So what is your point? Should I discard your opinion simply because you have low opinion of the Koran? Show me where Bultmann is wrong, not whether you hold his opinions in low esteem. I quotes him using very precise and verifiable statements. Why don't you simply refute them with equal validity? Why don't you show me that chapter 5 and 6 of John's Gospel are not out of order, or that Chapter 21 is not an addition tot the last chapter?
The very first chapter of John “the Word became flesh” and in the 20th chapter John’s report of Jesus’ invitation to Thomas to touch His wounded flesh dispels any notion that John’s gospel was influenced by incipient gnosticism
No sir. Jesus became flesh so he can suffer. Wasn't that the idea for Incarnation? It is only in his body that he could become subject to passions, and death. John still maintains that flesh counts for nothing, and that only the spirit is pure. That is Gnostic. Agian, if Gnostics didn't find him appelaing they would't have used him before Christians did.
As for Thomas, I suppose God could have just given him the faith without the theatrics, don't you think so?
John wrote to assist Jewish Christian readers to continue believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. He does not need to tell the basic gospel story again; his readers, apparently, already know it. Their need was for a clearer and stronger understanding of who Jesus was. John says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”(John 20:30-31) The words translated here as “you may believe” do not have the meaning “come to believe” in the original but “go on believing.”
The temple had been destroyed and the minority of believers from Jewish backgrounds were largely ostracized by the local synagogues and may have begun to wonder if they had made the right choice in following Jesus. John’s Gospel provided them with much encouragement in the belief that Jesus is the true fulfillment of all of the central hopes and aspirations of Judaism. John was also fighting against the infiltration of incipient Gnosticism by the early Gnostic teacher Cerinthus, who taught a form docetism—the belief that Christ only “seemed” to be human. Hence, John emphasized Jesus’ full deity and His full humanity. Jewish Christians were wondering if they had believed badly. John, therefore, is using these miracles and what Jesus says about them to persuade the readers of the rightness of what he is saying. He is not writing a history or a biography of Jesus but is attempting to strengthen in his readers a particular view of Jesus and to help them decide to give up their allegiance to Judaism and to commit all to Jesus. However he does use historical and geographical information in arguing his case. John gives us more specifically historical and topographical information than the other three Evangelists combined.
Chapters 5 and 6 should be grouped together as a single section. They are connected by a common theme; the nature and causes of Israel’s lack of faith in Jesus. Chapter 5 is concerned with the form which this unbelief took among the Jews at Jerusalem, and chapter 6 with the expression of it by the peasants in Galilee. The New Testament has much to say about the refusal of the Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah and it has been the cause of bitter controversy between Jews and Christians ever since. It was very natural therefore that John should have been at pains to record in greater detail than the earlier evangelists the reasons for this great rejection, as they had found expression during the earthly life of Jesus.
Both these chapters begin with an account of a mighty work of Jesus; and in each case the evangelist is relating stories similar to those found in the earlier Gospels. Though the scene of the first miracle is Jerusalem, and that of the second Galilee, the background of both events is provided by a Jewish festival. The better-attested reading a feast in 5:1, which now has the support of the Bodmer papyrus, the reference could be to any feast; and there is no need to assume that the chapters have been dislocated, and to attempt to restore the ‘original’ order by placing chapter 6 before chapter.
The primary purpose for which chapter 21 was added may well have been to correct an error which had arisen owing to a misquotation of what Jesus had said about the survival of John till the Lord should return in glory, for it is with the quotation of Jesus’ actual words on this subject, spoken at the time when Peter was recommissioned as a shepherd of Christ’s flock, that the narrative abruptly ends. Rumor had it that the Lord had prophesied that John would be alive when He came again, and the evangelist is anxious to make it perfectly clear that Jesus had only spoken hypothetically about such a possibility. Jesus said not. . . He shall not die; but, if I will that he tarry till I come (23). But, in other ways, this section makes a most fitting appendage to the Gospel. Peter is still a sinful man; the stains of recent disloyalty are on his conscience, and the penetrating gaze of Jesus is still fresh in his memory. More than the disciples present with him in the boat he needs to be personally assured of the forgiveness made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
“Show me where Bultmann is wrong, not whether you hold his opinions in low esteem. I quotes him using very precise and verifiable statements. Why don't you simply refute them with equal validity?”
Bultmann applied a complicated theory of style—critical method to John’s supposed literary sources, and postulates a redactor, who has added some passages and phrases to bring the Gospel into line with the Synoptic tradition and ecclesiastical theology. If there were passages which differed in a marked way from the style of the main portions of the Gospel, he thought this might be some indication of the use of separate sources, or of the hand of a redactor. He arrived at these sources by an examination of stylistic phenomena and rhythmic patterns, as a result of which he claims to be able to distinguish not only the separate sources but also the redactional elements.
Most scholars (cf. his pupil Kasemann, Guthrie, Dodd), have rejected Bultmann’s style—critical method because of the general unity of the book; grammatical peculiarities are fairly evenly distributed throughout the Gospel; skepticism of the Gnostic origin of the revelation sources; the stylistic features that Bultmann used as criteria for distinguishing between his two major sources occur in both; difficulty in freeing style criticism from the Bultmann's personal bias. They believe that Bultmann’s style criticism must lead ultimately to the denial of written sources altogether.