John is multiply redacted, so it lacks any singular perspective. Three different authors with three different agendas and sectarian positions, have contributed to it over a couple of decades, adding, removing, reordering, and altering. So we can’t really speak of it in a unified way as “more” or “less” Jewish. Though its final redacted form is predominately anti-Jewish. It advocates the view that Gentile Christianity has replaced Judaism, a view common to its period of final publication (its what we see argued in, for example, Justin Martyr).

With regard though to the one point you are asking about (the Logos Prologue), it isn’t actually discernible whether the composer of that was Jewish or rather is simply borrowing from Judaism. That the doctrine there comes straight out of Jewish theology doesn’t mean the author is Jewish or even likes Jews. It just means he liked that one aspect of its theology (and probably inherited it from earlier Christian-Jewish doctrine that could go all the way back to Paul), and used it to build his own. This could fit the replacement dogma as much as any other.

If you are interested in the “most” and “least” Jewish Gospels, those are Matthew and Mark, respectively. They are in argument with each other. Luke is trying to unify the two (though yes, he is more fond of the Gentile wing and expects it to be dominant).

So with all that said is it fair to call John one of the more “Jewish gospels”? Would Luke be the most gentile one?

There was no uniform method, no. And Ehrman is simply wrong (as he usually is when he doesn’t check, as he obviously didn’t in this case).

The word stauros just means stick. For example, it’s the same word used of stakes in a palisade, and of stakes people get impaled on. It could also be used for the Jewish hanging of bodies after execution, and several times for Old Testament era “crucifixions.” I cite the scholarship and examples in OHJ, pp. 61-61.

The reason crosses in our sense were common (even Jewish executions could employ them) is that the instrument was readily available: it was a T-shape, but (as described by Cicero and others) it employed two pieces, (in Latin) the crux (“stake”) and the patibulum (what we mean by “cross”). The instrument was a vine prop. Any agricultural society often had those ready to hand, and they were easy to make or commission for service.

Thus the most common procedure was to tie someone’s arms to the patibulum and have them carry that to the crux, which would already be cemented or built in place, and then they’d be hauled up and set on the cap block of the crux, forming the T (and hauled down when ready for disposal). Ankles might then be nailed to the crux.

But there was no law governing these details. So one could do whatever one wanted or had to hand. Since we aren’t told the specifics of what was done to Jesus, or even what was usually done at Jerusalem (or under Pilate, or under whatever legionnaire had execution duty at the time), we can’t really know. Best one can do is speak of what was most likely merely because it was most common.

Note Wikipedia has a whole page on this debate. As also on the archeological example you mention.

Thanks! Very helpful. In the glossary of my NWT it says “The Romans sometimes simply tied a victim to the stake, in which case he might live for several days before he died from pain, thirst, hunger, and exposure to the sun. In other cases, such as the execution of Jesus, they nailed the hands and feet of the accused..” (NWT 2013 revision p.1713).

My understanding is that the accused were normally tied at their wrists and nailed through the ankles or nailed through the wrists and ankles. I know of that one bone fragment where there is preserved a nail through the anklebone, but was there ever a uniform method of doing so or did the soldiers do it however they felt like on any given day? JWs claim that Jesus wasn’t executed on a cross beam but Ehrman insists that it was a cross, but he didn’t provide any evidence for that other than that the word “stauros” can also mean “cross”.

I don’t know the answer to that. All the weird ways of formulating the Christian trinity are hopelessly bizarre and infinitely varied. I don’t study them. They have no bearing on the origin of the religion.

I don’t think a patripassianist interpretation fits (given the past tense). But that depends on the particulars of the patripassianist position being queried.

The “general” idea of patripassianism (it’s even in the name) is that the Jesus who was crucified was at that time identical with the Father, which is not being advocated in GJn. One might twist it to be “consistent” with it, but I would call that stretching against probability. I doubt the authors imagined any such thing.

The ontological question is harder to answer because rarely did anyone even think about such questions, much less try to work them out. The semantics are vexed. What exactly does it mean to be or not to be identical with something? Technically I am just a part of the universe and not a separate entity. I can demarcate myself as a separate entity, but by arbitrarily deciding how I will physically divide things. The divisions are real. But the borders one can choose to label and discuss are infinite.

In emanation theory, the emanations (archangels) are separate entities, but not entirely, as they partake in the properties of God. They can be described as pieces of God, but only if you adopt a certain definition of “piece.” On other definitions they might then not be describable as pieces. God does not have a material substance, but they do. God stays in the seventh heaven, but they don’t. They have limited powers, he does not. They have separate minds, but are under the perpetual influence of God’s mind, and God knows everything but they only know some things (so their mental link is one-way blind). Etc.

So what counts as “ontologically separate” depends on what you are choosing to call “separate.” Why are you drawing those borders instead of others? There can be good reasons; but you are still just choosing to do that. Like when I choose to distinguish my first person mentality as separate from others: there is an ontological fact in that; but it’s still the operation of a brain made of atoms arbitrarily distinguished from the atoms outside the body. So in one sense I am “one” with Mars (we can describe the whole region from Earth to Mars and everything in it as a single sea of particles that are constantly causally interrelated). But in another sense, I clearly am not (I have a different location, I know things Mars does not, I have properties Mars does not, etc.).

Okay, thanks. So it would also preclude a patripassianist (Jesus=The Father) reading? Obviously it wouldn’t be Nicene Trinitarian but Sabellius or his followers see it as “The God” as in “The Father” himself or would context demand an ontologically separate entity? Thanks!

That depends on what one means by “a bad translation.” Can the Greek, as written, mean that? Yes. Is that likely what the author meant? No.

The latter requires attending to total context, both that of the author of John and his Christian environment (complicated by the fact that there are multiple different authors of the Gospel of John, as it was composed and redacted in three layers) and the Judaism around it.

In that context, e.g. Johannine Christianity and Philonic Judaism, John 1 almost certainly was written to mean the God.

Like I said, this is emanation theory: in Philonic Judaism there is the one and only God, and in him were all things; then at creation, he started separating out parts of himself into semi-autonomous agents (the archangels), one of them being the Logos.

So the Logos was a part of God (and in this metaphysical construct, not at that time separable, so it’s identical to that God); then it became a separate entity (when God chose to do that, to emanate out a part of himself). Christians then added a third step, “thousands of years later this separated entity assumed a mortal body for a brief time.” Hence, the Logos was later Jesus.

Okay but is the translation “was a god” in the NWT fair or is it a bad translation as Metzger and Wallace say?

I don’t know what Metzger said on this, but the John 1 passage is standard Jewish emanation theory: that’s why it is in the past tense. Jesus was God. Not is now God. But used to be.

Because all things were in the beginning united in God. Then God separated out of himself certain powers, called archangels, who then as separate persons embodied and carried out different aspects of God’s powers and will. One of those was the Logos. This is all in Philo and other Jewish authors.

There is nothing even peculiarly Christian about that passage. It’s totally Jewish. The only novelty is when it goes on to say the Logos acquired a mortal body for a brief time. That’s the only Christian innovation, although it wasn’t without Jewish precedents in understanding (the idea that angels could assume and cast off different bodies was not unknown).

See my discussion here.

I know John 1:1 should read “And God was the Word” but for reasons I still don’t understand, almost all translations have it “and the Word was God” do they mean the same thing or is the literal translation “God was the Word” support a patripassianist (Jesus=identical in all respects to the Father) reading? The NWT has the indefinite article “and the Word was a god” which even I think looks weird.

I know Metzger wrote a long piece on it but I’ve only read parts of it and he was as you know a Trinitarian. If you were to rank it next to the ESV, NRSV, NASB where would it fall? Would it be like the DR and be almost useless as an “accurate” translation?