present.
The outline of the ministry of Jesus in the synoptic gospels was designed by According to Mark. It describes a rather short period spent in Galilee of the Gentiles during which Jesus distinguishes himself by his miracles and his controversies with Pharisees. During a trip to the north, at Caesarea Philippi close to the fountains of the Jordan River, Peter confesses that Jesus is the Christ (the Messiah, Mk. 8:29), and his confession causes Jesus to demand complete silence about his identity. When evil spirits that Jesus expelled from possessed people cried out that Jesus was the Son of God, Jesus also gave them strict orders to keep silent and not reveal his identity. Peter’s confession marks the turning point in Jesus’ ministry in the lands of the gentiles and brings about Jesus’ decision to go to Jerusalem. Upon arriving at the city, immediately he finds himself opposed by the Sadducees who control the temple and have influence with the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate. Five days after coming to Jerusalem, Jesus hangs from a cross on a small hill outside the city. According to Matthew and According to Luke add to this outline narratives of Jesus’ birth, of the resurrection and of post resurrection appearances which are peculiar to each of them (in the best manuscripts According to Mark ends in 16:8).
According to John was conceived in a different womb and differs notably from the synoptics: here Jesus’ ministry includes Jerusalem from the beginning, and his final stay in the city lasts six months, from the feast of Tabernacles (September/October) till Passover (April/May). In this gospel, rather than imposing silence on those publicly identifying him, Jesus insists that he must be identified correctly, not just as Son of God, but as God. These differences cannot be overlooked, and place the gospel in a category by itself, as the early Church Fathers already recognized.
It has been argued that According to John consists of two sections identified as: “The Book of Signs” and the “The Book of Glory.” Others have proposed that rather than dividing the text into sections one should identify the sources used for its composition. It has been posited, for example, that the author used a source which contained several miracles. This is supported by the numbering of the changing of water into wine (2:1 – 11) and the healing of the son of the imperial officer (4:46 – 54) as the first and the second signs. The ending of the gospel in 20:30 – 31, then, is taken to have been the ending of the Signs Source. What makes the numbering of the two signs evidence of an underlying source is that in the gospel text the cleansing of the temple appears in between them, making the healing of the Roman official’s son the third sign.
Besides the Signs Source, a second source is identified as the one that provided the Revelation Discourses. These are extended monologues in which Jesus presents himself as I AM, the revealer of the Father. To these two sources ably redacted into the present text, it is argued, the authors then added the narrative of the passion, death and resurrection taken from the oral tradition.
A more recent theory identifies sources separating sections where miracles are called signs from sections in which they are called works. The problem with all these reconstructions of the origin of the gospel text in our possession, however, is that they lack a foundation that is based on broad appeals to vocabulary, style or theological perspectives. Against all source theories, it must be noted, the text displays amazing stylistic, verbal and theological integrity. Lacking sufficient supporting evidence, these various source theories have not been widely adopted. Still, many recognize that there may have been a collection of miracle stories which supplied material to the gospel.
In its present form, the gospel contains several inconsistencies or discontinuities. I have already pointed to docetic elements and an anti-docetic stand. I have also mentioned the numbering of the third sign as the second, and that at some points the narrative is interrupted by a communal confession. Some narrative sequences now appear to be dislodged, so that 7:15 – 24 clearly belongs together with the story of the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda (5:1 – 16). The text contains not only two justifications for the authority of Jesus to command the healed paralytic to carry his bed on a Sabbath, but also two rationales for the washing of the disciples’ feet (13:10 – 17), and two Farewell Discourses. The Farewell Discourse which ends in 14:31 with the words “Rise, let us go hence” belongs together with the beginning of chapter 18. Chapters 15 – 17, then, seem a later addition. If the order of chapters 5 and 6 is reversed the topographical references to Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee fit more cogently within the overall narrative. Chapter 20 has a clear ending for the gospel as a whole. The second ending in 21:24 -25 is obviously an afterthought, made necessary by the addition of chapter 21.
These many perplexing difficulties may be taken to indicate that the gospel developed over a period of time with sections added into an existing text as circumstances changed. Nearly everyone agrees that the final revision took place between 95 and 110 CE. At one time the gospel was dated between 150 and 175 CE. The discovery of a little scrap of papyrus containing words of chapter 17 on the front and words of chapter 18 on the reverse has made that dating impossible. This papyrus fragment was found in Egypt and is dated between 125 and 150 CE. The earliest full text of the gospel now in our possession is part of an Egyptian papyrus codex dated around 175 CE.
The characteristics of According to John which I have been describing serve to increase the desire to plumb its depths and appreciate its message. The complexity of its origin within one of the many trajectories adopted by different communities of the Jesus Movement in their attempts to understand God’s workings in the person of Jesus reveals the theological creativity of those Christians and has left us with an enticing and somewhat enigmatic gospel. Attempts to understand it, therefore, must be characterized by humility. No one may claim to have established the absolutely correct interpretation of its message. The text allows for many valid interpretations. Still, anyone who intends to explore its horizon and plumb its depths has to choose what at the moment seems to be the most valid among them. Those of us reading the gospel in the twenty-first century can only struggle trying to penetrate the meaning that to the original community must have been quite plain. No one can guarantee that she or he has captured the meaning as a whole. The cultural patterns of thought in the first century are not at all ours. Faced with this barrier I have opted for describing as best I can what the text says in terms of my understanding of its symbolic universe. This does not mean that I accept as valid all its presuppositions or its points of view, or that I find its presentation of themes quite satisfactory. For example, I find quite inadequate the notion that sickness is caused by sin (9:2), and the pervasive tension between determinism and free will: only those who are drawn by God come to Jesus, but those who refuse to believe are condemned. The notion that a woman’s purpose in life is primarily to bear children (16:21) is also quite problematic. Even as I find the vision of living abiding in Christ quite admirable, I would have liked for the gospel to give a more concrete picture of how such a life looks like.
Thus, while the gospel contains elements which may be foreign to us, it still offers a marvelous vision of the significance of Jesus, the man who many saw merely as the son of Joseph and Mary and others saw as the Son of God. The vision of the latter group is one that sparks a desire to understand it and to wonder about the implications it contains. Its influence in the history of Christianity, it would seem, has been enormous, well beyond the highest expectations the Johannine community may have had. Any attempt to enter that world must begin with the study of the grammar of the Johannine language, recognizing its significance and attempting to penetrate its inner resonances. The language is the carrier of the theology of the community. Theology is the result of faith being expressed within cultural parameters and a meaningful symbolic universe. The following meditations are my attempts to understand the theology of the Johannine community.
As do other books of the Bible, According to John reveals how some of the early Christians expressed their faith fully, creatively, powerfully within their symbolic universe and cultural parameters. The Christian Gospel, no doubt, transcends all its expressions and their cultural limitations. As such it is capable of being expressed in any culture and in any symbolic universe. Letting a text of Scripture speak for itself in its own voice causes one to marvel at the visions it projects. After all, Jesus did not come to reveal information about this or that. He came to reveal life, and
