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What John is referring to is the other Apostles and disciples.
Lionpainter shoots wide again, completely missing the point you made, ahh..'Insane mebrane'. A good one. It seems to indicate that the writer of Johns gospel is reporting an 'eyewitness' account rather than saying the writer is eyewitness.
some suggest that this is a third - person reference, like Paul's to a man who ascended into the third heaven and had a chat with Jesus. I first thought he was referring to some nut amongst the apostles, but I soon realized that he was talking about himself.
However, it is clear that John as we have it, is not eyewitness and cannot be. Whether the eyewitness claim is totally false or does have some element of truth is a matter than only evaluation of the text can decide.
The probablility is that the baptism, Galilean origins and crucifixion by Pilate is likely to be true as, if not, why would anyone have made it up only to have to try to explain it away or gloss over it?
It remains to ask, what else can we take as true and what must we dismiss as unreliable?
That is still a question that needs to be answered, Arequipa.
I think that much of it has been answered. Not all, by any means, but enough to explain why John differs from the synoptics. Because they worked from a common ur-text and John didn't, though at base the original story fits together remarkably well in all 4 cases.
The reason why the question is still being asked is that so few seem to be listening to the answers. Even in the 'The REAL Jesus - exposed at last!" books, they all start from the premise that what is in the gospels can be taken as reliable report of what a historic Jesus did and said and then start 'interpreting' from there. But it ain't so. The gospel material demonstrably isn't reliable.
He was the most earthy and personalisable for that reason. The ontological way comes out for the values of the individuality though one would wonder if the world is so blued or corporeally enlightened to the common Man theme. Sinful wealth was the greater motivator of the sought for (and overcoming) moral truth.
There is the suspicion he was the more artificial or phony with respect to the others.
He was the most earthy and personalisable for that reason. The ontological way comes out for the values of the individuality though one would wonder if the world is so blued or corporeally enlightened to the common Man theme. Sinful wealth was the greater motivator of the sought for (and overcoming) moral truth.
Quote:
There is the suspicion he was the more artificial or phony with respect to the others.
Fundamentalist churches often encourage new believers to start off their new life by reading the book of John before any other biblical book, however, just a few chapters in, you realize the book has an entirely different theme about Jesus from that found in the other Gospels. Why?
All 4 gospels have a theme about a different aspects of Jesus. John present Jesus as God. Mark presents Him as a servant. Luke present Him as a man and Matthew present Him as the king in the line of David.
This is prophesied in the O.T. where the Messiah is called a branch.
In Jer 23:5 the branch is righteous and will be a king.
In Zech 3:8 the branch is a servant. It is the only gospel that says Jesus came to serve not to be served.
In Zech 6:12 the branch is a man---The Gospel of Luke traces Jesus genealogy back to Adam, the first
man.
The reference in Isa 4:2 is not as clear as the other verses but it seems likely the the beautiful and glorious branch could be no other than Jesus. In that verse teh Branch is connected to the Lord, the Memorial name of God.
WE also can see the in the 4 faces of the Seraphim(Ezk 1:10).
One face was that of a man---one face was that of a lion, the KING of beast--one face was that of a bull, the best of burden---one had the face of an eagle. The eagles soars in the heavens and that is where God is.
We can also see it in the arrangement of the camp when Israel made camp until God told them to move out. Here we have to rely on Jewish tradition. The tribes of Judah camped to the south and tradition say the standard of this tribe was a lion.
Ephraim camped on the South and his standard was an ox. Ruben was on the east and his standard was that of a man. Dan was on the west and his standard was an eagle.
The tabernacle was in the middle and it symbolizes Jesus and His work---Rev 1:3 - Behold the Tabernacle of God is among men...
What is even more amazing is that if you assign an X for each group of a certain number you get something like this:
No one knows for sure, but it does not matter, What is written was inspired buy God. That is all we really need to know.
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