LOL @ RubaDub ? sorry I missed your first post.
Greatteacher : I?m not sure I got your point. Do you mean biological knowledge makes History of Ideas pointless? I?m not a theist anymore but I?m still interested in the development of religious ideas.
Peacefulpete: there are many conflicting theories (such as Schnakenburg?s, Brown?s and Boismard?s in the 70?s) on the development of the fourth Gospel. The problem is we are always in circular reasoning, just because (theological or ideological) content analysis is involved in literary criticism. I think most scholars agree on the most obvious additions (such as the Prologue, the discourse on flesh and blood in chapter 6, the expansions in chapters 15?17 or the second conclusion of chapter 21). Anyway, the basic material for discussion always remains the final text itself.
Leolaia:
- The Gospel of Thomas as a reference for the ?Gnostic substrate? of John would also need literary criticism. It?s not very difficult to distinguish in it logia which reflect a kind of ?mild Gnosticism? (such as those paralleled in Q or in Patristic literature) and others which imply a more clear-cut, conscious and elaborated Gnosticism (such as in the Apocryphon of James). Of course it is also circular reasoning, but it may modify our view of the Johannine use of its ?Gnostic source?.
- The central role of the person of Jesus in the Gospel is not to be opposed to Gnosticism as such, but rather to the kind of Jewish-Hellenistic Wisdom that many find in Q (in which the person of Jesus is significantly meaningless, if I dare say). In fact I think the main Johannine view of Jesus as Savior = Revealer (see also the model of the Samaritan ta?eb in chapter 4) is quite different from the Pauline concept of salvation (in which revelation is secondary if not altogether absent), and as such is not incompatible with early Gnosticism.
- I would resist the idea of labeling Johannism as ?Catholic?. Even a Catholic and rather conservative scholar such as R.E. Brown insists on the difference. In the epistles, the Johannine believer HAS the knowledge by his anointing (khrisma) and doesn?t need anybody to teach him, which is exactly the opposite of the Pastoral magisterium. Many would agree that the Diotrephes rejecting the Elder in 3 John is just a good bishop fighting pseudognôsis according to the Pastorals. At most the latest additions to the Gospel (chapters 6 and 21) can be explained as ?lip service? to Protocatholicism.
- I fully agree on the literary analogies between (Colossians-)Ephesians and John. However, the very fact that Revelation which is so clearly different from both in content and spirit (despite many linguistic parallels) arises in the same geographical area shows that there was no such thing as Christian Unity by the end of the 1 st century, even on a local basis.