Lecture One: Morris on John

JOHN

Lecture 1, January 10, 2011

Author

Many have thought that John was not the author.  Westcott is a massive argument says he is.

1)    He is a Jew.  He knows the Sabbath, how women are treated.   The DSS have helped to show that this knowledge is not Helenistic.

2)    He is a Jew of Palestine.  He has topographic knowledge.  He has knowledge of the Pool called in Aramaic Bethesda.   The DSS make it clear that this is their pool.  C. K. Barrett mentions 13 places that are not in the synoptics.

3)    He is an eyewitness.  John saw it.  He speaks with precision about seasons, tabernacle, the loaves and fishes.  There are precise names in John, for instance the servant whose ear was cut off was Malchus.

4)    Westcott says he was an apostle.  The apostle John.

5)    The strong theology of the gospel suggest and individual witness.

6)    The “chenoboskion” or library of Nag Hammadi, Egypt contained a cache of 40 Gnostic scrolls discovered 1946-1956.  They show that John was held in high esteem from a very early date.  This implies that the author was an apostle.  Some scholars feel that there was a Johannine School out of which came the Johannine writings. 

Date

Traditionally, 90-100 AD but LM says there’s slight evidence for it.  Others have said that since the theology is so well-developed, it must be late.  Yet, Romans is in the 50’s.  Also, there’s little dependence on or knowledge of the synoptics.  Morris prefers pre 70 AD.

History and Theology.  The critics have attached historical reliability, but LM says it is reliable both historically and theologically.  “The biggest argument against John’s reliability and authorship is that John talks very little about the things that the synoptics do. “  That is, he is an individual witness and writer of these facts.

The Text.  We go through the passages and make commentary.

Vos quotes Godet who finds correspondence in four areas:

1.     v. 1: In the beginning with Gen. 1:1

2.     “pros ton theon” with the plural of Gen. 1:26 (“let us make man”)

3.     Life and light of v. 4 with the trees of life and knowledge or good and evil

4.     Darkness of v. 5 with the story of the fall

Vos finds more: creation, providence, and history of the Logos in the OT.

“en arche”  -- in time or primacy.  Maybe both are implied

“logos” –

 1) Has a great ancestry among the Greek philosophers.  Can be “in the man” endiathetos or the word that goes out, prophorikos.  To the ordinary man, it pointed to something great about God, expression of wisdom whatever it was.  Gordon Clark says that Logos  is equal to logic, that God is made up of an infinite number of logical propositions.  This is rationalism.  Gnostics have an idea of a world spirit, or Logos, but it has no face.

2) It was used among the Jews.  They could equate the law with “the word.”

3) “en arche” could suggest the beginning of a new creation.  There may be seven distinct days at the beginning of the 4^th Gospel.  Verses: 1, 29, 35, 39, 44, and 2:1.  There are many feasts, many “I am” sayings, and many signs in this gospel.

John can weave several cultures together in the use of “word,” but his “word” has a face, it is a person, it became flesh and tabernacled among us.

“ain”—imperfect tense of continuous supra-temporal existence. 

It implies that the identity of the Logos is eternal, co-existent with God, and God.

1:1  Kai theos en o logos.  Predicate nominative, by Colwell’s Rule, the preceding anarthrous noun is a predicate nominative.

1: 3 – He is creator

1:4 – priority of life to light, power to knowledge, cf. 5:21, 25-26.

1:5 – the sovereignty of God in the OT.  Chief question is whether John is yet talking of Jesus as incarnate redeemer, or of his prior history.

1:6-9 – the ministry of John as parenthesis

1:11 – eis to idia, “he came home”  John never calls men huoi but tekna, only Christ is the huios.

1:13 – haimaton.  Blood drops, parents

Pisteuo – used 98x, but never the noun “faith.”  Emphasis on living trust in God, not faith as an object.  Eis and en are synonymous.  Trust and complete confidence are much the same.

1:14 – skenao.  An intentional reference to the glory of the tabernacle.  Sarx—a very crude, striking impression is made. 

Monogenous—not from the root gennao but ginomai, “only son, unique son.”

1:15 – ain, common tense of the verb here.  “He was before me,” i.e., eternally.

Charin anti chariots—always more than enough.

1:18 – Jesus “exegetes” the father.

1:20 – curtness of John’s reply.  5 words, 2 words, 1 word. 

1:25 – Pharisees cannot understand why John should baptize, Jews were supposed to be clean.

1:29 – What is the lamb of God?  General sacrifice but hard to connect it to one sacrifice of the OT.

1:31 – eidein—no great reason for one and not another verb.

1:42 – emblepsas—“he looked in.”  Kephas—the Rock, unlikely name for Peter except by God’s grace.

1:51—Amain, Amain—unparalled use of this word in the front of a sentence.

2:1 – “gunai”—As Jesus enters his public ministry as Messiah, he refuses to call her mother.  She must take her place with the others.

2:4 – He can’t be pushed to act before he is ready.

2:11 – It’s a “seimeion” a sign, a work with a significance, not a miracle as in the other gospels.  The gospel will transform the Jewish religion.

2:17—There are two different cleansings.

2:21 – cryptic mystical saying.

3:1 – Not normal speech.  A man of the Pharisees.

3:3 – “anothen” means both above and again.  John likes to use words with double meanings, like glory and lift up (to exalt and to crucify).

3:4 – Nicodemus may be wistful to renounce his past.

3:5 – “water and spirit.”  Water cold be the natural amniotic fluid or the semen.  LM prefers this.  Need to be born from both nature and supernature.

3:8 – “spirit”  Double meaning of wind or breath and Holy
Spirit.  As the wind is hard to catch, so is the spiritual man to the natural man.