New Vision

Alexander Woolley

Description

It matters whether we believe in God or not. No one can prove that there isn't a god and no one can prove that there is. However we can find signposts. In an interesting new book, A New Vision: A Fresh Beginning, Alexander Woolley looks for them and claims to have identified them. Current Christianity is often like a Christmas tree hidden under a canopy of decorations which camouflage the truth. All sorts of improbable ideas have been developed without there being convincing evidence to support the claims made. This book throws these decorations away and finds a real tree underneath it all. This is done by looking for the source of the Fourth Gospel. The access to information about discussions and decisions in the High Priest's household and entourage is explained because the very young witness had business there, was intensely curious and addicted to running. They knew he was associating with Jesus but his charm and youth enabled him to get away with this. The witness was a constant companion of Simon Peter, but, like Peter, he was illiterate and so his vivid tales of Jesus were unknown until the theologian writer of the Gospel met the witness late on in the lives of them both. The writer was so excited by the discovery that he composed the Gospel. The two met in Ephesus, in modern Turkey, after the witness had saved the life of someone in the public baths there, and so aroused the amazement of the writer. The Gospel was the result of this encounter. Tombs to two Johns were recorded there and A New Vision suggests that these were the tombs of the two Johns responsible for the last canonical Gospel. A compelling, fascinating read for anyone interested in theology.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Theology

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 18 mai 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781800465909
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2021 Alexander Woolley

The moral right of the author has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.


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ISBN 978 1800465 909

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.


Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Dedicated to Margaret, my long-suffering wife, who has helped me, many times, to make this more intelligible. I feel I owe special thanks to Frank Macarthy (-Willis-Bund) who asked me to read lessons at evensong in Balliol College Chapel, and to Russell Meiggs who inspired individuality of thought. Russell possessed an extraordinarily wide-ranging and questioning mind of considerable power, totally unshackled by any tradition. His historical ability would have discovered flaws enough to question the truth of Christianity, had he felt this appropriate. The fact that he appeared not to do so adds a substantial counterbalance to the views of people such as Richard Dawkins.


Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction

One
Why the Fourth Gospel is the best source
Two
Comparing the Gospel accounts and considering other points of view
Three
The character of the area in the time of Jesus and how the faith we desire should have firm foundations
Four
Assessing the data and establishing authorship
Five
Establishing where one is from further comparison of the different Gospel accounts, then digging to find firmer foundations
Six
Text, some commentary and some conclusions

Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography
Notes
Last Words


Preface
Caveat Lector
There is so much information, nowadays, that it is often almost impossible for a normal span of comprehension to command the whole of a relevant picture. As a result, the information comfortably taken into account tends to be that which suits the mental set of the thinker, while that which suits less well tends to be disregarded or even rejected outright. Therefore, decisions are often made after assessing only part of the available evidence and so end up flawed. This mental bias, occasioned by the fog of facts, makes it difficult to see what really matters and place it in the right order of priority. In an age of so much uncertainty and complexity, and when this complexity is increasing at an exponential rate, we tend to look for what is stable and predictable. Sometimes we believe we see these qualities as being present when there is insufficient evidence. Then also, as we do not like having our cherished beliefs challenged, we often reject ideas that threaten those beliefs before we have assessed those ideas properly.
Secondly, the idea of trying to reach a view of God might be likened to trying to reach the top of a mountain. The mountain is in one place but we, who may aim to scale it, are all in different positions and so not only have different views of that mountain and its top but must also pursue different paths, at least initially, involving different levels of challenge, to reach its summit.
Thirdly, and connected to the previous concern, different views and ideas, which appear to contradict one another, may all be right, as was pointed out by Albert Einstein, 1 when he thought of the perceived path of a stone dropped from a train window. The train is moving in the same direction as the wind and at the same speed as the wind. To the stone-dropper, the stone would appear to be falling in a vertical line, a dot. To an observer on a bank beside the track, the stone would describe a parabolic curve. To an observer in a helicopter, hovering motionless and directly above where the stone was dropped, the stone would describe a straight line. These three quite different views conflict with each other but each is totally correct from the point of its viewer. The agreed facts are that there was a stone, that it was dropped and that it reached the ground. Agreed facts are that Jesus lived and taught in Palestine, he died there, crucified, while his name, philosophy and teaching live on after him.
What is written here may seem, and actually be, totally wrong for some readers, according to their particular experience and understanding, but may be more readily acceptable and even conceivably helpful to others whose experience and understanding are different. But it should always be borne in mind that someone who produces ideas may have some useful ones even when that person is relatively unlettered and without powerful academic abilities. That some things seem trite or wrong does not mean that everything is so: there might be a nugget hidden away for someone to stumble upon.

Alexander Woolley
Bembridge, 2020


Acknowledgements
I start with a personal confession: I know far fewer books and authors than any real biblical scholar, while I know many of the books that I do have better by their spines than by their contents. I owe much to William Barclay, especially the two volume 1975 edition of his Daily Study Bible commentary on the Gospel of John, to which the debt is enormous. I am indebted to The Unauthorised Version: truth and fiction in the Bible by Robin Lane Fox, E.P. Sanders’ The Historical Figure of Jesus , the second edition of John Ashton’s Understanding the Fourth Gospel , and Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses and The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple . The RSV Interlinear Greek English New Testament (Nestle Greek text with literal translation by Alfred Marshall) was a vital aid. John Marsh’s commentary, The Gospel of St. John, helped, while John A.T. Robinson added other ways of looking at the problems in his Redating the New Testament . Géza Vermès also provoked different methods of facing problems. My brother, the Revd Canon Francis Woolley gave me valuable books, including some of the above, as well as Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible . Professor Henry Mayr-Harting suggested The Oxford Companion to the Year as a help with dates. My sister, Margaret Alice Stewart-Liberty, gave me The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and other extremely useful publications. These titles, and others I have consulted in preparing this monograph, will be found in the Bibliography.
I owe a special debt and would like to express my great gratitude to Gareth Vaughan who has been kind enough to edit and proofread this work. I should like to thank my brother Edward, also, whose patient care helped eliminate errors and improve the text.
However, in spite of the paucity of my reading and knowledge, this one point is worth consideration: just as to be a Christian needs no special training, knowledge or innate abilities, to be a useful commentator on Christian studies needs only a logically valid, useful and true point of view that has not yet been made available by others, however little information there be behind that point of view, so long as the criteria of validity, utility and signpost to truth be met.


Introduction
Mark’s Gospel, written in Greek, as were all the other books of the New Testament, states in 1:15 that John the Baptist declared everyone should ‘repent’. The Greek word which Mark’s writer used was metanoeite (μετανοεȋτε), where the first element (meta-) means ‘change’. We might be nearer to what was actually meant by ‘repent’ if we imagine he was telling people to think again, change their minds and readjust their ways of looking for God. Then they were to redirect their behaviour and begin their lives afresh. They were being asked to change their opinions, their ways of thinking, and their conduct. This is an exposition of what the author’s ideas have now become. It is a new vision, a new way of looking at the Gospels.
At a school in Ruyton-xi-Towns, Shropshire, the author heard the story of Balaam and his ass (Numbers 22-24), where Balaam thought God was in agreement with what he wanted to do. God was not, as Balaam was to find out in terrifying fashion, and rather painfully, when his ass crushed his leg against a wall. Balaam, who was not an Israelite, had a reputation for having a devastatingly powerful curse. Balak, king of the Moabites, confronted by invading Israeli forces, had just seen how easily they had overcome the Amorites. He urgently needed Balaam to curse the Israelites, so he offered a powerful inducement for him to do so. After initial information from his God, telling him not to curse the Israelite forces, an even greater offer from Balak persuaded Balaam that God was no longer against his going to curse the Israelite army. So he went, but was stopped, while he was on his way to curse the Israelites, by an angel with drawn sword, blocking his further advance. He had ‘misheard’ God and h