Jesus als Lebensspender

Abstract

Jesus als Lebensspender Untersuchungen zu einer Geschichte der johanneischen Tradition anhand ihrer Wundergeschichten, by Michael Labahn. BZNW 98. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1999. Pp. x + 559. DM 258.00. This revised Gottingen dissertation distinguishes between Formkritik, which describes literary forms in their present context, and Formgeschichte, which reconstructs the history of the transmission of the materials. In order to enrich our understanding of John's Gospel, Labahn proposes to do both types of analysis. Although some form-critical and literary-critical studies have argued that John worked primarily with literary sources, Labahn maintains that the Fourth Evangelist relied on various oral and written sources. He rightly cautions that we cannot assume that forms remained fluid in the oral stage of transmission and then became fixed when they were written down. Stories can be handed down verbally in a stable form, while written texts can remain fluid through multiple stages of editing. Labahn maintains that John's Gospel was completed in the early second century, and that John presupposes the Synoptic Gospels. His understanding of John's relationship to the Synoptics is helpfully complex, as is evident in his discussion of Jesus feeding the five thousand and walking on the sea (John 6:1-21). Although these stories are paired in Matthew, Mark, and John, labahn does not think that John drew his material directly from the Synoptics. Instead, John may have used oral traditions that were spawned by the Synoptics. In other words, John's oral sources may have been partially inspired by older written sources. Although conflict between John's Christian circle and members of the Jewish community has often been taken to be the primary context in which the Gospel was shaped, Labahn argues that this is only partially true. In its early stages, the story of the miraculous gift of wine at Cana (John 2:1-11) recounted an epiphany of divine power that has affinities with the Greco-Roman accounts of miracles associated with Dionysus. When the story was written down, the emphasis probably changed from Jesus' divinity to his unity with the Father through the revelation of his glory. In the earlier stage the story may have been used for missionary proclamation, and in its later stage it was used to build up the Johannine community. The account of the healing of the royal official's son was shaped in a similar way. Initially, the episode identifies Jesus as the giver of life, focusing the official's faith on Jesus and making clear that it was not simple fascination with the miraculous. In a manner suitable for missionary proclamation, the story concludes with the man and his household forming a community of faith. When the story was written down, it was linked to the wine miracle, and its final literary form stresses how the official's faith was grounded in Jesus' word, thereby connecting the episode to the Johannine theme of word-based faith (4:50). Conflict with the synagogue is more evident in the healing stories in John 5 and 9. The earliest phase of the story of the healing of the lame man in John 5 probably emphasized Jesus' ability to bring a new quality of life by freeing people from sickness. …