Whether this commentary goes well or
not, for the foreseeable future, I will not attempt to do another commentary on
the Bible.
But under pressure from you the public,
I have decided to do the promised commentary on the gospel of John since I
promised in a way to do it. For me Religion is a very private matter so you
will indulge me if I do not want to do this publicly too much.
The other three Gospels are what are
known as synoptic gospels, that is, they appear to be eye witness accounts of
the life of Jesus Christ much like a news or historical report, John's gospel
is more philosophical and it seeks to introduce Christianity as an alternative
to the Jewish faith, everyone knows that the Jews expected the messiah to be a
deliverer who would liberate them from the Romans and make them masters of the
promised land as they were at the time of David.
Of course we believe that Jesus Christ was
indeed the deliverer, and that he did not intend to deliver them physically but
spiritually with a new religion which would be universal, not just for the Jews
but for everyone who would listen and believe.
Those of you who spoke to me, particularly
liked the analytical way I sought to establish the authorship and time of the
three Synoptic Gospels so first I will address authorship and time of the
fourth gospel.
There is some confusion as to who
authored this 4th Gospel, that it was started by John the youngest
and most "Beloved Disciple" is stated in the gospel itself, and this title of
most "Beloved Disciple" fits John best, since whilst he was hanging from the
cross and seeing that the end was near Jesus asked John to take care of his
mother Mary as if she were his own mother, and he asked her to accept John as
her son, that's how much he loved and trusted John. People say that Jesus had
natural brothers, that may be so, but if true why would he literally entrust
his mother to John? Wouldn't his natural brothers have done that?
There are problems with identifying John,
the son of Zebedee, and the "Beloved Disciple" as the author of the 4th
Gospel, passages are clearly edited in later such as chapters 15,16, 17 and 21,
then there are the contradictions, John 16.5 contradicts John 14:4 and the
functions attributed to the Paraclete at 14:16&17 and 14:26 differ from
those in John 16:7-11 and 16:13-14 and there are numerous other such examples
which I will not go into here, the evidence therefore is that whoever wrote
this Gospel, it was written by more than one person who not only added to it but
who actually had different interpretations of certain fundamental Christian
truths, now remember that the Jerome Biblical Commentary is sanctioned by the
Catholic and other Christian churches so what I am telling you here is not heresy.
As to time, the gospel was the last to
surface, between 90-100 AD.
Now for the differences, John's Gospel
does not seek to bring the events in Jesus' life into chronological order, in
fact the structure of the gospel actually has everything out of sequence with
the other Gospels, John also does not refer to the old testament as frequently
as the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke do, and unlike them from the
very beginning of the Gospel of John declares that the word was god, was with
god and was made flesh and dwelt among us, John 1:1-9 and so the fourth gospel assumes
from the very beginning of the gospel, that Jesus Christ was the son of god.
After the wedding in Cana we have the
incident of chasing out the money changers from the temple, this was the first time
Jesus Christ sought to tell the Jews the fundamental concept of the Christian
religion which was that that the new temple would be his body so from here, very
early in the gospel, in chapter 2:21 and 22 the writers of John would begin to change
the rules and the beliefs of the fundamental Jewish faith to one of Christianity
i.e that his body would be the new temple and not the Jewish Temple.
Next comes the discourse with Nicodemus,
now Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus in the night because he was probably afraid
to be seen with Jesus during the day since he was high up in the hierarchy of
the Jews and being seen with Jesus was bad news, hence the saying creeping
around like Nicodemus in the night; and here for the first time Jesus tells him
that unless he be is reborn of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom
of heaven and that unless he denies the Jewish faith and becomes a Christian he
cannot prevail in paradise, I obviously cannot give every incidence of this
philosophy contained in the gospel of John Ladies and Gentlemen, but I will
give you enough from the first third of the John Gospel that space and time
allows, which would lead you to conclude that the crafters, or evangelists, who
wrote the gospel of John sought to downplay the Jewish religious beliefs and
put in place a completely new and different religion i.e. Christianity.
next comes the dialog with the woman at
Jacob's well in Samaria, first of all it is important to
note that Samarians were despised by the Jews and predictably the Samaritans
were also largely taught by their interpretation of history to hate the Jews,
so at John 4:9 when Jesus Christ is talking to a woman from Samaria at Jacob's
well, he was deviating drastically from what a Jewish Rabbi would do. But not
only does he go there which was incomprehensible to his disciples, he instructs
a Samarian woman to give him some water from the well and then he tells her
that he is greater than Jacob since whoever drinks water from Jacob's well will
thirst again, but whoever drinks from his well will never thirst. Incredibly in
the end he convinces her that he is not a mad man by saying these things, but in
fact he could be the messiah.
Chapter five verses 1-18 shows Jesus again
challenging the Jewish belief that no one should violate the concept of the Sabbath
by working on that day, so when he heals the man and instructs him to get up,
take his bed and walk the Jews found this troubling since they perceived that
the action of lifting the bed was in fact work forbidden on the Sabbath and so
disregarding the miracle of healing the man, they condemned Christ for it and
according to John they decided at that time, to kill him.
Chapter 6 describes that it was the near to
the feast of the Passover and he performed the miracle of feeding 5000 thousand
people who were assembled to hear him speak with just a few loaves and a few
fish, now the feast of the Passover was the biggest Jewish holiday, it still is,
it was the day when they commemorated that the angel of death had passed over
Egypt and that they were saved since as instructed by Moses himself they locked
themselves in their homes, ate unleavened bread, bitter herbs and plastered
lamb's blood on their doors, it was what had delivered them from bondage in Egypt
and to them it was the holiest of days but on two occasions Jesus Christ did
important things that set the stage for his new religion, one was this mass
feeding of 5000 people and the other was the last supper when he changed
forever the Jewish holiday of the Passover to the Holy Mass.
Later in the gospel chapter 7 verses 2-5 we
learn that it was the feast of the Tabernacles this was an eight day feast to
celebrate the harvest, and Jesus did certain things to replace its importance
in the Jewish calendar. For example when on the last day of the feast the
Jewish Priests circled the altar in Jerusalem and performed the ritual of the
water by pouring water from the spring of Siloam through a silver funnel into
the ground symbolically asking the ground to be kind to the crops in the coming
year, Jesus said to them, "if any man thirst let him come onto me and drink"
this was the crescendo of everything that was written in chapter 7 about the
feast of The Tabernacles and Christianity. And so I have run out of time
tonight since analyzing the forth gospel would take years but it is an
incredible work of philosophy to replace one set of beliefs and customs with
another and that is why we treasure it we have only looked up to chapter seven
of a 21 chapter gospel but the rest follows much the same pattern downplaying
Jewish beliefs and replacing it with Christian beliefs.
From this day onwards ladies and gentlemen
in view of your incredible thirst for this sort of knowledge, since the
pressure for me to do this was enormous, I expect that the priests, pastors and
teachers of all Christian doctrines will understand that if they cannot make
you understand what they are saying, even if you are not educated, it is their
fault since they were unable to explain it properly to you. Especially since they
are interpreting for you some of the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity and
it can be very interesting and provocative, your response to me has made me
understand that.
Finally I want it to be clearly understood
that I am not inviting a debate on all of this, there are conflicting
views to the ones that I have expressed here tonight and some of them are very
persuasive but they are not compelling, and so these are the most popular and
widely held views of Christian scholars today not the only ones.
