Josephus on Signs; Giants from the Abyss

I started Lee Harmon's Revelation: The Way It Happened.  Some months ago, I read and blogged through the sequel to this book: Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  See here for my posts on that.  And see here for Lee's excellent blog, The Dubious Disciple.  I'd like to thank Lee for sending me a copy of Revelation: The Way It Happened.

I'm going to play by ear how I blog through this book.  I do want to cover the broad themes of Lee's book, but I'll probably blog about tidbits here and there that interest me.  If that ends up overlapping with the broad themes, that will be good.  If it does not adequately do so, then I'll write a post about Lee's book that is more comprehensive.

Here are two tidbits for today:

1.  On pages 53-54, Lee says the following about the first century C.E. Jewish historian Flavius Josephus:
"In discussing the signs of the times, Josephus describes a light shining in the Temple, as well as a star like a sword, pointing to Jerusalem (probably Halley's comment in 66, which many Jews understood as foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem).  At one point, a heifer being led to sacrifice gives birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple.  It is Josephus who first relates the story of the voice from the Holy of Holies saying, 'We are departing.'  But he implies that the common perception that the 'Day of the Lord' has arrived misinterprets these signs."

The idea that Josephus believed in those kinds of supernatural phenomena somewhat surprised me, for I assumed that Josephus was a fairly level-headed historian.  I learned in a class, after all, that Josephus often sought ways to rationalize away certain miracles in the Bible!  But it turns out that Josephus does talk about the signs that Lee is discussing, and much more, in Wars of the Jews, Book 6, Chapter 5.

Josephus is criticizing Jewish figures of the late first century C.E. who were holding out hope that God would deliver the Jews from the Romans.  Josephus' point was that there were signs that Jerusalem would be destroyed.  Josephus also applied to the Roman Vespasian the ancient oracle that someone from Israel would rule the earth, noting that Vespasian was made the emperor when he was in Judea.  Earlier in his book, Lee argues that John the Revelator had Vespasian in mind when he was writing about the first horseman of Revelation 6:2----who looks so much like the conquering Jesus, yet most likely was not that.  According to Lee, John probably regarded Vespasian as a false Messiah because Vespasian was considered by some to be the prophesied Messiah, plus Vespasian, like Jesus, performed miracles (see my posts here, here, and here).

I don't know a whole lot about Josephus' eschatological views.  But he does appear to be applying to Vespasian some Messianic prophecy.  One question I have is: Why did Josephus believe that God willed the destruction of Jerusalem?  Put differently, what, according to Josephus, did Jerusalem do that so offended God?  The New Testament says that Israel rejected Jesus.  Within rabbinic literature is the idea that Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Jewish infighting.  What was Josephus' view?

2.  On page 89, Lee is discussing Revelation 9, in which weird scorpions are coming out of the abyss amidst smoke to afflict human beings.  Lee cites Cassius Dio, a second-third century C.E. author who wrote a vast history of Rome.  In Cassius Dio 66.23.1, we read (in this translation): "Thus day was turned into night and light into darkness. Some thought that the Giants were rising again in revolt (for at this time also many of their forms could be discerned in the smoke and, moreover, a sound as of trumpets was heard), while others believed that the whole universe was being resolved into chaos or fire."  The context for this passage is Cassius Dio's discussion of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The wikipedia article on Mount Vesuvius says that it erupted in 79 C.E.  That is when Lee dates the Book of Revelation.  For Lee, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is significant in understanding a number of the cataclysmic events in the Book of Revelation.  Lee says that John could have seen the eruption from Patmos, yet Lee speculates that John may have been closer to the event (though Revelation 1:9 says John was on Patmos).  Lee also argues against the eruption occurring on a Tuesday, thereby allowing it to have happened on a Sunday, the Lord's Day, which was the day that John was in the spirit (Revelation 1:10).  In terms of the importance of Mount Vesuvius to understanding the Book of Revelation, I think that Lee is on to something, even if John happened to be viewing the event from Patmos on a Tuesday.  As far as I know, John doesn't say that he viewed the entire vision on the Lord's day.

Who were the giants whom Dio Cassius was talking about?  As far as I can see, Dio Cassius does not say.  But this article refers to giants who tried to overthrow Zeus, and some of them had feet that were serpents.  Giants are different from scorpions, right?  Yeah, but I still think that Lee and others who have interpreted Revelation 9 in light of the giants in Dio Cassius are on to something.  In both, you have rebellious figures coming out of the abyss in smoke.  Lee brings up other considerations in his discussion of Revelation 9, such as the idea that Nero----the oppressive Roman emperor who died in 68 C.E.----would lead Parthians from the east in an attack on Rome (see here).  Does not Revelation 16:12 refer to the kings of the east?  And Lee interprets the Apollyon of Revelation 9:11, the king of the Abyss, in light of the portrayal of Nero as Apollo.  For Lee, John's point was that demonic forces would be instigating Parthia's hordes, led by Nero.  Again, Lee and others who hold this particular interpretation are probably on to something!

Was Jonah Dead? Was Jesus Taking Away Dionysus' Glory?

My church is going through John's Gospel: Wisdom from Ephesus With Michael Card for its weekly Bible study.  Two things stood out to me at last night's meeting.

1.  A group of us was talking about the topic of Jesus going to hell during the time between his' death and his resurrection.  One person (whom I will call Joe) was offering his opinion and, in the course of his talk, he said that he believed that Jonah died inside of the great fish, but God brought Jonah back to life.  Joe was referring to Jonah 2:6, which says (in the King James Version): "I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God."  Were there mountains and bars in the belly of the great fish?  Probably not.  Consequently, according to Joe, Jonah was in Sheol.

I can see Joe's point.  I can also think of reasons that some might disagree.  They might view Jonah 2:6 as poetic or metaphorical rather than literal.  Moreover, they might interpret Jonah 2:6 to mean that God rescued Jonah from a near-death experience, not that God resurrected Jonah from the dead.  It was interesting to hear Joe's interpretation, though.  I've heard the view that God raised Jonah from the dead before, but I did not hear that view justified through an appeal to Jonah 2:6.

2.  Michael Card in the DVD was saying that elements of the Gospel of John spoke to the place where John was writing, Ephesus, as John challenged the paganism of the city.  Ephesus had a god of healing, Asclepius, and snakes were used in some of the healing rituals that were carried out in his name.  In John 3, we see Jesus appealing to the story in Numbers 21 about the brass serpent that the Israelites looked upon to receive healing, as Jesus likened himself to the brass serpent.  In Ephesus, there as a high regard for Dionysus, who changed water into wine.  In John 2, we see a story about Jesus changing water into wine.  According to Michael Card, Jesus in John's Gospel was taking back the glory from the pagan god Dionysus. 

I already knew about some of this information because I had read Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  And Lee in his book about Revelation discusses the similarities between a miracle that was attributed to Vespasius and one of Jesus' miracles.  Some Christian apologists maintain that Dionysus actually was not said to have changed water into wine.  See here.  Personally, the sources discussed in that link look rather ambiguous to me.  But let's say that there was a pagan story that Dionysus changed water into wine.  Should we really go all ga-ga over a Christian who said that Jesus did miracles that pagan gods were said to perform?  It's like how some scholars treat the Hebrew Bible: P wrote Genesis 1 to say that the God of Israel, not Marduk, was supreme.  So someone's saying that one's own god is better than another by claiming that his god can do what is attributed to another god.  Big deal?  I don't find that particularly powerful!

But suppose that John was saying that his audience in Ephesus could know that Jesus changed the water into wine because his Gospel was eyewitness testimony?  Someone in the group was saying that John 2 was probably powerful to some of the pagans at Ephesus because the stories about Dionysus were legends, whereas the story about Jesus changing water into wine was a fact.  John may have been trying to make that point: the Ephesians could trust eyewitness testimony to a miracle more than a legend about Dionysus.

Am I convinced by this, though?  I don't know.  I wouldn't be surprised if people had eyewitness stories about healing from pagan cults.  The pagan cults were popular, after all.  I'm sure that they were effective in bringing healing, at least some of the time, otherwise who would use them?  And, when these cults weren't effective, their defenders could perhaps explain that away: the person seeking healing was not pleasing the god enough, or the god had a reason for that person to remain sick.  Elements of Christianity have that same approach today.

John 20:23, and Concluding Reflections

I finished Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  In this post, I'll write about John 20:23, then I will provide my overall assessment of Lee's book.

John 20:23 states (in the King James Version): "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained."

This verse has long disturbed me, the same way that Matthew 16:19 has troubled me.  (Matthew 16:19 says in the KJV: "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.")  The reason is that I have a hard time with the notion that God would condition God's acceptance or rejection of me on what fallible human beings think.  I have seen or heard of church leaders abusing their power and scaring their congregants with the threat that God will reject them if they disobey the church authorities.  And I draw comfort from the notion that God sides with what's right and that God loves me, even if there are other human beings (even church authorities) who might not.

Is there a better way to understand John 20:23?  As I look at Protestant commentaries, such as those of John Gill and John MacArthur, I see the idea that the church has the authority to declare that people are forgiven or unforgiven in the sense that God has given it stewardship over the Gospel, upon which forgiveness is conditioned: if a person repents and receives the Gospel, then the church will declare that person forgiven; if the person rejects the Gospel, then the church will declare him or her unforgiven.  According to this view, as I understand it, the church has authority in terms of forgiveness because it possesses the means of forgiveness (the Gospel), and yet whether or not a person is forgiven does not depend on the whims of church leaders, but rather on acceptance of the Gospel that the church preaches. 

Lee has a similar view, at least somewhat.  Lee talks about John 20:23 on pages 342-343.  According to Lee, Jesus in John 20:23 is encouraging the disciples to go out and preach forgiveness, which is the way that people will become free.  Otherwise, people are lost and in sin.  But my impression is that Lee differs somewhat from how many evangelicals would understand this: that we need to preach the Gospel because otherwise people will not hear and will go to hell because they did not have a chance to receive God's forgiveness, and thus are in a state of unforgiveness.  According to Lee, God has already forgiven everyone, but we're the ones who keep dragging others' sin up in our refusal to forgive and let things go.  By atoning for our sin, Jesus has given us the opportunity to "see beyond it."  In this Jubilee, we should be setting people free rather than holding grudges.  God has forgiven everyone, but that does not free people if we do not let them know that they are forgiven or forgive them ourselves.

Both the views of Protestant interpreters and Lee's view are thought-provoking, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is truth in what they say.  Still, when I read the verse, it seems to say that God's forgiveness (not just our cognizance of God's forgiveness) is somehow conditioned on whether or not the disciples exercise forgiveness (not just preach the Gospel).  I don't think that Jesus was giving the disciples a loaded pistol or knowingly sanctioning the abuse of power.  But, somehow, the church seems to have authority when it comes to people's forgiveness.

Now, for my overall assessment of Lee's book.  Again, I'd like to thank him for sending me a copy.  I have enjoyed reading it, and I have found it thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating, and spiritually inspiring.  In terms of its positives, I appreciated its picture of Christians struggling to recover their faith after the failure of their apocalyptic expectations, Lee's discussion of early Christians' diversity and their complex interaction with the Hebrew Bible, and Lee's wide-ranging knowledge of biblical scholarship, which he manifests in the book.  In terms of its negatives, there were times when I wished that Lee provided more footnotes to document what he was saying, especially when he was talking about how John's Gospel reflects pagan religions in areas (which, as he knows, has been debated within scholarship).  Moreover, it seemed to me that Lee contradicted himself in areas: he presents Paul as believing in a realized resurrection, but later he says that Paul expected for the resurrection to be future; he says that John's Gospel knew of II Thessalonians 2:13 (which is about the son of perdition, the man of sin) and applies the "son of perdition" label to Judas, but Lee later contends that II Thessalonians 2:13 was a reaction against John applying the label to Judas (pages 268, 350); and I'm still not clear about whether or not Lee thinks that John believed in an afterlife.  Contradiction is understandable, for there are plenty of arguments that can make sense or manifest a degree of plausibility, even though they contradict each other; I struggled with this when I did my comprehensive exam in Hebrew Bible!  But I think that a book should be consistent.  Overall, I'd say that Lee's book was consistent, in terms of its big picture: that John was replacing a futurist eschatology with a realized eschatology.  But it was mostly on side-issues that there appeared to be inconsistencies.

I blogged a lot through this book, but there were plenty of topics that I did not get to (i.e., John was from a priestly family).  My blog posts hopefully gave you a taste, and you are now tempted to buy Lee's book and read it for yourself!

John 20:17: Mary Magdalene and Jesus' Ascension

In John 20:17, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene shortly after his resurrection: "Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God" (KJV).

Why didn't Jesus want for Mary Magdalene to touch him before he ascended to his Father?  Later in the chapter, Thomas touches Jesus when he puts his hand into Jesus' side.  Did Jesus ascend sometime between his conversation with Mary and his conversation with Thomas, and that was why Thomas could touch him whereas Mary could not?  (UPDATE: Lee Harmon later argues in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened that the part of John's Gospel about Thomas touching Jesus' side was added by a later hand.)

In this post, I'll go into various interpretations of John 20:17, including that of Lee Harmon in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  Not all of the interpretations that I will mention are scholarly, for I don't own a lot of scholarly commentaries on the Gospel of John.  But I will draw from what I have.

Lee Harmon's view is that Mary was interrupting the ascent of Jesus' soul to heaven.  According to Lee, there was a notion at this time that the souls of the martyrs went to heaven, whereas the souls of everybody else went to Sheol, and, for John, Jesus was a martyr whose soul was going to heaven.  The soul departed from the body after three days, and Jesus at the time that he was speaking to Mary was therefore "incorporeal, untouchable" (page 330).  Lee also brings realized eschatology into the picture.  A common view within Christianity was that Jesus ascended to heaven and would one day come back to perform his Messianic role.  But John interprets this view within the lens of realized eschatology, according to Lee: Jesus would ascend to heaven, and soon thereafter he would come down and dwell with believers through the Holy Spirit.  Remember from my previous posts that, according to Lee, John's Gospel regards the coming of the Holy Spirit as Jesus' second coming.

Do I buy into this view?  While I am happy that Lee interacts here with the issue of the afterlife in the Gospel of John (since I was wondering what Lee's view on that is), I have a hard time with his focus on Jesus' soul to the exclusion of his body.  For one, as N.T. Wright has noted, this was a resurrection, and that's not entirely the same as a disembodied soul.  Moreover, in the Gospel of John, we can tell that John believed that Jesus' body rose on the third day because his body was missing from the tomb, and, later on, Jesus appeared to his disciples with his wounds.  If Jesus' soul were absent from his body when he appeared to Mary, then where exactly was his body?  It wasn't in the tomb!  Lee addresses this question, but he does not appear to answer it head-on; instead, he discusses the empty tomb tradition in the New Testament.  (UPDATE: In an appendix, on page 359, Lee says that what happened to Jesus' flesh is a mystery, and that it "has simply disappeared, never to be seen again!")

Regarding Lee's claim on realized eschatology, I find that to be plausible.  Jesus ascended to heaven, and then he returned and imparted to his disciples the Holy Spirit (John 20:22), which arguably could have been a means for him to dwell with his disciples.  (On a side note, Lee makes an interesting point when he interprets the five hundred witnesses to the risen Jesus in I Corinthians 15:6 in reference to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2.)

Why, then, could Mary not touch Jesus before his ascension?  There are a number of commentators (i.e., Peake's commentary, Bullinger, and others) who contend that something important happened at Jesus' ascension----he was presented to the Father as the wavesheaf offering, the Father accepted Jesus' sacrifice, Jesus officially was crowned with glory, etc.  But advocates of these positions did not explain, at least not to my satisfaction, why Mary could not touch Jesus before his ascension, whereas people could touch him after the ascension had taken place.  The closest I saw them get to an explanation was their assertion that Jesus wanted for Mary to regard him in a new way, not in her old manner of familiarity, and so Jesus needed to officially become new before that could happen.

But there are other commentators who take a different track altogether.  They don't regard Jesus' ascension as something that took place between the time that Jesus spoke to Mary and the time that Jesus appeared to Thomas.  Rather, in accordance with Luke-Acts, they regard Jesus' ascension as Jesus going to heaven forty days after his resurrection.  Consequently, when Jesus tells Mary not to touch him because he has not ascended, such commentators contend that Jesus is telling Mary that she should not cling to him but should rush to tell the disciples, for she'll have plenty of time to interact with Jesus before he goes back to heaven (John Gill), or that Mary should not cling to Jesus on earth because he will eventually have to go to heaven (John MacArthur).  I can't really argue against these sorts of ideas.  But they don't entirely set right with me.

A Random Tomb (Without a Stone and Guards)?

In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon discusses the tomb in which Jesus was placed in the Gospel of John.  Lee states the following on page 316:

"John's Gospel gives the impression that Jesus was hurriedly placed in a temporary location, his buriers aware of its impermanency, perhaps not even knowing the proper owner of the tomb.  Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea discover a tomb in an unnamed garden and borrow it for Jesus."

John 19:40-42 does give that impression.  It states (in the King James Version):

"Then took [Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea] the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.  Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.  There laid they Jesus therefore because of the Jews' preparation [day]; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand."

In this passage, it does appear to be the case that a Sabbath (perhaps the first Day of Unleavened Bread) was coming soon, and so Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea were looking for any nearby tomb that they could find so they could place Jesus there until they could give him a proper burial.  They found a garden close to where Jesus was crucified, there was a tomb at that Garden, and so they placed Jesus there.

Lee depicts John and Matthew debating about Jesus' tomb (and I should say that the debates between John and Matthew are entertaining parts of the book).  Matthew says that Jesus was not put in a random tomb but rather in the wealthy Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, which Joseph of Arimathea himself had carved out of rock (Matthew 27:57-60).  Whereas John bases his account in this case on having seen Jesus die and having talked with Nicodemus, Matthew bases his understanding of what happened on Scripture: Isaiah 53:9 says that the Suffering Servant will be with the rich in his death (to draw from the KJV's language).  Moreover, while Matthew believes that a stone was rolled in front of Jesus' tomb and that guards were placed there, John says that he is not aware that a stone covered the tomb, and that there were no armed guards when he went there.

In my opinion, Lee's interpretation of the Gospel of John in this case makes sense of what occurs in John 20: Mary Magdalene sees that the tomb is empty and she thinks that someone moved Jesus to another location.  I can understand why Mary Magdalene would conclude that, if Jesus were put into a random tomb in a random Garden on a temporary basis. 

I guess where I am puzzled is when John 20:8-9 states: "Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.  For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead."  But why would the disciple whom Jesus loved believe after seeing the empty tomb, if the empty tomb by itself did not prove that Jesus rose from the dead, for there was a natural explanation for why Jesus' body wasn't there: somebody came and moved it (and, in John's Gospel, it was probably unencumbered by a huge stone or armed guards)?  Or did the disciple believe on account of Jesus' clothes lying in the tomb?  Or did the disciple even believe that Jesus rose from the dead at that point, for v 9 says that he did not know that the Scripture said that Jesus would rise from the dead.  Perhaps, when v 8 says that he "believed", it means that he accepted Mary Magdalene's testimony that Jesus' body was missing.

(UPDATE: On page 335, Lee presents Peter saying that a grave robber could not have removed the body of Jesus because "No grave robber could unwrap him and leave the grave clothes."  The idea is that anyone taking the body would take the wrappings as well.)

What Kind of Jesus?

In my last post on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I mentioned Lee's view that John was John of Gisclala, who was influential in a Jewish revolt against Rome that led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.  According to Lee, John still had dreams of a bloody end to evil when he was exiled on Patmos, which was when he wrote the Book of Revelation, but John later had a change of heart, as the Gospel of John reflects.  John stopped expecting a bloody end and embraced a realized eschatology that emphasized love, Jesus' presence with the church, and Jesus' victory over evil on the cross.

One question I have had as I've read this book is this: Was the John who believed in realized eschatology more faithful to the teachings of Jesus?  Lee narrates that John certainly understood some of Jesus' teachings differently when John became committed to realized eschatology.  For example, Matthew 10:23 says that you (presumably the disciples) will not pass through all the tribes of Israel before the Son of Man comes.  According to Lee, John came to interpret Jesus' coming here, not as a cataclysmic event that would bring a bloody end, but rather as Jesus' coming to the church through the Holy Spirit.

As far as what Jesus himself taught, Lee refers to scholarship that holds that Jesus' message was not particularly apocalyptic, but there were Christians who later added an apocalyptic layer.  In light of that, Lee appears to be arguing that Jesus himself had a realized eschatology, which was reflected in the sources behind the Gospel of John.  And yet, in one of his narrations of the life of Jesus in this book, Lee presents Jesus as one who proclaims a sort of Jubilee, which entails the healing of the oppressed and sharing with the poor (page 228).  How would that fit within a realized eschatology?  Or would it fit better within a futurist (and yet imminent) eschatology, in which Jesus is seeking to overthrow the present world system?  Perhaps it could fit a realized eschatology, as Christians continue to heal and show love to the poor in the here-and-now, and hopefully that would lead to a widespread Jubilee.  (UPDATE: On page 344, Lee associates the Jubilee with Christians forgiving and people being forgiven.)

More on John and Realized Eschatology

In this post, I'll write more about realized eschatology in the Gospel of John, as discussed in Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  In my latest reading, key eschatological themes are said to be applied in John's Gospel to the first coming of Jesus Christ and to his spiritual reign (if you will).  The Beast, or the man of sin, in John's Gospel is Judas Iscariot, for both are called the son of perdition (John 17:12; II Thessalonians 2:3, and Lee also refers to Daniel), and both lead soldiers against Christ.  The parousia takes place when Christ sends the Holy Spirit, which is how Christ will dwell with his disciples, since Christ is so united with the Holy Spirit that the two (in a sense) are one.  The devil has already been cast down from heaven in John's Gospel (John 12:31).  And Moses and Elijah in the Gospel of John are not figures who will come in the future to inaugurate the end times, nor was John the Baptist Elijah, since John denied being Elijah in John 1:21.  Rather, according to Lee, Jesus in John's Gospel is Moses and Elijah, for Jesus fed the multitude with loaves like Elijah, and he brought manna like Moses.  Actually, I should note that it was Elisha (not Elijah) who multiplied the loaves (II Kings 4:42-44), but Elijah did multiply flour and oil (see I Kings 17:7-16).

And who is the false prophet of Revelation 13 in the Gospel of John, in Lee's view?  In my latest reading, John actually identifies himself as the false prophet.  According to Lee, John was probably John of Giscala, who led a Jewish revolt in Palestine during the years leading up to 70 C.E.  John at first embraced Jesus' spiritual message, but then he took a militant apocalyptic approach, which he displayed when he wrote the Book of Revelation.  But, years later, John once more embraced a more spiritual, realized eschatology, and he regretted his days as an apocalyptic prophet.  (Lee provides arguments that the same hand was behind John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation, notwithstanding their stylistic differences, and that John was an eyewitness to Christ.  Lee discusses his identification of John with John of Giscala in more detail in his previous book, Revelation: The Way It Happened, which I have not yet read.)

One thing that I have wondered as I have read Lee's book is this: Does Lee think that John in his Gospel believes in an afterlife, a hope for the believer that extends beyond the grave?  To be honest, I'm having my doubts.  Lee interprets Jesus' statements in John 14 about preparing a place for his disciples, not in reference to them going to heaven to be with Jesus after their deaths, but rather in reference to Jesus through the Holy Spirit coming to be with them on earth, in a new spiritual temple.  What, then, does God's victory concretely mean in John's Gospel, according to Lee?  What I'm getting is that it entails such things as God protecting believers from the evil one, God expanding the borders of the Christian community, Christ through his death drawing people to himself, the believers loving and serving one another in obedience to Christ, people having a new outlook as a result of their spiritual rebirth, and the church experiencing Christ's presence.

All of this realized eschatology is good, in my opinion, but, as I said in my last post on Lee's book, I have a hard time conceiving of a religion being hopeful when it lacks a futurist eschatology, or at the very least a belief that there is a post-mortem realm where things are made right.  I have a hard time believing that John's Gospel----in which Jesus stresses life, calls himself the resurrection, comforts Mary and Martha by raising Lazarus from the dead, and rises from the dead himself----viewed resurrection solely as a spiritual rebirth, without some notion of the afterlife being attached to it.

(UPDATE: Later in the book, Lee addresses the question of whether John had a belief in some sort of afterlife.  Stay tuned for my post on that!)

(UPDATE 2: Actually, I'll comment on the afterlife right now.  On page 343, Lee says that "Not once does John promise an afterlife or describe heaven", and on page 355 Lee criticizes the "afterlife-oriented teachings of today's churches."  Lee understands eternal life in John's Gospel as abundant life and as knowing the Father and Christ, and such passages as John 10:10 and John 17:3 may very well support that.  At the same time, Lee does appear to be open to the notion that John could have had some conception of the afterlife, or at least that is my impression.  On page 332, Lee says that Jesus' soul going to the Father and the two of them coming down to dwell with believers may give us insight into John's view regarding the afterlife.  And, on page 339, the dying John tells Ruth that he will not leave her, for "Life is everlasting, our Christian spirit forever entwined, for we are one."  Personally, I see no problem with regarding eternal life as abundant life and as knowing God and Christ in the present, but I don't think that precludes it applying to the afterlife, as well.)

Parousia at the Cross

Something that I read in a New Testament class one time was that the Gospel of John does not have a scene of darkness at Jesus' crucifixion, unlike the synoptics, for John wanted to present the crucifixion as a time of light and glory.  In my reading so far of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon has made a similar point----that Jesus' crucifixion was a time of triumph.  In my latest reading, Lee explains more what he means by that.

On pages 234-235, John, Matthew, and Ruth are discussing whether or not Jesus' crucifixion was a victory.  John refers to Colossians 2:13-14, which affirms that Jesus  spoiled and made a spectacle of the powers and the authorities, presumably on the cross.  Matthew, who is skeptical that Paul wrote Colossians, asserts that Paul expected for the victory to be future rather than something that occurred at the cross, for Paul foretold in I Thessalonians 4:17 that Christ would show up in the air, and believers would ascend to meet him.  John then tells Matthew that Paul was correct, and yet John proceeds to interpret the parousia and Jesus' drawing of believers in another way: Jesus would be lifted up on the cross, and there he would draw all people to himself.  When Matthew inquires how Jesus can draw anyone to himself while he is on a cross, John asks Matthew what power Jesus would command while he is "suffering, dying, bound to a tree" (page 235).  Ruth then interjects an answer: "Love...that's all he would have left to draw people with" (page 235).

This was actually a powerful part of the book, but it wasn't just because of the scene itself.  It was also because I was watching a movie while I was reading this passage, and the music that was playing from the soundtrack fit the passage quite nicely.  The movie was Eastern Promises, which I did not care for, to tell you the truth, but the soundtrack was good with the passage that I was reading!

The notion that Jesus could command people with love when he had nothing else with which he could command them, due to his vulnerability and apparent helplessness on the cross, is quite powerful.  Like Matthew, however, I would like for that love to be backed up with concrete power, in some form, for how would we be helped if the person who loves us cannot deliver us from our hopeless situation?  In my opinion, there has to be some futurist eschatology if a religion is to have any hope----or at least some place that people can go (such as heaven) where good triumphs and evil does not prevail.

Lazarus and Osiris?

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll comment on Lee's comparison of Jesus' resurrection of Lazarus in John 11 with the ancient Egyptian story of Osiris.  In John 11, Lazarus has two sisters (Mary and Martha), and Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day after Lazarus' burial.  On page 203 of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, one of the characters, Ruth, draws parallels between John 11 and the Osiris story.  Ruth says to Matthew:

"Osiris has two sisters who weep for him when he dies.  It is said of him, 'You have slept, but you will awake; you have died, but you will live.'  He is instructed while dead not to decay, not to smell.  Just like Lazarus.  So his tomb is opened on the fourth day, like Lazarus.  Horus approaches and commands, 'Go forth: wake up!'  And his wrappings are removed...John's story has been around for a long, long time Matthew."  John then says, "Before Abraham was, I AM."

I should add that another point that is often made by people who draw parallels between the story of Lazarus and that of Osiris is that the names "Lazarus" and "Osiris" are similar.

The idea that there are parallels between the Gospel story about Jesus and Egyptian mythology is particularly popular in freethought circles, which seek to portray the Gospel story as a rip-off or as just another savior tale that draws on stock-elements.  See this clip from Bill Maher's Religulous.  Some Christian thinkers, such as C.S. Lewis, have contended that such parallels are actually compatible with Christianity, for Egyptian mythology could have been foreshadowing the coming of Christ.

But there are also a number of Christian apologists, as well as scholars who are not beholden to Christian apologetics, who dispute that many of these so-called parallels indeed are parallels.  See here at Yahoo Answers (only the answers here to the question about Lazarus and Osiris are not particularly well-documented), and also Maurice Casey's critique of D.M. Murdock's work here. 

In this post, I'll share some of what I found when doing online searches on this topic.  I'll be referring to wikipedia, which many consider to be a no-no.  But the wikipedia article that I'll be using cites scholarly sources.  Plus, I'm not claiming that my post here is the final word on Osiris.  Far from it.  I'm not an Egyptologist.  There's a lot that I do not know.  I'm writing this post to start a discussion rather than to end it.  And your comments are welcome, as long as you don't put me down. 

Okay, here we go!  D.M. Murdock/Acharya S is an author who believes that there are parallels between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel story of Jesus.  She wrote a book, Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, which I would like to read someday, but I'm not buying it right now because it's price is too high for my budget!  On this site, Murdock has a chart listing what she considers to be parallels between the story of Osiris and the story of Jesus raising Lazarus in John 11.  The reason that this chart is useful is that it actually refers to primary sources for the Osiris story.  I do not know what all of those abbreviations mean, but "PT" stands for "Pyramid Texts."  You can find an English translation of one of the Pyramid Texts here.  I myself have not plowed through the Pyramid Texts to see if I agree with Murdock's interpretation of them.  Trying to understand verse takes more work than I'm willing to put into this topic right now.  But I'm linking to the texts, in case you or I choose to take a look at them sometime, for research purposes or out of curiosity.

The thing is, when wikipedia and the site here sum up the story of Osiris, I don't see in their summaries much that resembles the story of Lazarus' resurrection in John 11.  Yes, Osiris has two sisters, Isis and Nephthys.  But there are elements of the Osiris story that are not in the Lazarus story.  Osiris' brother Seth conspires with others to kill Osiris, out of an attempt to take Osiris' throne and also Osiris' wife-sister, Isis.  Seth succeeds in his plot, and he scatters the body-arts of Osiris throughout the land of Egypt.  But Isis, Nephthys, and others find most of those body parts and resurrect Osiris so that he can impregnate Isis with a son, Horus, who would be the new king.  Osiris' resurrection appears to be temporary, however.  Osiris becomes the ruler of the afterlife, and Horus and Seth battle for kingship.
But what about Murdock's reference to the parts of the Pyramid Texts that appear to present Horus resurrecting Osiris?  The closest that I could find to this in the wikipedia article was the following paragraph:

"With great celebration among the gods, Horus takes the throne, and Egypt at last has a rightful king.  The divine decision that Set is in the wrong corrects the injustice created by Osiris' murder and completes the process of his restoration after death.  Sometimes Set is made to carry Osiris' body to its tomb as part of his punishment.  The new king performs funerary rites for his father and gives food offerings to sustain him—often including the Eye of Horus, which in this instance represents life and plenty.  According to some sources, only through these acts can Osiris be fully enlivened in the afterlife and take his place as king of the dead, paralleling his son's role as king of the living. Thereafter, Osiris is deeply involved with natural cycles of death and renewal, such as the annual growth of crops, that parallel his own resurrection."

You can click here to see the footnotes and the scholarly sources that the article sites for this particular paragraph.  What appears to be the case is that Horus is enlivening Osiris, on some level, but Horus is doing so in order that Osiris might serve as king of the dead in the afterlife.  The idea is not for Osiris to roam the earth once more, but rather for Osiris to serve his function in the realm of the dead.  I wouldn't say that there's a perfect match between the Osiris myth and John 11, for the stories are different.  And yet, I hope that I've taken some steps (however inadequate or preliminary) towards understanding the context for what Murdock considers to be parallels.

(UPDATE: On pages 205-210, Lee has a more extensive discussion about the parallels between elements of the Jesus story and other religions.  He talks about scholars who are skeptical about many of the parallels, as well as refers to attempts by Justin Martyr and Tertullian to account for them, attributing them to mimicry by the devil.)

The True Murderer, and John's Interaction with the Hebrew Bible

In John 8:44, Jesus says to his Jewish opponents, "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it" (KJV).  In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon interacts with the question of how exactly the devil was a murderer from the beginning.  Did the devil actually kill people?  Lee notes that Satan murdered the sons of Job with God's permission, and Lee refers to the views that the devil was a murderer from the beginning in that Cain----whom later Jewish traditions presented as the son of the devil----killed Abel, or the devil in the Garden of Eden contributed to humanity's death by encouraging Eve to disobey God's commandment, resulting in the death penalty for humanity (i.e., we all eventually die).

But Lee does not believe that, overall, the devil is a murderer in the Bible.  Then Lee says "...but Yahweh is", after which he mentions the times that God mandated stoning for a variety of transgressions, sanctioned genocide, and even killed a large number of people himself when he was angry.  Lee, in commenting on John 8:44, asks on page 164, "Did Jesus, blessed with the true Spirit of the loving Father, imply that his people never knew the real Father, but were repeatedly deceived?"  Lee answers his own question when he says: "'The Jews,' according to John, have misunderstood God for centuries; they do not even worship the same God as Jesus.  They have been seduced in their laws by the spirit of the devil."  Lee sees a parallel between this and and views held by Gnostics, who maintained that Jesus was in conflict with "the evil creator of this world and orchestrator of Old Testament inhumanities" (page 165).  Lee does not believe that the Gospel of John is Gnostic or orthodox Christian, but rather that John would probably "consider both these later strands of Christianity to be extreme" (page 165).  But my impression is that Lee believes that, in John 8:44, Jesus essentially is referring to the God of the Old Testament as a devil.

Overall, I don't agree with Lee on this.  I would concede that a theme in the Gospel of John is that Jesus is revealing the Father, who before was not seen or heard (John 1:18).  I would also concede that the Gospel of John maintains that there is discontinuity between the Hebrew Bible and what Jesus is doing, for John 1:17 contrasts the law that was given through Moses with the grace and truth that are in Jesus Christ.  And yet, Jesus in John's Gospel also maintains that his work is somehow a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible----in that the law of Moses points to Jesus (John 5:39, 45-46), and Jesus has fulfilled ancient prophecies (John 7:38).  Moreover, Jesus appears to uphold the ethics of the law in John 7:19: "Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?"  My impression is that John regards the Old Testament as divinely-inspired, and yet incomplete.  Moreover, while I can see Lee's point that the theme that the devil (or Satan) was a murderer is not salient in the Bible, Hebrews 2:14 says that the devil has the power of death.  Granted, you don't see the devil killing people a lot, but there is a connection between him and death. 

But even Lee acknowledges that John believed that Jesus fulfilled prophecies in the Hebrew Bible.  The thing is, in my opinion, what Lee says highlights how complex John's interaction with the Hebrew Bible actually was.  John does not try to show that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to silence the detractors who say that Jesus was not the Messiah because he came from Galilee rather than Bethlehem (John 7:41-42), and the reason, for Lee, is that John does not think that the issue was important, even though Micah 5:2 affirms that the coming ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem.  Lee maintains that John viewed Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecies in Ezekiel----such as the spiritual washing in such passages as Ezekiel 36:25.  And yet, Lee presents John knowingly preferring the vision of Zechariah 9-14 to Ezekiel's vision of restoration.  Ezekiel presents a restoration in which God defeats Israel's enemies and Northern and Southern Israelites return to the land, whereas Zechariah 9-14 has a picture in which the Israelites reject a meek one (a king? Prophet? God?) and Jerusalem is largely decimated in its purification.  According to Lee, John goes with the latter, for John regarded the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. as a necessary part of God's plan, in which God replaced the old Temple with the new Temple, Jesus.

I'd like to think that John was not arbitrary in his approach to the Bible----that he didn't pick and choose what he would accept from the text.  The way that Lee has presented it in my reading thus far, John consciously picked and chose.  But perhaps John did not believe that he was rejecting the passages that he downplayed or ignored.  Maybe he believed that Ezekiel's prophecy of restoration was fulfilled spiritually rather than literally, for example.  (UPDATE: Later in the book, Lee appears to go that route.)

I can somewhat sympathize with Gnosticism and Lee's problems with the God of the Hebrew Bible, however.  I look at a number of evangelicals who seem to be happy because they worship a God of unconditional love.  I go to the Bible to encounter this God whom they worship, and I see someone who strikes Israelites with a plague when he is angry with their behavior.  I suppose that I can try to justify God's wrath----I wouldn't say that it was baseless----but it seems to fall short of the unconditional love that evangelicals believe is characteristic of God.  And yet, evangelicals would profess to accept all of the Bible.

Jesus and Elisha Disregard the Firstfruits Law? Esther Violates the Passover?

In my latest reading of John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, Lee Harmon makes an interesting point about the story of Jesus multiplying the loaves and the fishes in John 6.  According to Lee, Jesus and the people were eating loaves that were illegal for them to eat!

On what basis does Lee argue this?  In Leviticus 23:10-22, we see the law of the firstfruits.  On the day after some Sabbath that was soon after the Passover (Second Temple Jews debated which Sabbath it was), Israelites were to bring a sheaf of their harvest-firstfruits to the central sanctuary, and the priest would then wave that sheaf before the LORD.  Leviticus 23:14 states (in the King James Version): "And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings."  The wavesheaf ritual was associated with the barley harvest.  Before the wavesheaf ritual that took place soon after the Passover, the Israelites could eat neither corn nor bread from the barley that they had just harvested.

In John 6, there is the Johannine story of Jesus multiplying the loaves.  There are two things in John 6 that are noteworthy, in light of the law in Leviticus 23:10-22.  First, John 6:13 says that the loaves were barley loaves.  And second, John 6:4 says that the Passover was near, which means that John 6 is set soon before the Passover, not soon after it.  Jesus and the Jews in John 6 are arguably eating bread that's made of barley from the recent harvest, before the possessor of that barley has presented the firstfruits to God.  That, according to Leviticus 23:14, is a no-no.

According to Lee, how could Jesus justify doing something that was against the Torah?  Lee offers two answers, as far as I can see.  First, on page 117, Lee says that Jesus was teaching about a new age.  The idea here is probably that the old law does not entirely apply now that Jesus has come and inaugurated something new.

Second, on page 118, Lee presents Jesus appealing to the story in II Kings 4:42-44, in which the prophet Elisha multiplies loaves for a hundred people.  II Kings 4:42 states (again, in the KJV): "And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the husk thereof."  Lee's idea appears to be this: Rather than taking the firstfruits to God, as he was supposed to do, the man was using them as food for himself, Elisha, and a multitude.  And Elisha did not condemn the man for failing to present his firstfruits before God, but rather he proceeded to multiply the food.

I heard a similar idea in an adult ed class that I took on the Book of Esther.  In Esther 3:12, we read that the King of Persia's scribes on the thirteenth day of the first month (which is identified as Nisan in v 7) write the decree about the extermination of the Jews.  In Esther 4, Esther proclaims a fast for three days for the Jews in Shushan.  Remember that the Passover is on the fourteenth day of the first month, Nisan (Exodus 12).  On the Passover, the Israelites are to eat unleavened bread and bitter herbs.  Was Esther telling Jews to fast on a day on which the Torah commanded them to eat?  Was she disregarding the Torah?

I suppose that one can ask a lot of questions about these scenarios.  How do we know that the barley loaves in John 6 were from freshly harvested barley, rather than from barley from the previous year?  Was the man in I Kings 4:42-44 required to offer all of his firstfruits to God, when Exodus 23:19 commands the Israelites to bring the first of their firstfruits?  Can we really say for sure that the Jews in Shoshan fasted during the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, since perhaps it took quite some time for the decree to be promulgated after it was written down on the thirteenth of Nisan?  But, come to think of it, Esther would probably hear about the decree pretty fast, since, as queen, she lived in the capitol city.

Was Jesus consciously disobeying the Torah when he multiplied the barley loaves?  I vaguely recall reading in John Meier's The Marginal Jew that Jesus was not violating laws out of a conscious need to proclaim their nullification, but rather certain laws did not enter into his mind.  (I'm open to correction on this, as it has been a while since I read Meier.)  At the same time, there were occasions when Jesus put well being above ritual, even in John's Gospel.  Could that be going on in John 6?  After all, perhaps there is some reason that John 6 specifies that the Passover was near, which means that the firstfruits had not been offered yet.

John and Realized Eschatology

For my write-up today on Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I'll use as my starting-point something that I wrote in a post a while back, when I was blogging through volume 4 of John Meier's A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus.  I was talking about the issue of realized eschatology, and what I said referred to an example of what that means.  I said:

"I enjoyed Meier’s discussion of the Gospel of John.  The way Meier tells it, the Gospel of John differed from the synoptics on the issue of the coming of the Son of Man...The synoptics thought that the Son of Man would come in the future as a judge, after the resurrection of Jesus Christ...In the Gospel of John, however, the belief is that the coming of the Son of Man occurred at Jesus’ first coming, which is why John has a realized eschatology in which Jesus is acting as judge while he is on earth, and people are judged already according to how they view Jesus...Meier may be on to something, but I don’t treat his description as absolute...[T]he Gospel of John contains a concept of futurist eschatology, not just present judgment (John 5:28-29; 6:40)."

Realized eschatology has been a prominent theme in my reading thus far of Lee's book, and I'm sure that it will be prominent in the rest of the book, as well.  Lee, like many scholars, maintains that the Gospel of John has a realized eschatology.  Eternal life is something that people can enjoy now, for "It is to be lifted up above this base existence into the joy and peace that belong to God" (page 77), an idea that overlaps with things that the first century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria affirmed.  Today, Ezekiel's promises that people would be washed in the Spirit and that Israel would be resurrected are being fulfilled, as people are "created anew" and are "embracing the meaning of life intended by God" (page 70).  The promise that God will dwell in people's midst has been fulfilled in the incarnation of the Word in Jesus Christ.  People were judged already while Jesus was on earth, based on their view of Jesus.  And the new Temple and new Jerusalem are present now, as the Spirit dwells within a church that consists of Jews and Gentiles, who fellowship with God and with each other.

But what about the passage that I cited in my post----John 5:28-29, which affirms that there will come a resurrection, as those who did good deeds are resurrected unto life, whereas those who did evil deeds are resurrected unto judgment?  Lee states on page 113:

"Does Jesus teach realized eschatology, future eschatology, or some combination of the two?  Verses 28 and 29 appear to undermine the rest of the Gospel's teachings, particularly its this-worldly life just promised in [John 5:26-27], so much so that some scholars conclude verses 28-29 must be a later addition...But is it possible that no contradiction exists at all...?  Put another way, how quickly does Jesus' proclamation of the future ('an hour is coming') become John's past ('and now is')?  At the hour of Jesus' death?  At his Resurrection?"  Lee appears to be arguing that John could have envisioned John 5:28-29 being realized at Jesus' death or resurrection.  Jesus' death is important in John's Gospel, according to Lee.  On pages 56-57, Lee says that, when Jesus tells his mother in John 2:4 that his hour is not yet come, he means Jesus' "appointed death", which is when Jesus is glorified and victorious over the world and is a prerequisite for the rebuilding of the Temple.

According to Lee, even Paul, Matthew, and other Christians who had a futurist eschatology maintained that, in a sense, eschatological promises were being realized in their own time.  Paul, according to Lee, believed that Jesus' resurrection indicated that "the general resurrection has begun, and the new age is upon us" (page 78).  Lee says regarding I Corinthians 15, particularly the verse that says, "if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised": "Try to rid your mind of the misconception that Paul argues for a future resurrection.  He does not say 'if you do not believe the dead will someday rise' but rather 'if you do not believe the dead are raised.'" But did Paul lack a futurist eschatology?  I do not entirely know how Lee addresses this question, but one can point to such things as Paul's references to the Second Coming of Christ (I Thessalonians 4) and the renewal of the cosmos (Romans 8) to argue that Paul indeed had a futurist eschatology.  But he may have believed that the end was near because, already in his time, an eschatological fulfillment of promises was occurring, and in some cases had occurred. 

Regarding Matthew, Matthew in Lee's book for some time agreed with John the Revelator's view that Christ would soon return and overthrow evil, and yet, as John reminds Matthew, even Matthew presented graves being opened and people rising from the dead soon after Jesus' death and resurrection (Matthew 27:51-53), and Matthew in Lee's book regarded that as a fulfillment of Ezekiel's prophecy about the opening of graves (Ezekiel 37).  Perhaps Matthew had both a realized and also a futurist eschatology: he believed that eschatological promises were being fulfilled, and yet he anticipated a fuller fulfillment.

My impression is that Lee and many biblical scholars believe that John took realized eschatology further, to the point that it eclipsed or even supplanted any futurist eschatology.  On pages 94-95, the character Ruth says something that's quite intriguing: "When John dies, everything will change.  He is the final apostle, the last living person to have walked with Jesus.  And Jesus hinted that John would live to see him return.  Once John dies, we can get on with being Christians, no longer peering up at the clouds, waiting for the Messiah to light up the skies.  Our appointed deacons can finally exercise their authority without John's overbearing presence.  Those who have lost heart can finally let go."  In a sense, the picture I get is that a realized eschatology----one that focuses on the here-and-now rather than eagerly expecting for a cataclysmic end to come from right around the corner----is necessary for people to heal from their disappointed hopes, and for the church to be the church.

The question that I have is this: What hope does a realized eschatology actually provide?  If this is all there is, then that's pretty sad!  Moreover, if Jesus through the incarnation fulfilled the promise that God would dwell among us, where does that leave us now, when God is no longer incarnate among us?  Perhaps that's why Jesus' promise in John's Gospel about sending the Spirit is so important.

I one time took a Greek New Testament class on the Gospel of John, and the professor said that John believed in an afterlife, only he envisioned Christians going to heaven right after their physical death.  I have questions about that.  First of all, would that count as a resurrection, since the soul leaving the body has been argued to be different from a resurrection (at least according to N.T. Wright)?  Second, what exactly did Jesus bring that was new?  Wasn't there already a belief that souls would go to heaven----by Philo and others within Second Temple Judaism?  Perhaps Jesus moved the afterlife for the righteous into heaven, whereas before that all souls went to Hades, according to a certain strand of thought.

Who Was Nicodemus?

In my latest reading of Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, I learned about the view that the Nicodemus of John's Gospel appears in Josephus and the Talmud.  Lee refers to Josephus' Jewish War 2.451, Babylonian Talmud Taanit 20a, and Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 43a.

Lee cites Josephus' Jewish War 2.451 in arguing that Nicodemus "lived as a wealthy and generous Jew in Jerusalem during John's time" (page 66).  The passage says (according to William Whiston's translation): "the others readily complied with their petition, sent to them Gorion, the son of Nicodemus, and Ananias, the son of Sadduk, and Judas, the son of Jonathan, that they might give them the security of their right hands, and of their oaths: after which Metilius brought down his soldiers; which soldiers, while they were in arms..."
This scene is set in 66 C.E., according to Richard Bauckham (see here).  Bauckham argues that Gorion in this passage could be the son of Nicodemus ben Gurion, one reason being that it was common for people to carry their grandfather's name.

The Babylonian Talmud depicts Nicodemus ben Gurion as a wealthy man who interacted with the Romans.  See here for some of its stories about him.  Babylonian Talmud Taanit 20a says that Nicodemus was a nickname for Boni, for the sun shined (dikdera) for him when he asked it to do so.  In Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 43a, there is a Buni who was one of the five disciples of Yeshu (and Yeshua is related to the Greek name Iesous, or Jesus).  Yeshu, according to this passage, was hanged on the eve of Passover and was said to be a sorcerer who enticed Israel to apostasy, plus he was connected with the government (which, according to the translation in my Judaic Classics Library, indicates that he was royalty, or was influential).  Buni was executed sometime after the death of Jesus.

I haven't done a thorough study of this issue, to tell you the truth, but I do have a couple of questions.  First of all, if the people who put together the Talmud realized that Nicodemus ben Gurion was a follower of Jesus, why does the Talmud seem to portray Nicodemus in such a positive light? 

Second, there's the issue of how old Nicodemus was, and when, and even which Nicodemus we are talking about.  This article states the following, as its author refers to Craig Blomberg's scholarship: "there are two people called Nicodemus, one in Josephus' Antiquities (14:37), and one in the Babylonian Talmud. Both were members of the ben Gurion family, 'in which...' as Blomberg says, '... only a handful of 'first' names reappear over the generations.' (The implication is that Nicodemus is one such name.)  Josephus's Nicodemus [in Anitquities] was alive in 64 BC, so he certainly cannot be the person John writes about. The Nicodemus of the Babylonian Talmud was a rich man who lived in Jerusalem during the war with Rome, i.e. the late 60s AD. The Nicodemus of John's Gospel could have been the uncle of this Naqdimon ben Gurion of later Jewish history."  As I look at Josephus' Antiquities 14:37, I see no evidence that the Nicodemus who lived in 64 B.C.E. was part of the Ben Gurion family.  If he were, then, in my opinion, that would challenge the notion that Nicodemus ben Gurion's name of "Nicodemus" was a nickname----either because Nicodemus caused the sun to appear (as the Talmud says), or because he was innocent of Jesus' blood (which Lee argues, as we shall see shortly)----for Nicodemus would have had his name simply because it was a name that recurred in his family.

In any case, I think that the article does well to grapple with the identity of Nicodemus in John 3.  If the Nicodemus of John 3 is the Nicodemus of Josephus' Antiquities 14:37----the one who lived in 64 B.C.E.----then Nicodemus would be really old (perhaps approaching his 90s) when he met with Jesus in John 3.  If the Nicodemus of John 3 is the Nicodemus of the Talmud, who lived during the late 60's C.E., then how old was Nicodemus when he met with Jesus?  The author of the article goes with the option that the Nicodemus of John's Gospel could have been the uncle of the Nicodemus ben Gurion of the Talmud.

I'd now like to turn to what Lee says on page 67 about the etymology of the name Nicodemus: "Nicodemus, while clearly a Jew, sported a Greek name.  It means 'innocent of blood,' surely not his given name, perhaps coined as a reference to his refusal to condemn Jesus."

Lee speculates that John refers to Nicodemus by name (when it is rare for John to refer to people by name) because Nicodemus in Hebrew means "innocent of blood", and John may want to highlight that Nicodemus refused to condemn Jesus.  According to John Paulien in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Nicodemus in Greek means "conqueror of the people", which assumes that the name is from the Greek words nikao ("conquer") and demos ("people").  The word means "innocent of blood", however, in Hebrew: naqi can mean "innocent", and dam means "blood".  Do I think that Nicodemus was given that name because he refused to condemn Jesus?  I suppose that it's possible, but one cannot be sure.  After all, others were named "Nicodemus", including someone who lived in 64 B.C.E.  According to Paulien, it was a common first century Greek name.  Nicodemus could have had his name simply because that was his name, not because he was innocent of blood in his refusal to join in Jesus' condemnation.  At the same time, in my opinion, Lee does well to ask why John names Nicodemus, when John does not name so many other people in his Gospel.  Perhaps it is to highlight that Nicodemus was innocent of the blood of Jesus, but there could be alternative reasons: because Nicodemus was influential and John wanted to show that even prominent Jews were following Jesus (a similar sort of thing may be going on with Gamaliel in Acts 5:34, even though Acts does not say that Gamaliel followed Jesus), or because John is drawing from Nicodemus' eyewitness testimony (a Richard Bauckham sort of argument).

What Kind of Lamb, and How Will He Remove Sin?

In John 1:29, John the Baptist says that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  (I draw here from the KJV.)  This passage has long puzzled me.  Did John the Baptist believe that Jesus would die on the cross for people's sins, in a time when many Jews did not have that particular conception of the Messiah?  If so, then why did John arrive at a point where he seriously questioned that Jesus was the Messiah (Matthew 11:13; Luke 7:18-20), perhaps because he expected for the Messiah to overthrow Israel's oppressors, and there he was in prison?  I realize that I'm conflating John's Gospel with the synoptics, which is probably a no-no within biblical scholarship.  Still, I wonder: did the author of the Gospel of John seriously believe that John the Baptist had an awareness of the plan of God that so many people in that day lacked?

Lee Harmon, in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, looks at Second Temple literature (and the Testament of Joseph, whenever that is dated) to explain what John the Baptist in John's Gospel may have meant when he called Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  Lee puts the following into the mouth of the character Matthew:

"Enoch wrote about a great horned bull that morphs into a lamb with black horns.  That's what the Baptizer talked about, a heroic victory by the lamb, purging the world of sin...Enoch wrote: 'Purify the earth from all oppression, from all injustice, from all crime, from all impiety, and from all the pollution which is committed upon it.  Exterminate them from the earth.  Then shall all the children of men be righteous, and all nations shall pay me divine honors, and bless me; and all shall adore me.  The earth shall be cleansed from all corruption, from every crime, from all punishment, and from all suffering.'...And the Testament of Joseph tells how the lamb overcomes evil beasts and crushes them underfoot."

According to Lee, John the Baptist in John's Gospel thought that Jesus was a lamb who would purify the world of sin through judgment, not through atonement, in accordance with certain Jewish eschatological expectations.  But one can make the case that, even if that were John the Baptist's intent in John's Gospel, he could have been talking about Jesus' role as the lamb who would atone for people's sins, without realizing that he was doing so.  After all, in John 11:50 and 18:14, the point is made that the priest Caiaphas said that it is better for one man to die for the people.  Caiaphas meant that Jesus should be offered up to the Romans for execution, since that is preferable to the Romans wiping out Israel out of concern for the Messianic foment that could take place there.  But the Gospel of John applies that to the plan of God, in which Jesus dies for people.

Lee does not provide references to the parts of I Enoch and the Testament of Joseph that he mentions, but the part about the horned bull becoming a lamb is in I Enoch90:38.  The part about the purification of the earth is in I Enoch 10:20-22.  And the Testament of Joseph passage is in Testament of Joseph 19:8.  Click here for R.H. Charles' translation of I Enoch.    Click here to read Robert Sinker's translation of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.

Lee may have a point about the Enoch passages.  I'm still trying to figure out if he does.  I Enoch 90:38 mentions a bull that becomes a lamb with big black horns, but it does not refer to that lamb conquering.  Rather, it appears that the eschatological era of peace has already arrived by the time that the bull becomes a lamb.  Perhaps the bull becomes a lamb because he no longer needs to fight and can thus be peaceful.  I'm just guessing here, and I'm open to correction on this.  Regarding I Enoch 10:20-22, that does not mention a lamb, but, if I Enoch 90:38 is indeed about a lamb who conquers, then a first century Jew such as Matthew could have conflated I Enoch 90:38 with an earlier section of Enoch that describes God's purification of the earth of sin.  My question is: Does I Enoch 90:38 describe a conquering lamb?

In Testament of Joseph 19:8, there is indeed a conquering lamb.  But the thing about the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs is that parts of it are Jewish, and parts of it are Christian.  As I look at Testament of Joseph 19, it strikes me as Christian:

"Hear ye also, my children, the visions which I saw. There were twelve deer feeding, and the nine were divided and scattered in the land, likewise also the three. And I saw that from Judah was born a virgin wearing a linen garment, and from her went forth a Lamb, without spot, and on His left hand there was as it were a lion; and all the beasts rushed against Him, and the lamb overcame them, and destroyed them, and trod them under foot. And because of Him the angels rejoiced, and men, and all the earth. And these things shall take place in their season, in the last days. Do ye therefore, my children, observe the commandments of the Lord, and honour Judah and Levi; for from them shall arise unto you the Lamb of God, by grace saving all the Gentiles and Israel. For His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, which shall not be shaken; but my kingdom among you shall come to an end as a watcher's hammock, which after the summer will not appear."

In this passage, we see such concepts as the virgin birth and grace that saves Gentiles and Israel.  That sounds rather Christian to me.  When the Testament of Joseph here mentions the lamb conquering, I think that it's echoing Revelation.  The point in Revelation and the Testament of Joseph 19, in my opinion, is that the same lamb who died for people's sins, Jesus Christ, would overcome evil.  I should also note that there are some scholars who have argued that Jesus in Revelation actually conquers evil through his death.  In this scenario, the lamb imagery in Revelation cannot really be separated from Jesus' atoning work on the cross.

Perhaps Lee is correct that John the Baptist in John 1:29 thought that Jesus would be a conquering lamb who would purify the earth through judgment.  Or maybe John the Baptist in that passage had a brief moment of inspiration in which he grasped that Jesus would somehow be a lamb who would die for people's sin.  I'm open on this. 

Starting John's Gospel: The Way It Happened

I started Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  I'd like to thank Lee for sending me my Advanced Reader Copy.

This book is a sequel to another book that Lee wrote, Revelation: The Way It Happened.  I have not read all of that particular book, but I read parts of it on Google Books (see here), and I found the prose to be quite gripping.

Lee includes a summary of his Revelation book in John's Gospel: The Way It Happened.  Essentially, what I got out of that summary was that Christians during the first century were expecting for the end to come very soon, but that did not happen, and life just kept on going on.  In John's Gospel, the characters are trying to cope with that disappointment as well as other problems that Christians were experiencing, such as economic marginalization by pagans in Asia Minor and marginalization within synagogues.

The book alternates between fiction and non-fiction, even as the fictional parts manifest the author's awareness of issues within biblical studies.  In my latest reading, the prophet John is dictating his Gospel to a lady named Ruth, while Matthew expresses his sarcasm.  Matthew was a character in Lee's Revelation book, and he is the author of the Gospel of Matthew (but my impression is that Lee does not equate him with Matthew the tax-collector and disciple of Jesus).  Matthew is bitter because the end did not come, and he and his father gave up so much because they expected for Jesus to return soon.  Moreover, in my latest reading, Matthew, John, and Ruth debate about who exactly Jesus is.  Matthew believes that Jesus originated at the virgin birth, whereas John is proposing the radical idea that Jesus pre-existed and actually is God.  The Epistle to the Colossians comes into their discussion, since Colossians portrays Jesus as pre-existent wisdom, and Matthew expresses skepticism that Paul wrote that epistle.

Lee returns to this story, while he also has non-fictional sections that go into the historical background behind the Gospel of John.  For example, Lee has a section on the Greco-Roman conceptions of the logos, which are important to know in interpreting John 1.

Lee draws from biblical scholarship in this book.  Unlike Lee, I wouldn't call John Shelby Spong "one of our foremost Jesus scholars" (page 10), as quotable and insightful as Bishop Spong may be.  But Lee does demonstrate a grasp of scholarly debates in a footnote on the curse of the heretics in synagogues.  Although Lee views the curse to be present in the late first century and part of the controversy between Jews and Christians, he's aware of the scholarly arguments that it has a later date and was directed towards heretics in general, not Christians, specifically.  I tend to agree with Lee that, since there was controversy between Christians and mainstream Judaism in the late first century, as we see in the Gospel of John, there is a strong possibility that the curse of the heretics was directed against Christians.

I found something that Lee says on page 26 to be particularly interesting: "[The Gospel of John's] incarnation theme reminds us of Caesar Augustus, who, as the incarnation of the god Mercury, 'became visible' and whose birthday became 'for the whole world the beginning of the gospel.'  [(In a footnote, Lee refers to a resolution from the Provincial Assembly of Asia Minor that made these claims about Caesar Augustus.)]  Its descent and ascent theme brings to mind how the incarnated Mercury descended as the son of a god for the atonement of humans before ascending back to heaven.  While rich in Jewish symbolism, John's Gospel nevertheless makes the Christ story available to any reader living in Asia Minor or educated in Hellenistic tradition."

This passage in Lee's book made me think about scholarly arguments about divine kings in Greco-Roman conceptualization (see here, here, and here).  There is nuance in terms of this issue, but I did a search, and apparently Horace had a poem about how Augustus was an incarnation of Mercury (see here).  While I have questions about the extent to which Greco-Roman conceptions of divine rulers overlapped with the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, Lee mentions things that are certainly relevant to this issue.

The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony

I missed last week's Bible study at my church because I was sick, but I got to attend last night, and I also had an opportunity to read the transcript for last week's DVD presentation that the group watched. 

Essentially, what I'll do is write a post today and a post on Monday, and both will touch on last night's Bible study and the study of the week before.  Today's post will be on whether or not the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, and my post on Monday will talk about Jesus being a different kind of Messiah from what people were expecting.  My Bible study group is going through A Fragile Stone, Peter: Jesus' Friend With Michael Card. 

Michael Card appears to assume that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony to Jesus.  In the past, my mind would have been pretty closed to that, and I would have dismissed such a notion as uncritical naivety.  Why?  Well, one reason was that I was getting a different story in my academic New Testament classes.  Another reason was that the people I knew who did believe that the Gospels contained eyewitness testimony tended to rely on pious assumption or religious bullying rather than any appeal to argument.  To illustrate this point, I was talking with a friend about the contradictions between Mark and John on the day that Jesus died, and my friend responded: "But both writers were there when Jesus died, so wouldn't you expect for them both to get the date right?"  I then said, "Actually, we don't know who wrote the Gospels."  It amazed and irritated me that my friend essentially assumed that I shared his conservative Christian beliefs about who wrote the Gospels.

Nowadays, I'm a little more open to the notion that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, albeit I'm not overly dogmatic about it.  This is because of scholarly books I have read, or books I have read that draw from biblical scholarship, that argue that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  There was Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.  There was Lee Harmon's John's Gospel: The Way It Happened, which will be coming out in January.  And, while I don't particularly care for David Marshall's apologetic chest-thumping in his books, I at least have to give him credit for presenting arguments that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, rather than simply assuming that they do or resorting to religious bullying.  I regard the view that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony to be legitimate, even though I don't think that it's the only legitimate view out there.

But, if the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, does that mean that I have to be an evangelical Christian?  If what we have is eyewitness testimony that the disciples saw the risen Jesus, does that entail me having to embrace, say, the inerrancy of Scripture?  A number of evangelicals believe so: they think that, once you accept the Christian belief that Jesus rose from the dead, you then have to believe in inerrancy, for Jesus' resurrection demonstrates the truth of the Christian religion.  But I'm skeptical that I have to take that kind of step.  For one, even if Jesus rose from the dead, that doesn't mean that every closed-minded, dogmatic, authoritarian, bullying, ignorant evangelical or fundamentalist depiction of God that I have ever heard is true.  Maybe Jesus rose from the dead and Jesus is a nice and loving person, even as a number of conservative Christians distort (unintentionally), misunderstand, or misapply the things that he said.  Second, even if Jesus rose from the dead, that doesn't make the problems in the Bible go away----the contradictions, the diverse ideologies, the troubling acts and commands of the Old Testament God, the patriarchalism, the ways that the Hebrew Bible reflects ancient Near Eastern culture, the incompatibility between the Bible and modern science and archaeology, the unfulfilled prophecies, and the list goes on. 

Michael Card holds that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  But I wonder if, somewhere along the way, he was influenced by scholarly or apologetic arguments for this position, for he doesn't seem to just assume that the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony, but rather he actually appears to be informed about the issue.  He notes that the Gospel of John manifests awareness of certain details, such as the risen Jesus cooking over a coal-fire, and the name of the person whose ear Peter cut off being Malchus.  As Michael Card says, John tells the story of Peter's denial in such detail because he was actually there: "He knows the girl at the gate, the servant girl.  In fact, she gives him permission to come in."  Michael Card is also aware of the tradition that the Gospel of Mark contains Peter's eyewitness testimony.  And he may believe that this point is relevant to what Mark excludes and what Luke contains: Card says that only Luke had the heart to narrate that, after Peter's third denial of Jesus, Jesus turned and looked at Peter, which broke Peter's heart.

In some of these cases, Card appears to overlap with Richard Bauckham's arguments.  Bauckham highlights the importance of the naming of names in John's Gospel, and Bauckham also argues that Mark's Gospel draws from Peter's testimony (see here, here, and here).  Card does not really offer a sustained argument for the latter, but he does note that John names names.  Moreover, Card, like David Marshall, seems to think that vividness of narrative is a sign of eyewitness testimony, but Bauckham diverges from that argument, since vividness may be a part of a literary style rather than an indication that the author is an eyewitness.  At the same time, it does seem to me that the author of John's Gospel portrays the Disciple Jesus Loved, the source of the story in John's Gospel, as present at the events that are narrated.  Could that be fraudulent, or a literary device?  I can't disprove that it is either of those two.  But, in my opinion, it could also be an indication that John's Gospel is based on eyewitness testimony.

People in my group were raising their own questions about whether the Gospels contain eyewitness testimony.  For example, after Jesus rises in Mark's Gospel, a man tells a group of women to go tell the disciples----and Peter----that Jesus is going before them into Galilee (Mark 16:7).  You'll notice that Peter is singled out.  One lady asked if Peter (the source of Mark's Gospel) could be telling the story to make himself look important, and that's why it singles Peter out.  Someone else asked how Peter knew that the man was singling Peter out when he was not even there with the women, and people in the group concluded that Peter must have gotten that piece of information from others.  In my opinion (and I did not express this in the group), even if the Gospels reflect eyewitness testimony, that still coincides with them having a human element: people having biases, people gathering information, people including some things and not others, etc.