The low-status poor, lacking power, honor, and resources, such as the man who has been sick for thirty-eight years (5:1–9) and the man born blind (9:1–8), a child (4:46–54), a woman and a Samaritan (ch. 4), low-status Galileans (ch. 6), and those who habitually ignore the law (7:49).
42. Carter, John, 172.
43. Carter, John, 53.
part i
2. Background and Methodology
In the preceding chapter, I argued that the Johannine community was in conflict with the synagogue as well as with Roman imperial power. Accordingly, it is quite probable that the Gospel of John was written for the consolidation of the community in faith, although it does not seem that this is the only purpose of its composition, as I will argue further in this chapter. Then, I raised a significant question: why are so many christological titles employed in the Johannine Gospel? In my argument, I contend that John adapted a variety of the titles that were used to indicate the Jewish kingly Messiah and the Roman emperors in order to portray Jesus as the real king worthy of the audience’s lifelong allegiance in their complex and multicultural world.
In the present chapter, first, while regarding the Fourth Gospel as a product of a multicultural and hybridized society which accommodated multicultural features, I will argue that the Gospel was written for multiple purposes: it was written for multicultural readers in order to present Jesus as king; to make the readers believe in him whom they could follow for eternity; and to challenge them to live in the world according to the ruling ideology of the Johannine new world to overcome conflict and oppression. In order to do this, I need to begin by dealing with the purposes of the composition of this Gospel and to scrutinize the kingship motifs therin, because they are closely related to the identity of the Johannine Jesus.
In order to discuss this matter, in the first section of this chapter, I will present three major views of the purpose of the Gospel of John, including an investigation of the Johannine community as multicultural readers. In the second section, I will survey the kingship motif against the Jewish background and the Graeco-Roman to corroborate my research. In the last section, I will deal with postcolonialism as a major methodology of this book.
The Multiple Purposes of the Gospel of John
The Gospel of John may quite well have more than one purpose as well as a variety of intended recipients.44 The purposes of the Gospel have been described in various ways, and three major purposes, namely missionary, polemic, and parenetic,45 can be distinguished.
A Missionary Document for Various Groups and Individuals
The first suggested purpose of the Gospel of John is that it has a missionary aim. In it, we can find evidence of concerns about world mission: for example, references to the sending and coming motif;46 the emergence of the Greeks who seek Jesus (12:20); the Samaritans identifying Jesus as the Savior of the World (4:42); Jesus’ mention of other sheep which are not of this fold (10:16); most of all, God’s love for the world (3:16–17).47 In John 20:21, moreover, the sending motif could be applied to followers of Jesus, which then is a challenge to the Johannine readers. On this, Okure argues, “Thus the terminology of sending/coming not only focuses attention on the Father and Jesus, it emphasizes the intimate and exclusive relationship which exists between them in this missionary enterprise.”48 Segovia also argues that the Gospel of John, particularly the last two chapters,
[pursue] the proper and correct role of the disciples in the world, especially with regard to their assigned mission in and to the world . . . the section makes it very clear that the disciples must carry out their assigned role in and to the world and that they must do so under the guidance and direction of Jesus himself.49
We can read, therefore, in this Gospel that “the foundation of the fellowship of the Johannine community in the divine commission to continue the witness of the Johannine Jesus kept it oriented toward the world.”50 In this sense, mission seems to be the primary task of the Johannine community.51
From this position, some scholars regard the Gospel as a missionary document for Diaspora Jews or Christian Jews.52 However, the Johannine Gospel cannot be categorized in such a narrow way. There seem to be various inner-groups in the Johannine Community, suggesting a multicultural readership.53 The Johannine community might well consist of those groups whose origins were not simply defined by ethnicity or location.54 To define the Johannine community, therefore, various aspects of its origin must be considered: a variety of classes, ethnicities, and genders and of religious, cultural, political and economic backgrounds, because the descriptions in the Gospel show the complex aspects of relationships or conflicts between the Johannine community and others. For example, many groups and individuals, with which Jesus meets in the Gospel, show a variety of relationships: Individual Jews (Jesus’ disciples and followers; particularly, women (e.g., Mary and Martha, a Samaritan woman, etc), the sick (e.g., the invalid for 38 years; the man born blind, etc), and high-ranking individuals (Nicodemus, the royal official, and Joseph of Arimathaea, etc) and Jewish groups (e.g., the Jews of Jerusalem, the disciples of John the Baptist, and the crowds, etc), and non-Jewish people (e.g., a Samaritan woman and the Samaritans,55 Greeks, Roman governor and soldiers), and so on.
The characters and groups, which seem to reflect the reality of the Johannine community,56 show complicated and complex inter-relationships in the Gospel. From these relationships we may infer that it is highly possible that, within this multiple and hybridized society, the Gospel of John was written for the Johannine community which consisted of readers who were from multicultural environments.57 Accordingly, as a missionary document, this Gospel had not only the Jews in view.58 Its target readership must be wider. It is safe to say that the Gospel was written for a community that consisted of Greek-speaking readers including Jewish and non-Jewish people, and that, to them, the christological titles were mixed into one another to reveal the identity of the Johannine Jesus more clearly.
Polemic/Apologetic Purpose of the Gospel
The second suggested purpose of the Johannine Gospel is as a polemic.59 As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the Gospel was written to justify the Johannine community in the setting of contention with the synagogue, and to strengthen the faith of readers who were suffering persecution and martyrdom under Roman rule. This implicit conflict, for example, is revealed by the comments of the high priest in John 11:49–53, and in the passion narrative where the complicated conflict is revealed sharply: the conflict between the Jewish leaders and Jesus, between Pilate and Jesus, and between Pilate and the Jewish leaders.60
