my last damn post about the Gospels

[sistawendy]

John 14:6:

Jesus said to [Thomas], "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Gosh, megalomania much? I mean, I'm starting to get why not a lot of people in his day took him seriously.

In John 14:22-23, Jesus seems to be telling the Apostles that they will see him after the resurrection, but no one else will. It's all quite neat.

In fact, I take back some of what I said about Luke being the slick Gospel. Where Luke had style and the literary fashion of the day, John has grit, tension, emotion, developed characters, dialog, and some neatly darned plot holes like the above. You want dialog and tension? Try John's account of Jesus sassing people after his arrest, or Pilate and the chief priest arguing about the wording of the sign on the cross.

Oh, and at the very end, it appears that John the Evangelist is claiming to be John the Apostle. Wayell, if that were the case, he would have been about eighty years old when he put pen to paper. There's a minority view out there that mayyybe he could have been fifty. Either way, I don't buy it. Why would he have waited at all? The writers of the synoptic Gospels didn't. Ancient and medieval writers had little compunction about spinning yarns, especially if they thought there was a greater good to be served by it.

Next up: Acts, for which I confess to some anticipation: it's partly a travelog of Peter's & Paul's trips all around the ancient Mediterranean. After that, the mercifully bite-sized Epistles, which as opinion pieces I expect to make me jump up and down and yell. Then I drink the Kool-Aid with Revelation.

Comments

[tylik]

I mean, you could argue that a lot of bullshit was inserted, and what remained was heavily edited by the council of Nicea to fit their agenda. (BTW, if you aren't familiar with the card game Credo, do look it up...)

But yeah. I don't much care for monotheism, and I particular dislike the messiah thing as a plot device. So it was pretty much a given that the new testament would annoy me. I still need to go through it rigorously one of these days.

[sistawendy]

I mean, you could argue that a lot of bullshit was inserted, and what remained was heavily edited by the council of Nicea to fit their agenda.

That's a very strong possibility.

[staxxy]

this is another one of those "which John are we really talking about here, and just how many Johns were there actually?" issues for me. It could be someone had several scrolls penned by "John" and they just cobbled it all together in their own style.

The bible is like the longest lasting game of 'Telephone' ever, I think.

[staxxy]

Oh, and let us not forget that it is the book that really lays it out that Jesus was a huge ass elitist gatekeeper for heaven. Only the chosen few can get in, and ONLY through Jesus.