John (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament)

Brant, Jo-Ann A., Parsons, Mikeal C., Talbert, Charles

• Verlag: Baker Academic
• Jahr: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441235633
• Thema: Theologie & Religion
• Thema: Biblischer Kommentar

In this addition to the well-received Paideia series, Jo-Ann Brant examines cultural context and theological meaning in John. Paideia commentaries explore how New Testament texts form Christian readers by • attending to the ancient narrative and rhetorical strategies the text employs
• showing how the text shapes theological convictions and moral habits
• commenting on the final, canonical form of each New Testament book
• focusing on the cultural, literary, and theological settings of the text
• making judicious use of maps, photos, and sidebars in a reader-friendly format This commentary, like each in the projected eighteen-volume series, proceeds by sense units rather than word-by-word or verse-by-verse.

PART 1

John 1:1–2:12

In the Beginning

The Gospel of John drives a straight course to its end, Jesus’s death upon a Roman cross. Jesus stands at the helm: fixed in his view is the route that God has charted. Appropriately, the narrative begins like the Gospel of Mark, within the public eye of John the Baptist’s ministry, when Jesus is an adult in command of his life—rather than like Matthew and Luke, with the birth of a helpless infant. John 1:1–2:12 brings Jesus into the world of Second-Temple religious politics and establishes him as the leader of a group of disciples who follow him because they seek a messiah but who find themselves witnesses to God’s glory through signs they cannot anticipate. The opening chapters of the Gospel of John immediately establish its relationship with Hebrew Scripture, with which its first audience was surely familiar, but these chapters also make clear that this work is distinct from others with which that audience might be familiar. John’s prologue reveals that Jesus’s story neither begins with the Baptist nor ends with the cross. The origin of the story lies before the creation of the points of light by which we mark time.

John 1:1–2:12 In Context

In the beginning (1:1–2:12)

The Prologue and More (1:1–18)

Come and see: Jesus reveals his glory to his disciples (1:19–2:12)

Jesus’s itinerant ministry (2:13–12:11)

Jesus’s triumphant hour (12:12–19:42)

Jesus’s resurrection: Endings and epilogues (20:1–21:25)

John 1:1–18

The Prologue and More

Introductory Matters

For many years, a notion prevailed that John 1:1–18 was a hymn written for another occasion that was then tacked onto a preexisting gospel that had been cobbled together from several sources, but this idea has given way to a growing confidence that the prologue was crafted, either composed or reworked, as the original introduction to the Gospel. The external evidence points in this direction: there is no manuscript evidence for a gospel without the prologue, and second-century Christian scholars refer to it in their commentaries. Moreover, the way that it orients the reader to the entire body of the Gospel provides compelling internal evidence. The content and style of the prologue fulfill the prescription for an introduction provided by Cicero:

One’s opening remarks, though they should always be carefully framed and pointed and epigrammatic and suitably expressed, must at the same time be appropriate to the case in hand; for the opening passage contains the first impression and the introduction of the speech, and this ought to charm and attract the hearer straight away. (De or. 2.315, trans. Sutton 1942)

While the prologue serves to orient the reader to the rest of the Gospel, there are many aspects of the prologue that require some preliminary orientation for modern readers.

Genre

Placing a piece of prose or poetry into the conventions of an established literary form is often a necessary step in making good sense of its meaning or purpose. The abstract vocabulary of the prologue, the internal variations in prose style from grand or middle to plain, and its complicated structure all make determining its form or genre a challenge. Form critics have sought to fit the prologue into a Jewish convention, with some arguing that it is a hymn and others that it is a homily or midrash, a retelling of a biblical story grounded in the synagogue tradition of exposition on a passage from the Torah, in this case Gen. 1:1. The prominence of the word logos in the prologue invites some consideration of the Greco-Roman logos (oratio in Latin), an oration, which among its types includes encomium (a speech in praise of a person or thing), invective (a denunciation of the manners or morals or piety of a person), and apology (a speech of self-defense with regard to a particular challenge or accusation). The early church fathers integrated the Greco-Roman logos into the scripturally focused homiletic tradition inherited from the synagogue (Kinneavy 1996, 326). A homily is not simply instruction. The word means “social intercourse,” and its rhetorical purpose is to have both the speaker and the audience affirm the truth of Scripture by the speaker proclaiming its meaning or significance and the audience listening in agreement.

Recent studies in rhetorical criticism have led to the discussion of lyric pieces in the NT, such as Paul’s poem on love (1 Cor. 13:1–14:1) or the Christ hymn (Phil. 2:6–11) within the category of encomium. While the prologue does not line up point by point with the classical description of an encomium, discussing the prologue in light of some of the encomium’s ingredients helps make sense of its twists and turns.

The Three Styles of Prose

Beginning in the Hellenistic period, teachers of rhetoric delineated three styles (see Cicero, De. or. 3.177). The grand, or dignified, style (grave) stirs the emotions by making liberal use of figures of speech, rhythmic organization, periodic construction, and devices such as impersonating the voice of the dead. It is most appropriate for ceremonial addresses, such as praise of a god or ancestors, and it allows the speaker to display the full range of his or her rhetorical skill. The middle style (medium), appropriate to deliberative speeches and narrative, aims to please and alternates use of plain language with more charming expressions such as metaphor or metonymy and figures of speech that play with word order. The plain style (subtile) seeks to teach with clarity, vividness, and persuasiveness. Its sentences tend to be staccato, and its vocabulary unadorned. (Cicero, Or. Brut. 21.69 uses vehemens, modicum, subtile; Rhet. Her. 4.8.11 uses gravis, mediocris, extenuata.)

The Logos

The study of no other word in John’s vocabulary has preoccupied Johannine scholars as much as logos. To avoid reducing the range of possible meanings that the first audience could call to mind, logos will not be translated, but this requires a preliminary review of its range of possible meanings.

Encomium

An encomium is a composition in prose or poetry written to praise a human being, event, or idea. In the Greco-Roman traditions, encomia were often composed to celebrate the victory of an athlete or for recital at a funeral. The proper composition of the encomium is a common theme in the classical rhetorical handbooks. Aphthonius the Sophist includes the following subtopics:

Origins: nation, homeland, ancestors, and parents’ city

Upbringing: habits, skills, and principles of conduct

Deeds: of mind (e.g., prudence), body (e.g., beauty), and fortune (e.g., friends)

Comparison: superiority to someone or something worthy of praise

Epilogue: something fitting a prayer (Progymn. 35–36)

Hermogenes asserts that the encomia of gods should be called hymns (Progymn. 15).

Early investigations into the meaning of logos emphasized its technical usage in Greek philosophy and Stoic thought. Heraclitus (sixth cent. BC) used the word logos to refer to the eternal principle of order in the cosmos. Gnostic Christians adopted the Stoic meaning for logos and the Stoic belief in God as an abstract principle immanent in the universe; they seem to have interpreted John’s Gospel in this light. For example, Trimorphic Protennoia, a treatise discovered in the Nag Hammadi library (ca. AD 200), appears to be an amplification of John’s prologue set on the lips of the Son of God. The Corpus hermeticum, a compendium of Near Eastern literature (ca. second and third cents. AD) purporting to contain secret wisdom revealed by the messenger god Hermes, and Mandean manuscripts (ca. second cent. AD), written by a gnostic group inspired by John the Baptist, provide glimpses into intellectual and spiritual milieus in which concepts similar to that of the logos figured prominently. Trying to work backward from these sources to reconstruct earlier movements that may have informed the prologue’s form or concepts has produced a large body of scholarly works, yet without consensus regarding the necessity of such a venture.

Those who seek to ground John’s meaning within Jewish midrash have treated logos as the Greek translation of either dābār (word) or ḥokmâ (wisdom). The Hebrew Bible contains many references to the word of God as not just the expression but also the agent of God’s will (e.g., Isa. 55:11). In Proverbs, wisdom speaks and describes how she was created before the beginning of the earth (8:22–23) and how she was “beside him [God], like a master worker” and “was daily his delight” (8:30).

Many situate John’s use of logos within Second Temple Jewish wisdom tradition as well as the speculative theology represented by the writings of Philo of Alexandria. John’s description of the origin of the logos and its indwelling is comparable to descriptions of wisdom (sophia) found in Sir. 1:1–4; 24:8; and Wis. 9:1–2. Philo of Alexandria provides an example of a Jewish contemporary of Jesus who fuses neoplatonic or Stoic notions of the logos and the Jewish vision of a world called into being by God’s words and informed by God’s wisdom, in which heavenly agents play a role. There is a growing consensus that the prologue must be read within the context of a Jewish speculative theology and that the language of the prologue would have invited its audience to affirm the activity of God within history through agents of his wisdom. The word logos then prepares the audience to understand Jesus as an authoritative agent who reveals God’s activity and glory through his speech and actions.

Structure and Purpose

While scholars who pursued diachronic readings of the Gospel found evidence for editing and insertions in changes of style within the prologue (e.g., Brown 1966, 23–39), those pursuing a synchronic reading have looked for an overarching design, and many have found a chiastic pattern. The sample chiasm is adapted from the model provided by Jeffrey Staley (1988, 57).

Chiasm of John 1:1–18a

A Relation of logos to God, creation, and humankind (1:1–5)

B Witness of John (negative) (1:6–8)

C Journey of the light/logos (negative) (1:9–11)

D The gift of power to become divine children (1:12–13)

C´ Journey of the logos (positive) (1:14)

B´ Witness of John (positive) (1:15)

A´ Relation of logos to humankind, re-creation, and God (1:16–18a)

Staley’s pattern leads many to conclude that the fulcrum in 1:12–13 is the main point of the prologue. Although there may be a loose chiastic structure that helps one read the prologue, we need to be careful not to reconstruct the prologue to fit a rigid chiastic structure. As Peter M. Phillips (2006, 49) observes, “One wonders why, if the author of the prologue was so set on creating the kind of complex chiastic structure found by de la Potterie, Giblin and Culpepper and other eminent Johannine scholars, he did not do a better job.”

It may come as a surprise to many students of the Gospel of John that exegetes and translations have treated John 1:1–18 as a discrete exegetical unit only since the late eighteenth century (Williams 2007). The Latin lectionary demarcated it as a unit only after Vatican II (AD 1962–65). Some ancient witnesses treat 1:14 as the prologue’s conclusion (see Irenaeus, Haer. 1.8.5) and 1:15–18 as the words of John the Baptist (see Origen, Comm. Jo. 2.29; Aquinas, Joh. 191–222). This commentary follows this early tradition and treats 1:1–14 as the prologue proper and 1:15–18 as the beginning of John’s witness, which continues in 1:19–34. The subsections of the prologue follow the prescribed topics of an encomium.

Chiasms

Students are introduced to this term in high school biology to refer to two chromosomes linking to form an X, the Greek letter chi. In NT studies, the term refers to an organizing principle in which literary elements form a mirror pattern, for example ABCB´A´. This pattern sometimes points to the ultimate importance of the central, unrepeated element. Because the pattern is used a great deal in ancient literature, readers may be tempted to force a pattern onto the text or to overread its significance and thereby obscure the importance of details that do not fit the pattern. The pattern may have more to do with the need to organize thoughts for oration and memorization than with pointing to the meaning of a passage.

The prologue mirrors the incarnation by beginning with abstract language to signify the divine realm before the creation of the world and moves toward more-lucid language: the logos becomes light and then descends into the course of human history. Moreover, as the prologue moves through time from the primordial past to the present of the narrative action, its audience is transported from their own time back to the narrative present, in which they become witnesses to the action as it unfolds. The prologue (here) and the epilogue ...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Endorsements
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• John 1:1–2:12 Part 1: In the Beginning
• John 2:13–12:11 Part 2: Jesus’s Itinerant Ministry
• John 12:12–19:42 Part 3: Jesus’s Triumphant Hour
• John 20:1–21:25 Part 4: Jesus’s Resurrection: Endings and Epilogues
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Scripture and Ancient Sources
• Back Cover