MetaCatholic

Nathan Stitt points to a book that also comes as a free PDF and e-book. It’s on that hardy old perennial of the identity of the author of the fourth gospel. I’m never quite sure why that should excite more interest than the identity of the authors of any of the other three. Nor do I think it makes much difference if any to the significant questions of interpretation. But since Nathan described this book as making the case for Lazarus as “the beloved disciple” and the author of the gospel, I thought it would be worth a quick look (and a quick look is all I have given it). I’m afraid I find myself completely disagreeing with Nathan over the value of this book.

I should begin by coming clean about my own views. While I think John 21:24 identifies the beloved disciple as the key tradent for the gospel’s traditions, I think that is some step away from claiming him to be the author. I should also say that I regard the appellation “beloved disciple” as an implicit polemical claim to the superiority of the Johannine version of Christianity, especially vis-à-vis James and the Jerusalem church. (See here and here for a couple of previous posts that touch on this conjectural sectarianism.) I do not regard the term as part of a straightforward historical puzzle, so I’m not part of the natural audience for this book.

I must confess also, that without Nathan’s post, I would have written this book off if I had simply stumbled across it. Lots of underlining, shouty bold type, copious quotes from the KJV and the note that “References to the Greek text are from the Interlinear Greek-English New Testament, © 1981 by Baker Book House”: these things all conspire to prejudice me.

The problem is, the book’s arguments rather confirm all my prejudices. A large part of the book is devoted to arguments why the apostle John couldn’t have written the gospel. These include such gems as saying that if he had done, he would have included incidents like the transfiguration to which he was an eyewitness. Since John’s gospel noticeably omits the transfiguration, it can’t have been written by one who was there. This is not the world’s most impressive argument.

Mr Phillips (our author) also seems to be in two minds:

As stated earlier, the writer of this Gospel always described himself with phrases that avoided directly disclosing his identity. When one takes note of this, then mere dogmatic assertions regarding this author’s identity are likely to seem less convincing than they might have otherwise – since his identity is the very thing that God saw fit to have him conceal. (p7 pdf version)

He has a view of inspiration that makes him believe that the author concealed his identity as a matter of divine prompting. It leads me to wonder why, if God wanted the author’s identity concealed, Phillips is trying so hard to reveal it. The logic escapes me.

For a book which makes much of appealing to the Bible alone, it is surprising that the disciple whom Jesus loved is with no argument identified as the anonymous other disciple of John 18:15-16. It’s by no means an unreasonable or unusual conjecture (and I’m inclined to agree with it), but it’s far from certain fact. The beloved disciple is anonymous. The disciple with Peter is anonymous. Therefore they are the same person. The logic doesn’t quite work. You know you’re facing a dodgy argument when completely specious appeal is made to the Greek cribbed from an interlinear: ” The literal Greek says: “the other disciple” (Jn. 18:15) and “the disciple other” (Jn.18:16).” Yeah, that really proves the identification.

This is worth noting, since the author tries to build on it. His later argument (pp17-18) seems to have three elements:

• The other gospels never mention a particular disciple whom Jesus loves
• The other gospels specifically don’t mention him when we know he was present, like at Peter’s denial.
• The other gospels do mention John the son of Zebedee.

From these elements Phillips concludes that this somehow proves John is not the beloved disciple, and therefore not the author of the gospel. It is hard to take such fallacious reasoning seriously: it conflates the phrases “the other disciple” and  “the one whom Jesus loved” into a discrete identity, and assumes that this person can’t be someone referred to in another way in the Synoptics. Similar and equally fallacious arguments follow. They are predicated on a jigsaw-puzzle approach to the gospels, which assumes that we are dealing with identical literary material, describing exactly the same events, with the same intent, and that what we need to do is put them together. This, in my view, completely misses the point.

The idea that the gospels are a jigsaw puzzle to be pieced together continues even more bizarrely with arguments about the Last Supper which totally ignore the significant differences between the Synoptic and Johannine narratives. So he takes Mark 14:18-20: “And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”  They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?”  He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.” He comments that the phrase “one of the twelve” must imply others present, because when Jesus addresses them directly in John 6:70, he says “you, the twelve”. This not only ignores the parallels in Mark between “one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me” and “one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me” but also ignores the way that Matthew edits this linguistic awkwardness out. (Luke does something else again.)

While it is historically likely that others, such as the women who travelled with Jesus, were present at the Last Supper, the gospel accounts imply a meal only with the twelve. While the fourth gospel’s narrative is different yet again, the foot-washing narrative does appear to make most narrative and dramatic sense if only the twelve are present. Phillips’ desire to smuggle others in, of course, is that it is essential to his argument that Lazarus is the beloved disciple. If the Last Supper is limited to the twelve, then Lazarus can’t possibly be he.

His next argument shows the danger of the person who thinks “the Bible alone” obviates the need for scholarship. The KJV is alone among English translations in taking John 13:2 καὶ δείπνου γινομένου as “And supper being ended”. This suits Phillips’ argument, for it allows him to reconcile the eucharistic picture of the synoptic tradition with the non-eucharistic picture of the fourth gospel, and keep putting that jigsaw together. But unfortunately he reveals his ignorance:

[Various Bible versions translate this verse differently because of conflicting interpretations of the Greek word tenses involved. However, the study of things like word tenses can often end up with us having to choose between the opposing opinions of Greek scholars. So instead, let’s look again to the Bible to learn what it can teach us.] (p 25)

We don’t have to choose between different interpretations of the Greek “word tenses”, because we can always just read the Bible! (And Jesus said unto them: you have heard it was said in the aorist, but I speak unto you in the present.) “Ended” does strike me as the least likely interpretation. Most translations settle for “during supper” or something similar. I would be more inclined to take it along the lines of “When it was supper time…”. It seems to me, again, that the foot-washing makes most sense as an action that precedes eating. (John 13:4 poses a hint of a problem for this, but need not be taken to imply a meal already in progress.)

The argument continues in like vein. And there are some right doozies in there, like the argument that Lazarus as the fourth evangelist paid particular attention to the linen cloths that had wrapped Jesus’ body, because he remembered what it was like to wake up wearing your burial shroud! Buried in this inanity are the two reasonable arguments for identifying Lazarus and the beloved disciple.

1. Lazarus is particularly introduced through the phrasing of Mary and Martha’s message (John 11:3): “κύριε, ἴδε ὃν φιλεῖς ἀσθενεῖ – Lord, he whom you love is ill”. How significant this is will depend in part on whether you think φιλέω and αγαπάω are synonymous. It is always the latter verb in references to the disciple whom Jesus loved. John 11:5 is yet another argument for thinking the only difference is stylistic: “ἠγάπα δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὴν Μάρθαν καὶ τὴν ἀδελφὴν αὐτῆς καὶ τὸν Λάζαρον.” (cf also John 11:36)
2. References to the disciple whom Jesus loved only begin to occur after the raising of Lazarus has introduced the character precisely as someone whom Jesus loves. This does seem to me to disregard the paucity of references: John 13:23, John 19:26, John 20:2, John 21:7,20. There simply aren’t enough references, either to the character, or to specific disciples to say whether the character is only introduced half-way through, though it offers support to the argument from how Lazarus is introduced.

For me, unfortunately, Phillips has so many daft arguments that stronger ones take on the overall inanity of the rest. There is half a case to be made that Lazarus is the beloved disciple within the narrative of the gospel. But when it is presented by so many specious arguments, it is hard to take seriously. It is important, thought, to bracket this from any question of authorship. Luke’s account of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42) calls the historicity of Lazarus into question, as does the way in which his resuscitation becomes in the fourth gospel the motivation for the crucifixion, and makes him also a target for execution (John 12:10). When one moves beyond identifying Lazarus with the beloved disciple to identifying him as the fourth evangelist, that becomes a serious question mark.

It is hard, in short,  to see that the argument is strong enough to overturn the early tradition that associates the fourth gospel with John the Apostle, even if this seems to be confused in the memory with John the elder. For Phillips, any argument from tradition is as suspect as one from the Greek. Catholic tradition and grammatical knowledge alike detract from sola scriptura. But it should not be so for the rest of us. It is possible that early church tradition relies as much on plausible deduction as we do, but it is not unreasonable to see some strength to this particular tradition. It is also hard to imagine that as unknown a figure as Lazarus should appear to be a rival for Peter in some circles, which seems to be the implication of the narrative.

I must conclude that the beloved disciple remains an enigmatic character in the fourth gospel, but seeing the appellation as the way in which the community of John the elder has characterised John son of Zebedee their founding apostle seems still to make the best sense of both tradition and narrative.