Race in John's Gospel: Toward an Ethnos-Conscious Approach by Andrew Benko

Abstract

Reviewed by: Race in John's Gospel: Toward an Ethnos-Conscious Approach by Andrew Benko Shawn Kelley Jr. andrew benko, Race in John's Gospel: Toward an Ethnos-Conscious Approach (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019). Pp. xvi + 263. $95. This exhaustively researched book employs an "ethnos-conscious approach" to argue that the Gospel of John replaces then current racial categories with cosmological-racial ones. The opening theoretical chapter explains Benko's approach and develops a model for [End Page 700] textual interpretation attentive to ancient racial markers. This is followed by two sections: a lengthy analysis of historical-geographical categories employed but ultimately rejected in the Gospel (part 1) and a briefer analysis of Johannine cosmological-racial thinking (part 2). In the first chapter, B. begins by defending his use of race as an analytical category for ancient texts. He is attentive to the difference between ancient and modern categorizations of race but argues for a historically grounded approach. The bulk of the chapter consists of a rigorous analysis of the categories that support ancient racial thinking. This includes a discussion of terminology (ethnos, genos, laos), with attention paid to the difficulty of translating Ioudaios (i.e., Jew? Judean?). B. nimbly works his way through various scholarly debates on race in antiquity (Jonathan Hall, David Konstan, Denise Kimber Buell, Caroline Johnson Hodge, Dennis Duling, and Markus Cromhout). B. includes a discussion of five ancient theories of race before offering his own model of ancient ethnicity-race. This model is attentive to relevant categories like claims of common ancestry, common home-land, and distinctive culture. This dense but readable chapter provides a theoretically sophisticated and historically grounded model for identifying the way race functions in John's Gospel and could be broadly applied to other early Christian writings. The theoretical model is first applied to three races that appear in John's Gospel: the Galileans (chap. 2), the Samaritans (chap. 3) and the Judeans (chap. 4). Each chapter explores, sometimes in more detail than is necessary, the historical-political situation facing each race as well as how each race defines itself and is defined by others. B. argues that the Galileans were Judeans who were distinctive enough to be their own ethnos (p. 70), that the Samaritans shared a history with the Judeans that included both common religious ideas and ancestry as well as often painful periods of conflicts (p. 99), and that the Judeans claimed a distinctive identity forged in the Roman world (p. 124). Each chapter also explores how these racial identities function within the Johannine textual world. B. argues that Galilee is identified as the homeland of Jesus and as a place of refuge while "Galilean" is employed as an ethnic slur. He argues that John's Gospel is comparatively positive in its valuation of Samaria, presenting it as a ripe missionary field and showing that Jesus rejects anti-Samaritan slurs. Finally, he argues that Jesus rejects the Judean claims of ethnic superiority. His central claim is that John thoroughly employs these ancient racial categories to reject them. It may be tempting to suggest that John's Gospel rejects the particulars of racial thinking for a universal Christian humanism, but B. astutely takes the argument in a different direction. Instead he argues that John replaces historical-geographical racial categories with a cosmological form of racial thinking (part 2). He argues that John uses racial categories (i.e., birth, descent, homeland, distinctive character) but translates them into a new framework. He does so by exploring Johannine claims about children of God/the devil and by analyzing two recurring metaphors (the sheepfold and the vine). John's Jesus claims that his followers share a common ancestor (God rather than Abraham), a common homeland (heaven rather than this world) and a common moral, spiritual character. John's claims go beyond Pauline claims of spiritual kinship: "It is an affirmation of consubstantial unity, of shared essence, derived from their membership in the same people" (p. 183). John identifies early Christians in cosmological-racial terms that show who is to be included and who is to be condemned as children of the devil. The vine and shepherd imagery, reimagined by the...