John's Gospel part 1: Scripture first or Canon? (note: part 1 of two very different news items on John's
Gospel. Part 1 is from a Scripture scholar.
Part 2, a little further along the track, will be from a
communications scholar!)
ROME: 29th April 2006 -- Not sure if Salesianum
finds its way into communities, but it would certainly go to all
provinces. It comes out four times a year from the UPS in
Rome. When,
in the January-March 2006 number, the author of the first article
starts out - in English - with "The success of Dan Brown's The da
Vinci Code...", it is bound to get even the casual reader's
attention. It got this reader's attention (it would have anyway),
but
given that its author is a member of the EAO region and one of its
Provincials, it deserves a mention in austraLasia - it would have
anyway :-)
Frank Moloney needs no introduction so let's not
waste further
words there. He points out that Dan Brown popularized what
(particularly American) scholars had already promoted in the past about
the Christian Canon of Scripture - that it was something imposed on the
Gospels and other early Christian writings by reasons other than
religious or theological. At the height of the Gospel of Judas mania
several weeks back, (Frank doesn't say this, but it's clear enough) a
Google search on 'Elaine Pagel' plus 'expert' scored 157 hits.
She was
the media's prime go-to person for a scholarly read on the import of
the Coptic manuscript. She specializes in the Gnostics, you see,
which
was Frank's point in mentioning Pagel's Beyond Belief that
would date some of this Gnostic stuff prior to John's Gospel. But
Pagel is no real Gnostic 'scholar', either; she might be better
described as a lady novelist or naughty historian (a comment from a
Jesuit writing about her)! Dan
Brown is no scholar, though we can't detract from his ability as a
novelist, and he couldn't even remember, conveniently,
where he'd read much of his information, in the recent
London trial over his book, but he didn't need to look far to discover
scepticism
about the so-called Christian Scriptural Canon.
Frank's particular interest, as a scholar of John's
Gospel, is in
finding out how it really finds its place in the canon, from which he
can then say things about the canon more generally. As someone
who has
applied the discipline of narrative criticism to this Gospel, he comes
up with an interesting conclusion - that John tells the life of Jesus
to bring to a close the entire biblical narrative. That doesn't
sound
so astounding on first reflection, but he takes lines like "for as yet
they did not understand" which would be a Dan Brown delight line (if
DB reads John's Gospel; I doubt it) and an opening to
gnostic hopes. Frank points out, from his appreciation of the
fact
that this is a narrative, that Peter and the Beloved Disciple are
characters IN the story, and these characters as such do not yet
understand. But the characters in the story are not the readers
of the
story - nor its authors for that matter. Those lines, then, do
not
detract from the author of the Fourth Gospel's firm belief that he is
telling a story which fulfills Scripture, not one that somehow has to
be contrived later to 'belong' to a new canon of Christian Scripture.
All in all it's a good read and not a long one, a
mere 13 pages in
fact. To be recommended, especially before you pick up The
Solomon
Key (DB's next novel).
If you have further comment on this article, why not
go to BoscoWiki
austraLasia page and offer it there for others to read?
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