Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 3

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 2 with:

 

(p.34) " I have also learned after years of study that, although John's gospel is

written with great simplicity and power, its meaning is by no means obvious.

Even its first generation of readers (c.90 to 130 C.E.) disagreed about whether

John was a true gospel (p.35) or a false one--and whether it should be part of

the New Testament. [10] John's defenders among early Christians revered it as

the " 'logos' gospel " --the gospel of the divine word of reason ('logos', in

Greek)--and derided those who opposed it as " irrational " ('alogos', lacking

reason). Its detractors, by contrast, were quick to point out that John's

narrative differs significantly from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As I

compared John with these other gospels, I saw that at certain points this is

true, and that some of these differences are much more than variations on a

theme. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas) Chapter 2, p.34-35.

 

Note:

 

[10] For discussion, see Chapter 4; also, among the many scholarly works on this

issue, Maurice F. Wiles, 'The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth

Gospel in the Early Church' (Cambridge, 1960); T.E. Pollard, 'Johannine

Christology and the Early Church' (Cambridge, 1960); C.H. Dodd, 'Interpretation

of the Fourth Gospel' (Cambridge, 1953); and E. Pagels, 'The Johannine Gospel in

Gnostic Exegesis' (Nashville, 1973).

 

Here now, is Part 3.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 3

 

(p.35) At crucial moments in its account, for example, John's gospel directly

contradicts the combined testimony of the other New Testament gospels. We have

seen already that John differs in its version of Jesus' final days; moreover,

while Mark, Matthew, and Luke agree that disrupting merchants doing business in

the Temple was Jesus' 'last' public act, John makes it his 'first' act. The

three other gospels all say that what finally drove the chief priest and his

allies to arrest Jesus was this attack on the money changers, when Jesus in

Jerusalem

 

entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who

were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and

the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry

anything through the temple. [11]

 

Mark says of this shocking incident that " when the chief priests and scribes

heard of it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, " [12] and Matthew and Luke

agree with Mark that the temple authorities had Jesus arrested shortly

afterward.

 

(p.36) But John places this climactic act at the 'beginning' of his story, to

suggest that Jesus' whole mission was to purify and transform the worship of

God. John also increases the violence of the scene by adding that Jesus " knotted

a whip out of small cords " and " drove them all out of the Temple. " [13] Unlike

the other gospel writers, John mentions no immediate repercussions for this act,

probably because, had Jesus been arrested at this point, he would have had no

story to tell. To account for Jesus' arrest, John inserts at the end of his

narrative a startling story that occurs in none of the other gospels: how Jesus

raised his friend Lazarus from the dead, which so alarmed the Jewish authorities

that they determined to kill Jesus, and, he adds, the chief priests even

" planned to put Lazarus to death as well. " [14]

 

John intends his story of the raising of Lazarus, like his version of the

" cleansing of the Temple, " to point to deeper meanings. As John tells it, the

chief priests had Jesus arrested not because they regarded him as a troublemaker

who caused a disturbance in the Temple but because they secretly recognized and

feared his power--power that could even raise the dead. John pictures Caiaphas,

the high priest, arguing before the Jewish council that " if we let him go on

like this, 'everyone will believe in him', and the Romans will come and destroy

our holy place and our nation. " [15] According to John, such opposition was by

no means a matter of the past; even in his own time, about sixty years after

Jesus' death, those who opposed Jesus and his followers still feared that

" everyone will believe in him. " Thus, while John diverges from the other gospels

in what he says and how he says it, the brilliant Egyptian teacher named Origin,

who lived in the early third century and became one of John's (p.37) earliest

defenders, argues that " although he does not always tell the truth 'literally',

he always tells the truth 'spiritually'. " [16] Origen writes that John's author

had constructed a deceptively simple narrative, which, like fine architecture,

bears enormous weight.

 

John's gospel differs from Matthew, Mark, and Luke in a second--and far more

significant--way, for John suggests that Jesus is not merely God's human servant

but God himself revealed in human form. John says that " the Jews " sought to kill

Jesus, accusing him of " making yourself God. " [17] But John believed that Jesus

actually 'is' God in human form; thus he tells how the disciple Thomas finally

recognized Jesus when he encountered him risen from the dead and exclaimed, " My

Lord and my God! " [18] In one of the earliest commentaries on John (c.240 C.E.),

Origen makes a point of saying that, while the other gospels describe Jesus as

'human', " none of them clearly spoke of his 'divinity', as John does. " [19]

 

But don't the other gospels also say that Jesus is God? Don't Matthew and Mark,

for example, call Jesus " son of God, " and doesn't this mean that Jesus is

virtually--almost 'genetically'--the same as God? Like most people who grow up

familiar with Christian tradition, I assumed that all the gospels say the same

thing or, at most, offer variations on a single theme. Because Matthew, Mark,

and Luke share a similar perspective, scholars call these gospels synoptic

(literally, " seeing together " ). Only in graduate school, when I investigated

each gospel, so far as possible, in its historical context, did I see how

radical is John's claim that Jesus is God manifest in human form.

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas)

Chapter 2, p.35-37

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[11] Mark 11:15-16.

 

[12] Mark 11:18.

 

[13] John 2:15.

 

[14] John 12:10.

 

[15] John 11:48.

 

[16] Origen, 'Commentary on John' 10.4-6.

 

[17] John 10:33.

 

[18] John 20:28.

 

[19] Origen, 'Commentary on John' 1.6.