Kitabı oku: «Jesus’ Teachings about the Father. Reconstruction of early Christian teaching based on a comparative analysis of the oldest gospels», sayfa 5
John, Chapter 3
The next, third, chapter of ev. John begins with a very important episode in terms of comprehending the Teachings of Jesus: a conversation with Nicodemus about the Birth from Above.
But this episode itself, taken from unknown source, is very roughly attached to His allegedly first visit to Jerusalem as a prophet and wonderworker, which we have analyzed in Ch. 2. One gets the impression that another compiler of the Gospel was simply looking for a place to cram this episode into – and on the formal basis of Nicodemus, as a Pharisee and Jewish teacher, he put it together with Jesus’ stay in Jerusalem. Or he simply came up with the entourage of a Jewish teacher in a fabricated dialogue in order to bring the words of Jesus, His important words about the Birth from Above by the Holy Spirit. The trick, by the way, is constantly encountered and repeated in the gospels.
In general, upon careful reading of Ev. John, emerges the structure of multiple iterations of its compilation, at first by authors unknown to us, but, apparently, first made from the words of a living witness of Jesus, who remembered some important events that actually took place in his presence. We supposedly consider the younger disciple of Jesus, one of the first two called by Him, John Zebedee, who was later named John the Theologian. That is, people surrounding him (he himself was most likely illiterate) recorded in the form of notes the memories of individual events that he himself witnessed, and secondly, scattered sayings of Jesus, remembered by him. Then, apparently, this initial circle of authors came up with the idea to combine records on topics into some extensive monologues of Jesus and His dialogues with someone: with the disciples, with the Jews, and so on. These were subsequently repeatedly supplemented with new “utterances” in order to advance their understanding of the Teachings of Jesus, and then simply to establish their own ideas backed by His authority, presenting them as His utterances. The artificiality of this construct is noticeable in the complete contradiction and even opposition of Jesus’ statements, often in the neighboring records of the constructed dialogue. Later, someone apparently came up with the idea of combining these disparate passages into a single narrative, assembled from events and lengthy discourses, for which it was necessary to arrange them supposedly in chronological order and fill in the time gaps with fictional events, which are sharply different in form from vivid memories of “John” by the obsession of the propaganda component. All this multi-stage editing was carried out very roughly due to the technology available at that time: the text could only be cut into fragments, compiled again from the cut and added, something from oneself and then rewrite from scratch – a truly titanic work that took years. At the same time, it was too late to remove the absurdities and inconsistencies that escaped the attention of the editors, and, as such, they remained to be the evidence of deliberate rude interference in the previous version of the text. Later, previous versions were destroyed, or simply no longer rewritten and disappeared in the abyss of time. And so the generally accepted church canon gradually developed, including John (and others) gospel, which is a very distant and distorted version of what could be considered the Teachings of Jesus, and filled with numerous layers of sewage sediments of other religions and philosophical and religious ideas, introduced into the gospel by those in whose hands the original versions turned out.
Therefore, when reading Ev. Jn. you need to be aware that this is an artificial narrative construct with a conditional chronology, some of the events of which are fictitious for the sake of chronological coherence, and at the same time – there is a purpose of introduction into the mind of the reader of that image of Jesus and His Teachings, which was beneficial to the next editors and compilers, and was imposed by them on the reader. Which is very rude and reckless of inconsistencies, full of obvious absurdity of the insoluble logical contradictions that arise in the text. With such an approach to the compilation of the gospels, one can only be surprised that at least something of what really related to Jesus, His Teachings, His words and events connected with Him could reach us. With the help of God, we will pull all such artificial inserts” into the sun.”
So, the third chapter of ev. John, a meeting with Nicodemus, which is not clear when and where it took place, and whether it took place at all – but is still a very important and living testimony about Jesus and His Teachings.
“1 Among the Pharisees there was someone named Nicodemus, one of the rulers of the Jews2 He came to Jesus at night and said to Him: Rabbi! we know that you are a teacher who came from God; for such miracles as You do, no one can do if God is not with him”– this is an obvious story smoothing link that can be simply omitted. Moreover, Jesus was still unknown at that time and did not perform any specific “such miracles” in Jerusalem (where he had not yet been at that time, as will be seen later).
“3 Jesus answered and said to him: Truly, truly, I say to you, if someone is not born again (from above), he cannot see the Kingdom of God 4 Nicodemus says to Him: how can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born? " – what is it all about? Oh – about the mystical experience of Adoption to God through the Baptism of the Spirit and Birth from Above, experienced personally by Jesus, who was born from Above as the Son of God. Which is now revealed by Jesus to all who believed Him. Jesus shares HIS experience, which is summarized by Him in the realization of the need to be Born from Above for every person seeking the Heaven Kingdom and Eternal Life – you cannot enter the Heaven without being born again.
“5 Jesus answered: truly, truly, I say to you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, cannot enter the Kingdom of God” – this obsessive repetition of what has already been said is aimed at mentioning WATER (which has nothing to do with it, the Spirit in no way depends on water), as a necessary condition for the Baptism of the Spirit. Here one can immediately feel the biased hand of the students of John the Baptist, the Nazarenes, who wanted to include a mention of the mission of their first teacher, who baptized “for the remission of sins,” as, supposedly, without this the Spirit will not deign – an obvious forgery and fake. However, from what follows, it is clear that Jesus Himself did not baptize anyone with water – and, if so, where did the water come from and why it was mentioned together with the Spirit, which “breathes where it wants (Jn 3.8)” regardless of any water.
“6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be surprised that I told you: you must be born again. 8 The Spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from and where goes: this is the case with everyone born of the Spirit”– these are the priceless grains of Jesus’ personal mystical experience, which, apparently, He shared not with some Jewish sage who dropped by to sit by the fire, but rather with the closest circle of his disciples. Who, by the way, were the disciples of John before Him, and from old affiliations could not resist writing about Water as a condition for “forgiveness of sins.” In this utterance, Jesus very clearly points out the impossibility of the Spirit to be born from flesh, the idea by which all the Gnostic and Hellenic wisdom of the Christian trinitological constructs is refuted and overturned, sent into the roadside ditch of history, with just this one phrase. This is a very important and deep idea: in the world of matter Spirit does not exist, and matter does not exist in the World of Spirit. A person with his Mind is born spiritually by the Spirit not into the world of matter, but into the Kingdom of Heaven, and begins his stay in it from the moment of birth from Above, that is, eternal life for him has already begun here and now, and not sometime in an uncertain future. A person hears the voice of the Spirit only in his own mind, which (this mind) is already “reflected” in the Heaven and therefore is subject to the Spirit – and nowhere else.
“9 Nicodemus answered and said to him: how can this be? 10 Jesus answered and said to him: you are the teacher of Israel, and do you not know this? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and we testify what you have seen, but you do not accept Our testimony. “These “we” are echoes of the subsequent Gnostic “revelations” to the disciples after the departure of Jesus, as well as the disputes between Jesus’ disciples and the Jews and their resentment against them for not being interested in the preaching of Jesus. Where and when exactly these disputes took place is unknown, but the compilers tied them to the very first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem, which, most likely, I repeat, did not happen at all – we will see this from what follows.
“12 If I told you about earthly things, and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?” – Jesus is not going to reveal any “heavenly secrets” to his listeners at all – why? Well, simply because they do not need this for their personal salvation through the faith in the Son of God. And they will not understand anything… and will not believe it.
“13 No one has ascended to heaven, except the Son of Man, who is in heaven, descended from heaven” – a crude insertion is obvious, Jesus suddenly jumps from one subject to another, which does not apply at all to what was said in verse 12 – what for is this a separate statement? Well, to again persistently promote the Gnostic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul and, at the same time, of the Eternity of the Word, which we have already analyzed in the Prologue – the author decided leave his mark here too.
“14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that everyone who believes in Him, did not perish, but had eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. 18 He who believes in Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is already condemned, because he did not believe in the name of the Only Begotten God’s Son "– and here the Jews join the chorus with Moses and the bloody sacrifice “for the sins of the world ": gave the Son where? Oh – to sacrifice Him to himself; here we have the last judgment at the end of times. And the theology of substitution is already in action: the Chosen-ness is taken away from the Jews by God because they did not believe and is handed over to the Christians, who believed in the “Only Begotten Son” – the insertion is clearly a later one, when the final break with Judaism has already been determined.
“19 The judgment is that the light came into the world; but people loved darkness more than light, because their deeds were evil; 20 for everyone who does evil hates the light and does not go to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil, 21 but he who does what is righteous goes to the light so that his deeds may be made manifest, because they are made in God”– the Gnostics again intervene with their light “Light” from the Prologue, this is another introduction of the Gnostic secret knowledge through Jesus Himself, through his lips. At the same time, everyone has long forgotten what Jesus was talking about at the beginning, they were carried away by a conversation with each other about their innermost. Added to this are general complaints about the injustice of the world and wicked people who did not believe Jesus and His disciples. Plus the general morality, God loves the good, but the bad – not, and these bad ones themselves try to hide their bad deeds in the darkness from God’s Light. Light and darkness are both sacred concepts here, and are used in a figurative symbolic sense of comparing the good in plain sight, and the bad – hiding in the closet, where the corpse is in the closet.
So, all who were not lazy, every cricket hurried to take part, to insert its own chirp, to the real story of Jesus.
“22 After this, Jesus came with His disciples to the land of Judea, and lived there with them and baptized. 23 And John also baptized in Aenon, near Salem, because there was a lot of water; and they came there and were baptized, 24 for John had not yet been imprisoned "– that is, he (Jesus) was in Jerusalem and suddenly came to the” land of Judah”, to which Jerusalem apparently does not belong. Obviously, the two narratives are simply mechanically combined. And he decided to live now in Judea, to baptize the Jews in his faith. And John suddenly from Bethabar near the Dead Sea, where he allegedly baptized Jesus, moved to Salim, to Samaria on the border with Judea, near the Sea of Galilee, where, it turns out, upstream of the Jordan “there was a lot of water” – there was not enough water in the river for him, you see. That is, literally in those few days that Jesus spent in Jerusalem and on the way to it, John suddenly decided to go to baptize closer to the Dead Sea, on a collision course with Jesus. By the way, any public preaching of ANOTHER, non-Jewish god would instantly lead to the death of the preacher. At the time of Jesus in Judea the “fourth sect” of zealots was active, [44]who were absolutely intolerant of all who were not faithful to the faith in the Jewish tribal god Jehovah – these were, in essence, sicarii[45], that is, the dagger-bearers who simply slaughtered to death all who they did not like in relation to their accepted piety.
By the way, one may wonder how the Christian communities in Jerusalem and other Judea survived? We find an indirect answer from Flavius[46]: The head of the Jerusalem community was by no means Peter, but James (Jacob) the Righteous, posing himself as “the brother of the Lord,” but at the same time a native Jerusalemite and a Pharisee known in religious circles. How so? It’s very simple: it was important for the Jews to return the newly-minted Christianity back to Judaism, to turn the “stricter” followers of the Jewish religion into their “progressive” sect, and to believe that the Heavenly Father preached by Jesus is the same Yahweh, only a side view. To do this, they sent their agents: Paul to the emerging Greek-pagan Christianity, and this Jacob to the Jewish, whose main community was the Jerusalem community. And therefore, for the time being, no one touched the Christians, they were under the hidden patronage of the Pharisees, “under the hood of Müller” (the head of secret police in Nazi Germany). This can be seen from the incident described in the 20th book of Flavius, when the new governor of Judea decided to deal with the hated Christians and executed Jacob, throwing him from the roof of the temple. The Pharisees were terribly indignant, declared it unlawful and complained about the arbiter to the emperor himself – you can read about this yourself in the “Antiquities of the Jews”.
“25 Then the disciples of John had a dispute with the Jews about cleansing”. Where, in Galilee? Because as soon as John (later) thrust himself closer to Judea in Salem, he was immediately captured and killed. So he still calmly remained in Galilee in the same place. And how did these Jewish debaters end up in Galilee?
“26 And they came to John and said to him: Rabbi! The One who was with you at the Jordan and about whom you testified, here He baptizes, and everyone is coming to Him”– who came? Apparently the Jews – because the disciples were with John. Wow, how worried the Jews are for the reputation of the Baptist, a preacher of another, non-Jewish, faith.
“27 John answered,” A man cannot take anything upon himself unless it is given to him from heaven. 28 You yourselves are witnesses to me that I said: I am not Christ, but I am sent before Him. 29 He who has a bride is a bridegroom. but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices with joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. This – that my joy was fulfilled. 30 He must grow, but I must decrease. 31 He who comes from above is above all; but he who is from the earth is earthly and speaks as who is from the earth; He who comes from heaven is above all, 32 and what he has seen and heard, of that he also testifies; and no one accepts His testimony”. What about is this self-deprecating hysteria of John, who at the same time continued his mission of baptism” for the remission of sins “in spite of the discovery by him of the One by whose discovery his mission should end (according to his own words – John 1, 30—33)? If John himself did not believe Him, then why are these belated praises of Jesus? And if he did, why did he not give up the completed “mission” and didn’t leave it all, the water baptism, and did not follow Jesus to Him as a disciple? The answer is simple: the purpose of this fictional passage put into the mouth of John is propaganda, and “proof from John” that both Jesus and John are good Jews, the prophets of Yahweh, in pleasing whom one preceded the other, repetition is the mother of learning.
And further in the same spirit:
“33 He who has received His testimony has sealed that God is true, 34 for He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for God does not give the Spirit by measure.35 The Father loves the Son and has given everything into His hand.36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, and whoever does not believe in the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him "– here it suddenly turns out, unexpectedly, that John KNOWS and about the Spirit, which God gives “without measure,” and about the fact that Jesus is the Son of God (which one?), which has not yet been revealed to anyone by Jesus, and about the Heavenly Father, and about salvation through faith in the Son of God, which is yet to be learned by all from the gospel, the sermon of Jesus, which has not yet begun, if you believe the chronology given in the disassembled chapters – well, he knows everything as it is, but for some reason he himself does not believe in Jesus the Son of God, and did not go to Him as a disciple.
In general, all this, except for a couple of sayings of Jesus Himself about the Spirit and the Born again (above) – an empty collection of hollow propaganda of different sizes, trash – the events of this chapter are fictionalized and in a very strained manner, while the authors’ imagination and literary talent are simply a disaster.
The dry residue from the third chapter:
1 who is not born again (above) cannot see the kingdom of God
2 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not be surprised that I told you: you must be born again (above). 8 The Spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes: this is the case with everyone born of the Spirit
3 I told you about earthly things, and you do not believe – how will you believe if I speak to you about heavenly things?
4 God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him… because of belief in the Son of God
Sparse – but, well, that’s what we have.
I draw the reader’s attention to Jesus’ unequivocal rejection of the concept of the Last Judgment in the last episode. This completely refutes both the judgment itself and God as a strict judge at the end times. Here and below, we will more than once come across the refutation of messianic prophecies, accompanied by the sadness of Jesus himself that they do not believe him, trying on him the title of the messiah with all the accompanying entourage.
