David Trobisch on the Identification of John Through the 'Editorial Concept' of the New Testament

I have told my readers how much I love David Trobisch's observations in the Final Edition of the New Testament. Apparently I am not the only one who loves Trobisch. Aside from being a favorite of virtually every scholar I have ever respected, I happened to notice that Trobisch even gets an endorsement from Anne Rice, author of the Interview With a Vampire and related texts(!).

In any event, I have been doing detailed citations from Trobisch's work for the last few days. There is a selfish motivation for all of this of course. I am commonly accused of having some 'radical' ideas about an Alexandrian tradition based solely on the authority of a Mark who was also called John. I see this concept reflected in Clement's Letter to Theodore (at least with regards to a figure named Mark who is traditionally understood by Alexandrians to have also been called 'John').

Nevertheless I think because there are so many people who have never read Trobisch's work before, or perhaps there are so many people who might have read SOME of Trobisch's stuff and are unable to see the IMPLICATIONS of that work, I thought it might be useful to stop talking about ME and MY THEORIES for a while and spend some time talking about someone else's ideas which are far less controversial than my own.

Let me say again that like all great thinkers and writers, Trobisch lays out a series of observations which are irrefutable. As with all good scientific research, Trobisch's methodology CLEARLY DISTINGUISHES between the evidence and his conclusions. You can read the Final Edition and walk away disagreeing with SOME of Trobisch's inferences or indeed argue that Trobisch hasn't gone far enough or hasn't realized the full implications of his own research.

That is what I try and do with all of my research. I want to go beyond Trobisch while at the same time admitting that Trobisch's work is far superior to my own.

I happen to spend a great deal of time on David's work in the Real Messiah but strangely enough, I had never even read Trobisch when I had completed my first book, Against Polycarp when I was twenty three years old. I was already friends with Bob Price and he told me, "there's this scholar you have to read ..." and it was nothing short of revelation ever since BECAUSE we represent two different methodologies - one sound (Trobisch) and the other wholly inspirational (myself) - arriving at exactly the same fundamental conclusion (all the other difference are unimportant - at least to me).

So let's move on to the final stage in our examination of Trobisch's work - the specific APPLICATION of the 'editorial concept' of the New Testament canon as he sees it.

As we noted earlier, Trobisch sees the final editor of the New Testament canon as DELIBERATELY assembling a collection of writings for the purpose of providing a framework toward identifying all the principle figures of the Church as 'working together' for the establishment of orthodoxy. Most people would acknowledge the 'working together' as a 'historical fact.' Trobisch says it is impossible for us to ascertain whether or not this is true. One might argue that this editorial effort was developed AGAINST a pre-existent Marcionite understanding of a basic split in the Church at its very beginnings.

Of course, I think that the Marcionite view is the correct one. As a Jew I know that you can't get ten of us in a room without hearing ten different opinions or interpretations! (lol) But seriously, the only way the Letter to the Galatians makes any sense is if it was originally witnessing a fundamental disagreement which later became glossed over by subsequent editorial manipulations of the original (Marcionite) text.

It is interesting to note that entirely independent of Trobisch Theodore Weeden (another genius) sees a split between Mark and the Jerusalem community. I needn't recycle my view that the anti-Marcionite writings of Tertullian, Adamantius and Ephrem provide clues for the idea that 'Paul' was a title which the original Apostle Mark assumed after his transformational experience. Indeed there is no better clue than the one provided by Eznik when he says that 'Marcion' himself had the vision ascribed by our canon to 'Paul.'

It is not at all difficult to get from 'Marcion' to Mark if you have a basic familiarity with Jewish Aramaic. Of course most New Testament scholars can only work out linguistic arguments from Greek so the question of whether 'Marcion' developed from Marcus 'remains an open question' (!).

In any event, there is an ancient tradition as old as the canonical Acts of the Apostles that Mark was also called John (or indeed that John's other name was Mark). The Copts to this day say that Mark was the apostle's Gentile name and John his Jewish name. Not only do we see countless examples of important Jews in the Common Era and earlier holding two names, modern Samaritans continue this practice (my friend Benyamim Tsedaka also has an Arabic alias - Amin).

While scholars struggle to make sense of whether John Mark was St. Mark or St. John or some other John, Trobisch's work provides us with an explanation for why they can't seem to get out of these woods. The canon was deliberately arranged so as to identify 'Mark' and 'John' as two separate individuals.

Trobisch begins with the Gospel of Mark and says that the only clue that a reader of the New Testament would stumble across the second text in his canon and see a heading splashed across the top of the page - 'according to Mark.' As Trobisch notes:

Reading the title of the Second Gospel, readers may ask, 'Who is Mark?' In order to find an answer, they will have to consult other writings.[p. 47]

As Trobisch goes on to demonstrate the additional writings of the canon - not shared by the Marcionite collection - would readers to the conclusion that Mark was the son of Peter, a wholly subordinate figure in the early history of Christianity.

At the same time, Trobisch notes that far more significance would be attributed to 'John' who after all wrote a mysterious text which closes the collection of four gospels. As Trobisch writes:

The naming of authors in the titles of specific writings in another editorial feature that illuminates the editorial concept. From the readers' perspective these famous names seem to guarantee the reliability of the Canonical Edition. As far as the macrostructure is concerned, the authoritative names are part of a carefully woven web holding together the disparate parts of the New Testament. And seen from the perspective of the traditional material, the Fourth Gospel clearly did not intend to disclose the name of the 'beloved disciple.' The final editors, however, presented it as the work of John. All three perspectives therefore display a strong editorial interest in conveying the names of the prominent authors to the readers.[p. 46]

So Trobisch later goes on to tackle the same inquiry he developed for the Second Gospel namely:

Reading the title of the Fourth Gospel (i.e. 'according to John'), again the reader may ask, "Who is John?" The name John is mentioned twenty times in this Gospel, sixteen times in reference to John the Baptist and four times in reference to John, the father of Peter. Neither one can be regarded as the author, because the death of John the Baptist is reported in the text (10:40-41) and because Peter's father would be a very unlikely candidate to write the Gospel.

The last chapter expressly addresses the authorship, however, without giving a name. The 'disciple who is testifying these things' (Jn 21:24) is identified as the disciple 'who Jesus loved' and who 'was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, 'Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?' (Jn 21:20).

On the one hand, the readers are told by an unidentified voice that the beloved disciple wrote the Gospel and that it is now - maybe for the first time - presented to the public. (See the next chapter for a more detailed treatment of John). Both the title and the final remarks refer to the authorship. They enclose the book like brackets. From the reader's point of view the title does not necessarily have to be formulated by the author. On the contrary, the readers may readily accept the publisher's comments at the end as an explanation for the strange wording 'According to John' in the title. They indicate that John is not the author of this book in its present form but that John's original manuscript was edited for publication by someone else. From the reader's perspective editorial activity is not problematic. [p. 52]

Of course what isn't problematic for the naive believer is in fact a difficulty for those who want to critically examine the text. How are we to know what original text lays behind the editor's manipulation of the current material? Trobisch of course avoids delving into these controversial issues but sticks with demonstrating HOW WE WERE INTENDED TO IDENTIFY JOHN based on the 'editorial concept' of the canon. He concludes:

there is a way the reader can corroborate the suggestion of the publishers that John the son of Zebedee is the beloved disciple. All the reader will have to do is consult the other three Gospels. The preceding synoptic Gospels inform the reader that Jesus occasionally chose to confide in only three of the twelve disciples; these were Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, John and James (Mt 17:1 par.; 26:37 par; Mk 5:37). If the readers suspect the beloved disciple to be one of these three preferred disciples, they should be able to conclude with confidence that the beloved disciple is identical with John, the son of Zebedee. Peter is eliminated as the possible author of the Fourth Gospel since he is mentioned next to the beloved disciple in the final chapter and in the scene depicting the Last Supper, to which readers are referred. James can be excluded from further consideration because according to Acts 12:2 the Zebedee James died early, before the first missionary trip of Paul; Jn 21, however, presupposes that the beloved disciple outlived all other disciples. One way readers may identify the author of the Fourth Gospel, therefore, is to eliminate two names from the circle of three disciples who were especially close to Jesus [p. 53]

Of course many of my readers will say to me now that Trobisch is just restating the obvious. But what they don't understand (because they haven't read the book likely) is that Trobisch's restating of the obvious is ultimately developed to demonstrate how nothing in the canon is accidental. There is a deliberate effort on the part of the final editor to frame a particular understanding of 'the truth' which ultimately raises serious questions for anyone who just wants to take information from the canon as 'historical facts.'

It wasn't as if pristine original texts were just collected and dumped into the canon the way the final editor found them. At each step along the way, the final editor can be seen reshaping and manipulating evidence to fit a particular vision of the ancient Church. He wants above all else to LIMIT speculation and to END competing interpretations of who Mark or John is as much as he is 'preserving an original understanding.'

Of course the question Trobisch never answers is who the final editor was. I know from subsequent investigations that he has tried to see if Polycarp might have been this figure, but this simply will not work. Polycarp was the author of the original Gospel of John which I would argue resembled the Diatessaron.

In any event any inquiry into the question of who the final editor was can only lead to one conclusion - he was the historical author of the Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge False So-Called - i.e. the Church Father commonly idenified as 'Irenaeus' (although I am not at all sure this was his actual name). In my conversations with Trobisch he acknowledges that Irenaeus is the only other likely candidate once Polycarp is eliminated.

In my next post, I will begin my demonstration of why Irenaeus' writings provide AN EXACT PARALLEL for what Trobisch theorizes happened in the late second century from the surviving manuscript evidence of the New Testament canons. Hope you can all wait until then! This is very exciting stuff, in my mind. It is the opening which proves that the Marcionite understanding IS THE ONLY HOPE for a pristine tradition (and even then you never know) ...