John's Narrative Research Articles

Expulsion from the Synagogue: J. L. Martyn'sHistory and Theology in the Fourth GospelRevisited

InHistory and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, Martyn argued that John 9.22 concerns the formal expulsion from the synagogue of Jews who were confessing Jesus as the Messiah of Jewish expectation. Johannine scholars following Martyn have often claimed that a ‘high’ Christology must have provided the catalyst for this trauma, not the ‘low’ Christology posited by Martyn. For Martyn, however, a ‘high’ Christology was a subsequent development, leading to a second trauma, that of execution for blasphemously claiming that Jesus was somehow equal to God. Accepting Martyn's argument on 9.22 with respect to this issue, and leaving aside the debate about the relevance of the Birkat ha-Minim, this article seeks to determine why local synagogue authorities, evidently represented in John's narrative by the Pharisees, would have found the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah so offensive that they formulated a decree to expel fellow Jews espousing this new messianic faith. Analysis of John 5, 7 and 9 demonstrates that the Pharisees in the Johannine setting found this confession offensive because they regarded the behaviour of Johannine disciples on the Sabbath as thoroughly inconsistent with their own understanding of the Sabbath commandment and as significantly hindering their desire to play an authoritative role in determining what counted as acceptable behaviour on the Sabbath and what did not. In short, the specific catalyst for expelling Jews confessing Jesus as Messiah from the synagogue was their Sabbath observance, which the Pharisees in the Johannine setting came to regard as an unacceptable deviation from their own developing views on the matter in the period after 70 ce.

The Healing of the Blind Man in John

ABSTRACTJohn's healing narratives are all presented as semeia or spiritual signs in the Gospel. It therefore always has two levels of meaning: the one level narrates a biological and socio-cultural healing act, and at the same time the narrative functions as a vehicle to illustrate ‘divine’ truths in John's Gospel—revealing the true identity of Jesus, with the purpose that those who read these signs, will eventually believe that Jesus is the son of God and thereby receive eternal life (John 20: 30–31). In this article we will discuss the healing narrative in John 9 where Jesus heals not only the physical blindness of the blind man, but also his spiritual blindness. It will also be illustrated how this narrative functions as a semeion or Johannine sign, designed to lead readers to spiritual healing in John's narrative world. Finally the implications of Jesus' engagement with those on the fringes of society will be discussed against the background of the rise of Christianity in Africa.1

The Burden of Ambiguity: Nicodemus and the Social Identity of the Johannine Christians

Nicodemus is an enigmatic literary character who is wavering in no man's land in John's narrative between Jesus' opponents and his true disciples. Some scholars have taken Nicodemus as an example of someone of inadequate faith who remains an outsider throughout the narrative, while others have traced his development from initial and tentative faith to open and public commitment to Jesus. The present article, however, agrees with those who have acknowledged that no single trait determines Nicodemus's portrait, but, in the end, this portrait remains ambiguous. In the article, a text-centered approach to Nicodemus is complemented by asking how this ambiguous literary character may have functioned as a symbol for those who shared John's dualistic tendencies. The article draws upon the social identity approach in order to explain how Nicodemus's ambiguity may have helped the Johannine Christians to accept the uncertainties in their social environment without abandoning the stereotyped and fixed thrust in their symbolic world.

Cannibalistic Language in the Fourth Gospel and Greco-Roman Polemics of Factionalism (John 6:52-66)

J. ALBERT HARRILL jharrill@indiana.edu Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 (ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) This essay names elephant in room around which scholarly interpreters of John 6:52-66 have long been tiptoeing with their overly circumspect discussions of eucharistie imagery in passage. That elephant is cannibalism, of course, and ignoring it leaves fundamental exegetical questions about famous crux interpretum unanswered and even unasked. What specific connotations did idiom of cannibalism have in ancient Mediterranean world? Why did Johannine author (or redactor) ascribe cannibalistic language to Jesus in a specific scene of factionalism? Did it draw on a recognizable topos familiar from wider Greek and Roman culture and not just from Hebrew Bible alone?1 What nongustatory messages about community maintenance and regeneration could such talk of cannibalism have conveyed? What connection did anthropophagy have for ancient audiences to articulate community dissent, party division, or even civil war? An exclusive focus on sacramentalism has framed kinds of questions previous commentators have brought to John 6, a preoccupation that has often been concerned more about theological controversies between Protestants and Catholics than about text itself.2 Exegetes have debated sacramental tradition of Lord's Supper in John 6, and have repeated standby interpolation hypothesis of Rudolf Bultmann's ecclesiastical redactor, to solve crux.3 One view holds that cannibalistic language has antidocetic intent.4 But, as is well known, John's narrative departs from Synoptic Gospels on, among other things, precisely point: Lord's Supper is never instituted in Gospel of John. The exegetical debate on John 6 goes, therefore, back and forth rehashing old proposals without a resolution in sight.5 We should recognize sterility of current debates on redaction-critical issues and on place of sacraments in Fourth Gospel. The passage deserves reexamination. It provides strangest exchange between Jesus and his Jewish interlocutors in Fourth Gospel. In a series of dialogues that collapse into monologues, Johannine Jesus provides warrants for his midrash on Bread from Heaven that turn factionalism of bewildered grumbling (...) among the Jews (John 6:41-43) into an open fight (...) (6:52) in synagogue at Capernaum (6:59).6 The speech culminates in a pronouncement bewildering to audience: So Jesus said to them, Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat flesh [...] of Son of Man and drink his blood [...], you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh [...] and drink my blood [...] have eternal life, and I will raise them up on last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat [...] my flesh and drink [...] my blood abide in me, and I in them. (6:53-56) The whole dialogue is a virtual parody of a revelation discourse: what is revealed is Jesus' utter incomprehensibility. Even Jesus' own followers fail to understand what their prophet-messiah is requiring of them, which escalates divisive fray. Jesus asks his whether this (...) offends them too (6:60-61). The reaction of respondents could imply that they may simply not comprehend what Jesus is requiring, but context makes clear that they hear Jesus saying something literally obscene (disgusting to senses): to indulge in cannibalism by consuming his flesh and blood. The offense of saying triggers decision by the Jews to kill Jesus (cf. 7:1; 5:18) and desertion of many disciples (6:66). This scene is one of factionalism. In context, forms of speech that would normally provide warrants for a particular kind of instruction (midrash) serve solely to emphasize Jesus' strangeness as Other. …

John as storyteller: narrative criticism and the fourth Gospel

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction Part I. The Method of Narrative Criticism and the Gospel of John: 1. The practical criticism of John's narrative 2. Genre criticism of John's narrative 3. The social function of John's narrative 4. The narrative-historical approach to John's story Part II. An Application of the Method of Narrative Criticism to John 18-19: Introduction 5. A practical criticism of John 18-19 6. A genre criticism of John 18-19 7. A sociological reading of John 18-19 8. A narrative-historical approach to John 18-19 Conclusion References Index of names and subjects.