The Fourth Gospel in Four Dimensions: Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture

By D. Moody Smith, Jr.

Compelling perspectives on the Gospel of John from a premiere scholar of the subject

This multidimensional volume from the leading American scholar of Johannine studies brings together D. Moody Smith's germinal works from the past two decades along with some original articles published here for the first time. The resulting collection augments current understanding of the Gospel of John with fresh insights and research and points the way toward opportunities for new inquiry.

The collection is structured around four focal issues that define contemporary studies of John. In the first section, Smith places the book within its Jewish milieu, attempting to account for the tension between the work's seeming anti-Jewishness and its familiarity with Jewish life and thought. Next Smith engages the relationship between John and the historical figure of Jesus, especially the extent to which John's representation of Jesus reflects knowledge of independent traditions as well as the self-consciousness of his own community. The third section examines John's account against the Synoptic Gospels, assessing the evidence of John's access to an independent record of the passion and the possibility that John adopted the gospel genre from Mark. Finally, Smith explores how the Gospels, and especially that of John, evolved into scripture and how they have come to be interpreted in conjunction with one another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781643362342

Book preview

The Fourth Gospel in Four Dimensions

Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture

D. Moody Smith

The University of South Carolina Press

© 2008 D. Moody Smith

Paperback edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2008

Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina,

by the University of South Carolina Press, 2021

www.uscpress.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Smith, D. Moody (Dwight Moody)

The Fourth Gospel in four dimensions : Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture /

D. Moody Smith.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-1-57003-763-4 (pbk : alk. paper)

1. Bible. N.T. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS2615.52.S65 2008

226.5’06—dc22 2008024061

ISBN 978-1-64336-234-2 (ebook)

To John Painter

Longtime Colleague and Friend

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One: John and Judaism

1.  The Gospel of John in Its Jewish Context: Why Begin with Judaism?

2.  Judaism in the Johannine Context: Does the Gospel of John Misrepresent Judaism?

3.  The Stressful Tension between Judaism and the Johannine Jesus: Revisiting and Evaluating J. Louis Martyn’s Classic Proposal

Part Two: John and the Historical Jesus

4.  The Problem of History in John: The Gospel Narratives as History at Two Levels

5.  John’s Quest for Jesus: The Pastness of the Present Jesus

6.  John’s Portrait of Jesus: Jesus Portrayed as Talking Christology in John’s Narrative

7.  Jesus Tradition in the Gospel of John: Are John’s Differences from the Synoptics Coincident with Their Historical Value?

8.  Redaction Criticism, Genre, Narrative Criticism, and the Historical Jesus in the Gospel of John: Does John Also Enshrine a Separate Memory?

9.  The Historical Figure of Jesus in 1 John: Jesus at the Beginning Giving a Commandment for the Future

Part Three: John among the Gospels

10.  From Synoptic Jesus to Johannine Christ: Historical Considerations—Choosing between Genuine Historical Alternatives

11.  The Question of Gospel Genre: Did Mark Create the Genre?

12.  John and the Apocryphal Gospels: Was John the First Apocryphal Gospel?

13.  The Problem of Faith and History: Common to Both John and the Synoptics, and Peculiar to Neither

Part Four: John as Scripture

14.  When Did the Gospels Become Scripture? What Did Their Authors Intend and Their Readers Assume?

15.  Four Gospels and the Canonical Approach to Exegesis: Should Their Being Together in the New Testament Make a Difference in Their Interpretation?

16.  Toward a Canonical Reading of the Fourth Gospel: Canonical Readings from Clement of Alexandria through Abraham Lincoln to Rudolf Bultmann and C. H. Dodd

Notes

Index of Biblical and Other Ancient Texts

Index of Modern Authors

About the Author

Preface

In the spring of 1959, before I had passed prelims, my adviser, Professor Paul Schubert of Yale University, asked me what plans I had for a dissertation. I had at least a half-dozen ideas, and spelled them out to him briefly in writing. He read them over and pronounced them good. Then he said, Now, I tell you what you should do. Although an American citizen, Mr. Schubert was German in upbringing and education. That is the way it works in the German university. The student proposes and the professor disposes.

Rudolf Bultmann’s weighty 1941 commentary, Das Evangelium des Johannes, in the so-called Meyer series (Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament), was widely known but largely unread in the English-speaking theological world. Bultmann was already a famous figure, not only in New Testament study but also because of his program of demythologizing the New Testament, in theology as well. In his Theology of the New Testament, which had been published in fascicles from 1948 to 1953 and translated into English almost immediately (1951–1955), Bultmann placed the theology of the Gospel and Epistles of John after Paul, as the apparent capstone of early Christian theology in what was to become the New Testament. In his treatment of the Johannine writings, Bultmann occasionally referred to his commentary, in which he claimed to have shown that the present state of the text of the Gospel is not original.

Bultmann had subjected the Fourth Gospel to intense scrutiny and analysis and had assigned every bit of it to the author or to one of his sources. He had also made substantial rearrangements in the text, ranging from the transposition of entire chapters to the rearrangement of sentences. Moreover, Bultmann did not lay out the results of this work in the commentary so that the reader could see what these sources looked like. The allegedly original order of the text could be found in the commentary, but there was no key to the location of passages subjected to rearrangement. (This was supplied, however, in the 1971 English translation, The Gospel of John: A Commentary.) What, Mr. Schubert asked, is going on here? Bultmann is commenting on a text he has himself created!

My task was therefore first of all to lay out that text and to explain how Bultmann derived it from the canonical one. Bultmann’s commentary was not to be translated for more than decade. It existed only in the pre–World War II Fraktur German type that has since been abandoned. The work would not be easy, but it would be narrowly defined and would improve my knowledge of German, as well as of the Greek text of the Gospel of John. The dissertation, completed in 1960, was published in 1965 as The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel: Bultmann’s Literary Theory. In that work I was able to trace Bultmann’s method of analysis and reconstruction, present his putative sources and the text of the reconstructed Gospel in the original Greek, and offer an evaluation and critique. Bultmann’s literary theory about the composition of John, ingenious as it was, could, in the nature of the case, neither be proved true nor falsified. It may be internally consistent, but that does not mean that it is true historically. Moreover, if the unlikely process of composition that Bultmann’s theory entails had actually taken place almost two millennia ago, how likely is it that any modern scholarly detective could have uncovered it? In Bultmann’s view, the original manuscript of the Gospel was somehow disturbed or disordered, presumably before it was published, and the document was restored in its present form by a later redactor who emended it to include, for example, the sacraments and apocalyptic eschatology.

Perhaps in a postmodern era Bultmann might have simply claimed this reconstruction as his reading of John, which he understood as well as the evangelist who wrote it, and much better than the redactor who had restored and emended it. Be that as it may, Bultmann’s grasp of the theology of John’s Gospel was acute, and remains unsurpassed in its penetration and comprehensiveness. Yet while he rightly insisted on the indispensability of the Word’s having become flesh (that is, human, historical) for John, he was little interested in the possible historical dimensions of the Gospel’s narrative or in the concrete historical setting of its origin. At the same time, however, Bultmann’s argument that the Gospel, and the Epistles as well, represented a distinct theological tradition, not derivative from Paul or dependent on the Synoptics, merited serious consideration. A similar view was set forth by the leading British scholar of the mid–twentieth century, C. H. Dodd of Cambridge, who also made the Gospel and Epistles of John a lifelong scholarly enterprise. His most important works are, of course, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (1953) and Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel (1963). Like Bultmann, Dodd thought the Johannine writings represented a separate stream of Christian tradition independent of Paul and the Synoptic Gospels, whether or not the author (or authors) of the Gospel (and the Epistles of John) was entirely ignorant of them.

In 1984 the University of South Carolina Press published my Johannine Christianity: Essays on its Setting, Sources, and Theology. The title essay of that volume expressed a continuing belief that Johannine Christianity is a relatively independent development, that is, not derivative from Paul or the Synoptic Gospels. As different as Dodd and Bultmann were, they agreed on this important point.

In this connection, a book I first read while still in graduate study seemed to me to be of great importance, namely, P. Gardner-Smith’s Saint John and the Synoptic Gospels (1938). Gardner-Smith espoused John’s independence of the Synoptics and thus influenced his Cambridge colleague Dodd. Shortly thereafter I found Hans Windisch’s Johannes und die Synoptiker (1926), which had attracted little attention in the English-speaking scholarly world. Windisch granted that John knew the Synoptics, but argued that he wrote his Gospel to displace them because they were inadequate for his purpose. Both addressed the question of why John is so different from the other Gospels, although it nevertheless presents what is obviously an account of the public activity and death of the same figure.

Less than a decade after I had completed graduate study (1968), a thesis that explained John’s differences from the Synoptic Gospels and in other matters was advanced by J. Louis Martyn in History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. In Martyn’s view John’s differences had to do with the importance of the Jews, who are mentioned so frequently and at important points in the Gospel’s narrative. The conflict between Jesus’ (also Jewish) disciples who proclaimed him as Messiah or Christ and other Jews, who did not, had fundamentally shaped this quite different and distinctive Gospel. The questions of the role of the Jews and the different character or quality of the Fourth Gospel were related, and this seemed to me to be a matter of utmost importance. As they appear in the Fourth Gospel, the Jews are the opponents of the Johannine Jesus and therefore of the Johannine community. How this is to be explained is the burden of Martyn’s groundbreaking work.

So the problem of the theological meaning and significance of histories presupposed, or recounted, in the Gospel of John, as well as the relationship of those histories (that is, the historical context of the Gospel of John and the history of Jesus that is narrated), has fueled my interests for most of a career spanning the latter half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. Bultmann afforded the obvious place to begin. In his magisterial Understanding the Fourth Gospel (1991), John Ashton devotes "Part I: Questions and Answers to Bultmann as the pivotal figure. In Part II: Genesis" (meaning the historical origin of the Fourth Gospel), Ashton turns to the work of Martyn, whom he views as supplying the needed historical matrix missing from Bultmann’s treatment. With the publication of his History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, Martyn had set another agenda that most of us have come to regard as crucial and unavoidable. Yet as Ashton observes, the work of Bultmann as a comprehensive interpreter of the basic concept of revelation in the Fourth Gospel has not been surpassed. The essays that constitute the present volume do not fill in the gaps between Bultmann and Martyn, nor were they intended to. They are, however, representative of my effort to play on the same ball field, with similar interests and purposes in view. Yet they do focus largely on matters of history and interpretation that Bultmann and Martyn did not take up or resolve. Questions of history and theology perdure, because they quite obviously arise from the subject matter itself.

All the essays in this volume except one were first published after the appearance of Johannine Christianity in 1984, and all but two in the 1990s or thereafter. The one exception is John’s Portrait of Jesus, which originally appeared in Interpretation 31 (1977): 367–78. It has been republished more than once. It appears in Johannine Christianity (175–89), and reappears in this volume because what I have written there needs to be said in this context, and I cannot say it better. The Johannine Jesus gives long discourses on Christology, but the historical Jesus did not. Five of the essays have not yet appeared in print at this writing: The Gospel of John in Its Jewish Context; The Problem of History in John; Jesus Tradition in the Gospel of John; Redaction Criticism, Genre, Narrative Criticism, and the Historical Jesus in the Gospel of John; and The Historical Figure of Jesus in First John.

Although the individual essays that make up the chapters in this volume were not, for the most part, composed with this book in view, they do reflect a common or coherent viewpoint. Moreover, they deal with related or interlocking issues or groups of issues. There is therefore some overlapping that should prove to be understandable, and this is especially true in chapters that deal with the historical basis of John’s narrative of Jesus. Obviously, the data of the text of the Gospel is a given that does not change. In each case a different issue is tackled, a different perspective invoked, or a different, if related, point argued. Obviously, chapter 7, Jesus Tradition in the Gospel of John, is a comprehensive survey of the landscape and presents the evidence of the Gospel itself, upon which other chapters dealing with this central matter also draw.

James Denton, acquisitions editor for the University of South Carolina Press, has given me much encouragement and help in the production of this book. I thank him as well as his predecessor Barry Blose, who first broached the idea with me. Without them this book would not have materialized. The same goes for my friend, former student, and now, with Robert A. Spivey, my collaborator (Anatomy of the New Testament, 6th ed.; Prentice Hall, 2007), Professor C. Clifton Black of Princeton Theological Seminary. He made invaluable suggestions about the arrangement of the book, its title, and the titles of the chapters. Also my friend and colleague Kavin Rowe, now assistant professor of New Testament in Duke Divinity School, has been an unfailing source of help and advice in this and other matters. Jane Allen Smith in asking Why are you doing this book? caused me to think twice, as she frequently does. Her questions have always proved to be worth hearing. The answer is that I have addressed issues that should be addressed but remain unresolved or outstanding, whatever may be made of my efforts to resolve them.

The dedication to my friend John Painter marks his retirement from teaching, but certainly not from productive New Testament scholarship. If perhaps I have not cited him sufficiently, it is because I so often agree with him or find him persuasive. In thinking our minds often run parallel, I flatter myself. When we met at a Society for New Testament Studies meeting at the University of Durham, England, where he had done his doctorate with Professor Kingsley Barrett, we discovered we have a common passion for tennis as well as Johannine studies. In his youth John was both a cricketer and a tennis player. In fact, he found himself competing in top junior tennis tournaments in Australia alongside the likes of Kenny Rosewall and Lew Hoad. A serious injury caused him to look in other directions, and the scholarly world of New Testament is much the richer for it. Painter’s important contributions to Johannine scholarship include the major study of The Quest of the Messiah (rev. ed. 1993), a superb commentary on the Johannine Epistles in the Sacra Pagina series (2002), and the revision of the forthcoming third edition of Barrett’s commentary on the Gospel of John. Moreover, his study Just James, now in its second edition from the University of South Carolina Press (2004), is the definitive work on the brother of Jesus.

Acknowledgments

The author and the press are grateful to the following publishers:

The Syndics of Cambridge University Press for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 2, John, in Early Christian Thought in Its Jewish Context, edited by John Barclay and John Sweet (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 96–111. Copyright © 1996 by Cambridge University Press.

Westminster John Knox Press for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 3, The Contribution of J. Louis Martyn to the Understanding of the Gospel of John, in History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. 3rd ed. (Louisville, Ky. 2003), pp. 1–23. Copyright © 2003 by J. Louis Martyn.

Baylor University Press for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 4, The Problem of History in John, in What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present and Future of Johannine Studies, edited by Tom Thatcher (Waco, Texas, 2007), pp. 311–20. Copyright © 2007 by Baylor University Press.

E. J. Brill for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 5, John’s Quest for Jesus, in Neotestamentica et Philonica: Studies in Honor of Peder Borgen, edited by David E. Aune, Torrey Seland, and Jarl Henning Ulrichsen, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 106 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 233–53. Copyright © 2003 by E. J. Brill.

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 6, The Presentation of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, Interpretation 31 (1977): 367–78. Copyright © 1977 by Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education.

E. J. Brill for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 7, Jesus Tradition in the Gospel of John. In Handbook of the Study of the Historical Jesus, edited by Stanley Porter and Tom Holmen (Leiden, forthcoming). Copyright © 2006 by E. J. Brill.

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 9, The Historical Figure of Jesus in 1 John, which appears in slightly different form in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essay on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008).

Sheffield Academic Press by kind permission of Continuum International Publishing to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 10, Historical Issues and the Problem of John and the Synoptics, in From Jesus to John: Essays on Jesus and New Testament Christology in Honour of Marinus de Jonge, edited by Martinus C. de Boer. Journal for the Study of Religion Monograph Series 84 (Sheffield, 1994), pp. 252–67. Copyright © 1994 by Sheffield Academic Press.

Leuven University Press for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 11, John and the Synoptics and the Question of Gospel Genre, in The Four Gospels. 1992: Festschrift Frans Neirynck, edited by F. Van Segbroeck, C. M. Tuckett, G. Van Belle, and J. Verheyden (Leuven: 1992), vol. 3, pp. 1783–97. Copyright © 1992 by Leuven University Press.

Leuven University Press for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 12, The Problem of John and the Synoptics in Light of the Relation between Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels, in John and the Synoptics, edited by Adelbert Denaux. Bibiotheca Ephemeridum Theo-logicarum Lovaniensium 101 (Leuven, 1992), pp. 147–62. Copyright © 1992 by Leuven University Press.

The Society of Biblical Literature for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 13, John and the Synoptics in Light of the Problem of Faith and History, in Faith and History: Essays in Honor of Paul W. Meyer, edited by John T. Carroll, Charles H. Cosgrove, and E. Elizabeth Johnson (Atlanta, 1990), pp. 74–89. Copyright © 1990 by Scholars Press.

The Society of Biblical Literature for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 14, When Did the Gospels Become Scripture? Journal of Biblical Literature 119 (2000): 3–20. (Presidential Address, delivered at the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston, Massachusetts.) Copyright © 2000 by Scholars Press.

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 15, John, the Synoptics, and the Canonical Approach to Exegesis, in Tradition and Interpretation in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of E. Earle Ellis, edited by Gerald F. Hawthorne with Otto Betz (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1987), pp. 166–178. Copyright © 1987 by Wm. B. Eerdmans.

The Society of Biblical Literature for kind permission to reprint, in revised form, the original version of chapter 16, Prolegomena to a Canonical Reading of the Fourth Gospel, in What Is John? Readers and Readings of the Fourth Gospel, edited by Fernando F. Segovia (Atlanta, 1996), pp. 169–82. Copyright © 1996 by the Society of Biblical Literature.

1

The Gospel of John in Its Jewish Context

Why Begin with Judaism?

A half century ago the first question about the Gospel of John would not have been its relation to Judaism. Neither Rudolf Bultmann nor C. H. Dodd, the great mid-twentieth-century interpreters of John, started there. Why not begin with the Gospel of John and Jesus? John, like the other Gospels, purports to be about Jesus. A half century ago, however, one would not have begun with Jesus either. Yet within that time span this also has changed. John is once again coming into its own as a source for Jesus research. Both things have changed, but why one begins with John and Judaism will be the subject of this essay.

Before one presents the Johannine Jesus, or discusses Jesus tradition in the Gospel of John (chapter 7), it is necessary to ask about John and its possibly Jewish originative context. Why should we think such a context is fundamental? Of course, that John should have originated within Judaism is not surprising if the Gospel is about Jesus. Jesus himself was a Jew, as is now universally acknowledged. The so-called third quest of the historical Jesus has unmistakably underscored this fact. For theology, particularly New Testament theology, this means that Jesus’ humanity is inseparable from his Jewishness, if it is more than a mere and meaningless abstraction. But was the Judaism of Jesus himself the same as the Judaism portrayed in the Gospel of John? Moreover, was the relationship of Jesus to Judaism the same? Apparently not, but the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed the existence of a Palestinian Judaism with some affinities with Johannine theological language. Yet this fact, although important, did not lead to immediate success in situating John in, or in relation to, Judaism.¹

In the traditions embodied in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus appears as a Jew among Jews even as he creates surprise, astonishment, and sometimes anger among some of his fellow Jews.² Rarely are the Jews singled out in distinction from Jesus, however, because Jesus himself is assumed to be Jewish. The Jews are mentioned only when an evangelist is reflecting his own, later perspective (Matt 28:15; Mark 7:3).

Jesus is said to have begun public activity by proclaiming the imminent advent of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14–15). Obviously, the realization of God’s kingly rule lay in the future, but one could detect in Jesus’ own work the signs of its in-breaking and presence (Luke 11:20). For this and other reasons Jesus was an unsettling presence. Jesus represented something new. But that new thing was not at first conceived as the beginning of Christianity as a religion separate from Judaism. In the Gospel of Matthew, perhaps the most Jewish of the Synoptics, Jesus presents himself as one who has come to fulfill scripture, although not necessarily in ways that others would anticipate. He does not reject the biblical law of Judaism, as much as he may dispute with other Jewish teachers how that law should be fulfilled (Matt 5:17–20). It is sometimes said that Jesus radicalized the demand for obedience. Perhaps he did. He certainly did not abandon it. Moreover, there is in Matthew, and in the other Synoptics for that matter, little to suggest that Jesus thought God had sent him on a mission to Gentiles as well as Jews. I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, Matthew adds to Mark’s narrative (Matt 15:24; cf. 10:5), but it seems to be the proper understanding of the distinction between children and dogs in Mark 7:27.

The Apostle Paul, probably Jesus’ contemporary although never his earthly companion, gained importance and fame by preaching the good news of Jesus to Gentiles and in effect abandoning the then widespread insistence on their obeying the law. He styled himself the Apostle to the Gentiles, in distinction from Peter and James. Paul, as a Jew, thought of himself as instrumental in making a break with Judaism, not of his own volition but by the call of God (Gal 1:15–17). Paul’s move has been called his conversion, but not by Paul himself, who never uses the term Christian or Christianity. Yet there is good reason that Paul has been thought of as the founder of a Gentile Christian church, forever separate from Judaism. Paul would not have been happy, however, with such a designation or such fame. He saw in his Gentile mission, and in the Gentile churches, a means of bringing his own Jewish brothers and sisters to faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus as the Messiah (Rom 11:13–24), something that was not, however, happening during his own ministry (9:1–5).

Paul is portrayed in Acts (8:3; 9:1–22) as a persecutor of Jesus’ followers, a description that accords with his own statements (Gal 1:13, 23). Later, as a missionary for Jesus, he was beaten by his (fellow) Jews (2 Cor 11:24; cf. Deut 25:3). Thus Paul attests, at the very beginning of the Jesus movement within Judaism, that it evoked resistance and hostility, which he had at first, as a Jew, dealt out and then, as a Jewish apostle of Jesus, received. For Paul the parting of the ways had to do with law and custom. Reading Paul’s letters and Acts we naturally assume that everything centered on Paul and his mission. Yet this cannot have been the whole story of Christianity’s mission and expansion, important as it was.

The Gospel of John

The Johannine literature, particularly the Gospel of John, suggests there was another branch of the Jesus movement (perhaps one of several) that was also grounded in, but separating from, Judaism. Thus the Gospel of John pits the Jews, sometimes referred to as Pharisees, against Jesus the Jew (as he is called in 4:9). Indeed, the Jews approach John the Baptist and question him sharply at the beginning of the Gospel’s narrative (1:19–28). The fact that John is said to confess, and not deny (v. 25), suggests there is something hostile about the encounter and questioning. John, obviously Jewish, has been sent to Israel (1:31). Obviously, Jews belong to Israel. Israel is made up of Jews. Yet in the Gospel of John the term Israel is always used in a positive light (cf. 1:47; 3:10), while the designation the Jews usually, although not always, appears in a negative light.

In John 8:31–51 the Jews (at first the Jews who have believed in him) and Jesus are locked in mortal opposition to each other. (Yet it is interesting that here the Jews confront Jesus alone, not his disciples.) There would seem to be no possibility of rapprochement between them. Yet earlier Jews in Galilee were more perplexed by Jesus than angry with him (6:25–51). But after the horrendous dispute of John 8 the Jews are portrayed as having decided to expel from the synagogue anyone who confesses Jesus as the Messiah (9:22). This malevolent intention is repeated at the end of Jesus’ public ministry (12:42), and Jesus himself warns his disciples of this and worse as he meets with them at their last supper (16:2). Such statements presume that there were Christ-confessors who did not intend to cease being Jewish. There is something anomalous, and probably anachronistic, about all this. Nothing is said in other Gospels about the disciples of Jesus being in effect excommunicated from Judaism. (Presumably that is what is meant by the technical term aposynagogoi.)

There Jesus does not stand over against the Jews. He stands side by side with other Jews, who are seldom called simply Jews but are identified as Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, priests, lawyers, or Herodians. Jesus himself is sometimes referred to as a teacher or a prophet. All this makes good sense in a Jewish context. Also, only in John do the Jews seem to be identical with the Pharisees (cf. 9:22 and 12:42), who with the chief priests (who replace the Pharisees in the passion narrative) are the only historically identifiable Jewish groups mentioned. The situation of the Jews in John corresponds to the period after the Roman War (A.D. 70 and later), in which only the interests of the Pharisees survived that holocaust and the identification of the Pharisees and the Jews made a certain sense.

Interestingly enough, although Jesus is identified as Jewish in John (4:9) and, in the face of the challenge presented by the woman of Samaria, declares that salvation is of the Jews (4:22), he himself is never said to be expelled from a synagogue or threatened with such expulsion. This reflects the historical fact that he was not.

The Epistles and Revelation to John

The peculiarity of the state of affairs represented by the Gospel of John is bounded on the one side by the time of Jesus himself, when there was hostility but not with the Jews, and on the other by the time and setting of the Johannine Epistles, which make no mention of the Jews. The hostility in the Epistles is directed instead against other Christ-confessors who get it wrong about Jesus. They may confess Jesus (9:22), but they do not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2–3). They are docetic heretics. Their confession is worse than useless. It is misleading and corrupting. Yet there is no indication that these opponents are, or ever have been, Jewish. There is, however, an overriding dualism, which seem to require an opposite, or an enemy (if not the Jews, then the Christ-confessors who make an unforgivable mistake in their understanding and presentation of Jesus).

The Revelation to John, with the Gospel and Epistles, rounds out the traditional Johannine corpus. It is, of course, an apocalypse that reveals secrets, particularly about the future, the return of Jesus and the consummation of the age. At the end the heavenly, exalted Christ says repeatedly that he is coming soon (22:6, 12, 17, 20). The apocalyptic scenario is very different from the Gospel of John. In John also Jesus speaks repeatedly of coming again (14:4), but this coming is now reinterpreted (14:22) in terms of Jesus’ continuing presence among his disciples via the Counselor or Advocate (esp. 14:26; 16:12–15).

There is, however, a kind of bridge between Revelation and the Gospel at just this point. The Jesus who is coming soon is the same Jesus who has already spoken from heaven to his disciples on earth (Rev 22:16) in Revelation’s seven letters to the seven churches (2–3). John writes the letters (1:4), but what he communicates is a message from the crucified and risen one (1:18) who instructs John what to write (1:19). In every case a synoptic-like saying of Jesus about he who has ears to hear is adapted, as, for example, in 2:7: He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches (cf. Matt 11:15). Thus between Revelation and the Gospel there seems to be a parallel structure, although the terminology is different. For example, the term Counselor or Advocate (paraklētos), found also in 1 John 2:1, is not used of the Spirit in Revelation. Yet in both cases, Gospel and Revelation, Jesus, who is with God, communicates with his disciples below.³

Despite wide differences in terminology, genre, and scenario, there are a number of other points of contact between the Gospel of John and Revelation.⁴ Revelation names as its author a John (1:1 passim), although, paradoxically, the Gospel of John does not. There the author is described as a truthful witness (19:35; 21:24), while the author of 2 and 3 John is the unnamed Elder. At the outset (Rev 1:7) there is a reference to Zech 12:10, the piercing of the (side of) crucified Jesus, elsewhere found only in John 19:37. That the death of Jesus is clearly in view in John 19:37 is made quite explicit. Water and blood flow from Jesus’ side. In Rev 1:5 there is also reference to Jesus’ (spilled) blood, as his death is also necessarily in view. Revelation, like the Gospel, lays heavy emphasis on witness or witnessing. Jesus is the faithful witness (Rev 1:5): The testimony of Jesus (1:9) could be understood as the witness of Jesus; the martyrs of Jesus (17:6) are Jesus’ witnesses; also the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (19:11). Revelation’s heavy emphasis on martyrdom and witness is grounded in the fact that martys in Greek is both witness and martyr, and John is obviously aware that a pun is intended. Become a martyr in one’s witness is also conquering. The disciple who conquers (Rev 21:7; cf. 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21) parallels Jesus, who has overcome, or conquered, the world (John 16:33). Finally, in Revelation Jesus himself is called the Word of God (19:13; 20:4; cf. John 1:1–18 and 1 John 4:1–4).

Moreover, the Jews appear in Rev 2:9 and 3:9. Yet they are not truly Jews, although they may claim to be, but are the synagogue of Satan. Obviously, the synagogue of Satan is not a good thing, but Jews is here used in a positive sense. The reader is reminded of Paul’s use of Jew in Romans (2:17, 28–29; 3:1). A true Jew, or one who is truly a Jew, is a man (or woman) who is obedient to God. Similarly, for Paul in his argument with Peter (Gal 2:14–15) being a Jew counts for something, even though the coming of Jesus has changed the terms on which God’s salvation is accessible (cf. Rom 9:1–5). But are these references to Jews and a synagogue of Satan in Revelation closely related to the Gospel of John? Have the Jews who preside over synagogues shown their true colors by expelling the true Jews (in the Gospel of John, Israelites) who have confessed Jesus? Apparently the followers of Jesus who are here addressed (by the exalted Jesus) are being oppressed by these Jews falsely so-called. I think it quite possible that the Gospel of John and Revelation reflect similar settings in which Christ’s confessors are suffering at the hands of their fellow Jews who deny that Jesus is the Christ.⁵ It may not be an exact fit, but it is a close one.

The Acts of the Apostles

In the Gospel of John the Jews are not followers of Jesus but are usually, with the Pharisees, Jesus’ opponents. (Yet some are occasionally portrayed as still contemplating the possibility of belief.) John is usually read as if their hostility is basic throughout the Gospel. Such a complete breach closely parallels what is found in another narrative context, namely, the Acts of the Apostles. Acts, however, describes the emergence of Christianity from Judaism, and even notes that in Antioch, when the gospel was preached to Greeks (presumably Gentiles), the disciples were first called Christians (11:26). Obviously, such disciples were no longer thought of—nor did they think of themselves—as Jews.

At the end of Acts 12, after the release of Peter from prison and the death of his nemesis Herod, the scene shifts fully to Antioch and the narration of Paul’s missionary work begins. Only in Acts 15 do we read that the apostles and elders, including Peter, gather again in Jerusalem, before James, to decide whether converts must be circumcised and charged to keep the law of Moses as Pharisaic believers were still insisting (15:5). The decision is basically negative, so that the mission of Paul and Barnabas is vindicated (cf. Gal 2:1–10). The reader then learns of Paul’s further missionary work (16:1 until his arrest in Jerusalem in 21:27–36), and after that of his hearings and speeches before Roman as well as Jewish authorities as he moves from Jerusalem to Rome, where the narrative ends. Thus, after chapter 12, Acts is an account of Paul’s mission and his defense of it as Apostle to the Gentiles. We do not learn much about what is going on among Christians or churches in other places. We do, however, learn that there are still thousands of law-abiding followers of Jesus in Jerusalem who advocate circumcision and obedience to the law for all true disciples of Jesus and suspect Paul because he does not (21:20–21). The Jewish authorities are now Paul’s opponents (24:1–8) although they recognize his Jewish origin. Their hostility is mortal, because they seek his death (Acts 25:2–3). One is reminded of Jesus’ dire forecast in John 16:2.

The Book of Acts, read critically, gives a historically plausible portrayal of the mission and expansion of Christianity. Obviously Luke does not describe everything that was going on within the first generation. In fact, that would have been impossible. Does Acts represent an unbiased portrayal? Obviously it does not. If postmodernism has taught us anything, it is to suspect any claims for such a portrayal, ancient or modern. Acts, however, deals with real people and events. That impression is not false, as a comparison with the only sources certainly contemporaneous with the events, Paul’s letters, shows. The data of Acts and Paul do not always agree, which suggests not that Acts or Paul is valueless historically, but that they are dealing with the same or related data.

We have briefly canvassed through the Synoptic Gospels, Acts, Paul, and the Johannine writings, looking at the use of Ioudaioi, Jews. It is a striking fact that the term occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It is not found in the Catholic Epistles (including the Johannine), Hebrews, or the Pauline Pastorals. Neither does it occur in Ephesians, Philippians, 2 Thessalonians, or Philemon. Its most significant occurrences are in the Gospel of John, some of Paul’s letters (especially Romans), and the Book of Acts.

How do the Johannine writings, particularly the Fourth Gospel, fit in? Do they fit in? It has often been presumed that the Johannine writings came in the aftermath of the situation described in Paul’s letters and Acts. That is, with respect to the Jewish-Christian issue specifically, they presume and reflect the position attained at the end of the line of development (Entwicklungslinie or trajectory) reflected in Paul’s letters and described in Acts. But do they? Or do they represent a separate, related but independent, line of development?

If they represent the end point of such a development, Judaism would scarcely be the proper beginning point for a book on John’s Gospel. That issue would have been settled. If, however, there was a distinctly Johannine line of development, Judaism may well be the place to begin. In the former case, it has seemed appropriate to treat John, particularly the Gospel of John, in the context