Why didn't Yeshua write anything?

[mfbukowski]

35 minutes ago, Gray said:

Jesus won't even let anyone call him good, but in the late source John, Jesus suddenly thinks he's Yahweh? The earliest and best sources don't present a Jesus who believes himself to be divine. Academic biblical studies has rules to it. You don't have to like them. You can even use postmodernism as launching pad toward total skepticism of history (except maybe the historical conclusions you like). 

I thought you only cared about the story itself? The story is that Jesus proclaims himself to be the son of God. The history is something different. So what? Isn't it the belief that's important to you? John didn't know Jesus the man. He wrote a story about the the truths he believed about Jesus the Son of God. He even warns the readers several times not to take the stories too literally. John puts words in Jesus' mouths to express theological truths, not facts about the life of Mary's son.

 

 

Besides the fact that I don't like any historical conclusions that I can think of at the moment. these are good points of which I was unaware.

Thanks for the criticism- I will have to learn more!  Yes I see the conflict there

Even the great ME cannot be an expert in everything.

 

[Gray]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Besides the fact that I don't like any historical conclusions that I can think of at the moment. these are good points of which I was unaware.

Thanks for the criticism- I will have to learn more!  Yes I see the conflict there

Even the great ME cannot be an expert in everything.

 

You humble me. Thank you

[RevTestament]

17 hours ago, Gray said:

He wrote a story about the the truths he believed about Jesus the Son of God. He even warns the readers several times not to take the stories too literally. John puts words in Jesus' mouths to express theological truths, not facts about the life of Mary's son.

If you don't mind CFR on your claims here. Chapter and verse please. IMHO tho, your last sentence is just the typical guess of modern scholars, but if you have anything besides a scholar's opinion to support it, you can give that too.

[Gray]

14 hours ago, RevTestament said:

If you don't mind CFR on your claims here. Chapter and verse please. IMHO tho, your last sentence is just the typical guess of modern scholars, but if you have anything besides a scholar's opinion to support it, you can give that too.

There's quite a lot of material on this, of course. Are you CFRing the idea that John wasn't writing a history of the life of Jesus, or that John wasn't an eye witness? Something else?

To summarize issues with John (borrowing someone else's summary): "John is regarded as the most theological and least historical of all the Gospels. It does not come from the disciple of that name or from anyone else who actually knew Jesus. It is too late, too Greek, too theologically developed and too anti-Jewish." It's the first gospel that tells us that Jesus existed before his birth, for example.

As you may be aware, John dates from something like 60 years after the death of Jesus. Although there are certainly bits of historical tradition, the work itself is obviously not an eye-witness account, and bears clear marks of a composed story. The theology is totally different from the earlier synoptic and Q sources - it represents an evolution toward higher Christology. And of course the anti-Jewish sentiment in John makes it clear that the author is not writing from an early Christian perspective. Early in Christian history, the movement was thoroughly Jewish, and the disciples met in Jewish synagogues. Later in the first century there was a falling out.

Anyway, are you looking for specific books? There's An Introduction to the Gospel of John (Ray Brown). You can also check out this Stanford Series on the historical Jesus: https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=10

Here's another introduction to John:

Some discussion of it here, starting on P11

https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/sites/partners/cbaa_seminar/CBA_members_only/Fredriksen_temple.pdf

 

For the specific claim about John warning against literalism, I'm getting that from Spong's reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar

Quote

John’s Gospel seems to ridicule anyone who might read this book as a work of literal history. For example, Jesus says to Nicodemus: “You must be born again.” Nicodemus, the literalist, says: “Born again? I am a grown man! How can I crawl back into my mother’s womb and be born again?” Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “If you know the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would give you living water.” The Samaritan woman, a literalist, responds: “Man, you don’t even have a bucket!”

 

[Physics Guy]

"It does not come from the disciple of that name or from anyone else who actually knew Jesus."

That may depend on what you mean by "come from". The exact form of John that we have probably wasn't written by anyone who knew Jesus personally, but could it have been based on accounts that came from people who did know him? I don't think that's so easy to rule out.

If John's more hifalutin christology was simply made up, then how did it manage to gain market share against the (supposedly) previous tradition of the synoptic gospels? Why was it accepted as portraying the same Jesus? These are questions that still need some kind of answer, because somehow John's version was so accepted. Somewhere in the first-century Christian community there was some sufficient weight of collective judgement that the Jesus of John was indeed the same Jesus.

Now, perhaps this judgement was merely like that of the comic-book audiences who have decided to accept that Superman can fly, and not just jump tall buildings, or that Wonder Woman is an actual goddess, and not just an Amazon. The upgraded story is appealing and so it is welcomed by people who like being able to think of their hero as even better than he or she was at first. Perhaps that's all it took. So Jesus is not only Messiah but also pre-existent Word: yeah, cool! 

That's still just a hypothetical, speculative explanation for why early Christians accepted the Jesus of John. An alternative explanation is that there really were some more esoteric traditions, from people who had not only known Jesus but had also been in his inner circle, and that these authentic but esoteric traditions simply took a bit longer to emerge in written form. Scholars don't have to believe this, but by the same token I don't see how they can be sure that it isn't true.

[hagoth7]

2 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

...If John's more hifalutin christology was simply made up, then how did it manage to gain market share against the (supposedly) previous tradition of the synoptic gospels? Why was it accepted as portraying the same Jesus?...Somewhere in the first-century Christian community there was some sufficient weight of collective judgement that the Jesus of John was indeed the same Jesus....

This.

....there really were some more esoteric traditions, from people who had not only known Jesus but had also been in his inner circle...

And this.

 

Great post.

[RevTestament]

17 hours ago, RevTestament said:

If you don't mind CFR on your claims here. Chapter and verse please. IMHO tho, your last sentence is just the typical guess of modern scholars, but if you have anything besides a scholar's opinion to support it, you can give that too.

Re:  "He even warns the readers several times not to take the stories too literally. "

13 minutes ago, Gray said:

To summarize issues with John (borrowing someone else's summary): "John is regarded as the most theological and least historical of all the Gospels. It does not come from the disciple of that name or from anyone else who actually knew Jesus. It is too late, too Greek, too theologically developed and too anti-Jewish." It's the first gospel that tells us that Jesus existed before his birth, for example.

As you may be aware, John dates from something like 60 years after the death of Jesus. Although there are certainly bits of historical tradition, the work itself is obviously not an eye-witness account, and bears clear marks of a composed story. The theology is totally different from the earlier synoptic and Q sources - it represents an evolution toward higher Christology. And of course the anti-Jewish sentiment in John makes it clear that the author is not writing from an early Christian perspective. Early in Christian history, the movement was thoroughly Jewish, and the disciples met in Jewish synagogues. Later in the first century there was a falling out.

https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/sites/partners/cbaa_seminar/CBA_members_only/Fredriksen_temple.pdf

For the specific claim about John warning against literalism, I'm getting that from Spong's reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar

Recharacterizing Jesus' use of symbolic language into John warning against literalism just threw me for a bit of a loop. However, I don't feel it is too terribly different from what Jesus does in Matthew with parables and such. There He also specifically points out that the blind will continue not to see and the deaf not to hear, because they do not understand His message in spirit. So to try to claim John's Jesus is terribly different, is not really true. I do agree that John does offer a more spiritual message overall than the other gospels which is why I like it.

But here is Jesus in Matthew saying essentially the same thing as He did to the woman at the well in John:

13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

As for the time of John's composition, I am prone to agree it was probably the last gospel written, and was probably written just a little before Revelation. I also agree that it is not strictly an eyewitness account, but seems to have things in it only Jesus was privy to. These would be revealed more like the things in Revelation. Perhaps, by an angel to John. Or you can do the scholarly thing and discount Revelation too. 

[Gray]

2 hours ago, RevTestament said:

Re:  "He even warns the readers several times not to take the stories too literally. "

Recharacterizing Jesus' use of symbolic language into John warning against literalism just threw me for a bit of a loop. However, I don't feel it is too terribly different from what Jesus does in Matthew with parables and such. There He also specifically points out that the blind will continue not to see and the deaf not to hear, because they do not understand His message in spirit. So to try to claim John's Jesus is terribly different, is not really true. I do agree that John does offer a more spiritual message overall than the other gospels which is why I like it.

But here is Jesus in Matthew saying essentially the same thing as He did to the woman at the well in John:

13 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

As for the time of John's composition, I am prone to agree it was probably the last gospel written, and was probably written just a little before Revelation. I also agree that it is not strictly an eyewitness account, but seems to have things in it only Jesus was privy to. These would be revealed more like the things in Revelation. Perhaps, by an angel to John. Or you can do the scholarly thing and discount Revelation too. 

Okay. By "he" I meant the author of the Gospel of John, not Jesus. The author weaves two stories into the narrative that seem to poke fun at literalists - the stories of Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman.

But yes, Jesus obviously taught using parables all the time - your reference to Matthew communicates the general idea very well. It should come as no surprise that those followed him might also teach in parables.

 

[Gray]

3 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

"It does not come from the disciple of that name or from anyone else who actually knew Jesus."

That may depend on what you mean by "come from". The exact form of John that we have probably wasn't written by anyone who knew Jesus personally, but could it have been based on accounts that came from people who did know him? I don't think that's so easy to rule out.

Yes, I don't doubt that there are historical nuggets to John. But John is composition that weaves in a lot of different material into a theological narrative that fits the ideas of the community that produced it. It's not a history in and of itself.

 

3 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

If John's more hifalutin christology was simply made up, then how did it manage to gain market share against the (supposedly) previous tradition of the synoptic gospels? Why was it accepted as portraying the same Jesus? These are questions that still need some kind of answer, because somehow John's version was so accepted. Somewhere in the first-century Christian community there was some sufficient weight of collective judgement that the Jesus of John was indeed the same Jesus.

Christian theology evolved over the decades of the first century. Mark has Jesus adopted as the son of God at his baptism. Matt and Luke have Jesus adopted at his birth (virgin birth narratives). John takes it a step further and says that Jesus was the son of God from eternity past. Paul seems to think that Jesus may have been some kind of angelic figure who was "promoted" by God.

It continued to evolve over the following centuries. 

 

3 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Now, perhaps this judgement was merely like that of the comic-book audiences who have decided to accept that Superman can fly, and not just jump tall buildings, or that Wonder Woman is an actual goddess, and not just an Amazon. The upgraded story is appealing and so it is welcomed by people who like being able to think of their hero as even better than he or she was at first. Perhaps that's all it took. So Jesus is not only Messiah but also pre-existent Word: yeah, cool! 

That's still just a hypothetical, speculative explanation for why early Christians accepted the Jesus of John. An alternative explanation is that there really were some more esoteric traditions, from people who had not only known Jesus but had also been in his inner circle, and that these authentic but esoteric traditions simply took a bit longer to emerge in written form. Scholars don't have to believe this, but by the same token I don't see how they can be sure that it isn't true.

 

It's hard to totally rule out any particular hypothesis, but it would really help to find an early source that affirms, for instance, that Jesus was divine and with God from the beginning. You'd also need to explain why there appears to be a gradual evolution in christology. 

[Physics Guy]

I can't think of non-Johannine texts that assert divinity explicitly, no. But the parallel passages in Matthew 10 and Luke 14, about having to love Jesus even more than parents or children, present a demand so extreme that it is hard to reconcile morally with Jesus being anything less than divine. I expect there are other synoptic accounts that implicitly give Jesus a status that gets higher the more you think about it.

I agree that it's an evolutionary step to go from that kind of thing to "and the Word was God." It's not clear to me, though, how late this evolution really happened. It might have begun and even gotten quite far along quite early, within a small inner group—perhaps even indeed within Jesus's lifetime—and taken decades to spread. I don't see how textual scholarship of much later documents can rule out that kind of scenario, which wouldn't leave much of a paper trail.

I don't see that it's implausible, either. The unlikely thing a priori, it seems to me, is that the idea of a guy being God incarnate ever took off at all. Given that it did, it seems more likely to me, rather than less, that it would take place early, when the personal charisma of the allegedly divine guy was still felt—and when the movement that had just lost its charismatic founding figure to crucifixion was most in need of a boost.

After all, it seems to me just from a public relations point of view that the time when you really need a doctrine that Jesus was much bigger than any cross is right after he's been killed—not decades later. If the movement has somehow survived for a generation without believing that Jesus was God, then it would seem to me that the movement could most easily go on keeping him as a mere senior prophet, and just focus on whatever he taught. Furthermore if the church had survived for a generation without its Christ being at all divine, then it seems to me that sudden assertions that he was God would have been hard to sell to people who had clung to their weird new faith for a tough generation and therefore probably thought that they at least knew what that weird new faith was.

So I can more easily imagine the deity of Christ as an early doctrine, though probably not very well articulated, than as a later invention. Even if we assume it was an invention, the time to invent it would have been sooner, not later.

[Honorentheos]

Unlike the author of Mark, the author of John is decidedly anti-Semitic and writing in a very different time to an audience that probably held little to no overlap with the original audience of Mark. The author of John ignores the variety in views among the people of Jesus' environment, much as some today would see limited to no need to distinguish between Sunni and Shite Muslims. As Christian beliefs moved out of the limited world of the historical Jesus through Paul and the early Church fathers and others it continued to evolve with it's audiences before attempts to truly unify it.

One of the oddities of Mormonism, IMO, is the claim to be a restoration of the original church (a very 19th c. American idea not unique to Mormonism and likely expanded on with the arrival of Rigdon) but includes more of the later post-Paul Christianity than anything that seems to have been original to Jesus but later lost.

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Honorentheos

[RevTestament]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

It's hard to totally rule out any particular hypothesis, but it would really help to find an early source that affirms, for instance, that Jesus was divine and with God from the beginning. You'd also need to explain why there appears to be a gradual evolution in christology. 

 

36 minutes ago, Physics Guy said:

I can't think of non-Johannine texts that assert divinity explicitly, no. But the parallel passages in Matthew 10 and Luke 14, about having to love Jesus even more than parents or children, present a demand so extreme that it is hard to reconcile morally with Jesus being anything less than divine. I expect there are other synoptic accounts that implicitly give Jesus a status that gets higher the more you think about it.

I agree that it's an evolutionary step to go from that kind of thing to "and the Word was God." It's not clear to me, though, how late this evolution really happened. It might have begun and even gotten quite far along quite early, within a small inner group—perhaps even indeed within Jesus's lifetime—and taken decades to spread. I don't see how textual scholarship of much later documents can rule out that kind of scenario, which wouldn't leave much of a paper trail.

I don't see that it's implausible, either. The unlikely thing a priori, it seems to me, is that the idea of a guy being God incarnate ever took off at all. Given that it did, it seems more likely to me, rather than less, that it would take place early, when the personal charisma of the allegedly divine guy was still felt—and when the movement that had just lost its charismatic founding figure to crucifixion was most in need of a boost.

After all, it seems to me just from a public relations point of view that the time when you really need a doctrine that Jesus was much bigger than any cross is right after he's been killed—not decades later. If the movement has somehow survived for a generation without believing that Jesus was God, then it would seem to me that the movement could most easily go on keeping him as a mere senior prophet, and just focus on whatever he taught. Furthermore if the church had survived for a generation without its Christ being at all divine, then it seems to me that sudden assertions that he was God would have been hard to sell to people who had clung to their weird new faith for a tough generation and therefore probably thought that they at least knew what that weird new faith was.

So I can more easily imagine the deity of Christ as an early doctrine, though probably not very well articulated, than as a later invention. Even if we assume it was an invention, the time to invent it would have been sooner, not later.

I believe part of Jesus' secret was to show that He was JHWH Elohim rather than to just come out and say it - to earn His spot next to the Father as the revelator of the the Father. I believe He knew this debate about him would rage on. However, I would point out that Hebrews 1:8 teaches that Yeshua was Elohim by quoting such an OT passage about Him:

8 But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God(Elohim), is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.

The Branch is also to be called JHWH. There are several OT passages which seem to include Jesus speaking as JHWH starting with Gen 3:22. There is also the Psalms passage wherein He is David's Lord who spoke unto YHWH.

[Gray]

On 7/3/2017 at 2:51 PM, Physics Guy said:

I can't think of non-Johannine texts that assert divinity explicitly, no. But the parallel passages in Matthew 10 and Luke 14, about having to love Jesus even more than parents or children, present a demand so extreme that it is hard to reconcile morally with Jesus being anything less than divine. I expect there are other synoptic accounts that implicitly give Jesus a status that gets higher the more you think about it.

I agree that it's an evolutionary step to go from that kind of thing to "and the Word was God." It's not clear to me, though, how late this evolution really happened. It might have begun and even gotten quite far along quite early, within a small inner group—perhaps even indeed within Jesus's lifetime—and taken decades to spread. I don't see how textual scholarship of much later documents can rule out that kind of scenario, which wouldn't leave much of a paper trail.

I don't see that it's implausible, either. The unlikely thing a priori, it seems to me, is that the idea of a guy being God incarnate ever took off at all. Given that it did, it seems more likely to me, rather than less, that it would take place early, when the personal charisma of the allegedly divine guy was still felt—and when the movement that had just lost its charismatic founding figure to crucifixion was most in need of a boost.

After all, it seems to me just from a public relations point of view that the time when you really need a doctrine that Jesus was much bigger than any cross is right after he's been killed—not decades later. If the movement has somehow survived for a generation without believing that Jesus was God, then it would seem to me that the movement could most easily go on keeping him as a mere senior prophet, and just focus on whatever he taught. Furthermore if the church had survived for a generation without its Christ being at all divine, then it seems to me that sudden assertions that he was God would have been hard to sell to people who had clung to their weird new faith for a tough generation and therefore probably thought that they at least knew what that weird new faith was.

So I can more easily imagine the deity of Christ as an early doctrine, though probably not very well articulated, than as a later invention. Even if we assume it was an invention, the time to invent it would have been sooner, not later.

Well, the non-Johannine texts present a Jesus who is promoted to divinity, or begotten into it at his birth. Still divine, certainly. What makes the earliness of the Johannine model of the "Jesus as divine from all eternity past" less plausible is that it directly contradicts the synoptics, which predate it.

[RevTestament]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Well, the non-Johannine texts present a Jesus who is promoted to divinity, or begotten into it at his birth. Still divine, certainly. What makes the earliness of the Johannine model of the "Jesus as divine from all eternity past" less plausible is that it directly contradicts the synoptics, which predate it.

I believe that interpretation is not supported by the text. Being the Word before coming to earth, does not make Jesus "divine from all eternities past." Same with having glory with the Father before the world was. Jesus never says He was the Son since before the beginning of the universe or before all ages. That is a theological interpretation imposed upon the text which the text nowhere says or even supports. For instance I proffer that Jesus became the only begotten Son on another world by following what His Father did and was sent to this earth as His only begotten Son, where He continued to do on this earth what He had seen His Father do, thus following the example of His Father. There is absolutely nothing in John to refute this interpretation, and in fact I believe John directly supports it. Joseph Smith also uses John this same way in the King Follet discourse.

[Gray]

6 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

I believe that interpretation is not supported by the text. Being the Word before coming to earth, does not make Jesus "divine from all eternities past." Same with having glory with the Father before the world was. Jesus never says He was the Son since before the beginning of the universe or before all ages. That is a theological interpretation imposed upon the text which the text nowhere says or even supports. For instance I proffer that Jesus became the only begotten Son on another world by following what His Father did and was sent to this earth as His only begotten Son, where He continued to do on this earth what He had seen His Father do, thus following the example of His Father. There is absolutely nothing in John to refute this interpretation, and in fact I believe John directly supports it. Joseph Smith also uses John this same way in the King Follet discourse.

 

Quote

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Jesus is divine "from the beginning".

In the synoptics, Jesus' divinity starts either at his birth or his baptism.

[RevTestament]

15 minutes ago, Gray said:

Jesus is divine "from the beginning".

In the synoptics, Jesus' divinity starts either at his birth or his baptism.

In the scriptures the beginning is the beginning of the world. "In the beginning the earth was without form."

The scriptures simply do not address the creation of the universe. The stars being "created" was either when they were able to be seen through the hazy atmosphere or the creation of the Milky Way Galaxy at most. So the traditional interpretation is just that - an interpretation.

In other words "In the beginning was the word" is simply saying at the beginning of this world Jesus was already the Word of God. He was already JHWH - which actually supports my interpretation I just gave in my prior post. He was already the begotten Son of the Father who was sent to this world as such having rejected evil and choosing good by following the Father.

Edited July 5, 2017 by RevTestament

[Gray]

43 minutes ago, RevTestament said:

In the scriptures the beginning is the beginning of the world. "In the beginning the earth was without form."

The scriptures simply do not address the creation of the universe. The stars being "created" was either when they were able to be seen through the hazy atmosphere or the creation of the Milky Way Galaxy at most. So the traditional interpretation is just that - an interpretation.

In other words "In the beginning was the word" is simply saying at the beginning of this world Jesus was already the Word of God. He was already JHWH - which actually supports my interpretation I just gave in my prior post. He was already the begotten Son of the Father who was sent to this world as such having rejected evil and choosing good by following the Father.

However you or I personally interpret "the beginning" isn't really material. The point is that John places the divinity of Jesus way back in time, whereas for the synoptic evanglists it starts during his mortal life.

[RevTestament]

5 minutes ago, Gray said:

However you or I personally interpret "the beginning" isn't really material. The point is that John places the divinity of Jesus way back in time, whereas for the synoptic evanglists it starts during his mortal life.

I think the synoptic gospels merely reflect what appeared to be a fairly plain man, although he surprised the temple scribes, who appeared to come out of nowhere to perform divine deeds - to heal the sick, and cure the blind. He called apostles, and to them He was a normal man who became divine. However, I don't believe they really ever address the subject per se. They didn't understand His mission at all until the end. They hoped for deliverance from Roman rule.

You are right in noting there is a difference between the Synoptic gospels and John. In the Synoptics Jesus refers to himself as the son of man, However, even in John He only alludes to the title of the Son of God almost in passing. Rather than proclaim His importance, He showed His importance through His works. This is a subtle thing that I think John appreciated better than the other apostles - and hence John was chosen to receive Revelation and be translated - definitely a high honor.

[USU78]

1 hour ago, RevTestament said:

I think the synoptic gospels merely reflect what appeared to be a fairly plain man, although he surprised the temple scribes, who appeared to come out of nowhere to perform divine deeds - to heal the sick, and cure the blind. He called apostles, and to them He was a normal man who became divine. However, I don't believe they really ever address the subject per se. They didn't understand His mission at all until the end. They hoped for deliverance from Roman rule.

You are right in noting there is a difference between the Synoptic gospels and John. In the Synoptics Jesus refers to himself as the son of man, However, even in John He only alludes to the title of the Son of God almost in passing. Rather than proclaim His importance, He showed His importance through His works. This is a subtle thing that I think John appreciated better than the other apostles - and hence John was chosen to receive Revelation and be translated - definitely a high honor.

Does our being really begin only when we perceive it?  When G-d says, "This day have I begotten thee"?   Or does our being begin when we begin?

That to me tis the weakness of Gray's argument.  Just because a chronicler [*Q] doesn't make something explicit which is obvious from context as well as implicitly doesn't mean that chronicler [John] who names names and makes things explicit is making things up.  The data are the data:  the documentary evidence is the documentary evidence.  The compiler of disparate materials into the Tanakh [as received by us] made choices, but they didn't create the world described in their source material.  The Brass Plates compiler plainly made different choices, perhaps from the same disparate materials, perhaps from different disparate materials.  But the lives lived, the theophanies reported, don't change because two different sources reported the same events differently.

It is dangerous to make pronouncements upon evidence without accounting for such things.

Edited July 5, 2017 by USU78

[Gray]

18 minutes ago, USU78 said:

Does our being really begin only when we perceive it?  When G-d says, "This day have I begotten thee"?   Or does our being begin when we begin?

That to me tis the weakness of Gray's argument.  Just because a chronicler [*Q] doesn't make something explicit which is obvious from context as well as implicitly doesn't mean that chronicler [John] who names names and makes things explicit is making things up.  The data are the data:  the documentary evidence is the documentary evidence.  The compiler of disparate materials into the Tanakh [as received by us] made choices, but they didn't create the world described in their source material.  The Brass Plates compiler plainly made different choices, perhaps from the same disparate materials, perhaps from different disparate materials.  But the lives lived, the theophanies reported, don't change because two different sources reported the same events differently.

It is dangerous to make pronouncements upon evidence without accounting for such things.

It's not my argument (what I said about the points where Jesus becomes divine). That comes from Ehrman.

But, the argument has nothing to do with John "making things up". John is expressing the things that were believed about Jesus in his own community at the time it was written.