understanding the postcolonial perspective and its application in the reading of the Gospel is very useful. It is helpful in identifying individuals or groups from the perspective of colonial and postcolonial relations. In particular, the identity and function of the Johannine Jesus can be newly interpreted. The Johannine community, the Jews and the Jewish leaders can also be reinterpreted.
It also helps us to see the subtle relationships among the groups. In the light of power struggles, we can see the suffering and hope of the marginal groups and their pursuit of the ideal destiny by overcoming their oppressors. A reading of the Johnnine Gospel from a postcolonial perspective can throw new light on its interpretation. When we read the Gospel as a postcolonial text, in the conflicts between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, between the Johannine community and the Jews, between the Jewish leaders and Pilate who was the representative of the Roman Empire, and so on, Jesus is regarded as the solution to these conflicts. In this book, I shall offer a reading of the Gospel of John from a postcolonial perspective, particularly identifying the kingship in its portrait of Jesus.
Methods and Theories
In order to read the Gospel of John from a postcolonial perspective and to identify the Johannine Jesus as the universal king, I will now deal with methods and theories of this book with priority given to postcolonialism.134
To begin with, it is necessary to define the word “postcolonial.” The adjective, postcolonial, is defined as the frame of mind “that problematizes the imperial/colonial phenomenon as a whole, and in so doing, attains a sense of conscientization which pursues independence from imperialism.”135 Therefore, a postcolonial focus encompasses not only the discourses of imposition and domination but also the anti-discourses of opposition and resistance.136 In addition, Samuel defines postcolonial literature and discourse, referring to it as:
the literature and discourse that springs from a colonized population during or after the colonial experience, that critically scrutinizes and engages the colonial contacts and perceptions of power. Generally, it is a complex, ambivalent and incongruous discourse that accommodates and disrupts the colonialist perceptions and perspectives of domination.137
In terms of definitions, it is plausible to say that there is postcoloniality in the Gospel of John. The Fourth Gospel as a product of the Roman colonial world clearly presents a way of resistance and decolonization to its first century readers, who were mostly colonized and marginalized by the center, using the imperial language as well as that of the fringes. In this way, the Johannine Gospel is a kind of postcolonial text.
In this section, I will explore postcolonial theory as long as it is relevant to my book. First, I will deal with the relationship between ideological criticism and postcolonialism; with the relationship between postcolonial agenda in comparison with colonial imperialism; with the relationship between postcolonialism and literary criticism; and lastly, with the major concepts in a postcolonial approach: hybridentity and diaspora.
Ideological Criticism as a Basis for Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism has plural theoretical roots from Marxism, the pioneer of modern critical theory, to Post-structuralism in terms of critical theories. Particularly, “poststructuralist concepts of the political nature of the language of race, gender, and class have had profound effects on postcolonial writers preoccupied with subject-identity and oppositional discourses.”138 In addition, it is likely that in the broader category of critical theories, postcolonialism could belong to both a kind of reader-response and ideological criticism. Hence, through the diffusion of these roots, a plurality of application in postcolonial studies is possible. In this sub-section, for my argument I will explore the relationship between ideological criticism and postcolonial studies.
On the one hand, ideology reflects reality, on the other hand, there is no ideology, which corresponds to reality as it is.139 Moreover, reality affects ideology. Since this is so, ideology, particularly at the textual level, needs to be interpreted in order to comprehend reality in history.140
In the Gospel of John, there seems to be ideology, in particular Christology (whether or not it is regarded as a political issue), which reflects not only the real Johannine world but also that which could be employed to reveal the ideal world which the Johannine Jesus/John/the Johannine community might pursue. Hence, ideology in the Gospel needs to be interpreted at the textual level to discover the reality of the Johannine world with which the Johannine community was confronted. The Johannine reality also needs to be reconstructed to seek for the influential elements in the formation and development of ideology in this Gospel.141 In the case of the Fourth Gospel, for example, the author might put his ideology into the composition of the Gospel, reflecting the real world to which he and his community belonged, in order to describe the ideal world where Jesus as the king reigns using terms, concepts and literary devices which had developed through the mixture of the cultures of the center and the margins.142
As a result, no interpretation of ideology in the text can be done in a vacuum. The important thing in the interpretation of Johannine ideology and reconstruction of the Johannine world, therefore, is to discover the relationship of the Johannine community and the conditions of the world in which the community is represented.
The difference and gap between the reality of the Johannine world and the ideological Johannine world occurs and exists because ideology reflects reality and reality has an effect on ideology. Consequently, it might be true that a greater or lesser gap (description with different angles, hyperbole, maximization or minimization) of representation of the real world would occur in the author’s representation of ideology in the text. Furthermore, more twist and gap of representation of the real world would occur in the readers’ interpretation of the ideology. In spite of the series of twists and gaps, however, through interpretation of ideology in a particular text we can reconstruct a hypothetical world, which reflects the real world, as described in the text and can discover the factors that influenced the formation of the ideology, though an interpretation is dependent on the interpreter’s circumstances. We cannot help but being interpreted by our circumstances when seeking to interpret the ideology of the Gospel.143 Therefore, an analysis of the interpreter is necessary in order to interpret the ideology of this Gospel from a postcolonial perspective.144
Postcolonialism vs. Colonial Imperialism145
First, to read the Gospel of John from a postcolonial perspective, it is important to know that one of the main topics of postcolonial reading in biblical studies is a discourse on “identity matter.” In terms of identity, differences and similarities between the colonizer and the colonized have been recognized as one of the most important factors. That is, postcolonial theory has been employed to clarify various identities and the complex relations between them in colonial society. For example, Bhabha146 scrutinizes the matters of similarity and mixtures between the colonizer and the colonized, while Said147 describes differences and opposition between them in his colonial discourses.148 Likewise, the Fourth Gospel
