Boid on the word and title שילה in John I: 11. Slight improvement.

I have worked out how to get rid of the weak spot in my argument. I said originally that leaving the prepositional prefix out and just writing שילה would be a bit unnatural even in poetic style. If the word-order is changed it becomes natural. Aside from which, the two halves of the sentence balance each other better. I propose שילה בא ושלה לא קבלוהו.

This would at first sight mean “Shiloh came, and the shin-lamed he party didn’t receive him”. [Meaning those that altered the text of Scripture for their own purposes, in this instance so as to deny the concept of a second and greater Moses and deleting the letter yod in the word Shiloh so it would have a value ten less than the name of Moses, making it refer to Joshua. We know people were aware that this kind of change was being done. See the clear statements about Dositheos’s altered text of the Torah in A.F. and in Photius and elsewhere. We know there were Christian Dositheans that didn’t approve of this, even if the motive was good. See II Corinthians IV: 1-3]. Then the verse would be seen to say “He came to what was his, and those that were his [but misguided] didn’t receive him”. The absence of the prepositional prefix is now entirely normal for poetic usage. The name Shiloh could be expected to be instantly understood, and this would make sure the reader then knew how to pronounce and interpret the word spelt shin-lamed-he. The concept expressed here is expressed in different words in verse 4 of the same chapter of II Corinthians. The reason for the fact of the prevalent theological insensitivity mentioned here in John is cleverly and convincingly explained in II Corinthians III: 7-18, using a proof from the Torah itself. It is the fact of the incapacity of the people to bear even the reflection of the light of revelation that brings about the need for a greater Moses with the power to drag the people up to his level, to make them little Christs; but this same very fact of their weakness of perception must logically make it hard for them to see the greater Moses and the greater manifestation of the heavenly Torah. In verse 4 of ch. IV it says the God of this World has stopped the light from shining on them. Quite so. They’re only aware of God as the God of this World, the figure on the throne on the sapphire pavement seen by the Elders of Israel, then later by Ezekiel and in a different way by Isaiah. They think there is nothing higher. Have a look at the Greek and Syriac of II Corinthians IV: 4. What is actually said there is that the God of this World stops the light from reaching them. It is what they make themselves out of their ignorance that then keeps them ignorant. They create Ialdabaoth out of what in Exodus is the name given to the figure on the throne, the God of Israel. Then it takes on energy and deceives them out of its own ignorance, which is actually their own ignorance coming back to them with demonic power. Ialdabaoth lies. (This insight was misinterpreted by the Gnostics as a real distinction between the identity of the God of Israel and the higher God). Verse 4 of ch. IV of II Corinthians explains the meaning of the word “light” in the first chapter of John.

Reading verse 11 in John ch. I the second way, with shin-yod-lamed-he meaning “the one whose it is”, would be natural, and the reader wouldn’t need any help, because everyone took this to be the literal meaning of the title Shiloh. It would then be natural to read shin-lamed-he as meaning “what is his”. A translator into Aramaic or Greek would have to choose between keeping the name Shiloh or keeping the balance of the sentence. If the translator was hostile to the concept, or perhaps simply didn’t understand it, or perhaps made the only choice that would yield a translation that would make sense without a linguistic and exegetical commentary, then the choice would be the second one.

I think John I: 11 is a coded sentence announcing the purpose of the new edition of John’s Gospel, that is, to correct prevalent error, as Stephan has suggested. Such a chapter would naturally be composed in Hebrew, even if the rest of the Gospel were in Aramaic. I think the whole chapter to be a manifesto. I think the word “light” in this chapter of John is a theological technical term drawing attention to a core doctrine that has to be made prominent again, and I think the implications of this term are set out in this section of II Corinthians, and summed up in v. 6 of ch. IV and in a different way in v. 11. (Stephan has seen part of the implication of v. 11). In fact, I think John I to be the manifesto prefacing the republishing in clearer form of an accurate (though incomplete) Gospel and the passage in II Corinthians to be the re-wording of the manifesto in the form of an argument.

We now see why Jesus is not given the title Judah in the Gospels: he is given the more meaningful title of Shiloh. We can also see that an ancient tradition lies behind the Church’s traditional understanding of the title Shiloh in Genesis.