Back in 2020, Hugo Méndez of UNC-Chapel Hill published an open access article, "Did the Johannine Community Exist?" See https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/0142064X19890490
He writes: "Those texts represent a chain of literary forgeries, in which authors of different extractions cast and recast a single invented character – an eyewitness to Jesus’ life – as the mouthpiece of different theological viewpoints."
Nevertheless, as with other academic hypotheses, certain scholars have challenged the assertions of Méndez.
For some pushback on his claims, see https://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2020/04/is-the-gospel-of-john-a-forgery/
Michael F. Bird and Paul Anderson responded to Hugo: I found his reply to Anderson but did not see where he addressed Bird.
Other approaches to John's Gospel can be found:
Andrew, Matthew. "What Is Truth?: A Johannine Theological Epistemology." Scottish Journal of Theology 74, no. 2 (2021): 158-167. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0036930621000338.
https://www.biblicaltheology.com/Research/KolawoleOP10.pdf
See Blomberg, Craig L. 2007. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. Second ed. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic.
5 comments:
While examining this link
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2020/04/is-the-gospel-of-john-a-forgery/
I came across this very interesting article about the trinity https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2023/05/can-the-trinity-be-explained/#disqus_thread
The author seemed to be claiming that none of the various doctrines of the trinity are to be considered an explanation of the trinity itself ,no the trinity itself is beyond any explanation. It's the ultimate high ground isn't it? if your position is beyond definition, it is also beyond falsification (of course it is also beyond verification)
I read his blog entry: the author is Roger Olson. I've read his book on the Trinity, the ne he mentions in that entry. It is a helpful book for understanding Trinitarianism, but what's he also doing is making a distinction between the Trinity doctrine and the Trinity itself. Other authors have pointed out that no explanation or attempted doctrine of the Trinity fully explicates the triune Godhead or the three persons.
I agree that it's hard to see how the doctrine can be falsified or verified. As Olson said about Augustine of Hippo: Trinitarians use the term "person" for God not because it's the right term per se, but they employ the term so they don't have to remain silent. As we know, they regard the Trinity as a "sacred mystery."
I've read this article a while back.
I think some of his argument's against the Johannine community are valid, but I think he goes a little far arguing they are forgeries. Of course the communities are scholarly constructs, but I found found the arguments for forgeries to be just as speculative as the arguments for a unique Johannine community.
But the problem is, we DO have arguments for ... perhaps not a unique community, but for specific disciples of John in the second century.
That doesn't mean we have a special community, but there is a Johanine school of thought that was passed down going back to one individual. These are of course later writings, but not THAT much later than the traditional dating of John.
BTW, this is not to say that John arguing reporting accurate history without theological embelishment, but just to say that one does not need a special community to have one author, perhaps an actual aposltle (I think so), who had a specific viewpoint and had some authority among Christians.
I've always thought Raymond Brown's reconstruction of a Johannine community was more speculative than anything else although I too would agree that we have second-century evidence for those who followed Johannine thought.
It just gets me how those proposing these ideas ignore all of the textual evidence, for the most part, and decide to focus on controversial literary aspects of the text or read all kinds of assumptions into the text. Lonnie Bell makes a strong argument for a unified Johannine text and his arguments are based on strong textual data. Charles Hill has done some excellent work on the Johannine corpus and so has Paul Anderson.
I tend to agree, Scholars can go a little crazy with redaction mania.
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