More from the German scholar:

Yesterday's blog entry was a short visit down memory lame. I visit today a related crippled memory, leaning for support on Esther Kobel's book Dining with Jesus (2011), a reworking of her doctoral thesis on John's Gospel and food, where she has this to say:

The challenge of considering all Johannine passages containing meal scenes and food issues has been met by Jefferey H. Hodges in a doctoral thesis entitled Food as Synecdoche in John's Gospel and Gnostic Texts.

Like many others who cite me, Kobel has difficulties with my name. I am actually Horace Jeffery Hodges. That seems simple enough, though I've never really liked my name. Once in a post office, I was looking to pick up a package. The postal official shuffled through a pile of packages, picked one up, and asked, "Horace?" "Unfortunately," I replied. That got a laugh.

Anyway, Kobel does a pretty competent job of summarizing my own argument on food and Jesus in my thesis, though I'd emphasize "poison," namely, the vinegar accepted by Jesus on the cross, within a context that would make it fit better with my views on symbolism as understood by the fourth evangelist. I'd also ask what is meant by crucifixion. And I'd ask some follow-up questions . . .

By the way, I referred to Ms. Kobel yesterday as a German scholar. Technically, she's Swiss-German. I think.