(March 3, 2024 at 7:45 pm)Belacqua Wrote: \
I"m not sure I'd call it a "controversy." Bible scholars and historians have had different views about the Gospel of John (and every other part of the Bible) for a long time now. Particularly since the German Enlightenment started up new and more historically strict methods of reading the Bible, people have been debating all the issues you raise.
And I guess I'm also going to disagree with your phrase "did not openly challenge it." Lots of people have challenged it.
True, in the Middle Ages people thought John was the first and most accurate. Dante believed this. But it has not been the historians' view of things for a long time.
It's common knowledge that the Synoptics are more similar and John is different in many ways. It's widely accepted among scholars that the story of the woman taken in adultery, for example, is a later addition, not in any earlier source. It may well be a bit of fiction made up to demonstrate what Jesus was like (or what they thought Jesus was like).
Remember that in those days nobody had the goal of writing straight journalism, or facts-only history. They had points to make. They also felt it was just fine to write what -- in their opinion -- a famous guy would have said if he'd had time to say it, and then attribute it to him. There are dozens of spurious dialogues "by Plato" which are now agreed to be by later authors.
So this will only seem like a problem if you're a strict sola scriptura literalist. And there have been surprisingly few of those in history.
Fair enough. I guess that modern historians should be calling it "the most obviously fake gospel" rather than "the spiritual gospel."
