Talmud interpretation
Can I use Logos Bible Software to determine what the Talmud said about John 1:1-18? I have tried finding some commentaries on the Talmud but nothing good. I have also tried using exegetical commentaries. I asked BARD but it gave me a Jewish interpretation of the text.
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Christian Alexander said:
what the Talmud said about John 1:1-18?
Huh? The Talmuds are commentaries (Gemara) on the Mishnah. They deal with Jewish law and are usually categorized as part of the Oral Torah, attributed to the time the 10 Commandments were given. For either Talmud to say anything about John 1:1-18 would seriously undermine its claim to authority.
Friedeman, Caleb T., ed. A Scripture Index to Rabbinic Literature. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Academic, 2021. has only 1 reference to the prologue:
What are you actually looking for/expecting to find?
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Recognizing the Talmud doesn't discuss John per se. But they both share in a 2nd Temple development of 'Wisdom' and thence 'the Word'. My favorite is Lightfoot below. And Strack/Billerbeck's recent english translation is interesting as well.
https://www.logos.com/product/30801/commentary-on-the-new-testament-from-the-talmud-and-midrash Vol 2
https://www.logos.com/product/5912/a-commentary-on-the-new-testament-from-the-talmud-and-hebraica Vol 3
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Well, this is tough. Several commentaries I read state the John's use of the word λεγω in his Gospel was a Talmud restatement. I knew the Talmud did not discuss John per se as DMB stated below. The gospel according to St. John by A Plummer and Jannaris, A. N. (1901). St John’s Gospel and the Logos. Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Älteren Kirche, 2(Jahresband), 13-25 are some of what I read. Another scholar said the Talmud contains one reference to Jesus that claims he is in boiling excrement. In this reference, Onkelos uses necromancy to raise a spirit named Yeshu and asks him about his punishment in Gehinnom. Yeshu replies that he is in "boiling excrement". Mainly, I am looking to determine what words in John's Gospel are unique to the Talmud and Midrash if possible.
Furstenberg, Yair. "The Midrash of Jesus and the Bavli's Counter-Gospel." Jewish Studies Quarterly 22, no. 4 (2015): 303-324.
Murcia, Thierry. "The Rabbinic Representation of Jesus and His Followers." In The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity, pp. 126-139. Routledge.
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Christian Alexander said:
Mainly, I am looking to determine what words in John's Gospel are unique to the Talmud and Midrash if possible.
Greek words that are unique in Hebrew texts? I think that you are asking questions above your pay grade. I don't mean to insult you, but a scholar needs to be very familiar with the literature to carry out that kind of study and it's not the kind of raw material you can expect to find handed to you on a silver platter. You would need to use a concordance tool on the rabbinic literature in Hebrew, screening out the Hebrew words present in Scripture - Hebrew, Samaritan, Dead Sea ... to identify words unique to Rabbinic literature ... then check the normal Greek glosses for those words for use in John ... I suspect that the scholars are depending upon their extensive knowledge of the literature rather applying such processes.
What you appear to be wanting is references to Jesus in the Talmud and concepts "new" to the period that appear both in the Talmud and in John's prologue. Both of these are worthy topics of academic papers ... but at a level that you no longer need to ask for sources but are truly an independent scholar discussing the topics among colleagues. This is also the level of work that scholars spend months on and ask librarians/colleagues to send copies of truly obscure journal articles and graduate theses.
The base question I quoted above would be appropriate in the Logos forums if Logos carried the rabbinic canon in Hebrew. It does not, so the question does not belong in the Logos forums. You should recognize that Logos cannot do what you want. Also, remember to keep your questions focused. The references and examples do nothing to clarify what you want - they merely share interesting information. Sharing interesting information does occur in the forums but in limited quantities and usually marked as off topic.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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MJ. You did not insult me. I want to get better with my analysis. I am sorry if my question was not focused enough. This topic is very interesting and crucial to my research. I hope to do a doctorate on it one day. This is something I have been working on since December 2023. See this post in key. https://community.logos.com/forums/t/219907.aspx I hope to keep on refining my study to make it the best analysis on the topic. I want to cover other texts in John but the prologue of John's Gospel was first on the list.
MJ. Smith said:I suspect that the scholars are depending upon their extensive knowledge of the literature rather applying such processes.
This is especially true of Boyarin, Peder Borgen and Jonathan A. Draper. In your response, you showed me where I was wrong and what I was doing. I am trying to answer just what you said above with a twist. I will post more of what I want to do with this project soon. As of now, I am reading Boyarin's Border Lines, Searching for Meaning in Midrash | Logos Bible Software and Practicing Midrash: Reading the Bible’s Arguments as an Invitation to Conversation | Logos Bible Software I do not have enough facility in Hebrew. So what should I do since Logos does not carry the rabbinic canon in Hebrew?
Here I want to look at how John takes the concept of the Logos, a flexible but widely used idea in Greco-Roman philosophy for cosmic rationality, and re-codes it with a christological meaning by immersing it in Jewish wisdom traditions. According to Boyarin, verses 1 through 5 constitute a "midrash" on the first few lines of Genesis 1, a kind of explanation of it based on a later passage in the Hebrew Bible—in this case, Proverbs 8. He contends that the remainder of the prologue describes how God's wisdom ultimately reaches its greatest manifestation in Jesus. I want to find commentaries that discuss this passage in a Jewish point of view.
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Daniel Retter's Index of the Talmud (Amazon) includes both 'word' and 'wisdom', broken out by usage. But like with Philo, each instance would need examining.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Could you post a screen shot of Retter's index in question to this search?
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