Jesus on Stage: John’S Gospel and Greek Tragedy

By Philip Oakeshott

Jesus on Stage argues that the Gospel of John is, in its present form, an ancient historical novel, but that the evangelists first version was his own draft for a Greek play. The development of Greek drama at Athens is briefly described, with new suggestions on some details, and the continuing influence of the great Greek tragedians in the 1st Century AD is shown. Then the internal evidence in the gospel which points to an earlier draft play is marshalled: not merely dramatic scenes, some of which echo Sophocles, but speeches only appropriate to the stage, puzzling features which make sense if they were devised with theatrical presentation in mind, others which suggest the chorus of a play; and a drastic reshaping of the Synoptic storyline to centre the whole work on Jerusalem, with a Jesus who resembles the hero of a play. All this has later been expanded to form a novel, including incidents in the mystery and suspense tradition beloved by ancient novelists. But the book is not only for scholars; anyone re-examining Johns gospel from this standpoint will find new depths in the evangelists seldom historical but deeply spiritual creation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496999252

Philip Oakeshott

Philip Oakeshott, now a member of Southampton Quaker meeting, was born to an Anglican clerical family. The Second World War meant a rather ramshackle education, in seven schools, four of them in South America. From St. John’s, Leatherhead, he went with a State Scholarship to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where Modern and Mediaeval Languages were followed, since he intended to be ordained, by Theology. During a gap year on the shop-floor of a Sheffield steelworks he altered course into teaching, starting at an East End Grammar School and ending as head of a large and successful Hampshire Comprehensive School. On retirement he returned to the serious study of the gospels, while service as Quaker chaplain at Parkhurst and Albany prisons widened his experience further and deepened his theology. He first had articles accepted by Theology in 2008, and published his own book on Mark’s gospel, The Man that Peter Knew, in 2011. Since then he has been concentrating on John.

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2015 Philip Oakeshott. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/02/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9930-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9931-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9925-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922265

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Greek Bible text from: Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th revised edition, Edited by Barbara Aland and others, © 2012 Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 A Historical Novel

2 Problems with the Text

3 Greek Theatre

4 Dramatic Scenes in John’s Gospel

5 Could A Christian Write A Play?

6 Evidence For A Draft Play

7 Theatrical Scenes

8 The Chorus

9 Jesus At Jerusalem: A Tentative Reconstruction

10 The Value Of John: A Personal View.

Appendix A The Theatre of Dionysus at Athens

Appendix B The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel

Appendix C The Date of the Crucifixion

Short Bibliography

Notes

Acknowledgements

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All translations from Greek and Latin in this book are mine, working from the Aland New Testament (4th rev. ed.), and from the classical texts of the Loeb Classical Library. All or most Bible translations, and even occasionally the Loeb translations, at times conceal some aspect of the truth; for example, the stage-directions added to the text of a play represent only an individual editor’s, sometimes outmoded, perception of the ways in which such plays were produced. As translator, my wording cannot help but coincide often with that of other translators, to whom indeed I owe a great deal; but my only conscious plagiarism is of E.V. Rieu’s ‘pitched his tent among us’ (John 1.14).

I wish to express my warmest appreciation of good advice and encouragement given during the earliest stages of my studies in the gospel of John and of the classic and the Hellenistic Greek drama by my late friend Keith Treacher, the late Henry Chadwick, Professor Paul Anderson of George Fox University, Washington, and Professor Howard Jacobson of Illinois University, none of whom are to be held responsible for the ideas expressed in this book, still less for any errors which it may contain.

Once more I must thank Southampton University for allowing me the use of their library, and Southampton Central Library for their unflagging zeal in finding me books from other libraries all over Britain.

My special thanks to Canon John Davies, formerly Lecturer in New Testament Studies at Southampton University, whose friendship has always rendered his very pertinent criticisms not merely acceptable but enjoyable; and also to my resident computer expert, without whose unfailing help this book could not have been written.

Introduction

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In The Man that Peter Knew I argued that Mark’s Gospel was an honest, if at times imperfect account of Jesus’ ministry, and still our best source for Jesus’ life. Greek Tragedy and the Gospel of John is, on the other hand, intended to show that factual biography was not at any point the Fourth Evangelist’s intention.

John¹, almost certainly published between 90 and 115 AD, has been a puzzle from the beginning, being so obviously different from the already established Synoptic gospels (i.e., Mark, Matthew and Luke) in its storyline, its teaching, and its portrayal of Jesus himself. The earliest evaluation we have of this gospel, by the scholar Clement of Alexandria, writing little more than a century after John’s likely date of publication, stated flatly that ‘John, the very last (of the evangelists), realising that the physical facts (ta somatika) had been set out clearly in the (earlier) gospels, urged by his friends and inspired by the spirit (pneumati), created a spiritual gospel (pneumatikon poiēsai euaggelion).’² The implication is clear; and although the church came to treat this gospel as factual, we should not today overlook Clement’s distinction between the known, physical facts concerning Jesus, recorded by the first three evangelists, and this inspired, but much less factual gospel which the fourth evangelist composed. (Poieō is the word used for all creative work, be it poetry, drama or sculpture, or the God of Genesis creating the world; graphō, to write, is what they say of Mark.) Certainly, whoever composed it, the Fourth Gospel has a theological depth undreamed of among its predecessors; but also, as Clement quite clearly says, it is primarily concerned with the theological significance of the principal facts in the Synoptic record – the preaching and teaching, the healings, the crucifixion and the resurrection; and, as I will add, wherever an invented incident will best suit his purpose, the fourth evangelist creates one.

The thesis set out in this book is that the first draft of the Gospel of John was intended to be a stage-play for the Greek theatre, imitating those of Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides, the great classical dramatists of the fifth century BC; and based, loosely, on the events of Passion Week. Later, however, the author changed direction and expanded that draft into a Greek historical novel or ‘romance’, a genre which flourished from perhaps the first century BC at least until the third century AD. At both stages, then, a work of fiction; of historical fiction, insofar as it deals with a historical person, but not in the sense of trying to present an accurate historical account of that person and the events of his life. Like Shakespeare, painting Richard III as a complete villain coming to disaster or Henry V as the triumphant ideal king, the evangelist depicts his Jesus as God in human form, with supernatural power and insight, yet submitting calmly to a dreadful fate and so achieving the greatest of all victories. John is trying to express what he sees as the significant truth about Jesus through the medium of historical fiction.

It is in this gospel that Pontius Pilate asks, as the story reaches its crisis, ‘What is truth?’ ‘All Truth is a shadow, except the last, except the utmost; yet every Truth is true in its kind’, says Isaac Pennington, an early Quaker (italics mine). What kind of truth is John putting forward? Fiction or drama based on history can have its own validity – consider, for example, T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.

John himself makes his approach quite clear with a prologue outlining his theological view of Jesus as the Incarnate Word of God; and reinforces it at the end of his main book when, after saying that there were many other 'signs' which Jesus did and the disciples witnessed, ‘not recorded in this book’ he continues: ‘But those written here have been recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this faith you may possess eternal life by means of his name’ (John 20.30-31). Unlike Mark, John abandons accurate biography in favour of a very dramatic theological interpretation of Jesus. This gospel is often inspired and inspiring fiction, a store of many treasures; but it will become all the more valuable once we have recognized that historical fact was never the author’s concern: the truth he sought to express was of another kind, expressed through a different medium.

1

A Historical Novel

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As in an archaeological excavation, this enquiry must chart the topmost layer of the site before digging deeper: we must survey the narrative gospel as it is now found in the New Testament before we can begin to examine its possible dramatic content. The first stage is to examine the present text to see whether it supports my prime contention that the fourth gospel is a work of fiction; a work now of historical fiction, and resembling in that respect other books that can be found in the Old Testament and the Apocrypha (see below). Only then shall we be ready to delve deeper for traces of an earlier version.

The Fictional Element in John

If one tried to write a novel about Jesus, it might not be long before one found oneself turning more and more to John for lively incident, dramatic tension, or the mechanics of plot; and the suspicion might finally dawn that the evangelist had himself written just such a novel. Once that thought occurs, the evidence is not far to seek.

John has long been acknowledged as a remarkable piece of writing, with even C.H. Dodd (1963 p.18), the most convinced twentieth century champion of this gospel’s historical value, remarking that it was 'to a degree unequalled by the other gospels, an original literary composition'. Many scholars have held that the fourth evangelist drew on a tradition independent of that of the Synoptic gospels. Opinions vary from Dodd's claims for the high factual content of John’s tradition to A.T. Hanson's view that it was inferior; but most scholars support the independence of John and many -- C.K. Barrett is a notable exception -- deny him any knowledge of Mark. Yet, apart from any conscious, or possibly subconscious, wish to uphold John as true witness, the idea that it is historically valuable rests mainly on the assumption that it at least purports to be an attempt at history. When Stibbe (1992, p.74) says that 'Historians like Mark and John do not invent details in order to create a sense of factuality', this may be true of historians in general and of Mark in particular; but it begs the question about John. Perhaps the author was not a historian? Stibbe talks of 'fictionalized history', but writers of fiction, however historical, invariably do add detail, for verisimilitude and for greater interest. This study will maintain that the fourth evangelist draws on the Synoptics, and possibly on Paul as well, radically reshaping their words for reasons which are sometimes theological but as often artistic; with some passages drawing on the practice of his church or the knowledge of its members; and that the clear differences and discrepancies between his narrative and the Synoptic ones is due, not to knowledge of some other tradition, but to his ruthless adaption of the synoptic one for his own medium -- fiction.

The Ancient Novel

C.S. Lewis once attempted a black-and-white dismissal of the possibility that John could be anything other than the recording of fact:

'Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage -- though no doubt it may contain errors -- pretty close to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this simply has not learned to read.'³

Lewis' literary judgement here may well be sound; more so perhaps than the recent tendency to classify John as a bios, for although the book can be said to have the form of Greek popular biography, the writer's inventiveness, ruthless reshaping of sources, and above all sophistication of plot, so different from the almost unconnected episodes which make up, say, a bios like the Life of Aesop, all identify the gospel as a novel. Lewis's mistake was to suppose that the gospel's author would have needed to anticipate the technique of the historical novel, which was already flourishing in the Graeco-Roman world; ‘John’ had many predecessors and successors in that genre. The gospel may seem ‘modern’ and ‘realistic’ because of the author’s talent for lively dialogue,⁴ which is indeed livelier than that of most ancient novels, but lively dialogue has always been, as both Old Testament and Apocrypha can show, a notable characteristic of Jewish and Graeco-Jewish storytelling; but, like these, John also contains much that is neither realistic nor, as serious history, very plausible.

A great deal of fiction was written in the Hellenistic period which followed Alexander’s conquests and the early centuries of the Roman empire which followed it, owing partly to the increase in literacy and perhaps also to a new individualism as people strove to find purpose and identity in the enormous world of empire (Perry, pp.78, 140). Those novels which have survived can reasonably be dated as early as the first century BC or as late as the third century AD, and their production was rising towards a peak at the beginning of the second century AD (Reardon, 1989, p.5), which is a likely time for John’s gospel to have been written. Whatever the causes, there was a market for fiction, varying from a high-minded Utopia like Iambulus' Island of the Sun to the bawdy Milesian Tales of Aristides, but including also genuine 'romances', novels like Chariton's Chaereas and Callirhoe, the Ninus Romance and The Dream of Nectanebus.⁵

Often such novels made some use of known historical characters; but, like modern ones, they varied, from those telling a romantic story with minimal factual content to those like The Alexander Romance, 'a narrative about a historical figure, with a historical basis but with much additional material casting light on the hero's significance and making the story more exciting'.⁶ That phrase aptly describes the type of historical novel which is sometimes mistaken for a popular biography; and it is to this ambivalent genre that John properly belongs.

The Jewish Greek novella

The Jewish people have always been much given to storytelling, an art form that breaks neither the second nor the fourth commandment. There was no language barrier between the majority of Jews and the Greek-speaking culture of the eastern Roman empire in which they lived. In Palestine itself (which had been under the rule of Alexander and his successors for longer than India was ever held by the British) Greek was much spoken, and a great many Jews lived in Greek-speaking cities abroad. So novels in Greek were written also by Jews. The Genesis-based love-story of Joseph and Aseneth is thought to be one of the oldest of the ancient 'romances'; and the fact that this whole passionate tale is spun from just two verses of Genesis (Ch.41.45,51), shows how far such a novel might be creative rather than historical.

The Hebrew scriptures already contained three early examples of the historical novella: Jonah, Ruth and Esther. Jonah is, like the Arthurian legends or