All of the notes on this portion of this site pertaining to the work of NT Wright and Mike Bird are taken directly from:
The New Testament in Its World
An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians
N. T. Wright (Author) , Michael F. Bird (Author) Page Count:992
Format:Hardcover, Cloth
ISBN:9780310499305
Release:November 19, 2019
John stands out from the rest of the New Testament. With Paul we are in the seminar room: arguing things out, looking up references, taking notes, and then being pushed out into the world to preach the gospel to the nations. Matthew takes us into the synagogue, where the people of God are learning to recognize Jesus as their king, their Emmanuel. Mark writes a short tract, challenging his readers with the very idea of a crucified king and turning it into a handbook on discipleship for followers of the servant-king. Luke addresses the educated Greek world of his day and paints a big picture of God’s purposes through Israel’s Messiah for the whole world.
John, by contrast, takes us up the mountain, and says quietly: ‘Look—from here, on a clear day, you can see for ever.’ We beheld his glory, glory as of the father’s only son. John does not include the story of Jesus’ transfiguration, as the other evangelists do. But there is a sense in which John’s whole story is about the transfiguration. He invites us to be still and know; to look again into the human face of Jesus of Nazareth, until the awesome knowledge comes over us, wave upon terrifying wave, that we are looking into the human face of the living God.
John’s gospel is in some ways remarkably like the three synoptic gospels, yet in other ways it is very unlike them. Why? What account can we give of this?
But then there are the stark differences. How long was Jesus’ public career, and where was it located? John has his dramatic Temple-action near the beginning; the synoptics put it near the end. But then John has Jesus going to Jerusalem frequently; for Mark there is only the one visit. Was the Last Supper a Passover meal, as in the synoptics, or held on the night before, as John seems to suggest? There are also theological differences: the Johannine Jesus appears more forthright and explicit about his divine status than the Jesus of the synoptics, and the Johannine Jesus talks more about ‘eternal life’ than the ‘kingdom of God’ (though there is overlap on both). The Johannine Jesus uses discourses rather than parables (though some may be ‘buried’—parables woven into discourses like the image of the ‘apprentice son’ in John 5.19–23). The Johannine Jesus performs no exorcisms. We do not see Jesus baptized, nor are we told about his words of institution at the Last Supper. In the synoptics, the high priests seek to kill Jesus because of jealousy, but in John’s gospel it is because he raised Lazarus from the dead. That incident, indeed, is one of many things found in John but not elsewhere. Others include the ‘I am’ sayings, the dialogues with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, the turning of water into wine, Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet, the teaching about the holy spirit as the ‘Comforter’, and so on. John is clearly making a distinctive, unique contribution.
First, John was writing a new Genesis. His whole book, opening with the words ‘In the beginning’, which echo Genesis 1.1, is about how the world’s creator has come at last to remake his world. John 20 is about Jesus’ resurrection, but every sentence breathes the life of ‘the first day of the week’, the start of new creation. And if John hints that his prologue is heralding a new version of Genesis 1, then the equivalent of the climax of that great chapter, the creation of humans in the divine image, is precisely when the Word becomes flesh. John 1.14 corresponds to Genesis 1.26–28: the one through whom the world was made now becomes the one through whom the world is rescued and remade.
Second, John was also writing a new Exodus. Moses led the people out of Egypt and gave them the Torah, to prepare them for God coming in person to dwell with them (in the tabernacle) and to lead them to their inheritance. Now ‘the Word became flesh and [literally translated] “tabernacled in our midst” ’ (Jn. 1.14). Jesus is the place where the one God has come to dwell among us and to reveal his true glory.
Third, as a result, John was also writing about Pentecost. John bears witness to what he remembers, but his memory of Jesus is augmented and animated by the holy spirit, the paraclete, who will ‘teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’ (Jn. 14.26). John, it seems, sees himself as part of a Jewish movement that has experienced the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes in Israel’s Messiah, and as someone who has received the gift of YHWH’s own spirit from this Messiah. John is providing an epitome of Jesus’ life, written by one who has experienced the streams of living water promised by Jesus to his followers, with the story expounded in the co-ordinates of Israel’s scripture. This is no bland bios, with the sayings of a famous teacher strung together in a loose narrative framework. John has written a theologically creative and spiritually rich fusion of personal memory and Pentecostal faith . . . . The Johannine Jesus is what Jesus looks like viewed through the lens of the spirit, the paraclete.
The gospel of John sets out several vital biblical themes. There is rich teaching about God as father and his love for his world. There are clear warnings about the evil and darkness that have invaded God’s world, and about the tragic unbelief of so many Judeans in the face of divine witnesses. John has more to say about the spirit than all the other gospels put together, generating a strong theme about discipleship, which stems from faith in God and issues in love for others, and about the God-breathed mission to the wider world. John’s Jesus regularly refers to salvation in terms of ‘eternal life’—presumably, as elsewhere in the New Testament, ‘the life of the age to come’, not a Platonic dream beyond space, time, and matter.
But the heart of John’s thematic world is christology. John constructs a christological cascade, presenting Jesus as the father’s supreme agent, the heaven-sent son, the pre-existent Word who is enfleshed with full humanity.
CONTEXTUAL AND CRITICAL MATTERS
Origins of John
As with the other canonical gospels, John’s gospel makes no mention of its own author. However, a central character in the second half of the gospel is the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, usually referred to in modern times as the ‘beloved disciple’. This figure was reclining beside Jesus in the upper room; he was, it seems, with Peter in the high priest’s hall; he was with Jesus’ mother at the foot of the cross; he runs with Peter to investigate the empty tomb; he was among those to whom the risen Jesus appeared by the Sea of Galilee.
He is portrayed as being, literally and metaphorically, one step ahead of Peter, almost as if there might have been a friendly rivalry between them. Although the beloved disciple is not explicitly mentioned prior to Jesus’ final meal with his disciples in Jerusalem, this does not mean that he had no part in Jesus’ ministry before that point. It might well be that he was the unnamed one of the two disciples of John the Baptist—the named one being Andrew—to whom the Baptist spoke about Jesus and who both then began to follow Jesus.
The beloved disciple is more likely a historical figure, a Judean follower of Jesus, a community founder, whose eye-witness testimony and personal authority undergird and vouch for the fourth gospel’s veracity.18 But this only presses the question once more: who was he?
According to tradition, the beloved disciple was John the son of Zebedee, brother of James, one of the senior apostles among the Twelve. Many early Christians believed that he wrote the gospel of John and the three letters of John, and that he received the revelation of Jesus Christ on the island of Patmos, where he composed the book of Revelation.
In the late second century, the Muratorian canon states that ‘The fourth of the Gospels is that of John, one of the disciples.’ Around the same time, Irenaeus wrote that ‘John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence in Ephesus in Asia.’ Irenaeus traces this view back to a group of Asian elders, probably including Papias of Hierapolis (d. c. AD 130) and Polycarp of Smyrna (d. c. AD 155), who had conversed with John before his death after a long old age, probably during the reign of Trajan (AD 98–117). According to Irenaeus, Papias had been a ‘hearer of John’;24 according to Philip of Side, Papias was a ‘disciple of John the theologian’.
A more compelling alternative to John the son of Zebedee is another John, ‘John the elder’.
This hypothesis rests on Papias’s statement about preferring oral testimony over written records when accessing Jesus’ teachings. He mentions two distinct Johns:
I will not hesitate to set down for you, along with my interpretations, everything I have carefully learned then from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance someone who had been a follower of the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and abiding voice.
Papias’s identification of the ‘elder John’ can also be correlated with the self-designation of the author in the second and third Johannine letters. Assuming a close connection between the gospel of John and the letters of John, the clearest self-identification of the author is not as an ‘apostle’, but as an ‘elder’, and a ‘witness’ to the events of Jesus’ life.
Date
If, as many suppose, John was dependent on the synoptic tradition, that might push us to a later date, but only if we could be more certain than we are about the dating of the synoptics themselves. There is no strong evidence against the traditional date near the end of the century, either towards the end of Domitian’s reign (AD 81–96) or at the beginning of Trajan’s (AD 98–117). But that double negative indicates the continuing uncertainty on the topic. Some have continued to argue that a much earlier date is possible and even preferable.
Place of writing
So where was the gospel written? Early and unanimous tradition suggests Ephesus.
Purpose
On the surface, John’s gospel gives us a clear purpose-statement at the end of the resurrection narrative: ‘But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’ The words ‘that you may believe’ should perhaps say: ‘that you may come to believe’; there is a difference of one letter in the Greek, and both readings are strongly attested in the manuscripts.
Nor are the stories of Jesus in this book simply ‘illustrations’ of an abstract point; the ‘faith’ to be elicited is that the Word became flesh, specifically the human flesh of this unique human being, doing these unique things.
This christology generates an ecclesiology, as John seeks to reinforce a particular form of group identity that construes Messiah-believers as God’s children, the true worshippers, those of the light, his sheep, who have vexatiously been labelled as schismatics or apostates by their fellow-Jews. This explains why, in the course of the narrative, Jesus’ messianic identity is so disputed, and why, the more clearly Jesus is identified with God, the more ferocious the opposition against him becomes.
John’s gospel, then, is a masterpiece of evangelistic proclamation and intra-Jewish apologetics, deeply rooted in Israel’s scriptures, witnessing to Jesus’ identity as the divine Messiah and claiming that his followers, gentile as well as Jewish, were the legitimate heirs of Israel’s heritage and promises.
Prologue (1.1–18)
The prologue functions like an overture to an opera. It tells the story from creation to new creation; from covenant to new covenant. It introduces the main motifs in the drama that are about to unfold: Jesus is God’s light and life, the supreme manifestation of divine glory, grace, and truth, evoking also the divine Word and its human witnesses. John draws together the story of creation (‘In the beginning’) and Israel’s election (‘he came to his own’), with Israel’s Temple as the location of the divine presence (‘glory’ and ‘dwelling among us’), and Israel’s covenant charter (‘law given through Moses’). The back story is that God called Israel to be the means of rescuing the world, so that he might one day rescue the world by becoming Israel in the person of its representative Messiah. Thus, in the prologue, God’s promise to dwell with his people and to rescue them from the darkness takes place through the sending of the divine Word into the world, into the human flesh of the true Image; and when the Word is received, it begets new children. The tragedy is that the Word has been resisted by Israel (‘he came to his own, and his own did not receive him’). But God’s new Temple has been built in the person of Jesus and through the work of the spirit. As in Revelation’s picture of the new Jerusalem (21.3), the dwelling of God is with humans. John has often been misread as though it was telling humans how to leave the present world and get to heaven. In reality, it is explaining how heaven itself, in the person of its Lord, came to dwell among us; how the one through whom all things were made came to rescue and renew that created world.
So John describes the coming of the Word into the world, bringing with it life and light (1.1–4). John the Baptist witnessed to the light (1.6–8), the light which evoked the twofold response of either unbelief or belief (1.9–13). Finally, the Word entered human existence as the ‘only begotten son’ of God the father (1.14–18). This gives the reader the signal that the ‘son of God’ in the rest of the narrative, while being a recognizable designation for the Messiah, was now also to be understood in terms of the eternal Word through whom all things were made.
The climax, then, is obviously verse 14: ‘the Word became flesh’. Much like Wisdom in traditions associated with that concept (see ‘Portals and parallels: Wisdom dwells on earth’), the pre-existent Word ‘tabernacled’ or ‘pitched his tent’ in the very creation that he helped bring into existence. The startling implication is that all prior forms of divine presence were either transitory or preparatory: the Word-made-flesh is a unique mode of divine disclosure, the climactic manifestation of God’s covenant favour (grace) and of divine testimony (truth).91 The story the prologue tells is thus the story of the whole gospel in miniature. This is the story of Jesus told as the true and redeeming story of Israel, told as the true and redeeming story of the creator and the cosmos.
PORTALS AND PARALLELS: WISDOM DWELLS ON EARTH
Jewish authors could picture Wisdom, the personified word of YHWH, looking to dwell among the people but struggling to find a place, until she took up residence in Israel (see Prov. 8.22–31; Wis. 8.4; 9.9). According to Sirach, the figure of Wisdom comes to dwell permanently among humans, specifically in the Temple at Jerusalem, depositing the divine word and divine glory in Israel’s midst. However, in 1 Enoch, the picture is darker: Wisdom had been trying to find somewhere to live, but finding none, she went back home. In her absence Iniquity went out and found somewhere to dwell, and turned what should have been Wisdom’s home into a den of iniquity. Consequently, there is now no hope for the world, or Israel, or individual humans. John’s development of this same theme is of a different order altogether. He agrees with Sirach that the divine Wisdom does indeed find a home. He recognizes, and takes on board, the tragedy that lies behind 1 Enoch 42: the world did not know the logos, its creator, and even ‘his own people did not receive him’. But this did not make him return home, having abandoned the world to ‘iniquity’. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. The logos has come, as mainstream Judaism fully expected, not to judge the world but to redeem it. But instead of Shekinah and Torah, the Jerusalem Temple and the covenant code, as the places where Wisdom/logos dwells and reveals the divine glory, John says that the logos became flesh, became a human being, became Jesus of Nazareth.
Sirach 24.1–12
Wisdom praises herself, and tells of her glory in the midst of her people. In the assembly of the Most High she opens her mouth, and in the presence of his hosts she tells of her glory: ‘I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist. I dwelt in the highest heavens, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud. Alone I compassed the vault of heaven and traversed the depths of the abyss. Over waves of the sea, over all the earth, and over every people and nation I have held sway. Among all these I sought a resting-place; in whose territory should I abide? Then the Creator of all things gave me a command, and my Creator chose the place for my tent. He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance.” Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be. In the holy tent I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion. Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting-place, and in Jerusalem was my domain. I took root in an honored people, in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.’ (NRSV)
1 Enoch 42.1–3
Wisdom could not find a place in which she could dwell; but a place was found (for her) in the heavens. Then Wisdom went out to dwell with the children of the people, but she found no dwelling place. (So) Wisdom returned to her place and she settled permanently among the angels. Then Iniquity went out of her rooms, and found whom she did not expect. And she dwelt with them, like rain in a desert, like dew on a thirsty land. (OTP)
The book of signs (1.19—12.50)
The first main section of the gospel is sometimes referred to as ‘the book of signs’ because of the sequence of ‘signs’ which John himself flags up as he introduces the first two (2.11; 4.54). John seems, with these, to be hinting at a longer sequence, which most assume will mean seven, but opinions differ as to which incidents in the subsequent narrative should be seen as the remaining five. There is a lot to be said for seeing the raising of Lazarus (11.1–45) as the seventh, which might suggest that the third is the healing of the crippled man (5.2–16), the fourth the feeding of the five thousand (6.1–15), the fifth the walking on water (6.16–21), and the sixth the healing of the man born blind (9.1–7). On balance, however, we prefer the perhaps bolder move of seeing Jesus’ crucifixion itself as the seventh sign, with the raising of Lazarus as the sixth, omitting the walking on water which, though obviously significant in various ways, does not stand out in the same way in John’s narrative. The point of the ‘signs’, as John says at 2.11, is that they reveal Jesus’ glory and elicit faith. For John, this is supremely true of the crucifixion. The ‘signs’, however, are thereby doing the job which John assigns first and foremost to John the Baptist, namely, pointing to Jesus and starting to explain his significance.
John declares that Jesus is the ‘Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’, combining the images of the Passover lamb and Isaiah’s ‘suffering servant’. John, having seen the spirit descend on Jesus, testifies that he is the ‘son of God’, signifying both Jesus’ messianic identity and his unique filial relationship with Israel’s God—and perhaps that these two things were always designed to merge into one (1.29–34). This leads two of John’s disciples (Andrew and Simon) to follow Jesus, with Jesus renaming Simon as ‘Cephas’, the Aramaic word for ‘rock’, corresponding to the Greek petros.
At a wedding in Cana, Jesus performs his first ‘sign’ (sēmeion), turning water into wine at his mother’s request. The story resonates with the promises of divine generosity and plenty in the messianic age. Other overtones abound: the six jars used for Jewish ceremonial washing are transformed into wine-flagons, and the master of ceremonies comments that the best wine has only now appeared.
The next scene reaches the same conclusion by a startlingly different route. In Jerusalem for Passover (the first of three Passovers in this gospel), Jesus drives out money-changers, traders, and animals from the Temple courtyards—the famous scene which in the synoptic gospels comes towards the end of the story. Jesus’ explanation is stark: the Temple is to be destroyed and rebuilt (2.19). This saying reappears in various forms in Jesus’ trial in the synoptics; John insists that it refers primarily to Jesus’ own death and resurrection, the ‘Temple’ being his own body (as we were already learning from 1.14 and elsewhere).
Nicodemus, coming at night, is told about the new birth that Jesus is offering. The Jewish world knew the importance of being born into Abraham’s family; Jesus is claiming that a new kind of ‘birth’ is now both necessary and, by the spirit, possible. It will be achieved through the ‘lifting up’ of the ‘son of man’ (3.14)—combining the echo of 1.51 with an allusion to the ‘exaltation’ of ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel 7.13, and pointing thereby to a major theme of the gospel. This will unveil the greatest Johannine theme of all, the breathtaking scope of God’s love (3.16).
The personal challenge to Nicodemus, framing so many theological themes, is echoed in the very different personal challenge to the Samaritan woman. Despite centuries of deep mutual suspicion between Jews and Samaritans, and despite the alarm-bells that would ring at a man being alone with an unattended woman, Jesus asks the woman for a drink from Jacob’s well (4.1–42). Another Johannine theme is thereby introduced: water, the water of life promised here and in 7.37–38. In a teasing dialogue, Jesus questions her about her husband, then revealing that he knows about her sad and chequered past. She changes the subject—right into what we now know to be a central Johannine theme: Jews worship in Jerusalem, Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, but Jesus is doing something new that will upstage both.
If chapter 3 emphasized the new birth (over against ordinary Abrahamic descent), and chapter 4 the new worship (over against the Jerusalem Temple), chapter 5 emphasizes the new age itself, the reality towards which the weekly sabbaths had long pointed. (Many Jewish teachers then and now have seen the sabbath as the anticipation of the age to come.) Jesus heals a paralyzed man, instructing him to pick up his mat and walk; but the Judeans object, because it is the sabbath. Jesus’ response, developed in another extended discourse, implies that the age to come is already here, the age to which Moses pointed but which he could not deliver, the age which would issue in resurrection itself (5.25–26).
The longest discourse so far accompanies the next ‘sign’: the feeding of the five thousand, echoing the wilderness feeding of Israel after the exodus. This stirs up the possibility that the crowd might try to make Jesus king in the wrong way (6.15), and he retreats up the mountain while the disciples set sail across the lake. The storm that follows sets the scene for Jesus’ YHWH-like powers, striding over the sea and bringing them safe to shore. The crowds are confused, but Jesus insists that they should look beyond his provision of ordinary bread to the reality which he embodies in himself. The language is stark: they must eat Jesus’ flesh and drink his blood! This would sound preposterous, even to those who might hear the echo of 2 Samuel 23.17. Most would now say that John intends us to hear echoes of the eucharist (6.32–59). It is indeed a ‘hard saying’ but, as Peter insists, Jesus has the words of ‘eternal life’, the life of the age to come which is already breaking in.
John has now firmly linked Jesus’ work with Passover; he now has Jesus also fulfilling the Feast of Tabernacles. This agricultural festival involved the lighting of lamps and processions, ending with the pouring out of water and wine in the Temple, commemorating the divine provision of water in the wilderness. Jesus’ presence and teaching confuse the crowds and the authorities, but he declares (echoing Isa. 55.1) that thirsty people should come and drink—from him. As before (4.10–15), he is offering living water, like the water flowing from the Temple in Ezekiel’s vision (47.1–12; also Zech. 14.8). John interprets this in a stark phrase: the spirit wasn’t available yet (literally ‘there was not yet spirit’) because Jesus was not yet ‘glorified’.
At this point the narrative flow is sharply broken by the story of ‘the woman caught in adultery’—or, better perhaps, the men caught in hypocrisy (Jn. 7.53—8.11). The earliest manuscripts omit the passage, and some later ones place it at different points in John and even in Luke. This doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; it might be that the story was thought so radical that some early scribes left it out. Its present placing has the effect that John 8 starts with Jesus protecting a woman from being stoned and ends with Jesus himself having to escape stoning. It focuses on the powerful mercy which triumphs over the negative judgment of the law, as resurrection-life triumphs over death—without slackening the moral demand (‘from now on don’t sin again’, 8.11 NTE/KNT), while highlighting Jesus’ condemnation of those who presumed to judge but were themselves just as sinful (8.9).
We should then read John 8.12–59 as a continuation of the previous conflict between Jesus and the Judean leaders at the Feast of Tabernacles. This section is bracketed by two great ‘I am’ statements (‘I am the light of the world’ and ‘before Abraham was born, I am’) (see Table 27.1). This section contains further disclosures by Jesus of his sent-ness from the father; the polemic both ways ratchets up in intensity.
I am the bread of life 6.35, 41, 48
I am the light of the world 8.12; 9.5
I am the sheep gate 10.7, 9
I am the good shepherd 10.11, 14
I am the resurrection and the life 11.25
I am the way, the truth, and the life 14.6
I am the true vine 15.1
Absolute ‘I am’ statements 4.26; 6.20; 8.24, 28, 58; 13.19; 18.5–8
The Pharisees, dismissing and condemning Jesus, are in fact accusing the father who sent him, proving despite themselves that they are indeed walking in darkness. This is one of the sharpest depictions in the gospel of the fact that ‘he came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’ (1.11 NTE/KNT). God the father is seeking Jesus’ honour, and will vindicate him, proving that he is in fact the fulfilment of the divine promise to Abraham himself.
The Carpenter's Nail 