My reply to Apologist Dr. Robert Bowman on Gospel of John's historical reliability

The following is the reply I made to Dr. Bowman over at his blog.  My comments did not immediately appear, so I presume Bowman wishes to review replies to him before allowing them to actually post.

---------------

Dr. Bowman,

I find that many conservative scholars have no difficulties with the Muratorian Fragment's listing of canonical NT books, and no problems with its testimony to the traditional authorship of the gospels, but when the MF specifies that John's first idea for gospel authorship was that the disciples first starve themselves for three days, then jot down what would be "revealed" to each disciples, then suddenly, conservatives are quite sure that this part of the MF is a later interpolation or an otherwise distorted view of how John reacted to the prospect of writing a gospel.  And suddenly, they aren't so sure that the MF really goes back to the 2nd century.

What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories? 

Indeed, John 16:14 and the book of Revelation (if the author of those two books is the same guy), combined with Clement of Alexandria's explicit denial that John desired to write "external facts" about Jesus as the prior Synoptic authors had already done, would justify the historical conclusion that John was open to getting the truth about Jesus in more ways than just what he or others remembered Jesus saying, the method that most conservative Protestant scholars insist was the case.  Which then means that for any saying of Christ now exclusive to John's gospel, we cannot reach a reasonable degree of certainty on whether or to what extent these words of Jesus correctly represent in Greek the same information Jesus' hearers got when he spoke to them in Aramaic.

If such a case can be historically justified, then I don't see how the skeptic who makes such argument would be unreasonable to use it to further argue that the gospel of John contains an unknown mixture of historical truth and historical falsehood or theologizing which cannot be disentangled, and as such, he is disqualified from the list of independent witnesses of Jesus' resurrection.

So my questions to you would be:  If John is the only person saying Thomas' infamous doubting was cured by his touching of the risen Christ's crucifixion wounds (John 20), what makes you so sure this is based purely on eyewitness recall?  Shouldn't you remain open to what Clement said, and allow that John's unique material about the risen Christ was written for a "spiritual" reason that is not the same as writing out the "external facts"?

For what reason do you think skeptics are unreasonable to assert that the esoteric nature of the uniquely Johannine gospel material disqualifies it from the possibility of answering questions about literal history, such as whether Jesus rose from the dead?

Update: October 16, 2017

Dr. Bowman responded as follows:

robbowman says:
October 16, 2017 at 11:22 am
Barry,
 WordPress mistakenly treated your comment as spam, but happily I found it and was able to approve it.
 I tend to privilege internal evidence from the text itself as well as evidence from roughly contemporaneous sources over evidence from much later secondary sources. Both the Muratorian Fragment and Clement of Alexandria are much later than John’s Gospel and so their statements need to be assessed in the light of the more directly relevant evidence. Where those later secondary sources appear to confirm conclusions based on the text itself or secondary sources closer to the time of the Gospel’s composition, naturally I will agree with them.
 I don’t see anything in John 16:14 or the Book of Revelation that would support the claim that the Gospel of John is not providing biographical material about Jesus.
Reply

----------------------------
I replied as follows:

Dr. Bowman, thanks for rescuing me from the spam heap. 

So I guess I got "saved"...?

If a case can be made that some sayings of Jesus in the canonical gospels did not exist until after Jesus died, then it would seem it is hopeless to try and disentangle these sayings of late esoteric origin from those which the historical/biological Jesus actually mouthed...which might provide rational academic justification to the unbeliever to simply throw up their hands and say the gospel of John is disqualified by reason of ambiguity from being viewed as the written recollections of eyewitnesses who heard the historical Jesus talk.

The reason I say John 16:14 indicates some of the Johannine material on Jesus isn't biographical or historical, is because the author makes it clear that Jesus would continue giving "sayings" to the church beyond the grave, by means of the Paraclete.

 12 "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

 13 "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

 14 "He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you.

 15 "All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you.   (Jn. 16:12-15 NAS)

Notes:

a - The things the disciples cannot now (i.e., 30 a.d.) bear, are things Jesus has to "say".

b - So when v. 13 asserts the Spirit, who will be speaking later won't speak on his own but rather convey only what he "hears", the author clearly intends the reader to believe that the Spirit will, sometime after Jesus dies, continue to convey what Jesus has to literally "say" to the church, this cannot be watered down to mere "guidance".  Inerrantist scholars appear to agree:

"This spiritual guide’s task then is pointedly summarized as receiving that which comes directly from Jesus and passing it on or messaging it (cf. vv. 13–15 for a communication triad) directly to the disciples. This type of passing on of significant information reminds me of the rabbinic concept of the passing on of tradition and assuming that such tradition has been unaltered in the process."

Borchert, G. L. (2002). Vol. 25B: John 12-21. The new American commentary, New International Version (Page 170). Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

-----------------------

c - "things to come" (v. 13), ok, so when the gospels have Jesus describing future events or "things to come" (i.e., Matthew 24), this statement in John would justify the view that Jesus' eschatological statements were provided to the church by the Paraclete after he died, despite the fact that they present them in the gospels as if they were things he said before the crucifixion.  These sayings of Jesus conveyed by the Spirit are a case of him taking them FROM Jesus (v. 14-15), reinforcing the above-cited conclusion that the Spirit is not merely "guiding" the church but conveying what Jesus actually has to "say" beyond the grave (v. 12).

The point is that when you apologists assert the gospel of John constitutes eyewitness testimony obtained by typical memory or "recollection" of what the historically Jesus said and did before he died, you are giving the impression to the unbeliever that the person who wrote that gospel drew upon nothing other than his own and possibly other's eyewitness memories, the same way that anybody normally does when writing down a description of an event years after it took place.

That impression conflicts with John's own testimony that Jesus would continue giving his sayings to the church from beyond the grave, naturally raising the question as to whether some of the Christ-sayings in John were things the apostles never heard Jesus say until after he died.

This then raises the problem as to which Johannine sayings of Christ were those that the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthed, and which sayings of Christ were those that the church never knew until the Spirit conveyed them to the post-crucifixion church.

Without a convincing alternative interpretation of John 16, and without coming up with a miracle to help us disentangle in John the pre-crucifixion sayings of Christ from the sayings he gave from beyond the grave, it would seem unbelievers have here a reasonable academic justification to consider the question of JOhn's eyewitness nature to be hopelessly confused and to thus disqualify John's gospel from the list of resurrection witnesses apologists typically depend on.

And all this is to say nothing of the equally significant objection that if Matthew, Mark or Luke or their sources (Peter?) had remembered Jesus talking in the high-Christological way he does in John's gospel, they would not likely have "chosen to omit" such powerful theological teachings anymore than a modern day author of a book entitled "Sexual Scandals of the Clinton Presidency" would be likely to "chose to omit" all mention of the Monica Lewinsky affair.  So the Synoptic failure to echo Christ-sayings now exclusively limited to John's gospel, is a rational reason to suspect that John's Christ-sayings originated in circumstances far more complex/esoteric than simply what somebody remembered the biological/historical Jesus actually mouthing before he died.

Update: October 24, 2017:  Dr. Bowman has indicated he would like to have the last word on the matters I raised, and that my messages will not be allowed until I more directly address his main post:

robbowman says:

October 16, 2017 at 5:52 pm
Barry,

Your argument from John 16:14 fails to support the crucial aspect of your claim, namely, that what the Holy Spirit would tell the apostles after he came would then be written in the Gospels as though they were pre-Crucifixion sayings of Jesus. There is no reason not to take John 16:14 to mean that the apostles were going to receive revelation from the Holy Spirit that would be presented as such. It does not present Jesus as saying that he will continue to give “sayings” through the Holy Spirit that were then to be reported as though they were given before the Holy Spirit came.
I’ve allowed the discussion up to this point, but any further comments will need to address one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece.

Update November 2, 2017:  Bowman allow me one more post, as follows:

Barry Jones says:
October 24, 2017 at 8:06 pm
Dr. Bowman,
 Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece”
 You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.”
 Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto?
 First, my comments about the Muratorian Fragment directly speak to what kind of person John was and whether his ideas about gospel history are similar to those held by modern conservative Christians. John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?
 For example, my question to you from my first post: “What would be wrong with an atheist saying the MF is truthful when it paints John as believing he should get his gospel material via more esoteric means than simply jotting down his eyewitness memories?” Isn’t answering that question relevant to the proposition “The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”?
 If the MF is telling the truth about how John desired to obtain his gospel material, then the more you paint him as an eyewitness, the more he becomes an eyewitness who wishes to mix material obtained by vision with material from his own eyewitness memories, to obtain gospel material…a point that surely is relevant to your attempt to paint John as an “eyewitness” and that “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus.”
 Second, if you wish me to rebut with new argument, well, one of your premises was
“#2: The Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness.”, but you didn’t make any specific arguments thereto, instead, you simply a) cited the chapter and verses references in John which you believe show eyewitness authorship, then b) assured the reader that rebuttals to skeptical attempts to explain away this claim could be found in the works of Andreas Köstenberger, and that Richard Bauckham “offers a variety of independent lines of evidence in support.”
 Did you intend to make argument to support the premise?
 Of critical importance is your allowing as possibly true the view of Bauckman that the author of John’s gospel was a “John the Elder”, when you say:
 “Note that the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the author was an eyewitness even if there remains some uncertainty about who he was. Bauckham, for example, does not think the author was John the son of Zebedee but another disciple called John the Elder.”
 How do you propose a modern person can make an assessment of John the Elder’s general credibility, when in fact conservative Christian scholars disagree on whether he even existed? For example Dr. Monte Shanks argues in “Papias and the New Testament” (Wipf & Stock Pub, July 8, 2013) that it is only from Eusebius’ chiliast-biased “misunderstanding” of Papias, that such a figure as John the elder arises. Jerome in De Viris Illustribus admits the confusion problem in the church and denies that the Elder and Apostle are the same man.

Bowman replied, making even more clear his desire that the discussion be concluded:

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:20 pm
Barry,
 You wrote: 

Not sure why you are implying with your last sentence that I wasn’t addressing “one or more of the arguments presented in the blog piece[.]” You say in your blog piece “In short, we ought to be somewhat skeptical when we are told that the “Johannine” Jesus speaks about himself in ways radically different from the Jesus of the Synoptics. The burden of proof should be assigned to those who make this claim in order to depreciate the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the Gospel of John.” Thus you argued that skeptics should be required to give argument why they deprecate the historical reliability of John’s gospel. Were my first two posts here not directly relevant to the task of deprecating the historical reliability of Jesus’ speech in the gospel of John”, even if you thought my arguments unpersuasive thereto? 

Your quotation from my post came from the conclusion of my fifth point, which was that Jesus sometimes speaks in the Synoptics in ways that are usually considered “Johannine.” Yet you did not address this point. Nor did you address any of the arguments presented in any of the other nine points of my article.
 You wrote: 

John was prone to obtaining his gospel material from visions induced by starvation. That surely is relevant to your first argument “#1: The Gospel of John has historical value as an ancient biography of Jesus”, unless you now clarify that when you say “eyewitness”, you also mean those people who get their material by vision?

 I gave three arguments in defense of that point. The Muratorian Fragment was not relevant to any of those three arguments.
 Your assertion in any case distorts what the Fragment states. It claims that Andrew, John, and others fasted for three days (not that they “starved themselves”; a three-day fast was not at all unusual in their culture) while they sought divine guidance as to which of them should write, and that Andrew — not John — received a revelation that John should write the whole text while the others reviewed it. Here is what the Fragment says:
 The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, [one] of the disciples. To his fellow disciples and bishops, who had been urging him [to write], he said, ‘Fast with me from today to three days, and what will be revealed to each one let us tell it to one another.’ In the same night it was revealed to Andrew, [one] of the apostles, that John should write down all things in his own name while all of them should review it.
 Do you see it? The Fragment says absolutely nothing whatsoever about John receiving any sort of revelation through the three-day fast. Only Andrew is said to have had a revelation. And it was a revelation concerning how they should proceed with producing a new Gospel text, not “visions” that supplied the actual content of the new Gospel.
 As to why I didn’t offer a detailed defense of my second point, which was that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness, there are two obvious reasons. First, it’s a blog, not a periodical article or a monograph. Second, this blog post addresses the issue of the historicity of the “I am” sayings in the context of evangelical scholarship on the Gospels (note the opening paragraphs). You might just as irrelevantly ask why I didn’t defend the existence of Jesus as why I didn’t defend in detail the view that the Gospel of John was written by an eyewitness. So I referred to some good work on the subject that most evangelical scholars would acknowledge as at least important and relevant work on the subject.
 Finally, whether the author was John the apostle, son of Zebedee, or another man named John the Elder, ultimately has no bearing on the cogency of the internal evidence that the author (whoever he was) was an eyewitness.

robbowman says:
October 24, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Barry, please be advised that we will not be engaging in any protracted discussion here. As far as I am concerned, this exchange should be considered to have come to a conclusion.
Reply

I wrote one more reply as follows, but for right now it sits waiting to be approved:

Dr. Bowman,
Are you willing to defend your theory of John's historical reliability, in a formal or informal written debate (or series of formal or informal written debates) online, at any location of your choosing, where I set forth the full panoply of reasons, one at a time, to justify viewing John's gospel as historically unreliable?  I am quite aware of, and have studied, conservative Christianity's best defenses on the matter from "An Introduction To the New Testament", D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, Leon Morris, Zondervan Publishing House, © 1992, as well as those of Guthrie in his Introduction, and various online defenses by other evangelical Christians. 

The only reason I don't attempt to justify my use of the MF evidence is because you have now requested, immediately after accusing me of distorting the MF, that the matter be considered closed.  You clearly do not wish to allow me to defend my interpretation of the MF testimony HERE, so since that is your idea of scholarship, I'll comply.  But I provide point by point rebuttal to your latest over at my own blog, since apparently you and I don't agree on what constitutes serious academic discussion.  No, your blog wasn't a monograph, but then again, exactly how much a blogger will allow discussion of his controversial ideas at his own blog, is a very subjective thing.  That's why I offer you the challenge, supra.  If "blog" is the hangup, then pick whatever other internet forum you wish so we can launch all out war on this matter.

Surely you have to admit, there's at least one belief John had that I've disproven.  John 3:20.    

If the Jehovah Witnesses would be abusing John 3:20 in applying it to you, because of your willingness to debate their denials of Christ's deity, then under the same logic, you'd be abusing John 3:20 the same way in applying it to me, because of my willingness to debate your views about John's historical reliability.  Yet if you admit I'm free from the condemnation described in that verse, you part ways with pretty much all over theologically conservative evangelicals.