IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
Par for the course.
It's why I stated it as my opinion and not as fact.
Did Jesus say what the gospels say He said about Himself?
- Thread starter Longfellow
- Start date
It's why I stated it as my opinion and not as fact.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
I can understand that line of reasoning, but I think that "no Jew would ever ..." is always a fallacy. We have actual examples of Jews using "Ioudaioi" idiomatically to refer to the authorities in Judaea, and it seems likely to me that it was commonly used that way in Galilee.
(later) Also, at the end of the first century, possibly even Greeks would have mostly understood it that way.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
John was from Galilee. "Ioudaioi" would likely have meant people in the province of Judaea, with or without negative associations. It might very well have had negative associations for some people In Galilee, if they saw it as a puppet of Rome
IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
If i were saying it in an absolute sense, sure. But I'm not. I'm talking about the odds. What are the odds that John was written by a self-loathing Jew versus a Gentile? My money is on the Gentile.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
Please tell me if you can think of a better word than "Ioudaioi" that a Jewish author could have used for Temple authorities or Temple aristocracy.
Longfellow
Well-Known Member
At least you're original. I searched with Google and on YouTube and couldn't find anyone saying that the author of John was a gentile.
IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
Well that's the tangle. There really isn't a word that refers to just those Jews who wanted Jesus dead. You have to use their names or a long, long phrase to spell it out like "the small group within the Sanhedrin who wanted Jesus dead." If you want to refer to those particular Pharisees with whom Jesus had legal disputes, you would say beit Shammai, but I doubt that every Pharisee of beit Shammai wanted Jesus dead. Further, some of the people who wanted him dead weren't Pharisees at all. Caiaphas was a Sadducee.
Sometimes there just isn't a vocabulary shortcut. If I could give an example, there are those in congress who want to cut all aid to Israel. What do you call them? Do you call them Americans? Congressmen? Democrats? Republicans? There isn't a word. You can either uses their names, or you have to spell it out with something like, "that minority of congressmen who want to cut all aid to Israel." Yes, it IS a pain in the butt when we don't have a vocabulary word.
IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
I'm pasting directly from my ChatGPT inquiry:
The clearest names I can identify are Ernest Renan, who explicitly regarded the Fourth Gospel as the work of a Christian author writing in a later Hellenistic environment rather than of the Jewish apostle John, and Adolf von Harnack, who argued that the author was not the apostle and considered the possibility that the author was a Gentile Christian. Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel also argued explicitly against Jewish apostolic authorship and treated the Gospel as the product of a later Gentile Christian milieu.
Would you consider, for example, Ezekiel the prophet a self loathing Jew?
@IndigoChild5559 -
Can I assume that you have read the more contemporary Jewish scholars I have referenced? If yes, could you tell me what you felt was less compelling in their reasonings than those of the non-Jewish scholars of a century and more ago?
Can I assume that you have read the more contemporary Jewish scholars I have referenced? If yes, could you tell me what you felt was less compelling in their reasonings than those of the non-Jewish scholars of a century and more ago?
IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
I can't make heads or tails of your question. The idolatry going on Judah during the time of Ezekiel was widespread--it had become the norm, not the exception. How is that comparable to the number of Jews in the Sanhedrin that would have formed some conspiracy to kill Jesus (I'm giving Longfellow the benefit of the doubt here, I don't actually know any such conspiracy existed). Let's be generous and say that half the Sanhedrin were in on it, roughly three dozen men. How is that comparable? How can three dozen men be referred to as "The Jews" when there were millions of Jews in the Roman Empire?
IndigoChild5559
Jewish, Idealist, Romantic, Musician
I honestly don't know if I have read any of the scholars you referenced or not. Whether the gospel authors were Jews or not is something I looked into around 2008-2011? There really isn't any particular author that really made a dent, I don't recall a single name on either side.
What made a dent was one single comment that someone spoke. A unanswered question. This happened during my very brief stint at Ahavat Zion, the MJ congregation. There were four of us in the room, and Stuart Dauermann was reflecting on John and how John sets up "The Jews" as the foil and the resultant years of antisemitism Jews had endured because of this. And I could hear the hurt in his voice, see the confusion on his face, feel his sense of betrayal, see his head shaking back and forth in almost disbelief, "Why? It makes no sense to me. I just don't understand it. Why would he DO that?" This was not a stupid man. This was not a man uneducated in the ins and outs of who wrote John. This was a man who had every motivation in the world to have an answer. This is the man who is supposed to have the answer for everyone else who asks, "Why would John DO that?" And he had no answer. It was a moment of honesty and vulnerability, a moment when all the game playing had stopped and someone was being real.
And in a flash, my mind regrouped the problem. On one side was the attachment to the idea that John, a Jew, wrote that gospel. On the other side was what simply made more sense: he didn't. Before that moment, I believed John or some other Jew had written the gospel. After that moment, I didn't.
If I could articulate my thinking, I would say I was using Judge Judy reasoning: If it doesn't make sense, it's not true.
May I ask why it bothers you so much that I hold the opinion that I do? This is not the first time, or even the second time, that you have chimed in on this issue, and RabbiO, you almost never chime in on anything.
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