The Gospel of John and Christian Origins

24 Have I proved that the Prologue was once no longer initially composed by means of the evangelist himself? Have I proved that it was once extra to the Gospel afterward during its composition? probably now not. I post, notwithstanding, that i've got made an excellent case. 25 yet there continues to be one additional argument, which in my 23. Brown, Gospel, 1:1. If we want to preserve Brown’s overture metaphor, we must always imagine by way of the grand live performance overtures of Beethoven and Brahms, self-contained and self-sustaining, or the precocious younger Mendelssohn’s “Overture to a Midsummer Night’s Dream,” instead of of the lead-in overtures of Mozart, Verdi, and Wagner. 24. in this subject see bankruptcy nine of realizing the Fourth Gospel, 366-86, “The tale of knowledge. ” 25. Martin Hengel takes an analogous view: “As with so much works, the prologue used to be additional final: probably it used to be composed previous as a hymn, yet this too may have been after cautious mirrored image. John 17 used to be additionally Human or Divine? | 167 opinion is decisive. “For the legislations used to be given via Moses; grace and fact got here via Jesus Christ” (1:17). With this sentence Moses has been ousted from his place on the center of the Jewish faith; his privileged function as God’s middleman has been taken clear of him and conferred in its place on Christ. this can be the declaration of a brand new faith and will now not most likely were written or uttered by way of an individual within the Jesus team till a second within the lifetime of the synagogue whilst the rebels inside it had deserted the legislation so thoroughly that they can now see that the instructing of Jesus, no longer that of Moses, used to be God’s imperative revelation to humankind. The uncompromising competition to conventional Judaism expressed within the Prologue may were impossible ahead of the separation of the 2 events within the synagogue, and accordingly the Prologue should have been composed fairly overdue within the lengthy background in their many disagreements. Commenting on 1:18 (“no one has visible God”), Brown feedback that it truly is most likely directed opposed to Moses, and provides, “We may possibly suspect that this topic used to be a part of the Johannine polemic opposed to the synagogue, for it's repeated in v 37 and vi forty six. ”26 He additionally says that John is retaining up the instance of the one Son “who has not just visible the daddy yet is ever at his part. ” but the Prologue doesn't say that the Son has noticeable the daddy: it says that not anyone has visible God. The recommendation that this can be a part of a polemic opposed to the synagogue is unquestionably a sensible one. John 5:37, besides the fact that (“his voice you may have by no means heard, his shape you've gotten by no means seen”), used to be most likely written by means of the evangelist earlier than he had turn into familiar with the hymn that he ultimately followed as a preface to his personal paintings; and 6:46 (“Not that anybody has noticeable God other than him who's from God; he has visible the Father”) is healthier learn as a planned qualification of the uncompromising negation within the Prologue—at first sight a shocking suggestion yet one who profits plausibility whether it is conceded that bankruptcy 6 belongs to the second one variation of the Gospel and used to be rather potentially written concerning the time that the Prologue was once tailored to shape a preface to what follows, forcing a rearrangement of the unique beginning.