I'm going to toss this out there, and risk incurring the wrath of certain types of Christians, simply because I find it fascinating and convincing. It's called the Ur-John Thesis.
The Thesis is the work of a layman named Evan Powell. It is nearly impossible for a layman to cause any stir in the closed community of Serious New Testament Scholarship, but Powell did. Because academia is pretty much of a closed shop, I can't say that any NT scholars fully embraced the Thesis. but they did acknowledge that it's clever and intriguing.
Alas, I don't know what happened to Powell. His site is still up, but the huge section on the Thesis is now gone and there has been a "Full Proposal Coming Soon" announcement up for years now. The Ur-John Thesis —.
The Thesis is apparently covered in Powell's 1994 book, The Unfinished Gospel: Notes on the Quest for the Historical Jesus, still available at Amazon (Amazon.com). You'll note that the reviews are enthusiastic. (Alas, Powell also has some extremely controversial theories that would be offensive to most Christians, including me, so be forewarned.)
Anyway, what is the Ur-John Thesis?
It's easily stated:
I don't insist the Ur-John Thesis is correct, but it does resolve a fair number of mysteries. There's no reason to suppose the Holy Spirit couldn't have informed and guided the entire process. If you're one of those who is offended or threatened by this sort of thinking and prefers to take the Gospel of John at face value, that's fine. (Sometime I'll share the weird epiphany involving the Gospel of John that caused me to become a Christian one afternoon when that was the farthest thing from my mind.)
The Thesis is the work of a layman named Evan Powell. It is nearly impossible for a layman to cause any stir in the closed community of Serious New Testament Scholarship, but Powell did. Because academia is pretty much of a closed shop, I can't say that any NT scholars fully embraced the Thesis. but they did acknowledge that it's clever and intriguing.
Alas, I don't know what happened to Powell. His site is still up, but the huge section on the Thesis is now gone and there has been a "Full Proposal Coming Soon" announcement up for years now. The Ur-John Thesis —.
The Thesis is apparently covered in Powell's 1994 book, The Unfinished Gospel: Notes on the Quest for the Historical Jesus, still available at Amazon (Amazon.com). You'll note that the reviews are enthusiastic. (Alas, Powell also has some extremely controversial theories that would be offensive to most Christians, including me, so be forewarned.)
Anyway, what is the Ur-John Thesis?
It's easily stated:
- There are basically two distinct strands to the Gospel of John.
- The first (Ur-John), generated by the Beloved Disciple, is a historical Gospel that is actually the earliest. This explains why John and the Synoptics are quite different insofar as their accounts of Jesus are concerned: John predated the Synoptics, and the Synoptics were aware of each other but not of John.
- The more hifalutin portions of the Gospel of John are a series of much-later redactions undertaken by a series of editors to address contemporary theological concerns such as Gnosticism (and, Powell believes, to tidy up John's negative view of Peter). The last of these redactions would be attributable to the period typically assigned to the Gospel (roughly 100 AD). This was when the Gospel was in the form we now have. This explains why the Gospel's Greek and Christology seem awfully sophisticated for a humble Beloved Disciple.
I don't insist the Ur-John Thesis is correct, but it does resolve a fair number of mysteries. There's no reason to suppose the Holy Spirit couldn't have informed and guided the entire process. If you're one of those who is offended or threatened by this sort of thinking and prefers to take the Gospel of John at face value, that's fine. (Sometime I'll share the weird epiphany involving the Gospel of John that caused me to become a Christian one afternoon when that was the farthest thing from my mind.)