Jesus in John: Avoiding the "Greek Mystery" view

We're wrapping up our series on how Jesus sounds in John's Gospel and we've seen how argument after argument fails to support the claim that John embellishes, elaborates, invents, or puts his own interpretations into Jesus' mouth.   Today we're getting into the nitty gritty of some specific Greek aspects of what is called Johannine idiom. All too often, the fact that an argument concerns an ancient language is used to make laymen--or indeed anyone who doesn't fluently read that language--feel that they are not entitled to an opinion. The impression given is that having a credential of formal study in an ancient language is akin to being inducted into an ancient mystery religion, and that only those who have received this secret initiation rite have a right to draw any conclusion whatsoever concerning any argument that involves that language.  

Here I illustrate the fact that even the understanding of such relatively technical matters of the contrastive use of a Greek conjunction can indeed be understood by those who don't fluently read the language. More importantly, once the data are out there and the alleged arguments, anyone is entitled to hear and evaluate that argument.  What we find is that such extremely trivial matters as whether Jesus used one Greek conjunction or another to expressive the contrastive meaning "but," or whether or not John translated his words in Aramaic differently from the way that Luke would have translated them (but didn't, since these passages aren't in the Synoptics), cannot possibly provide support to the proposition that John embellished or elaborated Jesus' words. Nor even to the claim that he engaged in an especially loose or free paraphrase, since either conjunction expresses the relevant meaning quite clearly in the context.  And in fact, as it turns out, the use of the contrastive "and" (kai) has an especially Semitic sound and may be an especially good representation of Jesus' words, whether he was speaking in Greek or Aramaic originally.  All this and more you'll find in this final segment.

Which leaves us with a question: Why doubt John?   For more, be sure to see The Eye of the Beholder:  https://www.amazon.com/Eye-Beholder-Gospel-Historical-Reportage/dp/1947929151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2P5N15K1P8TIJ&dchild=1&keywords=the+eye+of+the+beholder+lydia+mcgrew&qid=1617757441&s=books&sprefix=the+eye+of+the+beholder%2Cstripbooks%2C185&sr=1-1