British New Testament Society

My aim here is to continue, and take a stage further, the discussion by Wendy North at the 2004 BNTS Conference on 'The Jews' in John's Gospel. In it she observed that John never explains what he means by 'the Jews', and infers from this that John's audience know who 'the Jews' are; that there must be some contextual 'logic by which his references make sense'. She believes that 'the Jews' represent 'Jewish society as (John) experiences it' and that his group is 'already excluded from the synagogue, which is its natural home... The bitterness in the conflict passages' show that John 'speaks from an excluded position beyond (Jewish community) boundaries (and)...it is his retrojection of this term ('the Jews') into the past of Jesus' story that gives rise to the gospel's Jesus as a figure to be distinguished from people who are Jewish, a situation wholly inappropriate to Jesus' own life and circumstances.'

I infer from Wendy's analysis (with which I agree entirely) that the Johannine dispute is an intra-Jewish dispute. We have a group of Jews whose extravagant theology has caused them, to their dismay, to be thrown out of a club to which they previously belonged, and they abuse their erstwhile fellow-members for not seeing things their way. The question here is 'who are these people, and can we identify the group whom they vilify?' And I suggest, surprisingly, that the Evangelist's enemies have been under our noses all along. Their views have been accepted into the canon: they are the addressees of 1John, 'The Enemy Within' the NT.

The characteristic vocabulary of the Johannine texts (light/darkness, flesh/spirit etc) indicate that these documents are related, but the nature of the relationship has been problematic. It has been particularly hard to reconcile the spiritualised 'high' christology of the Gospel with the mundane ethical admonitions of the Epistles (their relatively 'low' christology). Since the exegetical tendency has been to seek unity in what looks like disagreement, standard interpretations (most famously that of Raymond Brown) leave many questions unanswered.

I suggest that we look afresh at these disagreements and read them for what they appear to be - the opinions of opponents. I take the Law-based theology of the Epistles as belonging to a synagogue, whose only distinguishing feature is that it sees God's promises to Israel fulfilled in Jesus. These are 'the Jews' of the Gospel, who insist on obedience to the commandments and who have expelled a group of charismatics for 'going beyond' their rules and traditions. The Gospel, on the other hand, is the manifesto of the expelled group who now abuse their former companions from outside - and 'historicize' their criticisms by putting them into the mouth of Jesus. These are the opponents of 1John who regard Jesus as divine rather than a man of flesh and blood, and who think that their 'faith' excuses them from obeying the Law.

In this paper I discuss Brown's interpretation in The Community of the Beloved Disciple; the verbal connections between the Gospel and 1John and the question of priority; John Elliott's essay on sectarian formation; contrasting attitudes towards opponents, 'sin' and the Law; and some general remarks about the possible socio-political context of the Johannine literature.

I conclude that we may be misled into thinking that, because the Gospel has been so influential in later Christian theology, it dominated the Johannine agenda in its own time as it has done ever since. By setting aside this largely unexamined assumption we can avoid benighted questions (like 'is John antisemitic?') and develop simpler, more satisfying interpretations of these texts and more particularly of their relationship.

In the drama of the Fourth Gospel, the "twelve disciples" take centre stage in chapters 13 through 17. The role of Jesus' inner circle of followers shifts in chapter 13. Beginning with the foot-washing scene, the disciples receive "private tutoring" from Jesus, removed from a public display of signs or speeches. During the lengthy tutoring session, the author's presentation of the disciples exposes men who are quite puzzled and bewildered by the words of Jesus. The disciples are perplexed by Jesus' speeches, misunderstand his words, demonstrate a feeble faith, and generally do not grasp what their master is telling them (e.g. 13:22, 28-29; 16:29). One of "the twelve" departs from the scene "at night" (13:30); the darkness symbolizes both a cloud of his own evil intention and a cloud of uncertainty on the remaining eleven. The role of the disciples shifts again in the prayer of John 17. Jesus presents a picture of his disciples in his prayer that is all together different from the men in chapter 13, 14 and 16. Jesus prays for his disciples in 17:6-19, where they are presented in a much more affirmative light. The author of the Gospel indicates through Jesus' prayer that the disciples (save one) were fully rescued and restored to unity with the Father and the Son at some point in time after the narrative time of the prayer. Their future mission and testimonies were successful (17:20). The shift in presentation of the disciples is for the benefit of the readers of the Fourth Gospel. The promise of full recovery of the eleven is a model and a promise for the readers who believe the words and the work of Jesus. It is a demonstration of the victory of Jesus over the intentions of the defecting disciple. After the Easter events and the gift of the promised Paraclete, it is the readers of the Gospel who benefit from the change and development of the characters in John's Gospel.

One of the most mysterious of all the Son of Man sayings in the Gospel of John is the first, in which Jesus tells Nathanael that he and the other disciples will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Since scholarly attention has focused on Jacob's vision in Gen 28.12, there has not been sufficient attention to the words 'heaven opened'. Because the opening of heaven is often found in the context of heavenly or apocalyptic visions, this paper attempts to argue that within the Johannine narrative the words 'heaven opened' introduce an apocalyptic and heavenly figure who has come to earth in order to reveal heavenly mysteries. The Johannine Son of Man links heaven and earth, but he does so not as a human reaching to heaven but as a heavenly figure coming to earth. The greater things that Nathanael and the disciples will see are the heavenly things that the Johannine Son of Man will reveal.

The book of John used the word kosmos to mean several things: enemies, natural and physical world and the spirit world. In African tradition, particularly among the Yoruba people of Nigeria, the world is aye which has various similar meanings of the physical world, the enemies in the world and the spirit-world. The purpose of this paper is to examine critically, Johannine concept of this world (kosmos) in the Book of John and in African tradition. Some of the questions that will be addressed would be "Is there any possibility that the author of the Gospel of John has contact with African tradition?" "Or was he/she an African? " "What is the actual meaning of this world in the Gospel of John?".