and anticipates a vastly different reality, namely, the life of God which is given through faith in Jesus. He highlights also that “this alternative community . . . reflected in, and shaped by, the gospel’s anti-language, is commissioned to continue to do the works Jesus did (14:12–17), to reveal God’s life-giving purposes even though it will be a tough and resisted work (15:18–25).”42 Furthermore, Carter explains that the Johannine meaning of life is “countercultural in that it is marked by love and service, not domination as in Roman imperial society, and material and physical, since it participates in God’s life-giving and just purposes of salvation.”43 Finally, Carter concludes that in John’s Gospel various christological titles, which are related to kingship, are used throughout the Gospel to emphasize the identity and tasks of Jesus as God’s agent.
Outline of the Research
This book consists of two major parts: the first part is about the identity of the Johannine Jesus (from chapter 2 to 4), and the second part the function of the Johannine Jesus (from chapter 5 to 6).
First, in chapter 2, I will discuss the textual features of the Johannine Gospel in relation to its purposes and recipients. Then, I will describe the two pillars of the background of the kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John: Jewish traditions and Graeco-Roman traditions. Thirdly, I will discuss the importance of the combination of the two traditions to understand the kingship motif of Jesus in John’s Gospel. Finally, I will discuss the method of this book: postcolonialism.
From chapter 3 onwards, I will investigate christological titles, which present the kingship motif of Jesus and their distinctive usage in the Gospel of John. In chapter 3, I will point out important factors for understanding the Johannine christological titles: the Johannine christological titles as hybridized products of hybridized society, and their distinctive usage in mixture. Then, I will discuss the Johannine christological titles in terms of kingship, particularly, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Prophet, the Savior of the World, and the Lord/ My Lord and My God.
In chapter 4, I will research the title, “the king of Israel/the Jews” which explicitly reveals the kingship of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. To begin with, I will survey the meanings of “king” (βασιλεύς) in comparing with both Graeco-Roman and Jewish understandings of this particular office. Then, I will examine that title in the particular context of the Johannine Gospel.
In the second part of the book, I will research the function of the Johannine Jesus from a postcolonial perspective. To do so, in chapter 5, I will deal with “identity matters,” that is, the identities of the groups in the Gospel of John: the Roman Empire as the center, the Jews not the ordinary Jews but the Jews of Jerusalem as the collaborators, and the Johannine Group as the margins but also as a group to overcome the center. Then, I will deal with the subtle relationship between the center and the margins under the Roman Empire, and with the matter of collaborators with the Empire. In addition, I will research a complex and delicate conflict between the center and the margins.
Finally, in chapter 6, I will define the identity of the Johannine Jesus. I will discuss Jesus as space to identify him as a universal king, and his functions as a decolonizer, and his vision toward his new world where people live in harmony with love, service, peace, freedom, and forgiveness.
1. The date of the Gospel of John is important because “the dating . . . brings us to the question of the political ideology of the text” (Alexander, “Relevance,” 123).
2. Kümmel, Introduction, 246; Smalley, John, 82–84; Cassidy, John’s Gospel, 3; Brown, Introduction, 206–15; Keener, Gospel of John, 140–42; Lincoln, Gospel, 18.
3. Robinson, Cribbs, and Wallace propose an earlier date (in the late 50s or in the 60s) for the composition of the Gospel of John (Robinson, Redating, 254–311; Robinson, Priority, 67–93; Cribbs, “Reassessment,” 38–55; Wallace, “John 5,2,” 237–56). However, this view is not supported by many scholars (see Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 42–44). For example, the expulsion from the synagogue is not likely to have occurred much earlier than the eighties (Lincoln, Gospel, 18). Carson suggests tentatively a date in the early eighties (Carson, The Gospel, 82–86). However, supposing John knew the Synoptic Gospels, its date suggests an earliest date of 85 CE (Keener, Gospel of John, 140). In addition, because of the discovery of Papyrus Egerton 2 (P52, the two sides of a fragmentary leaf from a codex of the Gospel of John, written probably between 100 and 150, being the oldest known copy of any book of the New Testament) dates in the second century seem now to have lost their foundation (see Metzger, “Recently Published Greek Papyri,” 25–44, esp. 40; Keener, Gospel of John, 141–42; Carson, Gospel, 24, 82; Lincoln, Gospel, 17–18).
4. Domitianic persecution and the motif of ruler cult are important elements to date the Gospel of John to the reign of Domitian.
5. About the expulsion from the Synagogue, see Martyn, History and Theology; Brown, Gospel, xxxiv–xl, xcviii–cii; Brown, Introduction, 58–89; Meeks, Prophet-King; Meeks, “Man from Heaven,” 44–72; Lincoln, Gospel, 82–89; Kysar, “Community and Gospel,” 355–66; Smith, “Presentation of Jesus,” 367–78; Painter, “Farewell Discourses,” 525–43.
6. Many scholars follow Martyn’s view on the Johannine community (an attempt to reconstruct the historical context of the readers to whom the Gospel was first addressed). In this book, I also employ the term “the Johannine community” to develop my argument, because, in the textual level, we can reconstruct the Johannine community, which has a variety of backgrounds in the multicultural world, in conflict with other groups (on the reconstruction of the Johannine community as the ideal reader in the textual level, see chapter 5 of this book). However, it is impossible for us “to produce a portrait of the historical reader that is so complete that it guarantees the meaning of the text, and even as we gain some clarity about the first-century context we are still confronted with questions about how the text can speak to its twentieth-century readers in a compelling way” (Koester, “Spectrum,” 6). Accordingly, as Koester concludes, “The final form of the Gospel envisions a heterogeneous readership,” in other words, “the final form of the Gospel was shaped for a spectrum of readers” (Koester, “Spectrum,” 9, 19; see also Culpepper, Anatomy, 221, 225; Lincoln, Gospel, 88). I define, therefore, the Johannine community as the ideal reader, which had various origins and was in conflict with others in the text. In other words, in the presupposition that John bore in mind a variety of readers with a wide spectrum of origins, I contend that the Gospel of John was written to the Johannine community as the ideal/implied readers, which were marginal in the Empire (on the relationship between the implied readers and the Johannine community, see Segovia, “Journey(s),” 23–54, esp. 47–49; Sim, “Gospels,” 3–27).
Apart from the Johannine community theory, Bauchkam contends the circular reading of the Gospel (see Bauckham, “For Whom,” 9–48). Just as Robinson’s criticism on Martyn’s view as “highly imaginative” (Robinson, Redating, 272–75), while denying the reality of the Johannine community, Bauckham argues that the Gospel was written for wide circulation among its first century readers (“a very general Christian audience”). Barton also argues the impossibility of the reconstruction of the Johannine Community (Barton, “Christian Community,” 279–301). In terms of the written place of the Gospel, Cribbs also says that “different scholars can find sufficient evidence so as to argue that such diverse centers as Alexandria, Ephesus, Antioch, or Jerusalem were the locale in which this gospel originated,
