Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
davidmartin
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by davidmartin »

"I see this as compatible with the view that 1 John is written in relation to the Gospel of John, and here the "original teachings" being referenced in the writing are based on the view that the Gospel of John reflects "original teachings". The focus on love also aligns with GJohn. But the author says that the teaching about love is new. This seems to indicate that 1 John is following on the heals of the dissemination of GJohn, which we could say introduces a new focus on love."
is it really the case the 'new commandment' is about love?
i'm not so sure it really is, it says "For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another"
This isn't presented as being new at all

But in the discussion of the 'new commandment' he weaves and bobs around with a finale of "This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded"
The latter half of this is the familiar old commandment but the former is his new commandment and he's now weaved the two together

Instead of love being a new command it's an old command that everyone accepts, so he can use this to base his arguments upon
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by Ben C. Smith »

davidmartin wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 3:42 am
"I see this as compatible with the view that 1 John is written in relation to the Gospel of John, and here the "original teachings" being referenced in the writing are based on the view that the Gospel of John reflects "original teachings". The focus on love also aligns with GJohn. But the author says that the teaching about love is new. This seems to indicate that 1 John is following on the heals of the dissemination of GJohn, which we could say introduces a new focus on love."
is it really the case the 'new commandment' is about love?
i'm not so sure it really is, it says "For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another"
This isn't presented as being new at all
Exactly so. The love commandment is regarded as old stuff in 1 John. The commandment to believe in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, in 3.23 is not specified either as new or as old.

From a thread from a couple of years ago:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Tue Apr 17, 2018 12:16 pmI currently belong to the vocal minority of people who think that the Johannine epistles, by and large, predate the Johannine gospel. One of the reasons commonly offered for the priority of the gospel is the following triad of verses:

John 13.34: 34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."

1 John 2.7: 7 Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.

2 John [1.]5: 5 And now I ask you, lady, not as writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.

In the gospel Jesus acknowledges that the love commandment he is giving is a new commandment, while in the epistles the author/elder admits that this love commandment is not new. Thus, the argument goes, the gospel must have been written first.

But this argument confuses the order of events with the order in which an author writes about those events; just because an author writes both about WWI and about WWII does not mean s/he has written about those two wars in that order. It is just as easy to write a prequel as it is to write a sequel.

In this case, for example, it is easy to imagine the epistles being written on the basis of church doctrine as found, say, in Matthew 22.37-39 = Mark 12.29-31 = Luke 10.27 and then the gospel later, when the time came to put the love commandment in writing yet again, specifying that it was a new commandment based on the wording of 1 John 2.8 and 2 John [1.]5. Furthermore, the love commandment also finds expression elsewhere in the epistles:

1 John 4.20-21: 20 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.

The pronoun ("him") in verse 21 must refer to God; thus, according to this epistle it was God who issued the love commandment. The epistle comes across as ignorant of Jesus having issued it in the gospel of John, whereas in the synoptics it is actually issued by God the Father in the Hebrew scriptures (Deuteronomy 6.4-5; Leviticus 19.18) and merely quoted by Jesus as something old, not as something new.
I am pretty sure I detect a trend here:
  1. The love commandment is regarded simply as having been issued by God in the Hebrew scriptures (Deuteronomy 6.4-5; Leviticus 19.18). This is the perspective both of Mark and of the Johannine epistles.
  2. As the Jews in general come to be regarded as the enemy, it becomes necessary to find something distinctive about the way Christians treat love versus the way Jews treat it. Thus words are put into Jesus' mouth which "up the moral ante," so to speak; in Matthew this tendency comes out as 5.43-44.
  3. Eventually it is forgotten, whether deliberately or just as part of the trend, that love has much of a place at all in Jewish or Hebrew tradition. The Old Testament God is viewed more strictly as a God of wrath and vengeance, while the New Testament Jesus is all about the love. Marcion fits in here, as well as John 13.34, in which Jesus, instead of merely quoting scripture, issues the love commandment as if it were a new thing.
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Irish1975
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by Irish1975 »

On the commandment issue, I agree with David:
davidmartin wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 3:42 am is it really the case the 'new commandment' is about love?
i'm not so sure it really is, it says "For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another"
This isn't presented as being new at all

But in the discussion of the 'new commandment' he weaves and bobs around with a finale of "This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded"
The latter half of this is the familiar old commandment but the former is his new commandment and he's now weaved the two together
But if I understand Ben correctly he does not think that the commandment to believe in the name at 3.23 is related to the preceding discussion in 1 John 2:
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Dec 31, 2020 8:48 am The commandment to believe in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, in 3.23 is not specified either as new or as old.
But we can’t ignore that the “no new commandment” statement at 2:7 is immediately followed by the “yet/however/on the other hand/but still” reversal in 2:8 that he is offering a new commandment after all:

7 Ἀγαπητοί, οὐκ ἐντολὴν καινὴν γράφω ὑμῖν ἀλλ’ ἐντολὴν παλαιὰν ἣν εἴχετε ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς· ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ παλαιά ἐστιν ὁ λόγος ὃν ἠκούσατε.
8 πάλιν ἐντολὴν καινὴν γράφω ὑμῖν ὅ ἐστιν ἀληθὲς ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ ἐν ὑμῖν, ὅτι ἡ σκοτία παράγεται καὶ τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινὸν ἤδη φαίνει.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new commandment, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

This sets up an expectation for the reader that is only answered by 3.23. (The reader/listener can hardly have forgotten that a new commandment was promised earlier in the discourse but not yet provided. The problem of the antichrists/schismatics and their denial had to be introduced and lingered upon first.) And if we read chapters 2 and 3 together it is quite clear that at 3.23 the author is wrapping up the great question at 2:22, whether or not Jesus is the Christ. There can’t be any love or salvation or communion with the Father unless that specific commandment to believe in the name of Jesus is accepted. The new commandment makes perfect sense of the whole burden of the epistle, which is to affirm the necessity of believing that Jesus is the Anointed.

As I noted earlier somewhere, the commandment at 3.23 is very specifically given by God the Father, not by Jesus. Both the content of the new commandment and the one who gives it are different between the Gospel and the epistle.
davidmartin
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Re: Jesus Mythicism & 1 John

Post by davidmartin »

The gospel of John mentions love four times as much as the synoptics for it's word count
Love %
Mark 0.05%
Luke 0.05%
Matt 0.06%
John 0.21%
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