dear john

by peacefulpete 16 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Navigator

  Pete-It seems a minor miracle to me that the gospel of John got included in the canon of the new testament to begin with considering its somewhat gnostic flavor. Thank God that it was. I agree that it is the most spiritual of them all. Is there any account of the gospel prior to the editing by the more "traditional" church leaders?
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  rocketman

  Interesting.

  Hey pete, you got some pretty good jw credentials going on there.
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  peacefulpete

  Pete-It seems a minor miracle to me that the gospel of John got included in the canon of the new testament to begin with considering its somewhat gnostic flavor. Thank God that it was. I agree that it is the most spiritual of them all. Is there any account of the gospel prior to the editing by the more "traditional" church leaders? The answer is complicated, but yes. The internal evidence discerned thru various and sometimes subjective methods of textual criticism, Gnostic writings as well as divergent quotes from early Orthodox christian writers provide some insight into the form the stories may have have originally had. The debates today revolve around the assumed primacy of Gnostic or Jewish concepts of Jesus. I favor the heterodox view of jesus as an evolved pagan mystery figure that was later merged into Jewish Messianism. This involved the creation of a composite quasi-historical Jew drawing from various historical Jewish wouldbe messiahs from 2nd century BC to the 2nd century CE.
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  frankiespeakin

  Navigator,

  Here a site that attempts to show what the original Gospel of John may have been before the redactions.

  http://freespace.virgin.net/ron.price/john_home.html
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  peacefulpete

  Thanks Frank. I do respect this work yet will add that Price has disregarded the work of other more "radical" critics on religious grounds, and so this hardly represents the view of "scholars" in general.
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  stillajwexelder

  Thanks for the research peacefulpete
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  A Paduan

  So, if the evidence pointing to John as author of this Gospel is so flimsy -- how, then, did this book become known universally as the Gospel of John?

  That's how John was

  as for authenticity

  "they know his voice" "they do not know the voice of strangers"