The Lydia McGrew Podcast

This will be the last installment in my series on alleged seams in John. Does the fact that John 20:30-31 sounds sort of ending-like provide evidence of an editor? I answer no. I also examine the very strange scholarly tendency to turn John 21:24 on its head. That verse says that the Beloved Disciple is the one who "wrote these things," but oddly, various scholars take this to mean that he didn't write these things, that he merely "stood behind" the Gospel or took "spiritual responsibility" for it. This is the opposite of what the verse says! This topic gives me the opportunity to read a favorite quotation from Richard Bauckham on the meaning of the word "wrote" in that verse. Bauckham has "bad tone" (which is a good thing). Richard Bauckham, _Jesus and the Eyewitnesses_, 2nd ed., pp. 358-361

Today's seams in John video describes a truly strange, truly silly claim of a seam or aporia in John. The claim is that in John 19 Jesus is left outside in view of the crowd when Pilate is supposed to be questioning him back in the Praetorium. Huh? Apparently John isn't allowed to leave anything to basic reading or hearing comprehension. If he doesn't spell. it. out. he's saying that it didn't happen. And somehow this "problem" is part of a cumulative case for a complex process of composition involving an editor, resulting in a fractured Gospel of John. So not only are there arguments from silence, the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are also the silly. https://youtu.be/W0VWCdw4epk Six bad habits of New Testament scholars, which I allude to in the video. And yes, argument from silence is discussed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9fUKdpPl6k

Is there a contradiction between John 16:5, where Jesus says that none of the disciples is asking him, "Where are you going?" and John 13:36, where Peter asks Jesus, "Where are you going?" I argue that there isn't. Watch (or listen) to find out why. Plus, even if this were contradictory, it would hardly be evidence for a "seam" left by an editor. This is so obvious that Raymond Brown has had to argue that it's evidence for an editor who doesn't edit, due to his reverence for his sources, which is rather like a blue elephant that you can't see.

Today I talk about a passage that is considered a "biggie" among arguments for editorial seams in John: The supposed contradictions created by John 14:30-31. I argue that these contradictions are overblown and that the phrase "arise, let us go" in John 14:31 appears to be the result of vivid witness memory, not a contradictory clue to a bumbling editor. (This is also the position of D.A. Carson.)

Gary Burge uses the parenthetical remark from the narrator about Mary of Bethany in John 11:2 as an example of "seams" or "aporias" in John. He considers it to be a "problem" that this is a forward reference to John 12, the story of Mary anointing Jesus, which hasn't yet been narrated when John refers to her in John 11:2 as "the Mary" who anointed Jesus' feet. How is this even *supposed* to be an argument, or even part of a cumulative case, for the activity of an editor in addition to the author? Burge doesn't say. In fact, there is no scenario in which this would be a plausible thing for an editor to do. It is far more like what we see in oral recollection of one's life, which often involves asides, digressions, unexplained allusions, and the like, as these happen to occur to the speaker. And in this case the remark also reflects an awareness of the need to disambiguate the popular name "Mary."

Is there a problem with the chronological order that John indicates for the events in chapters 5, 6, and 7? Here I continue to argue that there is not. Critical scholars have created "problems" where no problem really exists. I discuss several more extremely weak arguments that chapters 5 and 6 are out of order, despite their explicit temporal indicator "after these things," and that there are explanatory benefits to swapping them. I continue to use Gary M. Burge as my foil, from his book _Interpreting the Gospel of John_. I also show that two of Burge's complaints about the placement of John 5 are in tension with one another: If one of them is a problem and is solved by the move he suggests, the other must not be a problem. Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

I'm continuing to argue against the claim that John's Gospel has "seams" that show where editors other than the Beloved Disciple have been ham-handedly stitching material together. This week and next week I'll discuss the claim that John 5 and John 6 are in the wrong order. Should we be trying to sort events in Galilee and events in Jerusalem, putting as many as possible of the Galilee events together and of the Jerusalem events together? I see no reason at all to try to do this. The Synoptics say nothing that implies that Jesus' Galilean ministry was uninterrupted by any visits to Jerusalem and returns to Galilee. Gary Burge continues to be my foil, as he discusses these supposed "seams" in his book _Interpreting the Gospel of John_. I refute his strange claim that there are "no transitions" between geographical places in John 4-7. (In fact, there are very *clear* transitions in those chapters with only one exception.) I argue that the phrase "the other side of the Sea of Galilee" in John 6:1 doesn't mean that an editor has awkwardly reversed the events in chapters 5 and 6. Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

Today I'm talking about the alleged "seam" in John 3:22, which says that after these things, Jesus and his disciples came/went "into the Judean land." Does this mean that they weren't in Judea before? Is this an internal contradiction, because Jesus was already in Judea, in Jerusalem, in the preceding events? And does it mean that an editor was trying awkwardly to fit stories together in the Gospel? I answer "no" to all these questions. Here are various translations of the verse: https://biblehub.com/john/3-22.htm Here is the Greek text analysis page: https://biblehub.com/text/john/3-22.htm Here is my video on four ways of narrating time. (But note: In this case I don't even think the narration is achronological.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4TzGiFCeLE&t=8s Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

What are so-called "seams" (or aporia) in the Gospel of John? This week I start a new series on this topic with fresh content that is not even found in my book The Eye of the Beholder. Some scholars use the presence of (allegedly) awkward transitions, (alleged) contradictions, and (allegedly) out-of-order segments to argue for the involvement of editors (even multiple editors) in the composition of the Gospel of John. Evangelical-labeled scholar Gary Burge agrees with the perspective of the skeptic John Earman in saying that "seismic seams" and "editorial traces" are "abundantly evident." While Burge holds that the Beloved Disciple lies somewhere behind all of this editorial activity, he seems to ignore the effects of unnecessarily distancing the Gospel we have from an eyewitness of the events. Ehrman, of course, does not pretend to consider the fourth Gospel to be historically reliable in the first place, so this distancing fits very well with his model. In this introductory video I explain the concept of seams and what they supposedly show, and I give one example using Ehrman's claim of a contradiction between John 2:23 and John 4:54. Thumbnail by Foto: Jonn Leffmann, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122817403

In this last in the series on why you should care if the Gospel authors put words into Jesus' mouth I warn again about thinking that "multiple attestation" to some type of teaching or some type of event will make up the epistemic deficiencies of the case, if you've already granted that the Gospel authors did this. As discussed in an earlier video on multiple attestation (see link), what we're looking for is independent attestation to the facts, not just to a "Christian tradition" (which might be erroneous). https://youtu.be/EGVlEhtv0Zo Further, many *specific* doctrines and events are not *overwhelmingly* multiply attested, in such a fashion that we can just toss out as inauthentic one or more of them without having a significantly weakened case. Also, the methodology that calls into question the historical accuracy of a given attestation may, consistently applied, undermine many of the attestations all at once. For instance, if we're putting a big question mark over the recognizable historicity of John's reports of Jesus' teachings, this may affect the vast majority (or even all) of the places where Jesus teaches some particular doctrine explicitly, if these are in John. The need for caution about being cavalier about Gospel accuracy and then trying to fall back on multiple attestation is thus intertwined with the emphases of the previous videos in this series--Jesus' personal teaching is data in a special way, and explicitness is evidentially important. I give several examples of these points, including Jesus' explicit teachings of his pre-existence and Jesus' explicit teachings that the believer need not fear the unintentional loss of his salvation. Thumbnail image by Guma89 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17999924