The Gospel of John

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The Gospel of John first lecture

• The highest Christology

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Low Christology/ High Christology

• Christology the theological understanding of
  the Christ what Messiahship means.
• Low Christology a Christology from below
  based on the understanding of the historical
  Jesus earliest followers.
• Titles messiah, rabbi, prophet, son of man,
  lord, son of God (the latter two without
  theological definition).
• Characteristics of Jesus a charismatic teacher,
  healer, worker of miracles, messiah, raised from
  death by God.
• Low Christology is characteristic of the
  Synoptic tradition.
• Matthew and Luke add a divine origin to Jesus
  birth son of God from his conception his
  virginal conception -- (but still without
  theological definition).
• High Christology a Christology from above
  based on visions, personal revelations, less (or
  not at all) on historical testimony.
• Titles Savior, Lord, Son of God, Word of God,
  Lamb of God, Equal to the Father, and finally,
  God.
• Characteristics divine figure in human form
  (incarnate or enfleshed God), absolute knowledge
  of others, power over life and death.
• High Christology is characteristic of Paul and
  of Gospel of John.

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The Fourth Gospel

• A very different Jesus from the Synoptic gospels.
  
• Written in opposition to the Synoptics?
• From perspective of Gospel of John, did the
  Synoptics get Jesus wrong?
• Last written of the canonical gospels.
• Written in a culture with somewhat different
  philosophical, cultural expectations.
• But also written in opposition to Gnosticism and
  Gnostic Christology.
• Jesus is human, has human flesh, but is
  essentially God.
• Instead of pericopés of teaching that go back to
  the historical Jesus, we get long theological
  discourses --
• -- mainly centering on Jesus identity and
  nature.

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John and the Synoptics

• About 90 percent different from Synoptics.
• Most of that 10 percent overlap centers on
  Passion narrative (but even here significant
  differences).
• Portrays overlapping ministries of Jesus and John
  the Baptist.
• Chasing money changers from Temple happens at
  beginning of Jesus ministry.
• Portrays three Passovers.
• Gives Jesus a ministry in Judea (around
  Jerusalem) -- synoptics see Jesus centered in
  Galilee.
• Puts the Last Supper before Passover.
• Contains very few of the Synoptic miracles.
• And hardly any of the Synoptic sayings.
• Instead a different set of miracles.
• And long discourses.

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Least historical of the gospels

• Because of its rejection of the Synoptic
  tradition, scholars are generally suspicious of
  its historical character.
• The discourses dont typically address the
  culture and context of the Jewish world of Jesus
  and disciples.
• It seems rather a late and highly theologized
  account.
• But there are some independent Palestinian
  traditions.
• And its fairly accurate in its Palestinian
  geography.
• So it may come from Syrian or northern
  Palestinian traditions.
• And it may contain some historical traditions
  about the historical Jesus may not be just a
  late and highly theologized account.
• But it is a late and highly theologized account.
• In effect, a channeling of the risen Jesus the
  writer is giving us what he believes is the
  essential nature of Jesus.

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Who wrote John, and when?

• Gospel not mentioned by anyone before 180 C.E.
• Earlier biblical scholarship assumed it was
  written mid-second century.
• But papyrus fragments of the gospel dated 125-150
  C.E. discovered in Egypt.
• So gospel must have been written before this
  time.
• Gospel is aware of the expulsion of Christians
  from synagogues, 85 to 90 C.E.
• Written perhaps 90 to 100 C.E.
• Irenaeus, c. 180 C.E., says gospel written by
  John, son of Zebedee on the authority of
  Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.
• But does Mark 10 39 imply John would be
  martyred, along with his brother James? (James,
  son of Zebedee, killed by Herod, around 44
  Acts 12 1).

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Who?

• Theres another John, John the Elder at Ephesus,
  circa 100 C.E., who is mention by Papias.
• Gospel nowhere mentions authorship by a John,
  but at the end claims connection to the beloved
  disciple This is the disciple who is
  testifying to these things and has written them,
  and we know that his testimony is true.
• So the gospel (or an editorial appendix) connects
  the gospel in some way with the authority of the
  beloved disciple.
• Who would have been extremely old in 90 to 100
  CE, presumably too old in any case for literary
  endeavor.
• Gospel wants to claim connection to the unnamed
  beloved disciple.
• But the rejection of the Synoptic tradition makes
  this puzzling.
• And the mystical character of the gospel makes
  authorship puzzling.
• Writer seems to have more a mystical than
  historical connection with Jesus.
• A writer with a visionary sense of the real
  Jesus, the Jesus whom the merely historical
  Synoptics got wrong?
• In this sense is the writer someone like Paul,
  but two generations later, who links his mystical
  Christ to Palestinian traditions?
• So, finally, an anonymous writer whom the text
  connects with the beloved disciple, whoever
  that may be.

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Narrative character of John

• Another reader challenging gospel, like Mark
  (though otherwise very different from Mark).
• No actual parables, but stories to be interpreted
  as parables, puzzles for the reader.
• All centered on the identity, nature of Jesus.
• Full of symbolic language light, truth,
  water, vine, spirit, flesh.
• Longer speeches, discourses by Jesus.
• Punctuated by an essentially new set of miracles,
  arranged in ascending order.
• Culminating in the raising of Lazarus.
• And the puzzle of how one ingests, takes in, this
  divine figure.

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Johns mystical prologue

• Beginning of John no infancy gospel.
• Matthew and Luke begin with Js birth, then
  through genealogies to Abraham (Matt.) and to
  Adam (Luke).
• John pushes Js origin back even further, In the
  beginning echoing Genesis!
• Word Logos Gk. means something like Reason,
  Speech, Thought.
• So the true origin of the Christ is the
  pre-existent Logos of God Jesus is the
  enfleshment (incarnation) of that Logos in human
  form.
• All very philosophical, very Greek.
• But related to the idea of Gods Wisdom in Hebrew
  Scriptures.

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Proverbs 822-31 the Wisdom of God

• The Lord created me Wisdom at the beginning of
  his work,
• The first of his acts of long ago.
• Ages ago I was set up,
• At the first, before the beginning of the earth.
• When there were no depths I was brought forth,
• When there were no springs abounding with water.
• Before the mountains had been shaped,
• Before the hills, I was brought forth
• When he had not yet made earth and fields,
• Or the worlds first bits of soil.

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• When he established the heavens, I was there,
• When he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
• When he made firm the skies above,
• When he established the fountains of the deep,
• When he assigned the sea its limit,
• So that the waters might not transgress his
  command,
• When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
• Then I was beside him, like a master worker
• And I was daily his delight,
• Rejoicing before him always,
• Rejoicing in his inhabited world
• And delighting in the human race.

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• The idea of Wisdom (Sophia in Greek) is also
  developed in the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha.
  
• John takes this Hebraic idea of Wisdom and
  translates it into the Greek philosophical
  terminology of Logos.
• Then asserts that the human person of Jesus was
  the enfleshment of that divine principle.
• Its a long distance from the Synoptic son of
  Man, Son of God.
• But see the Pauline letter to Colossians (1
  15-17)
• He is the image of the invisible God, the
  firstborn of all creation for in him all things
  in the heaven and in the earth were created,
  things visible and invisible, whether thrones or
  dominions, or rulers or powers all things have
  been created through him and for him. He himself
  is before all things, and in him all things hold
  together
• The visual image of this in St. Marks, IV.
  
  

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John the Baptist

• Interesting that the gospel begins by insisting
  that John the Baptist is not the Christ, but only
  bears witness to the Christ.
• Why still a concern late in the first century?
• Remember Acts 19 mentions the existence of a
  group that still followed John the Baptist's
  teachings in Ephesus.
• All the gospels are concerned to show John the
  Baptist in a subordinate role to Jesus.
• (The Mandaeans are an ancient but surviving
  religious group who still trace their roots to
  John the Baptist.)
• The first episode in John enacts the turn from
  John the Baptist and his teaching to Jesus as
  true light.
• Note the conclusion in the two disciples of John
  leaving him and following Jesus.
• One turns out to be Andrew, the brother of Peter,
  who becomes the link between Peter and Jesus.
• Then the calling of Philip and Nathanael (who is
  not mentioned in the synoptics).
• Jesus' first prediction here is not of suffering
  and death, as in Mark, but in a divine
  glorification (151).

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Behold the Lamb of God

• John 1 29 Here is the lamb of God who takes
  away the sins of the world.
• But why lamb?
• The phrase is so familiar, so much a part of
  tradition that we may just pass it by.
• But it should strike us as odd, surprising.
• Sets up something of a mystery in the gospel
  text.
• How will it be explained?