The gospel of John is in many ways the most profound Bible book. This is the book from which we quote on funerals, it also contains the Bible’s most known verse, John 3:16, and the Bible’s shortest verse, John 11:35; “Jesus wept.” Many liturgical traditions are associated with this book and pronounced as blessings at every Roman Catholic mass and very popular in the Anglo-Catholic movement.
John’s narrative significantly mutes the humanity of Jesus seen in many of the verses such as; John 10.36, 30: I am the Son of God., I and the Father are one.” For John, there is no temptation in the wilderness, no agony in the garden of Gethsemane, and no anguished cry of “my God, my God why hast thou forsaken me” from the cross.
This book offers fundamentalist some very serious challenges. The words of Jesus, coming as they do in elaborate discourses, show evidence of long theological development and cannot possibly have been the literal words of the historic Jesus.
In the synoptic tradition, Jesus enjoined silenced upon those who would broadcast his divine origin or his secret identity, however in the Gospel of John this identity is all but shouted from roof tops. The synoptics also suggested a public ministry of Jesus that lasted one year and in their narratives Jesus came to Jerusalem only for the climax of his life at holy week and Easter. John, however had Jesus involved in three Passover celebrations which would imply a two to three year public ministry, and he had Jesus go to Jerusalem on several occasions. Also in direct opposition to the synoptic tradition, John mentions the cleansing of the temple to have occurred at the beginning, not at the conclusion of Jesus’s public ministry (John 2:13), therefore for fundamentalist to suggest that there were two temple cleansings is indeed too far stretched to be taken seriously. John also disagreed with Mathew, Mark and Luke about whether the Last Supper was the Passover meal. For John it was a preparation meal eaten on the eve of the Passover, interestingly the content of the Last Supper is significantly absent from this Gospel.
Apart from its discrepancies with other Gospel narratives, the Gospel of John seemed to delight in making fun of those who would literalize Jesus’ words. Therefore to take the words of the Johannine Christ literally was clearly to miss Jesus’ meaning. In John 3:3; “How can a man be born when he is already old?” – Nicodemus’ response simply misses the point, but this is how a literalistic mind works, John seemed to be saying. In John 4:10 – 11, the Samaritan woman at the well was also a literalist. There seems to be a painful naïveté of literalism captured by the author of this fourth Gospel. The disciples themselves had this persistent literalistic attitude as seen also in John 6:33, 34 when Jesus said; The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world, to which the disciples responded; “Lord give us this bread always.” Those who would literalize the biblical text have still further problems with John.
But the most distressing of all, taken literally this Gospel had fed the dark side of religious bigotry more than any other part of the Christian scriptures. On most occasion when the words “the Jews” were used in the fourth Gospel the connotation was evil; i.e. John 8:23 “You (Jews) are of your father the devil, and your will to do your father’s desires – John 8:44. I think that for Jesus to call Jews “children of Satan” is out of character to the divine nature but because it is scripture it has been used to justify bigotry for ages. If Jesus could insult Jews, how much permission do his disciples need to go and do likewise? Is it conceivable that the Jesus of history could have actually said such things! Can this portrait of Jesus be reconciled with the portrait of Matthew, where the primacy of Jews in salvation was assured and asserted time after time? Is this portrait of Jesus part of the Christian heritage that has Jesus say, “Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ Matthew 5.44? Obviously not! Is therefore a literal understanding of Scripture a viable alternative for anyone? Of course not!. I too am convinced that there is an ancient and primitive historic tradition that lies behind the Fourth Gospel. With all its literal shortcomings, the Fourth Gospel still looms for me as the mountain peak of Christian writing. To portray that essence freed from the distortion of literalism is the aim of this study.
Many of us seem to entertain the notion that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit works in a void, discarding the role of ancient cultural contexts in which the Scriptures where written. No one writes, thinks, or communicates in a vacuum (This also calls for examination of the “void” mentioned in Genesis 1: 2! It does not necessarily mean “empty”). Every written work is but one half of the dialogue.
I cannot make a case for a single word attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel to be a literal word actually spoken by the historic Jesus. Yet I too believe that this Gospel writer understood Jesus and his ultimate meaning better than any other.
The book of Acts confirmed that John was active in Jerusalem and Palestine (Acts 3:1; 8:14). Since Mark’s Gospel had the authority of Peter behind it and as such greatly influenced Matthew and Luke to create the synoptic tradition, it could hardly have been challenged by a tradition that did not itself carry apostolic authority of an equal rank. Yet the Fourth Gospel challenged the synoptic tradition at several key points. Its “Author” had to be authoritative and highly respected. John, the son of Zebedee, was the only figure who could fit such description. The book was written in Greek towards the end of the first century. Putting the authorship discrepancies aside, it is conclusive that John, son of Zebedee was the authority behind this work.
There is no reason to doubt the long-standing tradition of the longevity that was associated with John Zebedee. As he became the sole surviving apostolic figure, something which also elevated his status, prestige and authority. His experience with Jesus and his remembered words of Jesus were surely shared with his disciples. The accuracy in the details of both events and places in and around Jerusalem that appear in the fourth Gospel argue for a primary and trustworthy early tradition. The long discourses and the unique way in which words were placed onto the lips of Jesus that made him express advanced theological ideas about himself as “Light”, “Tabernacle”, “Temple”, “Messiah”, “Servant of Yahweh”, “King of Israel”, “dispenser of eternal life” – all argue for a long period of development. It is obvious that in the writing of the Fourth Gospel, there was a theological giant, a genius of rare spiritual depth who could weave together this profound narrative.
In the years between the life of Jesus and the writings of the Fourth Gospel, the Christian movement had been successfully launched. It began in Jerusalem and the spread primarily among the Jews of the dispersion. In the fifth and sixth decade of the common era, Christianity began to make inroads into the gentile world, primarily as a result of Paul’s work. But even after Paul’s death in 64, Christianity remained mostly a Jewish movement until the city of Jerusalem fell to the Roman army in 70. The loss of this Jewish center dealt a significant blow to the centrality of the Jewishness of the Christian religion. Without the Jerusalem anchor, gentile Christianity began to grow quite apart from the previous Jewishness that had kept faithfulness to Jewish heritage. The tension that divided Jew and Gentile in this period of history also divided Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian. In the gentile circles there was a frequent assertion that the fall of Jerusalem was God’s judgement and punishment upon all Jews for their rejection of Jesus.
“I Am” was the constant claim of the Johannine Christ. The Word was with God in the beginning, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us, in the “I Am” sayings of this Gospel laid claim for this Jesus to the very name of God. No other Gospel writer recorded these sayings of Jesus because the Jesus of history obviously did not say them. Are these sayings therefore not True? They were and are true to the experience of Christ in the hearts of the believers. Christ has been and is the bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, caring for the alienated, the vine for the rejected and life for the dying. Therefore Truth is so much deeper than literal truth. The testimony of faith affirms the profundity of the Fourth Gospel. Requiring that the Fourth Gospel undergo the test of literalism would rob it of that very profundity.
The Gospel of John make these bold claims by exploring the divine power present in Christ, John carried his reader far beneath the level of the literal words and even the historic deeds of Jesus’ life. The Johannine message was not to be literalized, it was to be lived.
The Fourth Gospel, born out of decades of contemplation and meditation on the meaning of Jesus, was at one and the same time the least literal and the most accurate. The way it is used by literalistic Christian people today reveals the most profound biblical ignorance and the least understanding of the depth scripture.
In the next Article we shall a very deep look at the Man from Tarsus, the apostle Paul and his Gospel.
Story by: Philip Kakungulu
Crossing Lines Africa – Uganda
Pan African Peace Network
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