John 9:39-41

If you have argued religion with a believer for any amount of time, no matter what the faith, they have almost certainly pulled out their "knock out punch" for use on your disbelief: The scripture quote.  The biggest problem with this tool is that almost without fail the scripture is neither as meaningful as they think, or as valid as they hope.

John 9:39-41 is the scripture quote I was given last night for the purposes of converting my heathen ass into a member of the faithful. Let's take a look at it, shall we?

The first thing we should do is say a word about the author. The author of any text can tell us a good deal about the text itself. For example a text written a member of MLK's rights protests and a journal written by a Klansman may be about the same time period and even the same event, but have some important differences in slant, experience, purpose and meaning. So who is John?

Importantly, he is not the author of the Gospel of John. An issue that often clouds biblical passages is just how often the obvious author and the actual author are not the same. In this case, the Johannine literature (the gospel and three epistles) appears to have been written by several anonymous authors from about 90-115 CE, writing in a community that still defines itself as followers of a particular brand of the Jewish faith, and not yet part of the fledgling Christian community. John is a window on a group of people in the process of breaking away from the Jewish community to become a separate faith. While there is a good deal more to say about this (I recommend some of the Jesus Institute talks as interesting, though not always as scholarly as you might hope for, and Reza Aslan's Zealot for a pleasant and engaging, though not uncontroversial read) the key for our purposes right now is simply to recall that John is written some 60 to 100 years after the Jesus story is meant to have occurred. It is a collection of 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even more removed hand accounts that was assembled to reflect the beliefs of the community it was written for.

In fact we need to keep in mind that historical accuracy was neither a goal nor a concern for the authors of most religious texts in the Jewish community at that time. The religious texts written in first century Palestine simply weren't meant to be an historic record. These are testimonies of faith, written by people of faith, and meant only to reflect their beliefs. They are about Jesus the Christ, the founding myth of the faith, not Jesus the man, who may or may not have even existed. Treating them as useless because they are stories of faith and not accounts of history would be a mistake. Just as it would be to treat them as history.

It is also important to recall that the audience for John would have been roughy aware of these issues. In much the same way that fans of Batman today can argue about the relative merits of one comic books portrayal verses a particular films version of the caped crusader, the members of the fledgling Christian communities knew that differing versions of "Yesus" and his teaching existed. There is good evidence (see Rudolf Bultmann) that the Pauline version of Christos and the later Christian religion was seen as heresy to large parts of the early followers of the zealot Jesus who the Johnannine community would have been writing about.

Having set up some expectations, let's look at the actual story. The section of John recommended for reading is the end of the story of a blind man who is healed by Jesus, and then goes about proclaiming him. Several other Jewish faith members doubt him, and ignore him. This leads to Jesus making an allegorical claim about being the Judge of the world and telling the unbelievers that they are guilty because they have a chance to see the truth I him, but reject it.

So how do we analyze this text? Importantly, that depends on your belief. If you were a Jew in the time in question, the story has an obvious point: "this is the person who is going to save us, can't you see he did miracles?" This was a fairly common method of arguing for the validity of the teachings someone gave in that time and place (as it is in some circles even today) to a degree many don't realize. In fact the itinerant preacher wandering the desert proclaiming God and performing "miracles" to support the claim was such a common sight in Jesus time that it was a subject of jokes, farce and even a passage in a play from the time period. Wandering miracle workers were the "trust fund hipsters" of first century palistine. They were everywhere, and most people ignored them.

But to the believer of the time this is simply a way for Jesus to establish his credentials. He did miracles, healed people, raised the dead. Just like a few hundred other wandering preachers of his time.

But what does this mean to the unbeliever today, or the person actually interested in evidence for claims? Honestly, it isn't worth the electrons the web server used to send me the quote. A man named Yesus who may or may not have existed is claimed to have healed the sight of a man, without evidence or corroboration, and used this as a lesson to people who have no impact on my life in this current time. And all of this comes 3rd hand, repeated as hearsay and recorded not as truth but as a lesson...

Batman has more supporting evidence. Maybe we should worship him? Thanks but no thanks.