14 Feb 18 pg. 3
And the disciples are clearly used to
this. Although "used to this"
probably exaggerates their actual level of acceptance. There is no way that one
man lying on the breast of another man at supper isn't going to look
weird. You can try to persuade me otherwise, but it's going to be a "no
go". Even just trying to picture
it, it's too weird. Even knowing that they were probably all reclining on the
ground because that was how you ate supper in the context of the time period,
one of them lying on top of the other is just a bridge too far when it comes to
mental images.
But, I think it was supposed to be. As I say, I think God designed John that way
so that his response to the Johannine Jesus was as that of a lamb for a
shepherd. Just old enough and lucid enough to know that "this guy
represents safety". If you're God
there's no reason to incarnate a visual metaphor by half -- especially when You
know that the full weight of the non-Synoptic, monotheistic future is resting
solely on the shoulders of the individual in question.
Peter could have asked the Johannine Jesus
himself who was about to "give beside him". The fact that he prompts
John to do so, I suggest, indicates that the Johannine Jesus was more likely to
be forthcoming with John than he would have been with anyone else. And that Peter and all of the disciples knew
that. Which, I don't think endeared John to them. Exactly the opposite. I suspect it was one of
the major reasons, I'd suggest, that they all gravitated to the Synoptic Jesus
instead. The relationship of Jesus and John was off-putting.
Of course, it's possible that it was only
at the Last Supper that John was lying "thus upon the breast" of Jesus. It was a metaphysically unique historical
event and, I infer, metaphysically unique events in proximity and in relation
to it would have been neither unexpected nor unknown. Jesus washing the feet of the disciples
certainly had a "shock of the new" about it. But there's something
about the character of the description that suggests otherwise: that there was
nothing surprising about John's recumbent posture and disposition.
Which is one of the reasons that I suggest
John was simple. Any other man in that situation would have to be thinking,
"How does this look? What will people think?" It
16 Feb 18 pg.1 cont'd from 14 Feb 18 pg.3
would require, I think, a completely simple
psychological profile to effect with the kind of equanimity the passage
conveys.
And I don't think John changed over the
years. As another passage in his NBD listing puts it:
Jerome also repeats the tradition that John
tarried at Ephesus to extreme old age, and records that, when John had to be
carried to the Christian meetings, he used to repeat again and again,
"Little children, love one another."
Although I think the implication
we're supposed to take from this description is that this was a result of
senility, I would suggest that it was, rather, John's life-long simplicity expressing
itself. He was brought back from Patmos,
I infer, because the full weight of the Revelation and the impact it had had
upon the "seven ecclesias" made the idea of his exile theologically
abhorrent (if not theologically terrifying)...
[John's is a very distinctive narrative
voice, sharply aligned with the Johannine Jesus' syntax and phraseology, that,
I assume, only manifested itself in his Gospel, Revelation and the one formal
Epistle (1.John) and two personal letters (2.John; 3.John) of his in the
Christian canon. Unlike the Synoptic
Gospels, I find the Interlinear word-for-word English translations of John more
specific and understandable than the KJV. When you're God, I infer, it's no
great problem to write Koine Greek in such a way that it translates directly
into English (and all other languages, I'm guessing) (the Synoptic Gospels and
Paul's Epistles, not so much) with no modification necessary. John, to my eyes, appears to contort several
of the Johannine Jesus' messages in the latter three instances but not
unduly. And, most importantly to me,
John always calls God by the Name God]
[This is relevant, I think, to the current
subject insofar as it suggests to me that John was a binary figure, entirely
simplistic in conversation, presentation and perception, but lucidly and
specifically eloquent in his role as the Johannine Jesus' biographer
(documenting only the Johannine Jesus' ministry and, there, restricting himself
to a thorough recounting at considerable length of a handful of miracles) and
as the Johannine Jesus' amanuensis -- "thus upon the breast"
apparently serving to engrave each word of the Last Supper in John's mind
-- and as God's conduit for Revelation.]
…and, here he was, back where he started:
irritating everyone in the late first century Ephesian Church as he had his
Christian contemporaries in mid-first century Jerusalem with his reiterative
simplicity ("Little children, love one another").
