John

By Gail R. O'Day and Susan E. Hylen

The Gospel of John is one of the most beloved books in the Christian canon. Its stories and images have long captured the imaginations of Christians. Not only is it one of the most popular writings of the New Testament, but many aspects of its style and outlook are distinctive. In this clear, thorough, and accessible commentary on the Gospel of John, scholars Gail O'Day and Susan Hylen explore and explain this Gospel's distinctive qualities.

Books in the Westminster Bible Companion series assist laity in their study of the Bible as a guide to Christian faith and practice. Each volume explains the biblical book in its original historical context and explores its significance for faithful living today. These books are ideal for individual study and for Bible study classes and groups.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2006
• ISBN: 9781611644401

Gail R. O'Day

Gail R. O'Day is A. H. Shatford Professor of Preaching and New Testament at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Book preview

Introduction

The Fourth Gospel is one of the most beloved books of the Christian canon. Its stories and images have captured the imaginations of Christians in every generation. The stories of the wedding at Cana, the woman at the well, and the raising of Lazarus are told and retold among adults and children. Images of Jesus as the bread of life, the good shepherd, and the vine are familiar from Sunday school lessons, sermons, and stained-glass windows. While much about the Gospel is familiar, the depth and beauty of its language reward those who return again and again. For the early initiate, Jesus is simply the good shepherd, and we the flock he carefully tends. The student of John finds that picture enriched by understanding the way John draws from Ezekiel the image of God as shepherd. The patient reader comes to recognize Jesus not only as the shepherd of the sheep but the gate to the sheepfold … and such discoveries go on and on.

John’s Gospel is not only one of the most popular writings of the New Testament, it is also distinctive in many aspects of its style and outlook. For example, Jesus does relatively few miracles (and no exorcisms) in John. Jesus teaches in much longer speeches in John than in the Synoptic Gospels. His teaching contains few of the parables that are well known from the other Gospels: for example, the parables in Matthew that begin the kingdom of heaven is like a … have no direct parallel in John. The I am sayings that characterize Jesus’ speech do not occur in any other Gospel. John’s chronology of the life of Jesus is also different from that of Matthew, Mark, or Luke. John presents Jesus’ ministry as a three-year time period; it encompasses three Passover celebrations (2:13; 6:4; 13:1). The death of Jesus occurs on a Friday in each Gospel account. However, in John this Friday is the day of Preparation for the Passover; in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is the first day of the Passover Festival. Because of these differences, John is often presented as a Gospel that stands on its own (evident in references to it as the Fourth Gospel), while Matthew, Mark, and Luke are commonly grouped together as the Synoptic (literally, see together) Gospels.

Many modern Christians have asked why John’s portrait of Jesus is so different. One approach to this question is to look at the Gospel’s origins and the social and historical setting in which it took shape. Trying to understand where, when, and why this author wrote can help us to understand why his portrait of Jesus often looks different from the other Gospels. But historical investigation can only take us so far; it may help us to understand how John’s language came about, but it will not answer all the questions a reader may have about John’s distinctiveness. Another way of thinking about John asks the question differently: what do the distinctive attributes of John communicate to the reader about Jesus? This way of thinking about John poses questions about the literary style of John’s Gospel: What does John say? How does the text say what it says? The particulars of John’s narrative are shaped by the historical contingencies of the author’s and Jesus’ lifetimes and by the literary and theological choices the author made.

We begin with an overview of basic historical issues and literary features that will help the reader be an informed reader of John’s Gospel.

HISTORICAL ISSUES

Historical study gives us access to an overall picture of what first-century CE life was like (CE refers to the Common Era, also known as AD, the year of the Lord), so that when we ask what John’s language means we are not simply comparing it to our own perspective and language use. For example, Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in John 4 builds on certain assumptions of who Jews and Samaritans were in the first century. The Samaritans and Jews shared much in common—for example, both viewed the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch) as God’s holy word given to Moses. But they worshiped in different locations: the Samaritans at Mount Gerizim and the Jews in Jerusalem. When Jesus and the Samaritan woman have a discussion about true worship and its location, that discussion derives from this historical setting. Jesus and the woman know this background and do not need to make explicit references to it. But non-first-century readers, for whom the interactions between Samaritans and Jews are no longer part of their immediate experience, need to learn about this history in order to understand the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The topic of worship is not simply pulled out of the air in the middle of their dialogue, but arises from common assumptions and circumstances that Jesus and the Samaritan woman shared.

Historical study also helps to understand some very basic questions about biblical texts: Where did they come from? For whom were they written? We begin with these basic introductory questions before turning to John’s distinctive literary features. As with all the Gospels, precision about the date and place of authorship, or about the identity of the author, is difficult. The Gospel itself does give us a few clues regarding these issues, however, and these are a helpful foundation for our study of John’s Gospel.

Authorship

In its earliest manuscripts, the Gospel of John was anonymous, as were all the Gospels. Their titles, which attributed authorship, were added only later. The title added to John in the Greek manuscripts was kata lōannōn, according to John. But even these titles do not identify which John (or which Matthew, Mark, or Luke) wrote these works. Christian writers of the second and third centuries attributed this Gospel to John, the son of Zebedee, a disciple of Jesus, but there is little other evidence to support this assertion.

The information the Gospel provides about its authorship comes only at the very end of the book. The narrator’s voice interrupts the story of Jesus’ crucifixion at 19:35, following the issue of blood and water from Jesus’ side, to note, He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth. Again in chapter 21, the narrator intervenes with a closing comment, referring to a disciple who is present with the resurrected Jesus: This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true (21:24). The presence of an eyewitness to the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection is identified as the basis of the Gospel’s witness. At the same time, however, the eyewitness is referred to in the third person—his testimony is true (21:24)—so it seems unlikely that the author of the Gospel and this disciple are the same person. The we of 21:24 points to a later group that claimed this disciple as the source of its authority and traditions about Jesus.

Who then is this disciple? In 19:26 and 21:20 he is identified as the disciple whom Jesus loved (see 13:23; 21:7). The identity of this disciple may have been known to the first readers of the Gospel, but the author never names him in the story. The frequent use of the names of other disciples throughout the Gospel suggests that what was important to the writer was not the name of this disciple, but his relationship to Jesus. We are told repeatedly that this disciple is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and that his witness was singularly important to the subsequent community. He stands as a model of the love and witness to which all disciples are called.

Date

Early and mid-twentieth-century scholars placed the date of John later than the other Gospels—sometimes even into the second century CE. One reason that scholars have given John a late date is because in many places the Gospel seems to look back at the Jesus story and reflect on its meaning. The narrator tells the reader how later reflection on Jesus’ life has affected the way both Jesus and the Scriptures are understood. The first example of this in the Gospel occurs at John 2:13–22, John’s version of the cleansing of the temple. The Jews have responded to Jesus in verse 20, saying, This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days? The narrator then inserts this explanation: But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken (vv. 21–22). John explicitly tells the reader that the disciples have remembered this event at a later date, and that as a result of this remembering, they have come to see the event in a new way. This style of including reflection on the past into the Gospel story is not an isolated occurrence in John; another example is 12:14–16. Because of these places where the author incorporates such reflection into the story of Jesus, many scholars have tended to see John as a later document. The argument is that the author has had more time than the other Gospel writers to reflect on Jesus’ life, and this theological development is reflected in the writing.

More recently, however, other interpreters have rejected the later dating of John. One reason is that our earliest manuscript evidence for the whole New Testament is of a passage from John’s Gospel—an Egyptian papyrus from about 125 CE. The existence of this papyrus fragment suggests that the Gospel was already being circulated in Egypt by the turn of the first century, which means that its date of composition must be somewhat earlier than this. Another important reason to reject the later date for John is that the view of John as late portrays the Synoptic Gospels as somehow unreflective—as if they do not also view Jesus’ life from a postresurrection perspective and try to convey to the reader the meaning and importance of his life, death, and resurrection. But of course the Synoptic Gospels also do that. What is distinctive about John is the literary technique by which this reflection is made explicit, but the reflection itself is not unique to John. Matthew is a good comparison; Matthew frequently identifies passages of Scripture and relates them to Jesus (for instance, Matt. 1:23; 2:6). The way that John relates Scripture to Jesus is different from Matthew, but what is similar is that John and Matthew both remind the reader that Scripture and tradition can shed light on the meaning of the life of Jesus. Because of this, it is best not to assume that John is necessarily later than Matthew or Luke. They may all be in roughly the same range: 75–85 CE being a likely period for Matthew, Luke, and John.

Social Location of the Gospel

The importance of imagery from Jewish Scriptures and tradition is a key to understanding the kind of community for whom the Gospel was originally written. John speaks from within the Jewish tradition. He has an impressive command of the Jewish Scriptures and draws on their imagery, characters, and stories as a basis for understanding who Jesus is. John occasionally quotes the Scriptures directly, pointing to Jesus’ life as a fulfillment of the promises God has made in the past. He also utilizes the images of the important Jewish festivals—especially Passover and the Festival of Booths—to shed light on Jesus’ identity. John’s familiarity with and attention to the important stories of Judaism suggests a deep grounding in the Jewish faith.

This deep grounding does not translate into an easy relationship to Judaism, however. There are many indications of conflict with other Jews over the affirmation that Jesus was the Messiah. One of John’s common designations for the crowd that follows Jesus is simply the Jews: these are the people among whom Jesus works. Although clear signs are present of an expansion to non-Jewish peoples (see chap. 4; 11:50–52; 12:20–22, 32), Jesus’ ministry during his life is primarily among the Jews. Many of the Jews in the Gospel believe in Jesus, but there is clearly a division and increasing acrimony as time progresses. The very people who stood in a position to understand Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promised messiah are presented as those who call for his crucifixion. Not all Jewish people saw in Jesus the fulfillment of their hopes for a messiah. (See the excursus on the Jews in John.)

The division among the Jews is an important part of the portrayal of Jesus’ life, but it also reflects the experiences of Christians in the time the Gospel was written. John’s community also seems likely to have experienced conflict from within their Jewish community, as reflected in references in the Gospel to people being thrown out of the synagogue. For example, in chapter 9, the story of the healing of the blind man and the aftermath of that event, the blind man’s parents are asked to testify regarding their son’s healing: His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself (vv. 20–21). And then there is an interjection by the narrator: His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. This scenario about being thrown out of the synagogue crops up again at John 12:42 and 16:2. It is a situation that appears anachronistic within the life of Jesus, for two main reasons. First, synagogue worship may have been present in Jesus’ day, but it only became a central part of Jewish practice after the temple was destroyed by the Romans in the war of 69–70 CE. Second, if there were synagogue gatherings, it is not clear that in Jesus’ lifetime there would have been a concerted effort to throw Jesus’ followers out.

If being thrown out of the synagogue was not a reality during the life of Jesus, why does John include this language as part of the Gospel story? The most likely reason is that John incorporates aspects of the later community’s experience into the stories of Jesus. Prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by Roman troops in 70 CE, some Jewish Christians combined their Christian worship practices with Jewish worship practices (see Acts 2-46-47). But after the Temple was destroyed, Jewish and Jewish Christian worship life changed dramatically. The priestly class, the Sadducees, lost their power base with the end of the worship that was practiced in the Temple. Scripture and its interpretation became one of the defining marks of Jewish religious life, and teaching and interpreting Scripture was the domain of the Pharisees (rabbis) and the synagogue. The references in John suggest that the conflicts and disagreements between Jewish Christians and synagogue-based Judaism intensified in the years following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, as Jews and Jewish Christians worked to establish their religious identities within the Roman Empire. Some scholars have suggested that put out of the synagogue refers to a formal ban on Christian participation in synagogue worship after 70 CE. There is not enough evidence to suggest that such a ban was a widespread practice, but it does seem clear that the relationship with the synagogue and its leadership was a shaping concern for the Gospel of John. John’s audience appears to be a Jewish-Christian community in which there is much division over the identification of Jesus as the Messiah.

The Gospel’s way of storytelling, of often eliding the distance between the past of Jesus and the present of the Gospel’s readers, underscores the continuity between Jesus’ life and experience and that of the later community. This is a story of the past, but it is told through the lens of an ongoing community experience. By making the synagogue experience part of the life and teachings of Jesus, the Gospel allows the Christian community to see its own life experiences reflected in the life of Jesus and those around him. Again, this practice is not entirely different from what is found in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus’ criticism of the scribes and Pharisees (for instance, Matt. 23) occurs within the lifetime of Jesus, but it also reflects the situation of later Christians. After the fall of the Temple, the scribes and Pharisees held a great deal of authority as the interpreters of the Law. Matthew directs Jesus’ harshest criticisms at these groups (rather than the priests or the Sadducees). This reflection of the religious climate after the year 70 is another indication that Matthew and John are roughly contemporaneous.

LITERARY FEATURES

Although a contemporary of Matthew and Luke, the Fourth Gospel is strikingly different in its language and literary style. As we have noted above, both Matthew and John reflect the importance of Jewish tradition, yet the ways in which they do so are entirely different. Matthew favors direct quotation of Scripture, often with an indication that the Scripture is being fulfilled (for example, 1:22; 2:17; 4:14). John cites Scripture with less frequency. Instead, the author draws on the images of Scripture and the Jewish festivals and creates parallels with elements of the story of Jesus. Such literary characteristics are an important part of how the Gospel draws readers into a particular way of understanding Jesus. Here we discuss three aspects of John’s literary style (metaphor, irony, and the portrayal of characters) and provide an overview of the structure of the Gospel.

Metaphor

From its opening words, John’s language is laden with metaphor. A metaphor is a figure of speech that establishes a correspondence between two things that we would not normally put together. The prologue to the Gospel begins with the image of God’s creative Word, and the reader soon learns that this Word became enfleshed in Jesus (see discussion of chap. 1). A person is not really a word, but the metaphor makes a connection that asks us to look at the person of Jesus through the attributes associated with a word, and more specifically the Word of God (itself a metaphor). For example, a word communicates, reveals, and conveys information. To envision Jesus as the Word—and as the Word made flesh—shows something new about Jesus that we would not see without this metaphorical connection. What is true of the Word, its light and life-giving power, its close relationship to God, and its creative function are understood to be true of Jesus as well. The use of metaphor to understand the person of Jesus continues throughout the Gospel, as Jesus comes to be known as living water, bread of life, true vine, and King of Israel, to name only a few. The frequency and variety of John’s metaphors are distinctive features of this Gospel.

John’s metaphors offer the reader a rich and complex way of understanding who Jesus is. John’s metaphorical language is often right on the surface, as in Jesus’ many I am statements, which are unique to this Gospel. Yet John does not stop at explicit metaphorical statements. The narrative also enacts these metaphors in a variety of ways. For example, Jesus’ proclamation I am the resurrection and the life (John 11:25) is embedded within the story of the raising of Lazarus. The new life that Jesus brings to Lazarus provides a context in which to understand Jesus’ statement. The metaphor is enriched by this context, as the reader draws on Lazarus’s resurrection and new life to understand the meaning of Jesus’ statement about himself. This is often the case with John’s metaphors. A character offers an explicit metaphor that is clarified through the events of the narrative. Another example of this is Jesus’ statement I am the bread of life (6:35), which occurs within the context of the feeding of the five thousand and a discussion with the crowd about manna. These stories of bread, both from the beginning of John 6 and from the Exodus story, affect the reader’s understanding of what it means for Jesus to be the bread of life.

In some cases, John’s metaphors develop over the course of the entire Gospel. At the beginning of the Gospel, Nathanael says to Jesus, You are the King of Israel! (1:49). Later portions of the story also include references to Jesus’ kingship. Chapter 6 includes the response of the crowd to the feeding miracle: the people try to take Jesus by force to make him king. At the end of the Gospel, the trial scenes portray Jesus as King of the Jews at the moment of his crucifixion. What it means for Jesus to be king is affected by these later developments in the story. Jesus is not to be understood as a king in the sense that the Roman emperor was king, but as one whose kingship is embodied at the moment of his crucifixion. What it means for Jesus to be king may not be what Nathanael or the reader expects. Both the explicit metaphors and they way they are enacted through the narrative are important for John’s portrayal of Jesus.

In many cases, John’s metaphors are indicated through the temporal setting of a passage or the actions of a particular character. For example, many of the stories of Jesus’ life are set at the time of Jewish festivals. The miracle of the feeding of the five thousand in John 6 takes place at the time of Passover (v. 4). Another lengthy segment of the Gospel is set during the Festival of Booths (see 7:2). In each of these cases, the stories draw on other imagery from the festival: the feeding of the five thousand is told in ways that evoke the Exodus story; Jesus’ discussion during the Festival of Booths draws on imagery of light and water that was associated with that festival. This imagery suggests that the stories in John may represent or re-create metaphorically these earlier stories.

As is clear with the imagery of the Jewish festivals above, John’s metaphors draw on the language and cultural world that a first-century Jewish-Christian reader would bring to this story. The metaphors John uses would have been familiar for a wide audience, but John’s use of this imagery is also surprising. Putting these traditional stories of the God of Israel into a metaphorical relationship with the events of the life of Jesus creates new ways of understanding. It is also a mode of storytelling that involves the reader fully. John asks the reader to bring what is already known about the traditions of Israel to this text, but requires the reader to see these new events in light of the old stories. Understanding what it means, for example, for Jesus to be God’s Word involves an act of imagination on the part of the reader, taking what is known about the word and wisdom of God and putting those things in relationship to this person, Jesus. By taking on that act of imagination and stepping into the metaphorical world John creates, the reader can come to know better who Jesus is.

Irony

Irony is another technique the Gospel employs to draw the reader into its worldview. Irony occurs when the reader notes the presence of some disparity or incongruity in the text, and as a result perceives a double meaning. When the soldiers dress Jesus in a crown of thorns and purple robe and hail him as King of the Jews, the reader may understand this as ironic. On one level in the story, Jesus looks nothing like a king; at the mercy of these soldiers, he is about to be put to death. Yet the reader of the Gospel has been conditioned from the beginning to understand that Jesus truly is King of the Jews. Without knowing what they proclaim, the soldiers make visible Jesus’ kingship at the moment of his crucifixion. Irony plays an important role in the reader’s ability to understand that Jesus is king as well as what kind of kingship this is.

To create irony, the author relies on knowledge that is shared by the author and reader. This knowledge helps create the disparity or incongruity that leads the reader to recognize the irony. This shared knowledge may arise in different ways. In the case of Jesus’ kingship, the reader draws on cultural understandings of kingship and on what the text has already said about the subject and about Jesus’ identity. The Gospel gives some explicit clues to the reader, such as Nathanael’s early proclamation, You are the King of Israel! (1:49). Yet in the trial scene of chapters 18–19, the text relies on the reader to understand that what the soldiers consider a joke is actually true of Jesus. Because John’s narrator does not say flatly, Jesus is the king of the Jews, there is always a possibility that readers will not understand this message. For the reader who does perceive John’s irony, however, something very important happens. The perception of irony calls on the reader to make judgments about who is trustworthy and who is not. Should one trust the soldiers’ perspective as accurate? By leaving this question open, John draws the reader into an act of decision making about who they understand Jesus to be. The reader who understands that the soldiers’ words have greater significance than they intend has grasped a central message of the Gospel. The literary device of irony helps the author to convey the message about Jesus’ true kingship. It is also a means by which the Gospel pushes the reader to make his or her own decision about the central claims of the story.

Characters

Many of John’s characters come alive for the reader as complex and multidimensional people, largely because of the Gospel’s extended dialogues. Through their conversations with Jesus, the reader comes to see that these characters have opinions of their own. They question Jesus and push back at his answers. As they do so, the reader catches a glimpse of the complexity of human interaction with Jesus, of the range of questions that he evokes in people, and of their varied responses to his presence. This aspect of John’s characterization reinforces what we noted above with regard to irony, that the Gospel puts the reader in a position to make judgments about its characters. Whose perspective is trustworthy? Whose words are truthful? In doing so the Gospel involves the reader in his or her own dialogue with the characters