Paul N. Anderson has published an article at The Bible and Interpretation entitled “A Fourth Quest for Jesus…So What, and How So?” It argues for a rethinking of the way we pursue historical study of Jesus so as to include more of the evidence from the Gospel of John.
As a participant in the “John, Jesus and History
But on the other hand, it is not merely the differences between John and the Synoptics that are the reason why historians do not accept the historicity of the words the Gospel of John places on the lips of Jesus. It has much more to do with the internal stylistic consistency of the Fourth Gospel. The narrator, Jesus, and John the Baptist all speak with the same distinctive style and vocabulary. This, when coupled with the fact that the unique Johannine terminology gives expression to a number of ideas unique to John among the New Testament Gospels, such as that Jesus was aware of having pre-existed in heaven before appearing on earth, it seems that historians are absolutely correct to reject the authenticity of most of what the Johannine Jesus is depicted as saying. This doesn’t seem to me to be a case of undue skepticism, but of an appropriately critical approach to history.
Other bloggers who have mentioned Paul’s article include Jim West, Darrell Pursiful, and Ari. What do others think about this issue, and of the new and altered criteria Paul mentions in his article?
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