A Discrepancy in John’s Gospel

A discrepancy is defined as "a lack of agreement."¹ This essay ponders an interesting disagreement in the Greek manuscripts at the end to the prologue (1:1-18) to John's Gospel. The issue is the following: what did the original flesh-and-blood author of the Gospel write in the original author's copy (the autograph) of John 1:18? As most regular readers of this blog are aware no autograph (original author's copy) of the Greek New Testament is known to exist. Only later copies (and copies of copies) of the autographs made through the years exist. A very few of the over 5000 manuscripts of the Greek New Testament are dated in the second century but most (one might even say, virtually all) date from the third century and later.

            In the late fourteenth century, the English translation of John 1:18 by Wycliffe-Purvey read (in Middle English, translated from the Latin):

No man sai euer God, no but the 'oon bigetun sone, that is in the bosom of the fadir, he hath teld out.²

            In the sixteenth century the King James translation read (translated from the Greek):

No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.³

The phrase in which I am interested appears here as "the only begotten son." The two English words "only begotten" are used to translate one Greek word, monogenēs, which carries the meaning of the only one of his kind, or the one and only. Thus, a clearer translation is "the only son." The term "begotten" is misleading since it suggests that the son had a beginning, which is specifically denied in John 1:1-3.

Here, however, the problems begin. Although the translation of "only son" corresponds well with the similar readings in John 3:16, 18 and 1 John 4:9, text critics consider the reading "son" (huios) to be an early scribal change of John 1:18 to agree with the passages just cited above.⁴ The earliest manuscripts to preserve this verse in John (P⁶⁶ and P⁷⁵), however, have the reading  "unique God" (monogenēs theos) not "only son":

Unique God, the one being in the bosom of the Father— that one has made [him] known.⁵

What this unique God in the bosom of the Father makes known is the God whom no one has ever seen. This reading of John 1:18b was thought by a majority of the text critical committee considering the verse to be the earliest reading, although P⁷⁵ (dated at the beginning of the third century) reads "the unique God" (o monogenēs Theos). The word "him," lacking in the Greek, refers to the invisible God whom no one has ever seen in the first half of verse 18. And that makes the conundrum facing the translator of John 1:18 evident:  The sentence has [the] unique God revealing the God whom no one has ever seen. The reading "the only Son" (o monogenēs uios), which makes better sense, is regarded as a scribal correction because of the obvious difficulty. In textual criticism, the more difficult reading is to be preferred.

            One member of the committee thought it doubtful that the original author would have written monogenēs Theos ("Only God") and suggested in an addendum to the full committee's report that even this earliest reading might itself be a primitive transcriptional error. This suggestion was printed in square brackets and signed A. W. (Allen Wikgren?).

            As most text critics are aware, a reconstruction of the earliest reading is "if not the original, at least of the most reliable form of the text that can still be reached on the basis [o]f the material that has been preserved."⁶ Hence, the text situation in John 1:18 in the light of Wikgren's corrective comment points out the limitations of textual criticism as a critical study: it does not restore the original author's copy. In this case, however, the text-critical judgment of the Editorial Committee neither restores the original, nor restores the most reliable form of the text attainable given the material preserved from antiquity. And it raises the specter of a flawed original author's copy. Errors are something that every author knows only too well, as my correction of the quoted material in the first sentence of this paragraph demonstrates. Someone's typo there, after eluding the eagle eye of its author and the professional proofreaders of volume five of the NIDB, entered the print media world flawed.

            Faced with this difficulty, modern translators of the Gospel of John find different ways to resolve the difficulty. The translations, to judge from those Bible translations on my shelf, print later scribal corrections to the Greek text in some cases. The reading that seems to occur with frequency is "the only son" (o monogenēs uios).

One creative solution is to punctuate the sentence differently so that there are three separate designations for the son: "monogenēs,⁷ God, the One That Is, in the bosom of the Father—that one has made him known"⁸ But few translators of the English language Bible have followed this suggestion.

How does your Bible read for John 1:18?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Webster's New World College Dictionary (2002), under "discrepancy."

²Wycliffe Bible PDF, "Wycliffe Bible PDF Middle English," https://ebible.org/pdf/engWycliffe/

³The word him is written in italics because it is not in Greek.

⁴Bruce M. Metzger, ed. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2^nd ed.; Stuttgart: German Bible Society, 2000), 169-70. The text critics in this case have also published the 28^th revised edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament edited by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Germany.

⁵My translation.

⁶Joseph Verheyden, "TEXT, NT," in NIDB 5.540.

⁷The word monogenēs is actually an adjective but this solution reads it as if it were a noun.

⁸E. A. Abbott, Johannine Grammar (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 42, 55-56.

Is the Gospel of John Fictional?

What the stakes are, if it is at least partially fiction, is this: not everything written in the gospel happened, but some of it was created by authorial imagination. Around a month ago, I published a blog entitled, "Trickery in the Gospel of Mark,"¹ where I demonstrated that Mark was partially fiction ("a making up of imaginary happenings").²

            The narrator of the story in John becomes evident as a persona in the narrative when he directly addresses the readers, freezing the story in mid-telling and commenting on some aspect of what had just been shown and again resuming its telling.³ These comments are like parenthetical expressions interrupting the flow of the narrative. By comparison there is only one instance of this narrative device in the Gospel of Mark where the narrator becomes personified and directly addresses the reader (Mark 13:14).

            Among other things, the author uses this narrative device to present interior views (explain thoughts and motives) of characters in the drama and to explain what they are thinking and feeling. In real life, of course, the thoughts and motivations of others are hidden from us. We never know what people are thinking or their reasons for what they do. Even if they tell us, we only know what they told us they were thinking, and what they thought may well be different from what they said. The problem is also complicated by the fact that the Gospel of John is written around sixty years or so after the events narrated in the text,⁴ and the author was not an eyewitness to the events.⁵ This narrative device whereby the author presents interior views of characters in the narrative drama belongs more to the novelistic arts than to the historian's craft.

            What follows are several examples of this artifice by which the narrator reads the minds of characters in the drama including the mind of his created character, Jesus.⁶

The Narrator Reads the Mind of Characters in John's Gospel:

1 The narrator knows the steward did not know the source of the wine, but that the servants did know (2:9).

2 The narrator knows what the disciples remembered (2:22).

3 The narrator knows the inner motivation of those who persecuted Jesus (5:16).

4 The narrator knows what Jesus knew "within himself" (en eautō) (6:61).

5 The narrator knows the motivation of the parents of the man born blind (9:22–23).

6 The narrator knows what the disciples were thinking (11:13).

7 Judas questions why ointment was not sold and the proceeds given to the poor. The narrator knows Judas' motive for saying this (12:6).

8 The narrator reads Jesus' mind. Jesus knew from the beginning who did not believe and who would betray him (6:64).

9 The narrator reads the mind of Jesus and Judas (13:1–4).

10 The narrator knows that Satan had entered into Judas (13:27).

11. The Narrator reads Peter's mind and explains what Peter meant by the proverb Peter spoke (21:18–19).

What does it mean for a text when its author is found to engage in an unhistorical methodology, but chooses to use the conventions of literary fiction instead? At the least, it means that its narrative should be read very carefully. How should one read a text known to be novelistic? My suggestion is that one read it like one would read the historical novel Gone with the Wind. By recognizing that although it may have some historical features, the narrative itself is compromised as history. In the case of John, the author is more a Christian theologian than a disinterested historian.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Wry Guy Blog, "Trickery in the Gospel of Mark," April 11, 2025: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Trickery+in+the+Gospel+of+Mark

²Webster's New World College Dictionary (4^th ed), under "fiction."

³Hedrick, "Authorial Presence and Narrator in John. Commentary and Story," in J. E. Goehring, et al., eds., Gospel Origins and Christian Beginnings (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1990), 74–93. I found 121 instances of this narrative device, p. 81.

⁴W. G. Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament (trans., H. C. Kee; Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1975), 246.

⁵Kϋmmel, Introduction, 245.

⁶After a cursory reading in English, I found over thirty examples of this device used by the author of John. Here are several other examples of mind reading by the narrator of John: 1:43; 2:22; 2:23; 4:1; 4:17-18; 4:39; 4:41; 6:61; 6:64; 10:6; 11:13; 12:16-17; 12:18; 12:33; 12:41; 12:42-43; 13:11; 13:21; 13:29; 16:19; 18:4; 18:9; 18:32; 19:28; 21:12.

The Amalgamated Jesus

The image of Jesus that functions in the institutional church is a composite drawn from the four canonical gospels that is undergirded by a theological statement of the church. Children are taught the theological statement from the earliest possible age and when the child reaches maturity, s/he fills out the image choosing material indiscriminately from the four canonical gospels as taught in the church’s educational program.

            In the popular ecclesiastical mind, the narratives of all four gospels are regarded as reliable historical documents. The truth is, however, that they are written a generation and more after the death of Jesus. The narratives are based on brief anonymous oral reports of the sayings and doings of Jesus. The descriptions of Jesus, his activities, and his words are the products of impressions on the minds of those nameless persons who transmitted the oral reports, and the impressions the reports made on the minds of the evangelists, who then produced the gospels. The information from the oral reports has been filtered through the faith of each evangelist, which s/he had been taught in the church.¹ We have nothing directly from the mouth of Jesus. It is doubtful that anything survived the rigors of the oral period intact.

            Hence the gospels are a collage comprised of historical data, ecclesiastical theory and dogma, quotations and misquotations, and invented plots or story-lines. Critical readers of the New Testament have been aware of many of these problems since the late 1700s. The writing, The Age of Reason, by the American Statesman, Thomas Paine, anticipates “many of the insights of contemporary critical biblical scholarship.”²

            Each of the canonical gospels presents to the reader unique portraits of the man.³ A portrait is a unique painting by the artist recording how a particular painter sees the subject, and that is also true of the literary portraits by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are always similarities and differences. At times the differences in their portraits are glaring, at other times subtle. The primary reason Matthew, Mark, and Luke (they are called the “synoptic gospels”) are so similar is because Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source, and they also shared another hypothetical sayings’ source, which accounts for similarities in literary structure and in the sayings of Jesus. Matthew and Luke make changes to Mark’s text according both to their own theological proclivities and literary styles. The Gospel of John has little in common with the other three. The images of Jesus in the canonical gospels are not historical photographs but novelistic portraits.

            Here is one glaring example of their contradictory differences. In Mark 4:10, the author we call Mark puts on the lips of his literary character, Jesus, the reason why Mark thinks the historical figure, Jesus, told such difficult-to-understand stories (that is, parables):

So that they may indeed see, but not perceive, and may indeed hear, but not understand; lest they should turn again and be forgiven.

Matthew (13:13) and Luke (8:10b) completely eliminate the offensive phrase, “lest they should turn again, and be forgiven.” Matthew and Luke reject the idea that Jesus told parables to prevent people from understanding, lest they turn and be forgiven by God. John, on the other hand, does not even use the word parable and does not portray his literary character, Jesus, telling any of the classic parables known from the synoptic gospels.⁴

            These kinds of differences in the portraits of Jesus in the canonical gospels are lost in the pious ecclesiastical amalgamations of Jesus.

It’s just common sense, folks.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide.

²Hedrick, “Thomas Paine and the Bible,” The Fourth R (September-October 2022), 4.

³Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide. Studying Jesus (Hendrickson, 1999; reprint, 2013) 30-47.

⁴See the description of each portraiture of Jesus in Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide, 32-46 and “Is John a Revisionist Gospel?” pp. 151-54 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019).

Can the Past be changed?

That is to ask: is the Past etched in stone? Or as Omar Khayyam wrote: “The moving finger writes; and having writ moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” The dictionary defines the Past as “Time gone by” or as “[something] having existed or taken place in a period before the present.” In other words what we refer to as “the Past” is no longer available to experience. So how could it be changed? From our current linear perspective the past is “water under the bridge”—that is, the Past has passed beyond our ability to influence or affect what happened; in short the Past is transpired “history.”

There is, however, a curious passage in Ecclesiastes that supports the idea that the Past is constantly recurring. In an opening poem (Ecclesiastes 1:4-11) the author (called Qohelet) “characterizes nature as an endless round of pointless movement, a rhythm that engulfs human generations as well.”¹ From the author’s perspective the Past is so clearly delineated, however, that it can repeat itself: “What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done and there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl 1:9 RSV; compare 3:15). James Crenshaw, however, insists that “a myth of eternal return does not lurk beneath” these words. “Rather, the emphasis falls on the burdensome monotony of everything in nature and among human beings.”² Nevertheless, Qohelet’s words do seem to affirm that the Past is a “thing in itself,” and that what has been done will happen again.

Today we also think of the Past as a discrete “something” with clearly defined parameters except that it lies in a bygone era. We seem to consider the Past as a substantial “thing”—just like the Present and the Future. The truth is, however, we know the Past imperfectly and then only partially in artifact and narrative, and not at all in its aggregate totality. We know only its artifactual vestiges and partial narrative reconstructions, which do not always agree. One’s personal lived past is also available in one’s faulty memory. The collective memory of our shared human past is recited in idealized public ritual and narrative reconstructions and it is partially available in museum artifacts and personal mementos. The Past is hardly etched in stone, however, but rather it still remains accessible in the present.

The Past can be changed! That is to say: not in whatever actually transpired in that bygone era but rather in how we have come to think of those events—in short, by changing our understanding of those past events we can essentially change the Past’s influence on the present. Here are two examples from the Gospel of John in which the Past has been changed.

John 12:12-19

Jesus passes through Bethany on his way to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem (John 12:1) and stops at the home of Mary and Martha (12:2-3). The next day he proceeds to Jerusalem riding on a young donkey (2:14)—the situation is not unusual; the donkey is a common mode of transportation in the ancient Near East (e.g., 2 Sam 17:23; 19:26; 1 Kgs 13:13-14). The disciples who were present at the time thought nothing of Jesus riding on the ass to Jerusalem. It was a common sight to see travelers on donkeys. The crowd had gathered (12:12) because of the popularity of Jesus (12:11, 13, 19). But later, after the resurrection (12:16) when the disciples were reading Scripture and reflecting on what had transpired they chanced upon Zechariah (9:9), and suddenly the earlier incident became charged with Messianic significance as the disciples came to a new understanding of the incident through the Scripture. No longer was it a simple visit to Jerusalem before an admiring crowd at Passover; rather in the disciples’ new understanding the donkey-event had become a prophetic act announcing Jesus as the Messianic king, and the former enthusiastic shouts of the crowd became a confession of his Messianic status stated in the words of Zechariah’s “prophecy”:

Rejoice Greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a colt the foal of an ass. (RSV)

John 2:13-22

John’s account of the “Cleansing of the temple” is described in strongly violent language depicting vicious acts (2:15) more so than what appears in the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 11:15-19; Matt 21:12-13; Luke 19:45-48). The depiction features a sequence of vicious attacks by Jesus; he specifically uses a whip of cords to drive men and animals out of the temple and pours out the coins of the money changers overturning their tables. This visual image initially created problems for the disciples. But then they happened to remember that it had been foretold in Scripture that the Christ would be “consumed by zeal” for the Lord’s house (2:17; Ps 69:9). In other words Jesus is overcome by religious fervor at what he takes to be a desecration of the temple. From the disciples’ perspective this new understanding of Jesus’ violence and cruelty provides Jesus the excuse of “righteous indignation,” essentially pardoning his behavior and changing their earlier view of his cruelty—the “incident” had become an instance of divine justice at work.

            Since the Past is remembered and reconstructed from differing perspectives, who is to say that it should not be changed from yet another perspective? For example, was Benedict Arnold a traitor or a patriot? How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹James Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes. A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1987), 60.

²Crenshaw, Ecclesiastes, 67.

Historical Levels in the Gospels

Most people who read the canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) assume that they reflect a single level of historical activity; that is, the average reader generally assumes the gospels reflect eyewitness reports about the sayings and doings of Jesus. Hence they pay close attention to what Jesus said and did in the particular gospel they are reading. Nevertheless a simple comparison of the differences between these three gospels reveals that they are scarcely synonymous reports. Their conflicts cannot reasonably be resolved by searching the narrated events about Jesus to achieve an explanation that allows all the reports to be “correct.” For example, one cannot convincingly argue that their differences can be explained on the basis that no two eye witnesses see or hear exactly the same thing. The differences and contradictions range from minor to dramatic disagreements in extensive detail (compare, for example, the disagreements in their accounts of the first Easter morning, Mark 16:1-8; Matt 28:1-8; Luke 24:1-12).

There are actually multi-historical levels at play in the gospels. Level one consists of narratives about the sayings and doings of Jesus. Theoretically these took place during the career of Jesus around 26-36 CE. Level two is the later historical level of the individual gospel writer and that writer’s distinctive narrative and theological views about the events surrounding the career of Jesus. Around 70 CE Mark (the earliest gospel writer) in constructing his* narrative relied on oral reports about Jesus’ activities. Mark decided the precise wording of his narrative, what stories to use among those that came his way, the sequence of events in the narrative, and the form and content of the sayings of Jesus. Hence, the gospel represents Mark’s distinctive view of what Jesus said and did some forty years or so earlier. Mark’s account is colored by his personal theology and theological prejudices. He knew no historical outline of the public career of Jesus but imposed his own plan on the disassociated reports of which he was informed. Level three is located in the later time periods of Matthew and Luke (twenty to thirty years or so after Mark). These two writers used and edited several sets of earlier, apparently written, sources: Mark, Q, M and L, as well as oral tradition.

Here is a case on point from Baptist Bible study several weeks ago. Mark narrates two miracle stories (7:25-37: the healing of a deaf mute and the Syrophoenician Woman) that cast Jesus in a poor light. When Jesus heals the deaf mute, rather than healing with a word, he utilizes what appear to be magical gestures—“he put his finger into his ears and spat and touched his tongue, and looking up into heaven he sighed and said to him ‘Ephpatha,’ that is be opened” (Mark 7:33-34). Luke does not use this story and Matthew replaces it with a general story of his own composition (lacking specifics) of Jesus healing multitudes rather than a specific deaf mute (Matt 15:29-31).

Luke does not use Mark’s story about the Syrophoenician woman in which Jesus tells her: “Let the children first be fed for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (7:27). The statement reflects negatively on Jesus by suggesting that he had a prejudicial preference for Israelites and harbored a negative attitude toward this Gentile woman, only healing her daughter because of her witty retort (Mark 7:29). Matthew, on the other hand, includes the story, including part of Jesus’ offensive statement to the woman in Mark (Matt 15:26). Matthew also puts another offensive saying on Jesus’ lips: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 15:24). This statement has the effect of showing Jesus won over by the woman’s intense supplication to him (Matt 15:22) and hence in Matthew Jesus praises her great faith (Matt 15:28), neither of which appear in Mark’s story. One can only wonder why Matthew decided to use the story but double down on the negative attitudes reflected by Jesus that offend later Christian sensitivities. Luke, on the other hand, reflects the mission of Jesus as clearly including Gentiles (Luke 2:32; 4:25-27), and his second book (Acts) features Paul, the great missionary to the Gentiles (Rom 11:13; Gal 2:8-9; Rom 1:5). This may help explain why Luke does not use Mark’s story of the Syrophoenician woman.

There is a fourth historical level that is only accessible to readers of Greek who have some knowledge of textual criticism. Virtually all of our New Testament manuscripts are third century and later. Later copyists made changes as seemed to them theologically right, or to correct a perceived error in the text, or for other reasons. For example, Mark 1:2 is wrong in how he introduces a particular quotation (Mark 1:2-3). He writes: “As it is written in Isaiah the prophet.” The quotation, however, is a composite of Mal 3:1 and Isa 40:3 and some later copyists catching the error changed the text to read: “As it is written in the prophets.”

            If you want to know what is actually going on in a gospel, purchase a Synopsis of the Four Gospels** and always read one gospel in the light of the other four. From my perspective the canonical gospels give us more reliable information about the origins of the early Christian movements in general, than about the historical Jesus in particular.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*The male pronoun is used only for convenience. For my argument that the Gospel of Mark may possibly have had a female author see: Hedrick, “Narrator and Story in the Gospel of Mark: Hermeneia and Paradosis,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 14.3 (1987), 239-258, particularly the section on the gender of narrators (253-57).

**Available in English text only or in Greek-English from the United Bible Societies edited by Kurt Aland.

What happened to the Body of Jesus?

Like everything else in religion the answer depends on who you ask.

The canonical gospels are unanimous that after his death the body of Jesus was buried in a tomb (Mark 15:42-47; Matt 27:57-61; Luke 23:50-56; John 19:38-42). Mark says that later the tomb was found to be empty and the body gone. A young man sitting in the tomb said Jesus had risen and the disciples would find him in Galilee (16:5-7). Matthew says the tomb was empty and the body gone. An angel told those who came to the tomb that Jesus had risen and the disciples could find him in Galilee (28:5-7). Matthew adds that the women met Jesus on the way and took hold of his feet (28:9), so the “body” was in a state that could be grasped physically. John says that the tomb was empty (20:1-9). Jesus was present on four occasions afterward (20:11-18, 19-23, 26-29; 21:1-23). His “body” appears to have been capable of being touched physically, as John describes the encounters (20:24-27). Luke says that the tomb was empty (24:3). Two men by the tomb reminded the women that he had said he would rise (24:6-8, 24-23). Jesus was present on two occasions after the tomb had been found empty (24:13-31, 33-49); he was described as being physically present on those occasions (24:39-43). Matthew, Mark, and John raise the question: So what ultimately happened to Jesus’ body? These gospels never say. In Luke’s second volume (Acts), however, there is a hint that the body may not have been simply physical, for Jesus ascends to heaven (Acts 1:9-11), something that a physical body could not do (1 Cor 15:50).

There is, however, a suggestion in the Gospel of Matthew that the body could have been stolen (Matt 27:62-66), and a hint in John that his body might have been taken away and disposed of by the authorities (John 20:13).

            Paul simply rules out that the risen body of Jesus was physical when he says that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God for the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable (1 Cor 15:50). Hence, Jesus’ perishable physical body was placed in the tomb, but raised an imperishable spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42-57), as all believers likewise will “be changed” (1 Cor 15:51-52).

            John Dominick Crossan has a different take on the body of Jesus. Here are two brief quotations from his book:

With regard to the body of Jesus, by Easter Sunday morning those who cared did not know where it was, and those who knew did not care. Why should even the soldiers themselves remember the death and disposal of a nobody? (p. 158).

Roman crucifixion was state terrorism; that its function was to deter resistance or revolt, especially among the lower classes; and that the body was usually left on the cross to be consumed eventually by the wild beasts. No wonder we have found only one body from all those thousands crucified around Jerusalem in that single century. Remember those dogs. And if you seek the heart of darkness, follow the dogs (p. 127).

In other words, his body, if not eaten by wild beasts, simply decomposed.

This is similar to what Albert Schweitzer wrote:

In the knowledge that he is the coming Son of Man [Jesus] lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign (pp. 370-71).

In the Catholic tradition today the elements of the Mass (bread and wine) metamorphose into the “body of Christ” and Jesus is risen into the Mass; bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ.

            The eminent New Testament scholar and German Lutheran had this to say about the body of Jesus: Jesus has risen into the preaching of the church:

Christ meets us in the preaching as one crucified and risen. He meets us in the word of preaching and nowhere else. The faith of Easter is just this—faith in the word of preaching (p. 41).

Were you to ask me to answer the question, as a twenty-first century human being I might say: Today Jesus exists in time and space as a body of literature, art, music, church buildings, and religious communities. With that statement I find myself in good company: The early Christian apostle, Paul, thought of a gathering (ecclesia) of Jesus’ followers as the “body” of Christ (1 Cor 12:27).

How do you answer the question: what happened to Jesus’ body?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Bultmann, Rudolf, “New Testament and Mythology,” pp. 1-44 in Kerygma and Myth (edited by Hans Werner Bartsch; New York: Harper and Row, 1953/1961).

Crossan, Dominick, Jesus. A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: Harper, 1994).

Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan, 1968 [German original 1906]).

Human Intentions and the Biblical Tradition

John 13:1-30 is an interesting narrative illustrating the complexity of understanding human intentions from a written text. The text was written at the end of the first century by someone, whom tradition names as John. If one assumes that "John" has described a historical situation accurately, there appear to be three levels, posited by the author in this text, on which human intentions can be considered: level one, Jesus and the disciples; level two, the later composer of the text; level three, the readers of the text.

Level one: At a meal Jesus, disturbed in spirit, abruptly asserts "one of you will betray me" (13:21). The perplexed disciples do not know who he was talking about (13:22), so Peter asks the disciple "who was lying near the breast of Jesus," "who is it?" (13:24), and that disciple (i.e., he "whom Jesus loved") relays the question to Jesus (13:25). Jesus answers that it is he to whom I give this sop (13:26a), and then he gave it to Judas (13:26b).

The narrator interrupts this dramatic action (which is the "showing" of the story as it happens) at this point to directly address the reader in an aside with information about Judas that the actors in the literary drama do not overhear: "Satan entered into him" after he had taken the sop (13:27). The drama then resumes with Jesus telling Judas "do quickly what you are going to do" (13:27b). At this point again the narrator overrides the description of the scene with interpretive commentary telling readers that the disciples did not understand why Jesus had said this to Judas (13:28) and offers two explanations for Jesus' statement that the narrator asserts the disciples were thinking (13:29). The narrator briefly returns to conclude the scene by telling readers that Judas immediately left on his undisclosed errand and it was night (13:30).

Readers are left to ponder, along with the disciples, why Jesus told Judas to do quickly, what he was going to do (13:27b). But a bigger puzzlement is why disciples could not understand what they had just seen and heard when it is so obvious to any reader: Judas is going to betray Jesus (13:26; John 6:70-71; 18:2-5).

Level two: The writer deliberately (or sloppily?) narrates the story in such a way as to leave the reader perplexed as to the writer's intentions: Why deliberately contradict 13:2 with 13:27 as to when Satan entered into Judas? Why would the author use a technique of the fiction writer by reading the disciples' minds (13:29), an act that is impossible in real life, in order to explain how the disciples misunderstood Judas' intentions?  After Jesus' statement to the disciples in 13:21, why would the author leave completely unstated what Judas is obviously going to do? What is the significance of the extraneous "thus, in this manner" (outōs, 13:25), and why does the writer feel it necessary to illustrate the Roman manner of reclining at table (13:23, 25)?

Level three: Every close reader of the Gospel of John since the second century is left to make what they will of these problems.

In all candidness, however, there are only two historical levels in this brief narrative: level one is that of the author who composed the narrative, ascribed intentions and reactions to the characters, invented the dialogue, or lack of it. This shadowy figure either deliberately controlled the narrative in all particulars intending its lack of clarity and verbosity; for example the writer doubles the question "who is it" asked by Peter and by the disciple whom Jesus loved (13:23-25) and twice describes Judas receiving the sop (13:27; 13:30); or were these simply careless oversights?

There may, of course, have been an actual historical meal at which Jesus was upset that one of his chosen disciples determined to betray him, and sensed the gravity of what was about to happen, but our author was not present at the meal and had no way of knowing such intimate details. The most honest thing in the narrative is the writer's omission of Jesus' intention in telling Judas to do quickly what he intended to do—because we never know anyone's intentions. The most dishonest thing in the narrative is the author's reading of the minds of the disciples telling what they were thinking—because we cannot accurately "read" the minds of others.

Well, so what? Is there a greater significance to the information in this short essay? Perhaps.

Readers decide the significance of all information they take in. There is no universally agreed upon significance of anything. In my view the significance of the foregoing essay is the following: "Creative inspiration," if such there be, always resides in the mind of the human author and should not be transferred to a text, which is always subject to critical reviews pointing out flaws in a text. If we decide that a given text is "inspired," that is merely our own opinion.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Is the Trinity found in John’s Gospel?

             For the first essay on the Trinity see "Is the Holy Spirit Part of a Trinity?" Nov 26, 2015.            

 

            Toward the end of the first century the situation is remarkably different from what I found in the letters of Paul at the middle of the century.  Around the end of the century, the Gospel of John makes a definite advance in defining the relationship between Jesus and God, but there is no stated concept of a Triune God—i.e., Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as three persons conceptualized as One God.  Conceptualizing and describing a divine Trinity requires abstract logical thinking and systematic description, which are not found in John.

 

            In John God is understood as spirit (John 4:24), which seems to describe God's nature or character (spirit; not the spirit, which indicates identity).  Jesus is presented as God's "son" (1:49; 5:18; 10:36; 11:27; 19:7; 20:31).  The son (1:14), was "with God" and "was God" (1:1-2, 18), and came forth from God, having been sent here by God (8:42).  He became flesh (1:14; not quite the same as being born a human being). The essential identity of God and Jesus is made certain by the confession of Thomas: "My Lord and my God" (20:28).  Other less certain clues appear in John reflecting an identity (10:30; 17:11, 21-22). The unity is apparently primordial (17:24). No attempt is made by the writer, however, to explain how that unity/identity could be so.  In John there seems to be a duality of two distinct personae conceived as One God.

 

            How the holy spirit should be conceived in relation to the divine Duality, however, is complicated, and unclear.  At the beginning of Jesus' public life, John the baptizer testifies that he saw the spirit descend and remain (1:32) on Jesus, who as a result baptizes with (in?) the holy spirit (1:33).  The descending spirit must also be holy, for the "Father" is holy (17:11) and is apparently the source of the holy spirit with which Jesus baptizes. The spirit is thus involved in the activities of Jesus (3:3-8; 4:23-24; 6:63), and God is not stingy in giving the spirit (3:34).

 

            On one occasion, however, surprisingly an intrusive explanatory voice interrupts the narrative, asserting that there was no spirit yet, for Jesus had not yet been "glorified" (7:39) ("glorification" is a cryptic allusion to the crucifixion/resurrection, 12:23-24, 27-33; 17:1-5).  Hence 7:39 clearly contradicts 1:32-33, for spirit remains with Jesus through his career enabling his words (6:63), making true worship possible (4:23-24), and generating new birth (3:3-8). Opposed to this idea that the spirit is active in the public life of Jesus is the surprising statement at the end of the Gospel that the holy spirit is finally given (20:22-23).

 

            Before the crucifixion, Jesus tells his followers that he is going to the one who sent him (16:7) and at his departure the paraclete (16:4b-11) will come to them. The meaning of this word is unclear and translations vary.  Immediately following this statement his followers learn that another figure is also coming to them: the spirit of truth (16:13).  The temptation is to harmonize and read the paraclete and the spirit of truth as one and the same, but the figures have different functions: paraclete (16:8-11); spirit of truth (16:13-14).  Nevertheless the two figures are awkwardly identified as one and the same at (14:16-17)—how seriously should one regard the reference to "another paraclete" (14:16)?  Should one consider the spirit of truth as an additional (second) paraclete?

 

            The holy spirit is awkwardly identified as the paraclete in 14:25-26, almost as an afterthought.  Its appearance in 14:26 seems like an intrusion into the sentence, similar to the explanatory observation at 7:39 (among many others).  All three figures paraclete, spirit of truth (i.e., paraclete #2?), and holy spirit have different functions, but they all come to replace Jesus, the son (14:25-26, 16:7-8, 16:12-13).  This/these figures are not clearly identified as one with Jesus in the same sense that Jesus was identified with God; rather they are cast as performing Jesus' role in the community after he is gone. The language the writer of John employs to describe Jesus in relation to them puts a certain distance between Jesus, the paraclete, and the spirit of truth.  John 14:25-26: "paraclete, whom the father will send in my [Jesus'] name; he will remind you all I have said"; 16:14: "He [spirit of truth] will glorify me"; 16:7: "I will send him [paraclete] to you. . ." This language, carefully distinguishing between Jesus and the figure(s) who replace him, does not encourage a reader to sense a close unity or union between the son and his replacement(s).

 

            There are no Trinitarian formulae in John, the closest statement to such an idea being John 1:32-34, and John does not seem to be aware of the later theological concept Father, Son, Holy Spirit—three figures in one Godhead.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel

The fourth Gospel (John) is the latest of the four canonical gospels. Its "tone" (i.e., its ideas, style, and manner of expression throughout the text) is remarkably different from the earliest gospel, Mark.  Compared to Mark, John breathes the rarified air of a high Christology and a religious tradition completely different from Mark, Matthew and Luke.  Their narratives rarely overlap in content, and on the rare occasions that they do John's version has little in common with the Markan narrative and its characterization of Jesus. For example, compare the healing of the lame man (Mark 2:1-12 and John 5:2-18), where John tells a very different story, which has few similarities to Mark.  And in the story of Jesus walking on the water (Mark 6:45-52 and John 6:16-21), where John's version is much shorter and only superficially similar.

 

               I have described John 1:1-18 as a confession, and indeed it is, but it is also unabashed mythical (not historical) language (compare Philippians 2:5-11), which sets the tone for the Gospel of John.  In general Myth is a story about gods and heroes in a time and place not recognizable as our own.  Myth is about creation and origins; it is an "attempt to explain creation, divinity, and religion."  History is about what actually happened in the past, and historical description is based on evidence available to a neutral third party.  This event, described at the opening of the gospel, is not historical in the sense that it takes place in common space and time; it occurs for the most part in the primordium—i. e., earliest origins and events taking place before the world and time began.  It describes the event on the basis of the faith of the author.  Plato, however, regarded all the Greek myths told by the Greek poets as "made up" stories; hence they were things that never happened in the past.

 

               The character of John is such that critical historians attempt to rehabilitate its history by appealing to its rare similarities with the synoptic gospels, and in this way arguing that it is possible that "within the material shared by John and the synoptics" the author of John had access to an "independent and primitive tradition" about Jesus (Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, 2 vols. Doubleday, 1966, 1: xlviii).  It is virtually impossible to harmonize the linguistic interests of the Judean Jesus of Mark with the language of John's Jesus.  For example, the striking dualisms in John, light/darkness (1:5), truth/falsehood (8:44-45), Spirit/flesh (3:6), above/below (8:23), do not fit the language world of the Judean Jesus of Mark, even though they are, in part, shared with the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were contemporary with Jesus.

 

               Nevertheless John is not without its historical value, even though critical scholars generally recognize that it tells us virtually nothing about Jesus, the Judean man who lived more than a generation earlier than the writing of John.  Its value lies in the fact that the Gospel of John attests a very different type of Christianity at the end of the first century from what we find portrayed in the synoptic gospels a generation, or more, earlier; John represents a type of Christianity, which draws on different traditions some of which are likely as early as the synoptic tradition.  John demonstrates that a wide breadth of responses to the Judean man, and ideas about him continued to proliferate.  The Jesus traditions in the first century were pluralistic, rich, complex, contradictory, and none could claim exclusivity.

 

               There are remarkable differences between John and the synoptic gospels; here are a few of the most notable:

 

Synoptics:	John:
John baptizes Jesus with water.	John observes Jesus baptized by the spirit.
Jesus tells parables.	John has no parables.
Jesus' message announced the kingdom of God.	The kingdom barely mentioned.
Last meal Jesus says my body/blood given for you.	At the last meal Jesus washes disciples' feet.
Jesus performs exorcisms.	There are no exorcisms in John.

 

               In describing who Jesus actually was, one must make an either or decision between Mark and John.  As Albert Schweitzer saw at the beginning of the twentieth century, one must choose either the Jesus of Mark (which he incorrectly regarded as history) or the Jesus of John's gospel.  A middle path of harmonizing the two is not a historical solution.  Hence, since the beginning of the twentieth century the Gospel of John has been discredited as a historical source for Jesus, the Judean man who lived at the end of the first third of the first century.

 

What do you think about giving up the popular Jesus of the Gospel of John for Mark's Judean Jesus?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

See: Hedrick, When History and Faith Collide (Wipf & Stock, 1999), 30-47.

Does John know the difference between History and Faith?

Does the flesh-and-blood author of the Gospel of John respect the difference between historical information and personal religious confession?  Or put another way: is the author aware when s/he shifts from historical description into a confession of faith?

 

            I am not proposing that we read John's mind.  The author of the gospel that readers know is a mental construct they develop in their own minds in response to reading the text.  I am asking if there are any literary features in the text, which suggest the flesh-and-blood author either was not aware of the crucial difference between historical information and confessional rhetoric, or that s/he did not regard the distinction as relevant.

 

            The answer, like everything in the history-of-Jesus research, depends on who you ask.  For example, the Jesus Seminar (JS) found that only one saying in John originated with Jesus (John 4:42).  With regard to the deeds of Jesus, the seminar only found a few features (in John 7:15; 18:12-13, 28; 19:1, 6, 18) that suggested a superficial knowledge of aspects of the historical career of Jesus.  That is a vastly different judgment from Craig S. Keener, for example, who argued that all four gospels are "historical biography" (The Gospel of John. A Commentary, Hendrickson, 2003, 33).

 

            From my perspective John's narrative frequently sacrifices history in the interest of confessional rhetoric.  For example, according to JS the cleansing of the temple in Mark 11:15-19 reflects, in part, aspects of an actual historical incident, but the JS found that the account of the same incident in John 2:13-22 was not grounded in history—in other words in John's narrative, theology trumps history.  Scholars generally think, however, that the cleansing of the temple was a historical event and Mark reported aspects of it in a more or less historical way.  Yet even the barest historical outlines of the incident are lost in John's religious rhetoric—at least according to the JS.

 

            Apparently John is more interested in right faith than in describing the career of Jesus from a historical perspective.  For example, John 1:1-18 is clearly a confessional statement.  The only bit of historical data in the section is the mention of John [the baptizer], the Judean prophet, whom the author of John co-opts as a Christian witness (1:6-8, 15), as also was the case in Matt 11:12-15, where he is not part of the Israelite old order, but part of the new (compare the parallel in Luke 16:16, where he is part of the old order).  John chapter one uses confessional language rather heavily (1:9-8, 15, 19, 20, 29, 32 34).

 

            The author interrupts the story about Jesus with confessional rhetoric in spite of the fact that it threatens the integrity of the narrative.  For example, in John 3:11 in the middle of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus the author suddenly breaks into confessional rhetoric:  John 3:11 begins as a part of Jesus' comment to Nicodemus, but then shifts into an accusation against those who do not "receive our witness."

 

Truly, truly I say to you [singular; to Nicodemus] that we [the evangelist and his community] speak of what we know and you [plural; to his opponents] do not receive our witness (John 3:11).

 

In John 3:12 the evangelist assumes the persona of speaker to continue the criticism of his opponents: "If I (the evangelist) have told you (plural) earthly things, and you (plural) do not believe, how will you (plural) believe if I tell you (plural) heavenly things?"  Immediately following, John 3:13-21 (speaking of Jesus in third person) is spoken by the evangelist reciting the confession of the community.  At this point the engagement of Jesus and Nicodemus (3:1-10) has been completely forgotten.

 

            Once again in John 3:31-36 the evangelist shifts into confession leaving behind John's answer to his disciples about Jesus baptizing beyond the Jordan (John 3:25-30).  In these two incidents the evangelist overrides description with confession.

 

            Another similar incident is John 4:22-24.  The evangelist intersperses a community confession (4:22-24) between two dangling ends of the discussion between Jesus and the Samaritan woman (i.e., 4:21/25).  As s/he does at John 7:22 where the evangelist intrudes into a statement by Jesus in order to correct what Jesus said (this latter phenomenon is part of a much larger problem in the Gospel of John).

 

            Judging from these few incidents it appears that the flesh-and-blood author of John was more interested in confessional rhetoric than s/he was in historical description.

 

How does it seem to you?

 

Charles W, Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Is the Gospel of John Historical Narrative?

The answer would, in part, depend on the reliability of the sources used by the author. John, however, is the latest Gospel dating near the end of the first century and some sixty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, which is considerably past the time of the eyewitnesses who participated in the events narrated in the gospel.  What is more compromising for John as historical narrative, however, is the matter that the author writes like a theologian rather than a historian.  The principal theological concerns of John's community are, in part, Christology (e.g. 1:1-51) and soteriology ("doctrine of salvation," e.g. 3:1-21).  The author is simply not concerned about the historical aspects of the narrative.  Hence, the gospel is narrated theology rather than historical narrative.

 

            Historical writing portrays life realistically, which is the opposite of idealistically and romantically.  Realism presents the reader with "a serious representation of contemporary everyday social reality against the background of a constant historical movement" (Eric Auerbach, Mimesis, 518).

 

            The author of the Gospel of John has no real interest in the passage of time and chronology—what I take Auerbach to mean by "constant historical movement."  Chronology is the sequence in which events occur.  A historian is principally interested in the exact order in which events take place; defining an accurate sequence of events helps the historian to understand the causes and effects of those events.  In short, there is no historical narration without chronology.

 

            One does find a chronological segment in John 11:55-20:29, where events appear to be loosely arranged on a sequential frame surrounding the Passover (11:55; 12:1; 12:12; 13:1; 19:14; 19:21; 20:1; 20:19; 20:26).  It may only be an artifice, however, for the real purpose of the arrangement is to provide a framework for a series of mini speeches and the crucifixion/resurrection account.  In John 14:31 at the conclusion of one series of mini speeches (13:31-14:31) Jesus says, "Rise, let us go hence."  Jesus and the disciples were reclining (13:2, 12, 23, 25) at a meal when he began (13:31) the series of speeches that culminated in the command to rise and go (14:31).  No one moves, however, and Jesus continues to make speeches (15:1-18:1).

 

            The first half of the Gospel (1:1-11:54) makes no attempt at producing a genuine chronological account.  It consists of a series of literary vignettes strung together by a limited series of connectives intended to suggest a chronology.  Here is a list of some of the author's faux chronological connectives.  They give an illusion of chronology, but are only literary connectives:

 

The next day (1:29, 35, 39, 43); the third day (2:1); the sixth hour (4:6); after two days (4:43); that day a Sabbath (5:9); a Passover (5:9); a Passover was at hand (6:4); When evening came (6:16); on the next day (6:22); feast of Tabernacles (7:2, 14, 37); early in the morning (8:2); feast of Dedication, it was winter (10:22); it was night (13:30);  stayed two days (11:6).

 

Most of the connectives are mere transitions, however:

 

After these things (3:22; 5:1; 6:1; 7:1; 19:38; 21:1); after this thing (2:12; 6:66;11:7; 19:28); now (2:23; 3:1; 5:2; 5:9; 11:1, 5, 17, 55; 12:20; 13:1; 18:25); therefore/then  (3:25; 4:1, 44; 6:52; 11:17; 18:28; 19:1); again (4:44; 8:12, 21; 10:7, 19); meanwhile (4:1).

 

            Events in the gospel narrative are fated, and the inevitable ending was controlled from the beginning.  Jesus tells his mother: "My hour has not yet come" (2:4).  This anticipation of the critical moment of the gospel is repeated throughout the narrative (7:5, 8; 5:25, 28; 8:20; 12:23, 31-33; 13:1, 31; 16:25, 32; 17:1).  Jesus is "not from this world" (8:23; 17:14, 16), but has been sent (5:30, 37, 38; 6:29, 38. 44; 7:16. 28, 8:16, 42) into it for the purposes of judgment (9:39): the casting out of the ruler of this world (12:31-33).

 

            Historical narrative, on the other hand, reflects a natural cause and effect system where events are not fated or preplanned, but are spontaneous and randomly occurring.  The author of John, however, organizes details and writes narrative and speeches from the perspective of a particular faith.  The author's faith perspective and how s/he understands "history" to proceed is clearly reflected in John 2:14-22; 12:12-16, and 20:3-9: in these segments events in the career of Jesus are, the author believes, controlled by scriptural prophecy.

 

Historical events are not controlled by means of prophecy.  Describing historical events as controlled by prophecy is arbitrarily imposing a religious plot on time, and is considered a theological interpretation of history.

 

Does this information say anything about the historical reliability of John?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University