From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Fri Apr 17 1998 - 09:16:28 EDT
George Athas wrote:
>
> In addition to Carl's comments, John's gospel uses time, especially the
> idea of 'days', in a very contrived way. I do not think you can take
> John's chronology at face value.
This is a most intriguing comment... I have suspected, but not
understood, [I still don't understand], that time values in John are
there for a reason, and that the reason does not seem to be historical
accuracy, which concurs with you comment that chronology in John is
'contrived', meaning purposive. Even the insertions of 'the hour was
...' are baffling to me so far, and yet they do exist in the text, as
well as 'days'.
So my question is: What is the purpose of John's time usage, if it is
contrived? In this passage, why would the text tell us that Jesus
remains [a very loaded word itself] where He was for two days? Is the
two days itself a contrivance? To what purpose?
And as I read my own question, George, I am seeing that it is not a
b-greek question, so let me re-phrase it. How do you get the idea of
'contrivance' connected to the idea of 'days' from John's text? Are
the two days herein mentioned then not necessarily two days as we
think of them?
I guess my question originally was too narrow ~ The real question is,
How does time work in John? [not just in this passage] And it is too
big a question!! So I ask it not expecting much in the way of
grammatical response, yet not without hope either! :-)
George [the 'other' one]
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