Baptism of John -- page 2

The Gospel of John

Genre of Gospel: The Fourth Gospel is first and foremost a gospel; within that general grouping, it is a narrative gospel. The genre of Christian narrative gospel consists of works that proclaim the good news about the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, arranged in a story line that serves to advance the particular perspective or agenda of the author/editor.5 In general, then, the reader/hearer can expect the text to proclaim and explain the good news that the Christ of God has come to humankind. This genre of "gospel" has long been considered a new literary form, represented primarily by the first four books of the Christian New Testament. 6 If the gospels had been an entirely new genre, however, those hearing or reading it would not have known what to expect, and would have faced an obstacle in knowing how to interpret and understand what they were hearing or reading. There must be a close similarity between the gospel genre and some already existing genre that would have been familiar to the original audiences, such as history or biography.

The gospel genre is not intended to be history as the contemporary reader understands history. The gospel writer felt free to re-organize sequences of events and settings in ways that supported the particular points he wanted to emphasize, and to embellish or omit parts of the story of Jesus as needed. For this reason, it is impossible to construct a perfect chronological harmony of the gospels. The gospel writer was not a disinterested observer, but a partisan, whose intent was to tell his story in such a way that the reader comes to the same conclusion about who Jesus Christ that the writer had. The Fourth Evangelist 7 tells the reader exactly this near the end of his story, when he writes:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. 8

Some scholars have seen the Fourth Gospel as primarily a theological work; 9 but more recently it has been argued that the Gospels can be understood as a form of the Greco-Roman biography. 10 There are both clear connections between the gospels and examples of Greco-Roman biography 11 and distinctive characteristics shared by the four canonical gospels, including their subject (Jesus of Nazareth) and the evangelical message he preached. The canonical gospels are also distinct from the noncanonical gospels, both apocryphal 12 and gnostic.13

The early reader or hearer of the canonical gospels, therefore, would have recognized the canonical gospels as being in the genre of biography, and from that recognition would have known what to expect. One can gain a better understanding of the Fourth Gospel by comparing it with the other three. They are all concerned with the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth for the reader, and have many incidents and accounts in common. However, they also differ from one another in illuminating ways.

The Fourth Evangelist has omitted mention of several incidents which would seem to be important to the Christ story. There is no birth or infancy/childhood narrative in the Fourth Gospel, no temptation of Christ, and no Transfiguration. The order of events is different from that in the Synoptic Gospels, and where parallel accounts are given, they often differ in significant detail. For example, Jesus teaches by means of long discourses in the Fourth Gospel, rather than in the parables that predominate in the other gospels.

This could be evidence that the Evangelist did not know of the other gospels, or that he knew of them and was deliberate in his different account. The Fourth Gospel is still considered to be the last written of the four canonical gospels, although not as late as once thought perhaps 100-110 C.E. for a final edition.14 If so, there was certainly time for the synoptic gospels, and in particular Mark, to have diffused over a sufficiently large geographical area that the Fourth Evangelist would have known of them. On the other hand, some scholars suggest that the first edition of John may have been assembled as early as 80-85 C.E., only a decade or so after Mark. 15 Paul Anderson makes a convincing argument that the best way of understanding the relationship between Mark’s Gospel and John’s Gospel is to assume an interfluence in both directions, beginning with the oral traditions behind each; that the Fourth Evangelist built around Mark’s Gospel, adding to it additional material thought to be important, and correcting the record in certain places where needed. 16

Beyond the interplay between the Markan tradition and that of the Fourth Gospel, several topics can be seen as of particular concern to the Fourth Evangelist. Much of the Fourth Gospel expresses a high christology, describing Jesus as the divine pre-existent Word, on a par with the Father-Creator. This may account for the lack of infancy or childhood narratives and the omission of any genealogy of Jesus. The Fourth Evangelist may have considered Jesus too divine to have been seriously tempted by the devil, and therefore left out that story.

There are also the matters of the increasingly strained relationship between the new Christians and Synagogue Judaism; the persistence of the sect of followers of John the Baptist, and the infiltration of Gnostic/Docetic ideas into the early church. 17 The matter of dealing with the sect of followers of John the Baptist has been proposed by some as a main purpose for the entire Fourth Gospel. 18 In this paradigm, the gospel writer would shape his story to emphasize the subordination of the Baptist to Jesus, and this is in fact a significant difference between the portrayal of John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel and in the Synoptics. This paradigm will be further explored later in this paper.

The Proem (1:1-51)

The Fourth Gospel is easily separated into several sections. There is an introductory section, or proem, a section dealing primarily with the signs, or miracles, Jesus did, a section dealing with the Passion, and a concluding section. Each of these sections can in turn be broken down in more detail. The passage of interest in this study is part of the Proem, or introduction to the Fourth Gospel. This occupies the entire first chapter of the gospel, and comes to an end with the beginning of the second chapter, when the subject abruptly turns to the first of Jesus’ signs: the miracle of turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana.

This is a strikingly long introduction in comparison with those of the Synoptics. Matthew’s and Mark’s introductions are a single verse each, and Luke takes only four verses to introduce his gospel to Theophilus. The Fourth Evangelist, by contrast, spends 51 verses introducing his gospel. This difference itself attracts the serious reader to examine the first chapter in more detail.

The first chapter or proem is easily divided into two parts: verses 1-18 (Prologue) and verses 19-51 (Testimony of John the Baptist) by style and content. The first section is theological and poetic, the latter is practical and narrative. If the Prologue were deleted, v. 19 could serve as the beginning of the gospel in a style very similar to that of Mark. It begins to look as if the Fourth Gospel has two introductions, one after the other, and the second is much closer in style to the signs section that immediately follows.

(This is not the only way to outline the structure of the gospel; Painter, for example, considers only the Prologue as introduction and 1:19 as the beginning of the public ministry of Jesus. 19 In either structure, there are significant breaks in the flow of the text between verses 18 and 19, and again between the end of chapter one and the beginning of chapter two. In discussing exegetical issues in the Fourth Gospel, Painter calls the pericope 1:19-51 "The Quest for the Messiah: Act One".)20

The Prologue is material included by the Fourth Evangelist that the other gospel writers left out of their story, and as such it gives us an important insight to the Fourth Evangelist’s particular purpose in writing. The Synoptic gospels have very perfunctory introductions, and move directly into their story, which begins with the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The Fourth Gospel, by contrast, has an extensive introduction, which places the beginning of Jesus’ story before the Creation: "In the beginning the Word already was." 21 For the Synoptics, the story is how the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, came to embody the Divine and fulfilled the plan of God for the salvation of humankind; for the Fourth Evangelist the story is that the Eternal Divine, co-existent with God, became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and dwelt among human beings for the salvation of humankind. This difference of emphasis begins to illuminate for the exegete the "why" of the Fourth Gospel.

One similarity and one difference between the Prologue and the Testimony of John are of interest to this study. The similarity is that both the Prologue (verses 6-8, 15) and the Testimony (verses 26-27, 30-31, 34) are concerned to establish the Baptist’s subordination to Jesus. As discussed earlier, this is an important characteristic of the Fourth Gospel as a whole. Finding indications of this subordination in both sections is an indication of their literary unity. However, it is also possible to see the subordination verses in the Prologue as later insertions in an already existing literary unit.

The difference between Prologue and Testimony lies in their Christology. The Prologue presents a high Christology: Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God, eternally present, divine Son of God. The testimony of John, in contrast, offers a relatively low Christology: to the Baptist Jesus is the Lamb of God and the Chosen One of God. 22 Jesus’ new disciples call him "rabbi" (v. 38) and messiah (v. 41). These are terms of high regard, but not terms of divinity. 23

From these indications one may posit a redactional history of the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. If one assumes with Anderson an interfluence of the Johannine and Markan traditions, and with Ehrman that the Johannine community experienced a trajectory of higher and higher Christology as the years went by, 24 it may be concluded that the Prologue is a later composition, added to the beginning of the gospel at some later date. The Testimony of John would be the earlier composition, and at one time the beginning of the entire gospel. The fact that the Fourth Evangelist twice in the Testimony uses Aramaic words (rabbi, messiah) may also indicate, as Ehrman suggests, an earlier date of composition for the Testimony of John. Painter sees the insertion of the Greek equivalents of these Aramaic words as a sign of later editorial work to ready the gospel for a wider audience. 25 This also implies that the Testimony was put into writing at a relatively early date.

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