What did I Misunderstand, Zachariah?

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Maybe the author is unknown in this passage but the book of John is named so because it was written by John.

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who was john? i know a million guys named john.historically the many, many gospels we have were almost never written by the people they claimed to be. thomas for instance was written by someone claiming to be like the thomas of fame. luke is the only one i'm willing to believe as honest, because he claims to be writing it after the fact, and for the express purpose of reconciling stories.john, i disregard for a few reasons. it's blatantly antisemitic. (look at the passage about pilate and the jews, during the trial). by the time john was written, the early christian church sought to distinguish itself from judaism. they often did this by slandering jews. personally, i don't find that very christian. also, jesus walks around claiming to be god, the son of god, the savior, the only way into heaven, etc. this leaves two possibilities. one: this is really what happened, which makes jesus guilty of BLASPHEMY according to jewish traditions (distracting from god "the father") and his execution just. meaning he died for his sins, not ours. two: the book is meant as sheer propaganda, and not literal. the things attributed to jesus were to draw a following, not what he actually said.john also goes into much greater detail on certain parts than previously existing texts. this leads me to believe that much of john was pure fabrication, and designed to sell the christian religion, while making judaism look bad. not exactly the holy word of god.as a christian, i'm not quite comfortabel with the book. of course, that's reading it with an open mind.

this assertion is not neccessarily correct. by many accounts, he was just trying to reform judaism. earlier texts indicate him saying things like that he didn't come to change the law but to fulfil it.This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 05-22-2004 01:01 AM

well, yes, this is certainly true of the gospel of john. john was never directed at jewish people, but to direct people AWAY from it.the textual indications are of course that jesus's preaching was largely directed at jews, and not to radically change the religion itself -- just to redirect the hearts of the people. this mosaic law, like the babylonian precept it was stolen from, is designated limits on proper punishment and repunative measures. the idea was to establish a principle of fairness. often, in terms of goods (verse 21) the principle is repayment or replacement as punishment, but for things such as eyes and teeth, which could not be replaced, the same was still required of the offender. that is, should the original victim require it. but that was the maximum that could required. just one life, for one life. one eye for one eye, etc.what jesus was trying to do was point out that revenge, though legally allowable in this instance, was not a good thing, and it should not be motive of a person. it was not exactly an attempt to change the law of moses (presuming this is an actual mosaic law and not picked up later in babylon), but redirect the people under it. sort of the difference between laws and personal principles.i think, i'll have to check, that every verse following the proclamation of not changing the law, is this way. in that case, the verse serves as a sort of disclaimer.but anyhow, as for jesus's real message, should he have really existed, we may never know. all we have of him is bias propaganda literature, all with their own political intents.

i'm still personally interested in knowing whether these passages were borrowed from the code of hammurabi before or during the babylonian exhile.i mean, it's pretty obvious that they stole it from there, though. This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 05-22-2004 04:45 AM

no one is claiming history books to be inerrant. they do, however, claim to be the best current understanding of the subject, and are quite subject to revision. in almost every case, history books are written based upon source documents, ie: letters from people who were there, records, etc. the source documents for the bible are largely other mythologies, such as that of the believers of ba'al (leviathan for instance was borrowed from them), and the babylonians (creation story, noah). what about the gospel of thomas? wasn't that written by thomas, who stuck his finger into the risen christ's side? in that case, we should take it as more valid than luke, who even admits he wasn't there. just because a document has been attributed to someone does not mean they wrote it. in many cases, the actual date of the document strictly forbids that the person wrote it. how christian of you. don't agree? burn in hell!sorry to burst your bubble, but i am a christian.

purpledawn: i have a cat that looks almost exactly like that. does john even make specific ot references? i know the prophesy bits in matthew don't line up at all. the mroe i examine the ot and nt together, i see that they really don't match, and many fundamental assumptions (original sin, satan, etc) don't even seem to stem from judaism at all.

from the first two those look a little out context. i was thinking more along the lines of fulfillment of specific prophesies by actions than little nods to old testament scripture in quotations attributed to jesus. i guess i misunderstood the point. and anyhow, i haven't read all of john in a while.maybe tomorrow when i'm feeling more awake i'll go and look and see how the greek of the nt matches the hebrew of the ot, and what the contexts of each are. but frankly, i'm too out of it to do that right now.my guess is that they don't quite fit how they should.and yes, it is a beautiful cat. nice name for it too.