"T.L.:D.R." DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!"

Hi, Everybody!

First off: AUCTIONS!

The Undateable Cerebus #1 sold for $107.50 Canadian ($84.82 American) So, "YAY!!"
The Un-Bedable Vark #1 also sold for $107.50 Canadian ($84.82 American).

New are:
"CEREBUS" trade paperback test STUDIOCOMIX EDITION #1/1 signed by Dave Sim
And The Life and Legend of Wallace Wood 

And these are still going strong:

CEREBUS IN HELL? original artwork - 7 strips for publication 2019

Nick Calm Agent of C.O.D.P.I.E.C.E. #1

And Teenage Mutant Ninja Cerbi #1.

(And if he posts something after I post this, look for bonecrusher86 on the eBays.)

So open your checkbooks and bid, Bid, BID!!! (Or not, I don't care what you do. But, come on. You were just gonna blow that money on something stupid like food or rent anyway...)

Anyway, From Dave Sim:

17 Feb 18

Hi Matt!  

Since you were asking about Biblical commentaries, I thought I'd send this to you.  It's part of my RIP KIRBY COMMENTARIES which hit a religious off-ramp requiring a lengthy digression (about a year or so now) into the "Song of Deborah" (Book of Judges) with the November 8, 1950 strip.  Which then dovetailed with John's Gospel, which then dovetailed with my commentaries on Gertrude Stein's THE WORLD IS ROUND and BLOOD ON THE DINING ROOM FLOOR, finally circling back to John 19. So this is, really, the 17-page punch-line.

I can't imagine anyone would be interested, but you did ask about Bible Commentaries. 

You could maybe run it a page a week on sequential Sundays.  "T.L.:D.R."
DAVE SIM (YAWN) ON JOHN 19!"

Grab a Bible and follow along!

13 Feb 18 pg.1

Since I'm the only person who believes that there were two Jesus': the Synoptic Jesus (the YHWH's Christ, Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the Johannine Jesus (God's Christ, John's Gospel), it's always interesting when I find what I infer to be confirmation of the theory x number of years after having arrived at it. 

I think that's what I'm looking at in the NEW BIBLE DICTIONARY entry for "John the apostle" (see attached):

if, as the writers at the end of the 2nd century assert, John resided long at  Ephesus and exercised such influence, it is remarkable that there should be an entire absence of any reference to John in the extant Christian literature which emanated from Asia during the first half of the century, particularly in the letters of Ignatius and the Epistle of Polycarp. 

I don't think "John resided long" at Ephesus. Or, rather, I think he did, but it was for an extended period before he was exiled to Patmos when he was -- as the record the NBD references -- completely ignored and definitely not referred to.
 

 I think he did did linger on 'til the days of Trajan" in the sense that he lived to a very ripe old age for the time (80-90 years?) but I think he was only recalled to Ephesus after having been exiled to Patmos -- exiled not by the Romans, as is traditionally believed, but by the Christians -- because he was, by the late stages of the first century, the only person who still believed in the Johannine Jesus' existence. Everyone else, I infer, had been steamrolled by the "Peter succession"  into believing exclusively in the Synoptic Jesus (the Christian schisms of the time being exclusively between "Matthew-ists", "Mark-ists" and "Luke-ists").  

 I think that John had been the only one of the apostles to adhere primarily, if not exclusively, to the Johannine Jesus, he of the handful of miracles (which, I think it must be said, were Greater Miracles than their Synoptic counterparts: foremost among them: healing a man blind from his birth and raising Lazarus from the grave after he had been dead for four days).

And, by the late decades of the first century, I infer that John's unwavering loyalty was becoming a major theological  problem for the Church because -- although there are similarities between the Synoptic gospels and John's gospel, they are few and far between and the differences pose more problematic questions than they answer. 

For the earliest post-Peter, post-Paul generation of Church leaders, exiling John to Patmos must have seemed to them the best "shortest distance between two points is a straight line" solution.  Dump the old man on a distant island and count on his eventual death as the last remaining "Johannist" to eliminate awareness that there had ever even existed a Johannine Jesus. 

I know this got run before, but I'ma starting fresh!

Next Time: 13 Feb 18 pg.2! Can you contain your excitement?