If you read the comments from the NAB in my first post and if you read the notes about this line and this chapter in John 21 of the NAB, you will see that the Church apparently disagrees with you.
The footnotes of the NAB do not speak for the Church. They are a possible interpretation, and your statement on that should be no more sweeping than his.
Plus, this appears to be the statement of someone who is attesting to the words or writings of another person, not his own. It is like the person making this statement is giving an oath that says what is written there is an accurate representation of what they were TOLD, by someone else (probably a Christian disciple named John).
Dr.John Bergsma has commented that this passage, as well as the third person narrative used throughout, was a common literary technique of the time even if the author was the one providing the narrative himself. Even if this were not the case, at best this only shows evidence of a redactor, much as if one accepts Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, Moses cannot write of his own death and so Joshua traditionally filled in the gap. Another possible explanation is that the Gospel was dictated, which was indeed the case (traditionally) with St. Paul, and is quite conceivable when you consider that St. John would have been quite old at the composition date of the Gospel.
As to what I believe in the Gospel of John, I can say that I generally see it the same way the Church does.
No. You see it as a certain wing of liberal theologians *within *the Church. This is a crucial difference.
I understand that for some people it is problematic if the Gospels were not “written” by one of the first Apostles, since that is what “tradition” teaches. But unfortunately, tradition can be wrong,
Not just tradition. The *unanimous *tradition of any ancient Christian source referring to the canonical gospels states that they were written by the traditional authors. This should theoretically have a great deal of weight for a Catholic.
and the great majority of bible scholars, including Catholic scholars,
Why would a non-Catholic scholar have any bearing on a Catholic book?
hold the position that we don’t know who the authors of the Gospels were. Raymond Brown, probably the most respected Catholic Scripture Scholar of the past 50 years says quite plainly, “the view that the evangelists were not themselves eyewitnesses of the public ministry of Jesus would be held by about 95% of contemporary bible scholars.”
Fr. Raymond Brown’s scholarship was excellent, and it is also out of date. The recent surge in Catholic scholarship has chosen to regard tradition with its proper authority. I don’t think that you are giving enough credence to the fact that historical criticism was an outgrowth of german rationalism and the fact that since protestants had severed themselves from tradition as an historical/interpretive hermeneutic, they needed to turn to other methods to study the Bible. A good deal of historical criticism deals with theoretical postulations based off of zero evidence. Q cannot be found, definitions of Q differ, the heavily favored view that Paul essentially hellenized Jewish belief has been abandoned, and there is zero evidence for a “johannine community,” etc. Entire postulations have been built around statements found by Eusebius about a “John the Elder,” when the passage itself may be ambiguous and refer to John the apostle and there may not in fact be multiple Johns. And yet this one fuzzy point has served as the basis for far-flung theories that strain desperately not to accept the tradition that John the Apostle wrote it.
Fr. Raymond Brown may have been correct when he gave the 95% figure at the time, although his lack of numbers and citations leads me to believe it is a rhetorical statement. However, this is not only no longer true, it also fails to take into account that Fr. Raymond Brown even at the time of this remark was not referring solely to Catholic scholarship, which should be a Catholic’s primary reference point. The Holy Father specifically referenced the limitations of the critical method, and it would do as well for us to take note.
So what I say is not my wild, heretical opinion, but is based on the teachings of Catholic Bishops and Catholic scholars.
Theological speculations are not part of the “teachings of the Church.” Period. There is no “magisterium of Fr. Raymond Brown.” There is no “magisterium of John Meier.” There is no “magisterium of Fr. Joseph Fitzmeyer.” This also applies to more conservative theologians and scholars such as Dr. Brant Pitre, Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. John Bergsma, Dr. Michael Barber, Sr. Edward Sri, etc. etc. There is the Church, and explanations presented by theologians, which may or may not fall into disuse or even be abandondoned due to further definition. Your opinion on the matter is valid, but in an effort to respond to the other side, you seem to have overstated the authority of your own position.
