Who Wrote John?

Posted on May 20, 2014 by virgowriter

Who Wrote John?

Unnecessary movie remakes give me a headache. Why mess with a classic? Often times, this is simply Hollywood’s attempt at a cash-grab—better to make a film based on a tried-and-true story you know the audience has embraced than gamble on something they might not. Sometimes the film adds little—outside of snazzy new special effects, like 2010’s Clash of the Titans. Thankfully, a few films have capitalized on their chance to retell a particular story, such as Tim Burton’s reimagining of 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in his 2005 version, which deepened Wonka’s character by adding elements not even in Dahl’s book. Reverting the title to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory honors this change (as the 70s version suggests that the film is more about Wonka than Charlie). Likewise, David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo pays closer respect to the source material, by focusing more on Lisbeth Salander, than the 2009 Swedish version, which focuses more on the crime Mikhail and Lisbeth investigate.

We can do it better, Fincher seemed to be saying.

But not everyone who reinterpret previous work does a good job. The assessment, however, depends on who is judging.

So Helms at last handles John, and he has a lot to say about this final Gospel—and so doing, he echoes his recurring refrain that John saw fit to improve upon the material he had at his disposal.

But before he gets to this point, Helms first dates the work around 90-95 AD, and notes that it was written in Alexandria. He wants to emphasize that John’s author was not an eye-witness to Jesus’ life. This seems to be his strongest point–why else would you start here; however, he moves on to more significant details. He wll, however, return to the significance of this date.

The first point that differentiates John from the other three: Jesus’ moment of total triumph is not some future second coming. Why? According to Helms, this already happened at crucifixion (135): “I shall draw all men to myself when I am lifted up from the earth” (John 12:32). According to Helms, John 3:14-15 makes clear that those who believe in Jesus earn eternal life, which negates the need for Jesus’s return. For Helms, this explains the change in Jesus’ dying words on the cross from a wonder as to why God has forsaken him to: “It is accomplished!” (John 19:30).

So Mark missed the mark with the date by which Jesus would return. This partly explains why Matthew and Luke merely extended the time period in order to allow for Jesus to resurface. John, however, treats Mark’s problem differently: the Parousia is redundant because there was no need for it (136). Therefore, the changes apparently reflect John’s concerted effort “to cure Christianity of the religious illusion known technically as future eschatology” (136). Why this change? In theory, this allows for people to focus on the present, not future. This is known as “realized” eschatology (136).

Basically: Jesus doesn’t need to return in order to finish his work.

Aside from this major fundamental issue, why else did John craft his Gospel the way he did? According to Helms, when Synoptic Christianity arrived in Alexandria around 80 AD, he saw a threat, as represented by the Gospel of Mark. These ideas places too much emphasis on Peter, thus giving his ideas authority (137). So how did John counter this influence? He introduces the nameless “Beloved Disciple,” and, according to Helms, in so doing, John moves Peter from first to second, in terms of importance. This finally explains why his date of authorship was important in the beginning.

For example, at the Last Supper (13:1, 18:8). Peter is shown to be less intimate with Jesus. Helms discusses much more evidence that functions the same way (138-141).

Helms also makes much of John’s lack of naming Jesus’ mother. For example, at the foot of Jesus’ cross, the group of women (three, perhaps four) does not include mention of her name (141). This anonymity functions purposefully, much in the way the nameless beloved disciple: it can stand in for groups of people. The idea seems to allow for more inclusivity among believers.

The last point he makes in this first of two chapters on John is perhaps most interesting: John’s original author was later edited by a more “conservative editor” (145). What’s his evidence here? His first point handles the Eucharist. John 6:63 states that “The spirit alone gives life; the flesh is of no avail”; however, John 6:54 states: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood possesses eternal life.” Seems like a contradiction, right? This just shows how some people at the time were uncomfortable with John’s stance in places and sought to include some material to represent the more “traditional futuristic eschatology” (145). This is the other main reason the time of authorship proves significant.

Why would the original author have eschewed the flesh? According to Helms, John’s community did not see the eating of flesh as a way to eternal life: the spirit was enough (146). These and other reasons, for Helms, demonstrate why the Gnostics “welcomed John’s Gospel, and no wonder it had been re-written [in order] to be acceptable to the developing mainstream” (146).

So he ends this chapter by focusing on the efforts of the first John author to emphasize the importance of the spirit of Jesus—nothing else was needed. Helms’ John 2 is the one who added the importance of “ritual and final judgment” (147).

Helms makes an interesting case of the dual-authorship here, and it impacts how I think about this Gospel. And with any reimagining of a text, I can’t help wonder which is “more accurate.”

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Who Wrote Thomas and Q?

Posted on May 15, 2014 by virgowriter

Who Wrote Thomas and Q?

When I was an undergrad, I took a poetry class—one of three genre courses required for the creative writing major at UCSD. Because things happen during any semester, assigned content gets cut, shifted to different days, or supplemented, depending on unforeseen issues (such as bad weather, which is really not an issue very often in San Diego) or the class simply gets backed up—occasionally class discussion squeezes out important work, which must then be accounted for elsewhere in the semester. This is mostly why content gets nixed, even after it has made it on the syllabus. The professor knows the content well enough to realize certain readings/writers are more important than others, and so the lesser content loses out.

For this poetry class, I don’t recall what necessitated tweaking the syllabus, all I know is that near the end of the term, some room had to be made.

The gay poets were cut, for as our professors said, “they weren’t that important anyway.”

Although he later apologized to the class—after the comment had been passed around the department—we never did get to those gay poets, so I have no idea what I missed (although, I suppose I could have read up on them on my own, but I lacked the time then, or at least I thought I did). But even if I had, I would have missed his expert insight into these authors, and isn’t this what we go to school for? If he said they weren’t important, were they insignificant?

He’s a famous poet, my former instructor, and perhaps to him they were, but his opinion was all we heard. Most in the class, I’m sure, were fine losing them. After all, the gay clique seemed to be the only ones who circulated the comment. Even worse, perhaps: what if he hadn’t included gay poets in the first place?

Readers of the New Testament are familiar with the four Gospels, and I had no idea there were more. I’d heard bits of information that others existed, but I assumed that they were worthless or else they would have been included, right? As Helms points out, there are MANY more gospels, and of these, Helms asserts that Thomas, Peter, “Signs Gospel,” “Q Gospel,” and Secret Mark are also important.

Then why does he only discuss two of these?

He doesn’t really address this question in detail—focusing on these two will help readers understand some of the other gospel content “hidden” in John (101), but he does bring up the very important issue of how we think about the four gospels in the New Testament: they were not the first—nor should they be thought of as the final—words on Jesus’ life. And if people think of these four as the only true ones, dismissing other gospels as “fiction,” Helms suggests that these overlooked gospels are just as likely to contain theological liberties as Luke (100).

But why the disparity? Why would these four have been chosen over others? Helms mentions how—unlike today (his words)—the Church of 1900 years ago was quite divided, with several different “sects” competing for their take on who Jesus was—some saw a teacher of wisdom, some believed he never appeared in the flesh on Earth, some accepted him as God crucified for our sins (101). Helms contends that the four gospels we know are attempts to unite these versions.

Before people cry conspiracy too loudly (okay, just me), he points out that old gospels became lost because people no longer had use for their content, and therefore no longer copied them—why write out something by hand if you don’t like it? Since, he contends that Matthew and Luke both intended to render Mark superfluous (101), we almost lost Mark this way (101).

So how did he get his hands on these lost gospels? He mentions the places to find them, in books published after a monumental 1945 discovery of ancient documents in Egypt, by pure chance. But what is in them?

Q and Thomas are both collections of Jesus’ sayings that lack a narrative context (102). They also share much content. In Thomas’ 114 sayings, for example, 44 are similar to Q. He details several of these (109-11).

Of these sayings, one stands out: basically, the kingdom of heaven is within each person, and the way to know of “one’s own true inner divine nature” (105) involves getting to know yourself, and when that happens, you will return to the “pre-material, pre-divided state,” which neutralizes gender, ending all sexuality.

This, Helms suggests, is why the Thomas gospel was shunned (105-6), and also extends his argument as to why a female authorship of Luke would not be embraced. He doesn’t bother to acknowledge what this would do to the Bible’s (and the Church’s) stance on homosexuality.

He doesn’t really deal with Q, other than to say that it differs mostly in Q’s apocalyptic slant. In contrast, Thomas is anti-apocalyptic: the kingdom of God is already here, men just don’t see it (106). Therefore, there is nothing to look forward to, you should feel hope and love now (106).

This is really the second major argument as to why these Gospels were lost. He stresses that the “tension” between the apocalyptic and anti-apocalyptic stance is crucial to understanding John (109). But his point is clear: if you don’t hold fear over people, how can you get them to fall in line?

Although the shortcomings of these gospels demonstrate why they were obsolete and disappeared from the Bible as a result; however, now that they’ve been rediscovered, why not return them? Why not let people have all the information they might need rather than telling them what is true or not? Clearly various people have had a host of different ideas about their faith and how to interpret and understand it. Why shouldn’t we?

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Who Wrote Luke?- Luke’s Mind and Art

Posted on May 10, 2014 by virgowriter

Who Wrote Luke?- Luke’s Mind and Art

Last year, Guns n’ Roses was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Would the original line-up perform? The members were not on good terms, and at the awards ceremony, Axl Rose declined to show. In a statement, among other things, Rose called into question the Hall’s purpose. He’s not the only one to have issues with the Hall. Others question the nomination process (an artist becomes eligible 25 years after their first release), wondering why certain artists are inducted while others have never even made the ballot—influential bands like Deep Purple never getting a nod while “lesser” artists like Patti Smith and the Velvet Underground getting enshrined..

Although the nomination process is perhaps flawed, the Hall serves a very important function: it recognizes artists not based on popularity but rather on influence. So although Patti Smith and The Velvet Underground may never have sold millions of concerts, had a string of number one hits, and sold out five nights in a row at Madison Square Garden, a lot of the bands that learned from them did. And for that, they deserve recognition, even if people don’t realize the depth of their influence.

Because of this, I enjoy when a person unearths an influence about which I was unaware. I also appreciate when a person goes beyond identifying this influence and explains the depth of the influence.

Helms kicks off this chapter by examining the opening of Luke’s Gospel, which makes clear that not only was she not an eye witness to the events discussed but she is reviewing the materials in her possession with great detail. But not everything she read proved useful to her—in fact, according to Helms, only half of it was. So if Matthew saw fit to use about 90% of Mark, why did Luke only use half? She felt much of its work was based on “grave incompetence” (79) and that the prior work needed clarification (i.e. revision). The rest of Luke’s gospel is new content.

To fill in her story, she also used the Q Gospel (new to me, and not in my version of the Bible) as well as content exclusive to Luke. What we know of this gospel, then, is (as discussed in his previous chapter), designed to support how women were to be viewed as equals in the eyes of the Church, not as inferior to men, as so much other content suggests.

Given how much of this was detailed in the previous chapter, I wasn’t sure why this warranted a new chapter. This problem is compounded because of his failure—thus far—to deliver on his promise of art’s influence on Luke.

Instead, for all of Helms’ praise of Luke’s diligence, he discusses lapses in her use of Mark uncritically: For example, ten lepers “cured” in area in the midst of Samaria and Galilee (84). Problem: no such area existed. Also, when Jews and Samarians are discussed inhabiting the same area (Luke 17:11-16), according to Helms, they despised each other and therefore would never have been together.

Eventually, Helms does get around to the chapter’s point: the influence of art on Luke. He points out how the author borrowed from The Bacchae play (90-1), in Acts 12:8, 10 and 16:26. This finally justifies the new chapter, and here he presents an intriguing case. But the presence of the influence is not as intriguing as his suggestion of why this Euripides work would have resonated with Luke: “it concerns a young, persecuted and misunderstood deity [Dionysus], the son of Zeus and a mortal woman (Semele), who grants to his female followers redeeming release into religious ecstasy” (91).

Why is this significant? Well, one, it shows how people use art in order to make sense of their world, their beliefs, and their emotions. Two, it also shows how the content people may have never questioned before has multiple sources, some of which is not religious-based. Side note: it also appears to be the earliest form of plagiarism I have encountered.

It turns out, she also pulled from I and II Maccabees (93-95). So with all these influences, it appears that 50% of the new content Helms suggests is not really all that new—or 50% of her creation.

So did a woman really write Luke and Acts? I don’t know. But what is apparent is that Luke’s author did some solid research, pulling from several sources to paint a more complete picture than the ones in the sources to which she had access. And, if Helms is to be believed in this chapter—and he does make a good case—what his work demonstrates is that this gospel—and perhaps the others as well—were not the product of a first-person account; rather, they were the work of people influenced by past material as well as the world around them. What I appreciate most is how art was a part of this world. It’s important to remember that artists in general—and writers specifically—don’t create in a vacuum. They read, listen, observe, and then create. Often, we forget this or don’t even notice it and only pay attention to what they’ve created without appreciation what inspired it.

Next up: Who Wrote Thomas and Q?

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