observes, 'There is in Jerusalem at the Sheep-Pool a place with five colonnades, called in Hebrew Bethesda'. This was to be obliterated in the demolition of the city, only to be uncovered and confirmed recently by the archaeologist's spade. Yet John says emphatically at the time of writing (and not just of Jesus's speaking) 'is' not 'was'. Moreover, his knowledge not only of the topography but of the unrepeatable social and political conditions of Palestine prior to the Jewish war has been borne out in recent study.

                Comment


                • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                  Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                  If then we reopen the question of dating of this Gospel as of the others, what pointers are there to anything more precise? Working backwards, we may note what is almost certainly a reference in 21.18f to the death of Peter, which early tradition says was by crucifixion: 'You will stretch out your arms and a stranger will bind you fast.... He said this to indicate the manner of death by which Peter was to glorify God'. Peter met his death in all probability in the persecution of 65. Thereafter John was the last survivor of the 'pillars' of the apostolic Church mentioned in Gal. 2.9. James the Lord's brother had been killed by the Jews in 62, Peter and Paul had perished under Nero. It would not be surprising (and indeed it is amply confirmed by the book of Revelation if it comes from this date) if this quickened the expectation that the end must surely now come about soon (cf. Rev. 22.20). A word of Jesus interpreted to mean that 'the beloved disciple' would live to see it was evidently being used in support―not because he was so old but because it was so imminent. It seems much more likely that this misleading interpretation should need to be corrected soon after Peter's death, with which it was associated, than some thirty years later. A date of writing therefore of 65+, still prior to the Jewish rebellion (of which there is no foreboding in the Jew's obsequious dealings with Pilate) and the fall of Jerusalem, would fit well for the final version of St John's Gospel.

                  Comment


                  • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                    Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                    But so far we have been dealing with the epilogue, which must be considered with the prologue, and this in turn has to be viewed alongside the Johannine Epistles. For they share the same concern to insist that Jesus Christ had really come in the flesh (John 1.14; 1 John 4.2; 2 John 7), and indeed the prologue to the first Epistle (1 John 1.1-4) reads almost like a preliminary sketch for that of the Gospel. The Epistles reflect the same danger to the Church from the sort of 'Gnosticising' Judaism that we meet, also in the Ephesian area, in Colossians, 1 Timothy and the letters to the churches in Rev. 1―3, and (probably also from Asia Minor) in Jude and 2 Peter; and there appears no reason why they should not come from the same period, round about the early 60's. They are written to recall the faithful to fundamentals from which they are in danger of being shaken by distortions of the message that they had had from 'the beginning'. It is clear that there has since been time for a good deal of water to have passed under the bridges and both heresy and schism have assumed menacing proportions. The message to which the readers are being recalled is clearly that enshrined in the Johannine tradition―and, allowing for the lapse of time and the change in perspective, I see no decisive grounds for not thinking the author of the Epistles and Gospels to be the same man. Since his purpose in writing the Gospel was evangelistic (John 20:31), it makes sense to assume that it was originally composed and used for this purpose. If so, then, in some form or other, it will go well back into the 50's, at any rate in Asia Minor.

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                    • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                      Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                      But the tradition that makes it up shows every sign of having taken shape in debate and controversy with Jews in the heart of Palestine. All the arguments are Jewish arguments and there is not even as in Matthew (let alone Luke) a hint of questions that arise from Gentiles pressing in upon the wings: there is not a non-Jew in the Gospel, except Pilate and his soldiers ('Am I a Jew?', he asks in scorn). Christ is indeed the saviour of the whole world. John's Gospel is the least exclusivist or nationalistic. But his object seems to be to present this universalistic gospel as the true fulfilment of Judaism: Jesus is the Christ, the King of the Jews, is the the real manna, vine and shepherd of Israel. The problems arising from the terms on which Gentiles can enter and live in the Church do not seem to come within his purview. The children of God scattered abroad are still thought of in Jewish categories (7.35; 11.52). The 'Greeks' who come up to the festival and ask to see Jesus (12.20f) are evidently Greek-speaking Jews. And this could well reflect the kind of missionary encounter centred in on Jerusalem out of which the tradition of the Gospel was hammered. Indeed, I believe it probable that it took shape, in Greek, out of dialogue with the Greek-speaking Jews of Jerusalem (of whom Nicodemus with his Greek name is a representative sample) even before it was carried to Asia Minor―though the first language of its author was almost certainly Aramaic.

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                      • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                        Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                        If this is anything like its history (and the 'we' of the Johannine community is never far away to show it was much more than the work of one man, however dominant), then this Gospel tradition was coming to fruition simultaneously with the others―and doubtless in fertilization with them (hence some of the verbal parallels that have suggested literary dependence). It represents a tradition that basically took shape like the others in the 40s and 50s, though I believe its final stages reflect slightly later developments and events―hence the truth too in the report that it was written last. But though it is in many ways the maturest of the Gospels, it can also take us just as far back―if not further―to source. And at this point we cannot finally escape the question of authorship.

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                        • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                          Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                          The association of the Gospel with John the son of Zebedee is too strong simply to dismiss, but most scholars have found it impossible to see him as more than the source, or a source, of its tradition. It is also fairly widely (though by no means universally) accepted that 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' is intended to represent the apostle John (otherwise an unaccountable absentee from the Gospel, like his brother James), even if the claim of the Gospel itself is not accepted that 'it is in fact he who wrote it' (21.24). More important ultimately than who actually penned it is whether the tradition it represents does go back to source and whether the evangelist stood within that tradition rather than outside it (as even Dodd thought). I believe that the answer to both these questions should be, Yes. Having got that far, fairly cogent reasons have to be advanced that the author should not be John the son of Zebedee. One of the most powerful is that 'an ignorant Galilean fisherman' could not have written it. This objection begins to look less convincing with the evidence that his religious vocabulary is not necessarily so Hellenistic or so late, nor is his Greek style as cultured even as those of 1 Peter or James. Moreover, Zebedee with his two sons and hired servants, is much more comparable with the father in the parable of the prodigal son, who was similarly placed and evidently a man of some limited substance, than an illiterate peasant. Indeed, if we are looking for a candidate who fits the requirements, we should have to go a long way to find another who knew both Galilee and southern Palestine intimately, was a leader in the apostolic mission in Jerusalem and Samaria (Acts 3―4; 8.14-25) and, as Paul tells us on the highest authority in Gal. 2.9, was one of those who from Jerusalem undertook to 'go to the Jews'. To duplicate such characters, above all to invent a shadow who is a spiritual genius and theological giant, is scarcely a scientific procedure if there is any alternative. Against the stream of critical opinion, therefore, I am compelled to say that I have come to find apostolic authorship, within the context of an ongoing missionary community, the hypothesis which presents the least difficulties.

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                          • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                            Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


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                            Now if we admit this we are very close to source indeed―within the innermost circle of the Twelve―and this has of course been the contention of those like Lightfoot and Westcott who argued strongly for the traditional authorship. But lest the conservative-minded should at this point jump to the conclusion that this means that we possess the equivalent of a video-tape, it is important to emphasize at once that this means nothing of the sort. In fact to assume that this is the sort of truth the Gospel is giving us is to show a crass misunderstanding of its own claim.

                            Comment


                            • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                              Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


                              THE TRUTH OF THE PICTURE

                              The claim of the evangelist is indeed that 'his witness is true' and the context in which it is made shows that this is not just 'spiritual' truth unrelated to physical fact. For in recording the death of Jesus he says: 'One of the soldiers stabbed his side with a lance, and at once there was a flow of blood and water. This is vouched for by an eye witness, whose evidence is to be trusted. He knows that he speaks the truth, so that you too may believe' (19.34f). It is the truth of the history of which he speaks―yet the purpose of his recording it is primarily in the interest of faith (that you may 'believe'), not of fact for its own sake. Moreover, water and blood have profound spiritual significance for this writer, as his reflection on these themes in the first Epistle makes clear (1 John 5.6-8). In fact John is at his most theological when he is most historical, and most historical when he is most theological. His purpose is to show the Word made flesh (1.14)―and the one is of equal importance with the other. His method is, as it were, to project two colour transparencies at once, one over the other. It is possible, like the Jews, to see only the one, as the eyes see (7.24), at the natural level (8.15), and so to miss or to misunderstand everything. Or it is possible to see only the other, as many Christian interpreters have done, and to regard the flesh as unreal, a transparent sham. (This is evidently an early reaction, as the writer has come back to it in the Epistles and to insist, as in 2 John 7, that to deny the flesh of Jesus is nothing less than Antichrist.) But to see the 'glory' in the flesh is to know the truth that sets one free. And the verity of this is what John is interested in―not verisimilitude for its own sake. Judge the Jesus of this Gospel purely at the level of psychological analysis, and you will probably conclude, with the Jews, that he is a megalomaniac. For, in every sense, 'no man ever spoke like this man' (7:46). No sane person goes around saying 'Before Abraham was I am' (8.56) or 'Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall live forever' (6.56-8). These are theological interpretations, not literal utterances. Yet at the deepest level of faith they may indeed be the truth about the eternal Word of life, made flesh in this supremely individual and uniquely normal man of history.

                              Comment


                              • Can We Trust the New Testament?
                                Chapter 5: JOHN'S PICTURE OF JESUS


                                THE TRUTH OF THE PICTURE

                                If we are not to misinterpret and therefore to mistrust John, it is vital to see what he is doing. So perhaps it may be helpful to end with a sample dip into his Gospel to illustrate the importance, and the profundity, of this.

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