{"id":10700,"date":"2012-11-15T14:55:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T19:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=10700"},"modified":"2012-11-15T14:55:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T19:55:21","slug":"late-texts-early-traditions-continued-chronicles-john-and-the-mandaeans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/11\/late-texts-early-traditions-continued-chronicles-john-and-the-mandaeans.html","title":{"rendered":"Late Texts, Early Traditions continued: Chronicles, John, and the Mandaeans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday Jim West shared a link<\/a>to an article which ties in directly to the question I have been exploring<\/a> in a couple of recent posts<\/a>. The article is \u201cTHE \u201cSPRING OF THE YEAR\u201d\u00a0(2 CHRONICLES 36:10) AND THE\u00a0CHRONICLER\u2019S SOURCES\u201d by Michael Avioz, published in the\u00a0Journal of Hebrew Scriptures<\/em><\/a>. In this particular instance, Chronicles provides information about the timing of events which is not mentioned in Kings and which is confirmed by a Babylonian source.<\/p>\n

When a text gets a detail right which is not in a source that author is known to have used, particularly if it is a detail that is unlikely simply to have been remembered and passed on orally, it becomes more likely that this reflects additional information was available to the author in another written source.<\/p>\n

\"\"In the case of the Gospel of John, it has always intrigued me<\/a> that the author makes mention of 46 years spent building the temple (2:20). If Herod began building the temple in 19 BCE, or at least announced the restoration project<\/a> then, that would place the conversation in John 2 around the year 27 CE \u2013 which is when we would expect the start of a roughly three-year public activity, as John alone indicates, to begin, if the crucifixion is dated to the year 30 or so. Could this be a fluke, and if so, is it not an impressive one? Is it not more likely that the Gospel of John\u2019s author, whether or not he knew the Synoptics, also had some other source? Or can we envisage an author writing in the late first century making a good independent stab at when Herod\u2019s project had begun and how it related to the chronology of Jesus\u2019 life as it was coming together in a variety of sources? The latter is not impossible \u2013 but is it more likely than that the author of John had access to a written source that helped provide key details?<\/p>\n

In some cases, we may not have independent confirmation of a particular detail. In those instances, we may doubt the\u00a0historicity<\/em> of the information provided. But can we still conclude in at least some instances that an independent source has been utilized? If so, under what circumstances?<\/p>\n

\"\"In the case of the Mandaean Book of John<\/a>, the work indicates that John had a wife and children, and large numbers of disciples. It \u00a0depicts Jesus wanting to become John\u2019s disciple. It names John\u2019s parents \u201cZechariah and Elizabeth\u201d but uses different forms than those found in the Syriac New Testament. It presents John as speaking about matters of ritual purity as well as ethics. There are enough points of intersection with the New Testament to make it plausible, and perhaps probable, that someone who composed parts of it at some stage had knowledge of the New Testament. But that, for me, is not the most interesting question. The interesting question \u2013 which will be explored in more detail in my conference paper, which I will post here on the day I read it, it not sooner \u2013 is whether there is reason to conclude that there is also material which reflects traditions independent of the New Testament.<\/p>\n

Let me conclude by mentioning that Martin Dibelius<\/a>\u00a0(mentioned in Gabriele Mayer\u2019s dissertation on the Book of John<\/a>;\u00a0see also Dibelius,\u00a0From Tradition to Gospel\u00a0<\/a><\/em>p.124) detected underlying Luke\u2019s infancy account about John a unified source which was Jewish in outlook and not Christian. In the Mandaean Book of John, the same can be said \u2013 nothing related to Christianity appears in the account of portents preceding John\u2019s birth, while Jewish terminology appears: the Torah (Uraita, a term also found in the Talmud), the temple, and the Merkavah, for instance. The actual details of the Mandaean and Lukan accounts of events preceding John\u2019s birth only intersect or overlap rarely, and briefly. And yet both arguably reflect an account which genuinely focused on John the Baptist for his own sake, and not as forerunner to Jesus. And so, while it would by no means be justifiable to posit that the Mandaean version is \u201cthe original version\u201d of the story or even a \u201cmore authentic\u201d or \u201cmore primitive\u201d one, might it not be reasonable to deduce that it is more likely that the Mandaean-Lukan overlaps are due to both stemming ultimately from a common source deriving from Baptist circles, than to posit that the Mandaean author used Luke\u2019s account?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Jim West shared a linkto an article which ties in directly to the question I have been exploring in a couple of recent posts. The article is \u201cTHE \u201cSPRING OF THE YEAR\u201d\u00a0(2 CHRONICLES 36:10) AND THE\u00a0CHRONICLER\u2019S SOURCES\u201d by Michael Avioz, published in the\u00a0Journal of Hebrew Scriptures. In this particular instance, Chronicles provides information about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,12,30,57,88],"tags":[941,943,944,1140,1308,1874,3249,4095,5626,6220,6928],"class_list":["post-10700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-biblioblogging-bible","category-chronicles","category-gospel-of-john","category-mandaeans","category-society-of-biblical-literature","tag-babylon","tag-babylonia","tag-babylonian","tag-bible","tag-book-of-john","tag-chronicles","tag-exile","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-jehoiachin","tag-kings","tag-mandaean"],"yoast_head":"\nLate Texts, Early Traditions continued: Chronicles, John, and the Mandaeans<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday Jim West shared a linkto an article which ties in directly to the question I have been exploring in a couple of recent posts. 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