Jesus’ Teachings about the Father. Reconstruction of early Christian teaching based on a comparative analysis of the oldest gospels

John, chapter 1. Prologue John 1,1—18

For many years, serving on Easter and reading the “Prologue” of the Gospel of John during the Easter Mass (the first 18 verses of the first chapter), I felt a sense of reverence and admiration for the greatest wisdom of mankind, enclosed in 18 lines (John 1.18) … And, having never understood anything from it, not a word at all, I hoped that someday I would grow to accommodate and comprehend this wisdom.

Be afraid of your desires, they can come true.

As part of our investigation into the origin of the Gospel texts, let us proceed to chapter 1 of ev. John.

It is important to understand that – and this is acknowledged by all biblical scholars – the Prologue is not part of Gospel from John, but only precedes him – the gospel itself begins with the 19th verse.

That is, verses 1 to 18 are not what Jesus said and taught, are not his teachings and the Good News or a story about him and his gospel – but represent a certain philosophical doctrine of God, worked out among the disciples and followers, presumably, John the Evangelist circle. It is their collective idea of the God whom Jesus preached, and of Himself as the Son of this God.

And what are these ideas? Unfortunately, here we meet as many as three levels or heaps of Jewish, Gnostic and finally Hellenic wisdom.

Let’s analyze.

Chapter 1, verses 1—2: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 It was in the beginning with God.”

At the beginning of what? God is without beginning. This means that His Word is without beginning. Here, obviously, the beginning means the biblical creation of the world: “1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the water” – what was before, and what God was BEFORE the act of creation, the Bible is silent about it, but in the act of creation this god is Ellohim, (Gods). The plural for word “God” (El) – what does it mean? Apparently, the pagan “Pantheon” of gods, which the Jewish Bible (this is the official scientific name of Old Testament) and earlier sources mention time and again. And in John 1.1, what God is this? In the Greek original, Θεός, that is, just God, but in Hebrew this “just God” Θεός = אֱלֹהִים, that is, all the same Ellohim (Gods)! There is clearly a return to the biblical version of the Creation.

Therefore, it is about the same Jewish gods again: either Ellohim (Gods) from the first chapter of the book of Genesis, or Yahweh from the second chapter.

Simply put, the penetration of Judaism elements is detected – first, but not at all last. Whoever was the author of this verse of the prologue, he is a Jew by faith, this is obvious.

Next begins the manipulation of the concept of Word. If God Himself is the Word, then how can He have the Word – he has Himself or what?

We find the answer in William Barclay’s work, he is professor of theology at the University of Glasgow. From his book Commentaries on John: “For over a hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Hebrew language was forgotten. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but the Jews, with the exception of scholars, no longer knew it. Therefore, the Old Testament had to be translated into Aramaic so that people could understand it. These translations were called ‘Targumi’. Targumi were created in an era when people were filled with the thought of the transcendence of God and could only think that God was very distant and completely incomprehensible (the idea of the transcendence of the mono-God was borrowed by post-captive Judaism from Zoroastrianism during the Babylonian Captivity of the Jewish people – auth.) And therefore, the people who were engaged in the preparation of Targumi were afraid that human thoughts, feelings and actions would be attributed to God. In other words, they made every effort to avoid, when it comes to God, Yahvist anthropomorphism (humanization).”

That is why the authors of the targums began to replace the “too human-like” God everywhere in the text of the Tanakh with the WORD of God, as His creative power. Which turned out to be very consonant with the idea of the divine Logos (Word), which created the world and governs it, which was prevalent in Greek-speaking philosophy for over four hundred years, starting with Heraclitus. And although the Jews themselves by the time when Jesus lived had long abandoned both the Targums, returning to Hebrew, and from God’s Word, as from a heresy that was planted in Judaism by Philo of Alexandria, this very idea turned out to be very useful for the evangelist, who sought to substantiate the Divinity of Jesus for recently pagan Christians: “You have thought, written and dreamed for centuries about the divine Logos. Jesus is this Logos who descended to the earth”, ” The Word became flesh”, – the author of the Prologue told about Jesus to the former Greek-pagans Hellenic-Christians what they understood.

All this wisdom is a mixture of Jewish religious and Hellenic philosophical ideas in the name of the Teachings of Jesus “to pass more easily” so that new converts do not choke on what is “for the Jews it is a temptation, for the Hellenes it is madness.” This is the usual propaganda of religious innovation.

Let’s read on.

3—5 “Everything through Him began to be, and without Him nothing began to be that began to be. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” This is philosophical poetry, on which hundreds of books have been written. But God is still the same – Jewish one.

“6 There was a man sent from God; his name is John. 7 He came for a testimony, to testify of the Light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not a light, but was sent to testify of the Light. 9 There was a true light that enlightens every person who comes into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own did not accept him. 12 But to those who accepted him, believing in his name, he gave authority to be children of God, 13 who neither of blood, nor of the desire of the flesh, nor of the desire of a husband, but of God they were born. 14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have seen His glory, the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father”

From which God? All the same, from the Jewish Yahweh, (in Judaism of Jesus’ times the difference sin interpretations was already explained by the fact that the God in the Bible is the same, only the names are different). And here suddenly the Light appears, which is: true – in what sense? Light is matter, now we know this, but the evangelist did not. And therefore he gets confused in the matter: he speaks of light sometimes as the actual light, sometimes – light in a figurative sense, and the light is starting to assume the mystical meaning of divine origins. If we mean the “light of reason”, then those who come into the world will not reach the reason to soon, and it is mainly those around them that enlighten them. Let us recall the “Mowgli” found in India – it remained a beast, since the “light of reason” did not touch him outside of human society, in the absence of human communication. If, however, Light is the Creative Power of God (“the world began to be through Him”), then there are already two Creative Powers, and even three, or even four: besides the Word and Light, there is also Spirit and Wisdom mentioned elsewhere. But the key to this is simple – all this is a reference to the secret knowledge of the Gnostic doctrine. That is, in addition to the religious Jew and the Hellenic philosopher, the Gnostic also had a hand in the Prologue. Then “he came to his own and his own did not accept him” – a return to Judaism, his own – these are God’s chosen Jews, who else? “And to those who accepted” – here is the beginning of the “theology of replacement” developed and preached by Paul: the Jews killed the Messiah in the person of Jesus, and therefore Jehovah’s Choice passed to those who believed that Jesus is the very Messiah, the Anointed One, the King Jewish.

“He gave the power to be children of God, who… were born of God” – and only here is the speech of Jesus about the Beginning from Above, about the Son of God of all who believed in the Heavenly Father and His Son of God Jesus Christ (the good). And then – again a rollback to Judaism-Hellenism-Gnosticism in verse 14. “The only begotten of the Father” – what is that? These are religious and philosophical disputes that lasted until the 4th century of the “only begotten or consubstantial” type, and have not been completely resolved to this day. In the Greek text, μονογενής is the only begotten, the only one. That is, the old pompous word confuses and hides the true meaning: the only son of his father, He is the only son of the Father, born by the Father Himself, nothing unusual. Here is just one question: how would a mortal person who wrote the Prologue know about the family circumstances of God Himself? Moreover, to dare to tell these God’s family details in a completely earthly way, describing the relationship between fathers and children? From this point of view, such statements look like unscientific fantasy: why would God reveal his family secrets to mere mortals? Thus, it turns out that from the Teachings of Jesus here there is only, for the first time, the definition of God: not just an impersonal collective name for the Jewish names of God, but by the name revealed to us by Jesus. It is this line that most vividly indicates the late editing of the text dating back to the beginning of the theological battles waged by the “Orthodox” with the “Gnostics” from the second century.

Let’s proceed.

“15 John testifies of Him, and, exclaiming, says: This was the One about whom I said that He who followed me stood in front of me, because he was before me.”

Where did he say, to whom did he say and when? —Well, in the following story about the visit of John by the Pharisees. The author of the Prologue reveals himself: he first read the Gospel of John, and then wrote the prologue to it. That is, he put the cart in front of the horse.

“16 And from His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace,” – of whose fullness, Jesus fullness? What is meant by fullness? In the church teaching there is the concept of the Fullness of the Holy Spirit, which the Church possesses, But “grace upon grace” draws more attention. That is, it turns out, you can add a little more Spirit to the Spirit of God, strengthen God, multiply Him, increase Him? Since God is the Spirit, then either he is present in all his Fullness or not at all, the Spirit is not divided into parts. But, in any case, this is the subject of theological controversy much later than the supposed time of the writing of the gospel at the end of the first century.

“17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ "– ah!, that’s the point: after all, some implicit, but certainly saving part of grace, it turns out, was contained in the Jewish Law given by Moses, and Jesus added to it his grace-truth, and then the graceful grace happened: the Old Testament merged with the New one. On this basis, today an idea is being carried out and a new, revolutionary idea is being put forward about the equal salvation capability of the New and Old Testaments: for Christians, Salvation is in Jesus, and for the Jews – in the Torah..

To the obvious absurdity of this multi-storey religious structure, it remains – for “fullness” – to add that, according to modern scientific views, biblical heroes, including the above-mentioned Moses and the Jewish ancestral god Yahweh-Jehovah himself, are fictional heroes, and the entire biblical history of the Jewish people – a collection of folk tales and, of course, a fantasy. As for “through Jesus Christ,” the very attachment: Christ = Mashiach = King of the Jews, which is expected by the Jews according to the biblical OT-prophecies, to the Name of Jesus, reveals that the author of the Prologue a Messianic Jew.

“18 No one has seen God at any time; The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has revealed "– and how can this true statement be combined with all the previous? And how can this be Jehovah, whom so many had seen already: Adam and Eve, Abraham with Sarah, and Moses (from behind) and even Elijah the prophet, and who appeared to many biblical characters from behind, from the front, or even sideways, and even in the form of pillars and other horror stories, and more than once arranged personal beatings with or without reason. And again, editorial interference in the text: “the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father”– all this, I dare to insist, is a reflection of much later theological disputes that theologically, have never been completely resolved. And the victors, the “Orthodox” (church orthodox) prevailed only exclusively by “police” measures – as always. “I am the Father in the bosom” is lost in translation, hinting both at Jehovah and at the “pregnancy” of God with his Son. But in fact ὁ κόλπος πατήρ literally means “the one who is on the father’s chest”, that is, simply “beloved.” “He revealed”: ἐκεῖνος – he who; ἐξηγέομαι – to tell, show. So, in sum: “No one has ever seen God; the only beloved son told about Him”.

Whoever the author of the Prologue was, he was definitely not a disciple of Jesus.

John Chapter 1, continued

Well, let us pass, however, to ev. John from verse 19, what do we see? Priests and Pharisees came to John from Jerusalem to find out who he is. So what? He announced to them that he was not Christ (Messiah-Messiah-Anointed-King of the Jews), neither Elijah, nor a prophet – but who are you? Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness: Correct God’s Ways – Like Isaiah the Prophet[37]said. About Isaiah and his sophisticated prophecies suddenly recalls the one who appeared from the wilderness, where he was, according to Luke, from infancy (Luke 1.80: “80 But the baby grew and became strong in spirit, and was in the deserts until the day of his appearance to Israel” – this is all about him), overgrown with wild hair and never washed in life, a prophet, a savage, illiterate.

Does God need to clear the road?

And then – a question to him from the sent priests and Pharisees: why do you baptize?

From the point of view of the Jews, the question is meaningless and insane – what kind of baptism by washing with water from a river “for the remission of sins”? Sin is forgiven only by a bloody life-for-life sacrifice and nothing else. If they were sent to John, it was only for the purpose of arrest, trial and execution for blasphemy: “who can forgive sins, except God?”

Further, John elaborates before the Pharisees about “going in front” to baptize with the Spirit – who would listen to him. But the most interesting is yet to come. “28 This took place at Bethabar near Jordan, where John baptized” – in the ancient codes it is written in Bethany [38], and later converted to “Bethavar”, that is, “river crossing or ferry” – let’s remember this. Bethany is located three kilometers from Jerusalem, and thirty to fifty kilometers from Jordan, so John could hardly baptize “in Jordan” in Bethany, and therefore pious editors in later lists transported the obviously impossible Bethany to some faceless “ferry” (through Jordan, of course), which must have been on the Jewish side somewhere opposite Jerusalem, in the Jericho area – in general, no matter, geography is not a master’s science, and the authors of the Gospel are clearly at odds with it. This is followed by a whole speech, addressed to an unknown person, very pathetic: when the Jewish inspectors left, literally the next day, John suddenly sees Jesus (walking towards him) and speaks about Him to someone undefined,: “Behold the Lamb of God.”

“29 The next day John saw Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God who takes on himself the sin of the world.

29 – firstly, he sees Jesus coming to him and immediately recognizes in Him the one who was predicted to him – but how? Second, in what sense is he the lamb that takes away the sins of the world? Only in one way: the lamb was slaughtered and burned in the Jewish ritual sacrifice “for the atonement of sins”, and it turns out that Jesus was by his Father-God intended “for the atonement of sins” as a sacrifice to Himself? Whatever Heavenly Father, sounds like Ivan the Terrible, killing his own son. And thirdly, it is strange to hear about the Jewish sacrifice from exactly the man who himself canceled this sacrifice, replacing it with penitential washing “for the remission of sins.”