Day: January 27, 2007

2007-01-27

The poor and Q — collapsing already

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, New Testament
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Hoo boy! Half my examples in my old “poor and Q” argument were from the earliest chapters of Luke — yet of course there are good reasons for treating these as later additions to the original gospel. I’m wonder if any attempt to divine the origins of the gospels from textual studies is doomed given the strong likelihood of so many layers of redactions they were subjected to. Who is to say that the literal poor theme in Luke was not the work of a later redactor — or even original and with further accretions being added from the same “school” in response to various dialogue challenges. If there are reasons for taking Luke as initially dominant in Asia and part of the quatrodeciman types, an area in some rivalry with the Rome — wonder if there might be some grounds for a poor vs rich type “dialogue” there. But I’m just making all this up … thinking aloud only……

Loisy on The Gospel of John

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Church Fathers, New Testament
Tags: , ,

Why do I always seem to catch up with the older work last? Here are my notes from Alfred Loisy’s Origins of the New Testament (originally 1936) on the evidence for tradition concerning the Gospel of John.

The Gospel of John was a latecomer and “the elders” in Asia, specifically Ephesus, who were pushing for its acceptance had to compete against the synoptic gospels. To make the new gospel acceptable at such a late date it was necessary to attribute to its author a very long lifespan — from being a young man in the time of Jesus and living up till the time of Trajan (98-117). The Elders were able to say that they had conversed with this very elder John in the early years of the second century. (If he had been 20 at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion he would have been 90 years old in 100 ce.) In reality the apostle John was never in Asia but was confused with John the Elder there.

Loisy arrives at the above scenario from the evidence in Irenaeus, the Gospel of John itself, and the testimony of Papias. Continue reading “Loisy on The Gospel of John”