Jesus in John: The two-step argument and Jesus' themes

Here I introduce explicitly what I call the "two-step argument" that John elaborated Jesus' teaching in John. It consists of arguing that Jesus sounds suspiciously like the narrator of John and the author of I John, then *rejecting* the explanation that John was influenced by Jesus and talked like Jesus, on the grounds that Jesus sounds too different in the Synoptics.  I emphasize the exaggerated nature of the claim about differences between Jesus' speech in John and the Synoptics--implying that it is as though Jesus is using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from one region and time in the Synoptics and inconsistently using highly distinctive idiomatic phrases from another region and time in John. (As if one set of Gospels portrayed him as saying, "Jolly good, old chap," "In for a penny, in for a pound," and other distinctively British expressions while John portrayed him as saying, "Boy oh boy, that's great," "I'll take a rain check" and other distinctively American idioms.)   I also stress the fact that themes are not style. I coin the phrase "statistical contradiction argument" and bring out the unstated assumption that the different Gospels are trying to give a representative sample of how often Jesus used certain words. This would mean that if he uses "witness" or "truth" more often in John than in the Synoptics, there is a problem. But none of them claims to be giving a representative sample of how often he addressed certain topics or used certain words. This statistical assumption also underlies the attempt to place some significance on the absence of story parables in John--a truly poor argument against the robust historical accuracy of John. Obviously a verse like Matt. 13:34 doesn't mean that Jesus literally never taught without telling a story parable!  Be sure to check out the rest of the series!