Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible: John

By J. Martin C. Scott

This extract from the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible provides Scott’s introduction to and concise commentary on John. The Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible presents, in nontechnical language, the best of modern scholarship on each book of the Bible, including the Apocrypha. Reader-friendly commentary complements succinct summaries of each section of the text and will be valuable to scholars, students, and general readers.
 
Rather than attempt a verse-by-verse analysis, these volumes work from larger sense units, highlighting the place of each passage within the overarching biblical story. Commentators focus on the genre of each text—parable, prophetic oracle, legal code, and so on—interpreting within the historical and literary context.
 
The volumes also address major issues within each biblical book—including the range of possible interpretations—and refer readers to the best resources for further discussions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781467454322

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John

J. Martin C. Scott

INTRODUCTION

The Fourth Gospel (= FG) is a work of great literary artistry, full of dramatic irony and poetic beauty. The medium of poetry, with which the Gospel opens (1:1–18), is appropriate to the literary-theological style employed throughout and reflects the principal background on which the Fourth Evangelist (= FE) draws, namely, the writings of the Jewish wisdom tradition.

While the FG undoubtedly alludes to a wide number of works from the Hebrew scriptures (both the prophets and often polemically the Torah), it is the wisdom writings which provide the most important materials for understanding the FE’s use of the term Logos and the whole christological reflection which emerges from it in the body of the FG. Knowledge of the picture of Sophia (her Greek name is used to highlight the gender of Wisdom in this commentary) found in the great poetic chapters of Proverbs 1–9, Sirach 24 (also chs. 1, 4, 6, 14, and 15) and throughout Wisdom of Solomon, is fundamental for reading John’s Gospel. Pictured in wisdom literature as the agent of God’s communication of salvation, hope, judgment, and reproach to humanity, she provides a model for understanding the Johannine Jesus’ mission in the world (Scott 1992: 83–173).

The portrayal of God’s wisdom as a woman comes about at its most basic level because of the feminine gender of the Hebrew and Greek words. Yet it is not simply a linguistic accident that the portrayal develops in the way that it does in Israel’s wisdom literature (Scott 1992: 36–82). The whole contrast between Sophia’s call and that of the prostitute who sits at her door to entice men into her parlor (Prov 7:5–27; 9:13–18) depends on powerful sexual imagery. To make a direct equivalence in incarnational terms between the male Jesus and what is decisively a female image of God’s presence in the world is not possible. In choosing Logos, a well-established but masculinegendered synonym for Sophia, the FE is making firm the connection with the tradition while taking seriously the limitations of incarnation.

The importance of this female image of God’s presence in creation, redemption, and judgment as a background for reading the story of Jesus at the start of the third millennium is highlighted by the history of interpretation of the FG. Far from letting John Be John (Dunn 1983), the Logos of John’s Prologue was used as a significant building block for patriarchal Christology by many early church writers. The interpretation of the Logos in terms of Greek philosophical speculation, largely ignoring its primary roots in Sophia tradition, fast became the norm. It is clear, not least from the writings of Philo, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, that the words Logos and Sophia were quite interchangeable by the time of writing of the FG. In using the term Logos, which acknowledges the maleness of the human Jesus, the FG still leaves open the full range of meaning of the word Sophia.

In the Johannine Jesus we may see the fullness of God revealed, in both masculine and feminine dimensions, albeit within the limitations of incarnation in terms of human sexuality. As Elizabeth Johnson puts it: The gender particularity of Jesus does not reveal that God must be imaged exclusively as male. In Jesus Christ we encounter the mystery of God who is neither male nor female, but who as source of both and Creator in the divine image can in turn be imaged as either (Johnson 1985: 280).

Whether the FE intended to convey all the gender subtleties of the Sophia background (it is at least possible that it is intentional), this commentary adopts a narrative approach to reading the text as it stands. Little time is spent on weighing up historical matters which can be followed up in other literature on the FG (cf. Brown 1997: 362–82). We have no certain access to either the historical author or her/his audience, even if there are strong pointers to a community in crisis being addressed throughout. What may be attempted, however, is a reading of the Gospel from the viewpoint of an ideal [or implied] reader, whom the text itself constructs. This hypothetical reader is required for the narrative to make sense, or be heard coherently (cf. Powell 1993). In endeavoring to enable the modern reader to hear the FG from such an ideal reader’s perspective this commentary places emphasis on the pointers to the emergent theological meaning which the developing narrative contains.

John often uses intertextual echo as a means of alerting the implied reader to a variety of subtle connections. This takes the form of a word, a phrase, or an idea which evokes particular counterparts either internal to the Gospel (e.g., the use of feet in 12:1–8 evoking the later footwashing account), or externally in the literature of wider Jewish tradition (e.g., the opening words of the Gospel evoking Gen 1:1). Many of these echoes are crucial for understanding the christological picture which the FE paints, particularly in terms of the relationship to Sophia. Since she represented the immanence of God’s wise presence in its fullest appeal to Israel, Jesus, Sophia incarnate, comes in similar manner to the whole of humanity.

Another important literary-theological technique which the FG employs is irony. This takes a variety of forms throughout the Gospel, sometimes overt, sometimes covert (cf. Duke 1985: 7–27), but always pressing and inviting the reader to see beyond the surface responses of Johannine characters to the twists of meaning which often turn interpretation on its head. One such twist which this commentary attempts to read in a novel way is the use of the term Jews. Jesus, who is clearly a Jew, often speaks of Jews as though he were not one. For the most part this has been interpreted as part of the struggle of the Johannine community with its separation from its roots in Judaism (cf. Stibbe 1994: 107–31). Such a reading has never, however, done justice to the full spectrum of use of the term in the FG, so we will instead attempt to read it as an ironic reference to the struggle of the Johannine community with other Christian groups evidenced in the polemic of the later Johannine epistles (see the comment on 1:19).

Another ironic element of the FG’s presentation is the way in which discipleship is portrayed. Far from the Synoptic picture of a central band of men who demonstrate in positive and negative manner the traits of true discipleship, it is the women of the FG who serve in a paradigmatic role (cf. Scott 1994). Given the overwhelmingly overt male language of the FG (Father-Son) and indeed the maleness of Jesus, the subtlety of Sophia’s influence may perhaps be glanced in this role reversal. Certainly it provides an important alternative perspective to other NT and later ecclesiological viewpoints in this third millennium.

COMMENTARY

John 1:1–18

In the beginning the FE employed poetry to draw together the disparate themes which now find their theological focus in the Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. The primary themes of the FG are laid before the reader in these verses. The genius of the FE lies in the ability to make these opening words not only point forward to the content of the Gospel but also hark back to so much that has gone before.

Many attempts have been made to reconstruct an original hymn lying behind this introduction to the FG. Most commentators define four stanzas, which are interrupted by the comments on John the Baptist (= JBap), though the content of the stanzas differs in the various analyses (Dunn 1989: 240). There is general agreement on the scope of the first two stanzas (1:1–2, 3–5). Brown gives good grammatical and literary reasons for seeing the next stanza as comprising vv. 10–12b, with a fourth made up from vv. 14 and 16 (Brown 1966: 1–18, 21–23). While we shall not attempt any detailed analysis of the prehistory of the hymn, we shall point to important literary blocks which may help move our theological understanding forward and inform our comment on the text as the narrative unfolds.

In the beginning (1:1) obviously takes the reader back to the opening of the Torah (Gen 1:1) and so to the theme of creation. It is a theme which will dominate the opening verses both in terms of the creation of the world (1:1–5, 10) and in relation to the new beginnings which become possible from the presence of the Word in the world (1:12–13, 16–17). The concern here is not with origins, either of the man Jesus or of the believing child, but with connections. The Gospel will unfold in detail the connection between the introductory Word and Jesus, the beginning of whose story this poem is. In addition to that, however, the Prologue also plays a vital role in connecting that Word back into various strands of Israel’s salvation history.

Primary among the connections for the FE is that between Word (Logos) and the Wisdom of God, Sophia, whose own intimate link with both creation and salvation belongs to the most ancient literary traditions of Israel (Prov 8:22–33—creation; Prov 1:20–33—salvation). She was in the beginning with God (Prov 8:22; Sir 1:1, 4) and participated with God in the creation of the world (Prov 8:30; Sir 24:3–6; Wis 9:1–2). The wider scope of wisdom literature reveals Sophia’s participation in the making of the world as all-inclusive: the separation of waters and dry land, the establishment of the mountains and fields, the laying out of the heavens, and finally even the creation of the human race. Like the Word, Sophia may be hailed as the one through whom all things came into being (1:3).

It was not the FE who first made this connection between Logos and Sophia. The process is well attested in wisdom literature (Scott 1992: 88–94). In Sir 24:3, Sophia announces that she emerges from the mouth of the most high, at least hinting at a connection with word. The link is made explicit in Wis 9:1–2, where the parallel between Logos and Sophia is unmistakable. Other passages in the book of Wisdom hint at the same conclusion (both proceed from the royal throne in heaven: 9:10—Sophia; 18:15—Logos), but the most frequent parallels are found in the many writings of the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. Philo uses the terms interchangeably, for the most part substituting the Logos for Sophia in her traditional function as God’s agent in the world (Scott 1992: 58–61, 91–94).

The literary function here (and probably also the intention of the FE) in using the epithet Logos/Sophia is surely to make connections. All that has been known in the tradition concerning Sophia (and more!) is now embodied in Jesus Christ. At the same time, the mystery of Jesus Christ can best be illuminated with reference to the known categories of Sophia. The use of Logos to describe the one whose prehistory comes to fruition in Christ owes its origins to Jesus’ gender (see the Introduction, 1161), but constant intertextual echoes bind Jesus and Sophia ever closer as the story unfolds.

In him was life (1:4) seems to continue the creation theme, but the text is difficult. Brown lists five separate problems in translation (Brown 1966: 6–7), and finally opts for a direct connection to 1:3, a view which has found favor with others (Witherington 1995: 47—what has come into being in him was life). The theme has strong links with Sophia, not only in terms of creation but significantly in relation to salvation. The one who finds me finds life, she declares (Prov 8:35). Just as important is the implicit dualism of Prov 1:22–33, where the consequence of ignoring the claims of Sophia is calamity and death, in contrast to receiving her, finding security, and living at ease (Prov 1:33). Sirach echoes these sentiments (Sir 4:12), while in Wis 8:13, Solomon even goes so far as to suggest that she grants immortality! The FE elsewhere uses life only in the sense of eternal life (Brown 1966: 505–8), so it is hard to think that it means anything other here. While the whole Gospel may pick up the theme of eternal life in an idiosyncratic way, its seeds are sown in the wisdom tradition. The Johannine Jesus, like Sophia, brings about a crisis point in human experience, on the basis of which decisions between life and death will be made.

The life was the light of all people (1:4) again echoes the ancient tradition. Light is brought into being by the word of God as the first act in the creation story (Gen 1:3). The emphasis in John 1:4, however, seems closer to that in Ps 119:105, where God’s word is said to illuminate the psalmist’s pathway. There is a double connection here to the wisdom tradition, where Sophia is not only known as the first of God’s acts of creation, but is also revered for her illuminative presence. Solomon chooses her before light because her radiance is greater (Wis 7:10). She is a reflection of the ever present light of God (Wis 7:26), unquenched by the night or by evil (Wis 7:29–30). The gift of light, sought as a symbol of salvation, is being opened up to all people in the person of Jesus Christ, the very embodiment of Sophia.

Light is identifiable only in contrast to darkness, as the poem goes on to state (1:5). Primeval darkness is overcome by the creation of light (Gen 1:2–3), a motif which surely informs this text. John’s prior association of light with the salvation of humanity, however, leads the reader to hear the theme of conflict between good and evil behind this contrast. The word overcome (katelaben) is used again in 12:35, where such conflict is undoubtedly in mind, centered around the person of Jesus, the Light. The thought is not of an irreconcilable dualism, but rather in line with what we have noted in Wis 7:29–30, namely, that darkness/evil cannot put out the light of God’s all-pervading wisdom. The brief clarification of the role of JBap which follows (1:6–8) confirms this, since he is to be seen neither as darkness nor as a false light in contrast to the true light of 1:9. We might say that JBap sheds light on the Light through his witness. In parallel with Wis 7:10, 29–30, therefore, he is eclipsed by the superior