The ‘beloved disciple’ is an unnamed individual mentioned only in the Fourth Gospel. He first appears at the Last Supper, where he reclines on Jesus’ bosom. He asks about Jesus’ betrayer, is entrusted with the care of Jesus’ mother, discovers the empty tomb of Jesus, and identifies the risen Jesus in Galilee. He appears to have been a close companion not only of Jesus but of Peter. References to the ‘other disciple’ may also refer to the beloved disciple. …
Mt 1:17 – ‘So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to Christ, fourteen generations.’
The differences between Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogy of Jesus have been discussed elsewhere.
But what should we make of Matthew’s division of his genealogy into three groups of fourteen?
Matthew says that between Abraham and David were fourteen generations; between David and Exile were another fourteen generations; and between the Exile and Jesus were yet another fourteen generations.…
In Jesus, Contradicted, Michael Licona discusses the issue of ‘editorial fatigue’ as a way of explaining some of the differences between the Gospels.
He quotes Mark Goodacre:
…When one writer is copying the work of another, changes are sometimes made at the beginning of an account that are not sustained throughout. The writer lapses into docile reproduction of the source. Like continuity errors in film and television, editorial fatigue results in unconscious mistakes, small errors of detail that naturally arise in the course of constructing a narrative.
Mark is believed by many to have based his account on the testimony of Peter. However, much modern critical scholarship maintains that the internal evidence ‘hardly suggests, far less supports’ the traditional attribution. (Telford, A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation). This is unduly sceptical, to say the least.
The usual starting point is Papias (c.AD 60-130), who cites the ‘elder’ John:
…‘Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was either said or done by Christ.’
It is generally agreed that a period of some 40 years lies between the Gospels and the events they record.
How, then, were the stories of those events passed on.
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman thinks about transmission in terms of the ‘telephone game’:
…‘You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game “telephone.” A group of kids sits in a circle, the first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it.
I confess that I have, until now, accepted without question the ‘traditional’ attribution of the Fourth Gospel to John the son of Zebedee.
But I have been considering the view of Richard Bauckham, that the author and ‘Beloved Disciple’ of the Fourth Gospel is not John the Apostle, son of Zebedee. He is, rather, another John (later called ‘John the Elder’) who was a Jerusalem-based disciple (but not one of the Twelve).
I summarise Bauckham’s argument in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2nd ed.).…
Lk 10:25 Now an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 10:26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you understand it?” 10:27 The expert answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” 10:28 Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”…
Lk 10:25 Now an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 10:26 He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you understand it?” 10:27 The expert answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” 10:28 Jesus said to him, “You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.”…
All four Gospels record that, during the trial of Jesus, he was mockingly dressed in a robe:
Mt 27:27 Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the governor’s residence and gathered the whole cohort around him. 27:28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe (χλαμύδα κοκκίνην) around him, 27:29 and after braiding a crown of thorns, they put it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand, and kneeling down before him, they mocked him: “Hail, king of the Jews!”…
Readers of Matthew’s Gospel have long pondered and puzzled over his references and allusions to the Old Testament Scriptures.
Bart Ehrman invites us to consider the story that Matthew tells in his first five chapters:
