Abstract
In ecumenical circles, John 17:11b, 21–23 has been understood as Jesus’ prayer for church unity, be it confessional or structural. This article questioned such readings and conclusions from historical, literary and sosio-cultural viewpoints. The Fourth Gospel’s language is identified as ’antilanguage’ typical of an ’antisociety’, like that of the Hermetic, Mandean and Qumran sects. Such a society is a separate entity within society at large, but opposes it. Read as a text of an antisociety, John 17:11b, 21–23 legitimises the unity of the separatist Johannine community, which could have comprised several such communities. This community opposed the Judean religion, Gnosticism, the followers of John the Baptist and three major groups in early Christianity. As text from the canon, this Johannine text legitimates tolerance of diversity rather than the confessional or structural unity of the church.
Highlights
In ecumenical circles, John 17:11b, 21–23 has been understood as Jesus’ prayer for church unity, be it confessional or structural
A socio-cultural viewpoint on the language type found in the Fourth Gospel is combined with literary perspectives and historical reasoning
Such an approach is in line with the emerging ’new current’ of research on the Fourth Gospel, resulting from the influx of interdisciplinary approaches into biblical scholarship, characterised by methodological diversity (Thatcher 2006:1, 24–26)
Summary
Affiliation: 1Department of New Testament Studies, University of Pretoria, South Africa. The social-scientific, literary and historical prongs of the approach found in this article is evident of the development that took place within the ’new current’ in Johannine studies. Research conducted on the Fourth Gospel during the past five decades (the so-called ’new current’) has developed strikingly different from the ’New Look’ research that followed the historical critical approach (to which Robinson [1959] referred as ’Old Look’) of the previous half century. Robinson, as pinnacle of this movement, accepted the priority of the Fourth Gospel and found no reason to doubt that the Johannine tradition originated with a disciple of Jesus, perhaps even the apostle John (Thatcher 2006:9–10). The Gospel of John is no longer viewed as primary source next to the Synoptics and even Q, but it is regarded as a secondary source, as it has heavily reworked the tradition (Dunn 2003:165–167)
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