Series Preface
This collection of essays on the interpretation of Scripture in John’s Gospel is the fourth contribution in a scheduled five-volume series, which now includes each of the four canonical Gospels. The final volume will focus on the extracanonical Gospels and Acts. The objectives of the series are to situate the current state of research and to advance our understanding of the function of embedded Scripture texts and their traditions in the historical, literary, and socioreligious contexts of these early Christian writings. Being methodologically broad, the series aims to identify, advance, and, in some cases, bridge the concerns of variegated perspectives and approaches that are practiced today. Unlike the previous volumes, which were not organized according to predetermined categories, the present volume is more deliberate about categorical divisions, recognizing at the same time that these kinds of boundaries are not always fixed.
I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to the contributors whose expertise, creativity, generosity, and enthusiasm have made this ambitious project possible. I am also grateful to the editorial staff at Bloomsbury Press who painstakingly bring such collaborations to completion. Finally, I would like to express a profound appreciation to Kyle Parsons who has been a tremendous help throughout the editorial process.
This series is dedicated to my colleagues in the Religious Studies department at Trinity Western University whose scholarship, friendship, and good humor are sincerely cherished.
Abbreviations
AARAS American Academy of Religion Academy Series
AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
ABRL Anchor Bible Reference Library
AGJU Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums
ANF The Ante-Nicene Fathers
BAR Biblical Archaeologist Reader
BBB Bonner biblische Beiträge
BECNT Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
BEvT Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie
Bib Biblica
BibInt Biblical Interpretation Series
BibOr Biblica et orientalia
BINS Biblical Interpretation Series
BR Biblical Research
BSac Bibliotheca Sacra
BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
BZAW Beihefte zur ZAW
BZNW Beihefte zur ZNW
CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis & Theology
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
ECC Eerdmans Critical Commentary
ECL Early Christianity and Its Literature
ESCO European Studies of Christian Origins
ESEC Emory Studies in Early Christianity
EThL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments
GCS Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller
GNS Good News Studies
HeyJ Heythrop Journal
HNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament
HTS Harvard Theological Studies
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
HvTSt Hervormde teologiese studies
IB Interpreter’s Bible
ICC International Critical Commentary
Abbreviations
IDBSup Supplement to Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible
Int Interpretation
ITQ Irish Theological Quarterly
JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JMS Johannine Monograph Series
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JQRMS Jewish Quarterly Review Monograph Series
JR Journal of Religion
JSHJ Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
JSJ Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman Period
JSNT Journal for the Study of the New Testament
JSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament—Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
KEK Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament
LCL Loeb Classical Library
Leß Leßonénu
LNTS The Library of New Testament Studies
LS Louvain Studies
LXX Septuagint
MT Masoretic Text (Hebrew)
NCB New Century Bible
NCBC New Century Bible Commentary
Neot Neotestamentica
NET Neutestamentliche Entwürfe zur Theologie
NICNT New International Commentary on the New Testament
NIGTC The New International Greek Testament Commentary
NovT Novum Testamentum
NovTSup Novum Testamentum, Supplements
NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
NTA New Testament Abstracts
NTL New Testament Library
NTM New Testament Message
NTMon New Testament Monographs
NTS New Testament Studies
NTSI New Testament and the Scriptures of Israel
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
Or Orientalia (Rome)
PCNT Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament
PTMS Pittsburgh (Princeton) Theological Monograph Series
PTS Patristische Texte und Studien
QD Quaestiones disputatae
Abbreviations
RA Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale
RBS Resources for Biblical Study
RE Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche
REA Revue des études anciennes
RES Répertoire d’épigraphie sémitique
RHE Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique
RNT Regensburger Neues Testament
SBG Studies in Biblical Greek
SBLDS SBL Dissertation Series
SBLECL SBL Early Christianity and Its Literature
SBLEJL SBL Early Judaism and Its Literature
SBLMS SBL Monograph Series
SBLRBS SBL Resources for Biblical Study
SBLSBS SBL Sources for Biblical Study
SBT Studies in Biblical Theology
Sem Semitica
SemeiaSt Semeia Studies
SJ Studia judaica
SJLA Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity
SNT Studien zum Neuen Testament
SNTSMS Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series
SP Samaritan Pentateuch
SR Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses
SSEJC Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity
ST Studia theologica
SymS Symposium Series
TBT The Bible Today
TENTS Texts and Editions for New Testament Study
THKNT Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament
TS Theological Studies
UBS5 United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 5th ed.
UNT Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
UTB Uni-Taschenbücher
VWGTh Veröffentlichungen der Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft für Theologie
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament
WW Word and World
YJS Yale Judaica Series
ZNW Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Contributors
Paul N. Anderson
Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies
George Fox University Newberg, OR, USA
Extraordinary Professor of Religion North-West University Potchefstroom, South Africa
Warren Carter
LaDonna Kramer Meinders Professor of New Testament
Phillips Theological Seminary Tulsa, OK, USA
R. Alan Culpepper
Dean and Professor of New Testament Emeritus
James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology
Mercer University Atlanta, GA, USA
Research Fellow
Department of Old and New Testament
University of the Free State Bloemfontein, South Africa
Craig A. Evans
John Bisagno Distinguished Professor of Christian Origins
Houston Theological Seminary
Houston Baptist University Houston, TX, USA
Thomas R. Hatina
Professor of Religion and Culture Chair of the Religious Studies
Department
Trinity Western University Langley, BC, Canada
Visiting Professor
Hussite Theological Faculty
Charles University, Prague
Sandra Huebenthal Lehrstuhl für Exegese und Biblische Theologie
Universität Passau Passau, Germany
Jiří Lukeš
Lecturer in New Testament Studies
Hussite Theological Faculty
Charles University, Prague
Susanne Luther
Assistant Professor of New Testament Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Groningen
The Netherlands
Kyle R. L. Parsons Instructor in Religious Studies
Trinity Western University Langley, BC, Canada
Stanley E. Porter President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament
Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview
McMaster Divinity College Hamilton, ON, Canada
Rafael Rodríguez Professor of New Testament
Johnson University
Knoxville, TN, USA
Jan Roskovec
Lecturer in New Testament Studies
Protestant Theological Faculty
Charles University, Prague
Archie J. Spencer
John H. Pickford Professor of Theology
Northwest Baptist Seminary
Associated Canadian Theological Seminaries
Langley, BC, Canada
Search the Scriptures: A Survey of Approaches to the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel
Kyle R. L. Parsons
Scholars generally agree that the use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel (FG), like that of the rest of the New Testament, is hermeneutically Christocentric.1 However, scholars do not agree on the exact purpose or function of this hermeneutic within the Johannine context(s). While there is agreement that the Scriptures were appropriated to legitimize Jesus’s messianic identity,2 one cannot be as sure about their function in relation to the intended audience—whether they were meant to convince nonbelievers (evangelical or apologetic aims)3 or to encourage those who already believed (pastoral aims).4 In either case, the Fourth Evangelist (FE) faces the difficult task of explaining how the Scriptures make sense of a suffering, and indeed dying, Messiah figure, which was an unusual concept, to say the least.5 Alicia Myers summarizes it well by writing that messianic exegesis “had to explain the scandal of the cross and the reality of the resurrection as events entirely unanticipated by Israel’s scriptural narratives.”6
This introduction offers an overview of the shifting trends, goals, questions, and their related approaches to the FG’s use of Scripture. The approaches are organized into “historical,” “literary,” and “media” categories that have been trends in recent years, which I label as “perspectives” for convenience’s sake. Yet, each should be recognized as fluid in the sense that each can accommodate and overlap with the other(s) and be varied in its own right. Historical-critical approaches have often focused on both the
1 For the duration of this chapter, “Scripture,” “Scriptures,” or “Jewish Scriptures” will refer to the body of authoritative writings accepted as Scripture in Judaism prior to the delineation of a formal canon. These terms will also imply the designations “Old Testament” and “Hebrew Scriptures.”
2 Alicia D. Myers, “Abiding Words: An Introduction to Perspectives on John’s Use of Scriptures,” in Abiding Words: The Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia D. Myers and Bruce G. Schuchard, RBS 81 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015), 2.
3 See D. A. Carson, “Syntactical and Text-Critical Observations on John 20.30–31: One More Round on the Purpose of the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 124 (2005): 693–714; Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (London: SCM, 1961), 18.
4 See J. Louis Martyn, “Listening to John and Paul on the Subject of Gospel and Scripture,” WW 12 (1992): 73.
5 Donald H. Juel, Messianic Exegesis: Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1988), 26.
6 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 3.
FE’s sources and his interpretive method(s) in relation to his contemporaries. Typically, these approaches have aimed at understanding the world behind the FG.7 Literary approaches have most often appropriated rhetorical criticism, narrative criticism, and aspects of intertextuality. As such, the text itself is privileged along with the reader/ audience in contrast to the author. Media criticism covers more recent approaches that build on orality studies and investigates both how an oral performance affects textual meaning for an audience and how groups use the past for making sense of the present through the medium of social memory.
As a methodological survey, the aim of this introduction is to lay the groundwork for the essays in this volume, which are organized according to the most recent approaches. The summary of the articles is found at the end of this introduction. It is hoped that this structure will not only provide a fuller context for the following essays but also bring some degree of organization to many decades of study into the function of Scripture in the FG.
1. Historical Perspectives
Historically oriented inquiry has most often concentrated on explicit quotations in the FG.8 Apart from anomalies like the quotation in John 7:38,9 which does not correspond to any known scriptural form despite its being introduced with a typical quotation formula, most scholars have concentrated on interpretive patterns, preferred sources, and quotation formulae. A historical approach to the FG’s use of Scripture has a long tradition. Almost a century ago, Alexander Faure, for example, saw the value of subjecting the explicit quotations to form- and source-critical analysis in order to show how patterns may reveal pre-Gospel traditions. One of Faure’s key findings was that the FE switches from so-called “prooftexts” that dominate the first two-thirds of the Gospel to “fulfillment texts” in the Passion account. On the basis of this observation, Faure hypothesized that two distinct source layers were in play which a later redactor combined.10
Sources and Their Use by the FE
While Faure focused on the form of the citations in order to identify distinct preGospel traditions within the early Church, others have traced the citations back to their “original” sources. The studies of C. H. Dodd, Edwin Freed, Günter Reim,
7 Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1976), 87–94. As helpful as organizing methods and approaches into three textual (Ricoeurian) worlds might be, the methods and approaches used are too complex to be completely captured by this simplistic categorization. Though, it is useful as an orientation. Many approaches tend to have a foot in two or more “worlds” even if their primary aim is to understand one particular “world.” But it is helpful to view the general chronological movement of approaches this way so long as one does not think that past approaches and concerns are surpassed or obsolete.
8 John 1:23; 2:17; 6:31, 45; 10:34; 12:13, 15, 38, 40; 13:18; 15:25; 19:24, 28, 36, 37.
9 “Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
10 Alexander Faure, “Die alttestamentlichen Zitate im 4. Evanglium und die Quellenscheidungshypothese,” ZNW 21 (1922): 99–121. See also Myers’s summary of Faure (“Abiding Words,” 6).
and Maarten Menken aptly exemplify the aims and breadth of the historical-critical approach.11 Methodologically, these studies attempt to identify not only the scriptural versions that the quotations were based on but also how they came to be constructed, especially when they do not align with extant forms. When a given quotation in the FG differs from an alleged source text or scriptural version, explanations of origins and the compositional process are proposed. Typically, the explanations have pointed to the evangelist who shaped the versions that were accessible to him in order to address his community’s theological needs and idiosyncrasies.
For Dodd, who has been particularly influential, the differences resulted from the evangelist’s reliance on testimonia, which Dodd argued were written lists of scriptural prooftexts used by the Early Church.12 An example of this usage is found in a comparison of John and Mark’s versions of Jesus’s response to the Temple crowd. In John 2:16, Jesus tells the Temple crowd, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace (ἐμπορίου).” The form of this response, which incorporates Zech 14:21, is different from Mark’s version that uses a combination of Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11 (Mark 11:17). Dodd explains this variance by arguing that the FE chose different testimonia than Mark’s author. While the FE could have just as easily used the same testimonia that Mark’s author used, his motivation was guided by a very different theological aim. The FE had in mind the “day of the Lord” being fulfilled in Jesus’s expulsion of the “traders,” which was different from the motivation of Mark’s author.13
Though Freed, Reim, and Menken depart from Dodd’s hypothesis of testimonia, they too focus on determining the FE’s source texts. The sources they suggest, however, differ depending on the specific quotation. Accumulating all these sources, then, suggests the improbable scenario that the FE had quite a vast awareness (or even possession) of written material. For Freed, the FE was not only aware of a wide array of material but also drew from it extensively. With the majority of quotations coming from the Septuagint (LXX), Freed contends that some also came from the Masoretic Text (MT), several Targumic traditions, and still others from (probably) the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS).14 Reim’s range of material, however, is much narrower. For Reim, only Deutero-Isaiah and other early Christian traditions provided the FE’s sources.15 Akin
11 Edwin D. Freed, Old Testament Quotations in the Gospel of John, NovTSup 11 (Leiden: Brill, 1965); Günter Reim, Studien zum alttestamentlichen Hintergrund des Johannesevageliums, SNTSMS 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Maarten J. J. Menken, Old Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Form, CBET 15 (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1996).
12 See C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 300–302, 428–29; C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures: The Sub-Structure of New Testament Theology (New York: Scribner, 1953), 23–60. Dodd’s use of testimonia stems from J. R. Harris’ Testimonies, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1916–1920). See also Alfred Loisy, Le Quatrième Évangile (Paris: Émile Nourry, 1921), 495, where the use of Scripture in John 19:37 is explained via testimonia. D. Moody Smith also utilizes testimonia to explain John 19:37. See Smith’s “ The Setting and Shape of a Johannine Narrative Source,” JBL 95 (1976): 237.
13 Dodd, Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 300. It is worth noting that the Hebrew word that Dodd takes as “trader” can also mean “a Canaanite” (ינענכ). Dodd argues that it should be read as “trader” since the context of Zechariah describes all nations as invited to the feast of Tabernacles. Excluding a nation, then, counters this context.
14 Freed, Old Testament Quotations, 127–30.
15 Reim, Studien zum alttestamentlichen Hintergrund, 188–90 (cf. 241–46).
to Freed, Menken maintains that the majority of the FE’s source material came from the LXX, with the caveat that a few also originated from a Hebrew Vorlage. Bruce Schuchard nuances Menken’s view by claiming that one ought to be more precise by specifying Old Greek (OG), rather than LXX, as the more accurate designation of the Greek source material. Moreover, Schuchard goes so far as to say that the OG is the “one and only textual tradition” used by the FE.16
Menken critiques previous source-critical scholarship for not focusing enough on the editorial practices of the FE.17 As an editor, the focus shifts more to the whole of the Gospel, especially its entire theological program. Thus, for many historical critics trying to reconstruct the rationale for the use of Scripture in the FG, the differences between the meaning of the citations and their source texts expose not a faulty memory, as Charles Goodwin argues,18 but intentional changes based on a particular theological perspective held by the FE.19
The problem that ensued by pointing to the evangelist’s broader theological aims was that scholars could not agree on the key aims or even an overarching aim.20 For example, Menken argues that the citation of Isa 40:3 in John 1:23, which curiously condenses the LXX version,21 was constructed purposely by the FE to show his disagreement with the Synoptic tradition (where John the Baptist is presented as Jesus’s forerunner rather than, as the FE prefers, a contemporary witness to Jesus).22 Freed, however, argues that the FE is motivated by wisdom traditions. As such, the FE drops ἑτοιμασατε (“prepare”) for εὐθύνατε (“make straight”) so that ὁδὸς (“the way”) may
16 Bruce G. Schuchard, Scripture within Scripture: The Interrelationship of Form and Function in the Explicit Old Testament Citations in the Gospel of John, SBLDS 133 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992), xvii. See also Bruce G. Schuchard, “Form versus Function: Citation Technique and Authorial Intentional the Gospel of John,” in Abiding Words: The Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia D. Myers and Bruce G. Schuchard, RBS 81 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015), 23–45, where he states that most scholars at least agree that the FG relies on Greek versions of Scripture.
17 Menken, Old Testament Quotations, 205–6.
18 Charles Goodwin, “How Did John Treat His Sources?” JBL 73 (1954): 61–75, argues that John must have had faulty memory since his quotations differ from the written sources.
19 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 7.
20 Moreover, determining the source text(s) that the FE uses in his citations of Jewish Scripture is no simple task. It is complicated by the number of versions of Scripture in circulation during the time. Not only were different translations in circulation (e.g., the Greek LXX, the Aramaic Targums, the Hebrew Codices, even the Old Latin predating the Vulgate), but there were several versions of each. See Craig A. Evans, “From Prophecy to Testament: An Introduction,” in From Prophecy to Testament: The Function of the Old Testament in the New, ed. Craig A. Evans (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 3–4. Moreover, what is now understood to be Scripture (canonically) may not have been what various Jewish groups deemed Scripture. This is exemplified by the “phantom” citation in John 7:38. Though cited by the FE as Scripture, it does not match any extant text.
21 The LXX Isa 40:3 reads: φωνὴ
(“A voice crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths of our God’ ”); whereas John 1:23 reads: ἐγὼ
(“I am a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’ ”). So, the substantial change the FE makes here, apart from condensing two lines into one, is the omission of “prepare” (ἑτοιμάσατε), while retaining “make straight” (εὐθύνατε).
22 Menken, Old Testament Quotations, 30–31.
take on a “moral and ethical” meaning.23 Although the text is subjected to the same method, different results follow.
Goodwin is a good example of the breadth of possible theological motivations that reshaped the forms and meanings of Israel’s Scripture. For Goodwin, the FE’s use of Scripture demonstrates ineptitude, given that the quotations, if indeed they were before him, are expressed “loosely, and confusedly.” For this reason, Goodwin argues that the FE “appears to have quoted from memory, and the attentive reader has seen how elusive are the tricks his memory could play. And whatever was the original intent of the source material used, John has forcibly accommodated everything to his own purposes.”24
Schuchard agrees that the FE used memory, but he has a much more optimistic view. Following the work of Paul Achtemeier,25 he acknowledges that the environment in which the FE composed his Gospel was infused with orality and that citations were likely quoted from memory rather than copied from a written source,26 but he takes issue with the inference that the search for the sources used by the FE is “an exercise in futility.”27 Instead, Schuchard understands memory to be as reliable as the practice of copying from a written text.28 Since the FE’s citations do not always reflect its source texts, such inquiries into the FG’s use of Scripture naturally lead to questions about the nature and reliability of memory. Both Goodwin and Schuchard assume that memory is either unreliable or reliable, respectively, allowing little room for a “grey zone” or for extended findings in the fields of psychology or sociology. The latter is addressed below.
William Bynum also appears optimistic about one’s ability to determine not only the changes made by the FE to the source text but also the FG’s historical reliability.29 What distinguishes Bynum’s study from the aforementioned ones is its limited analysis of Zech 12:10 in John 19:37. His conclusion is that the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, known as 8HevXIIgr (“R”), is the FE’s source text. Consequently, Bynum’s study demonstrates continuity directly with the DSS, and as Myers notes, “it even leads him to the provocative suggestion that John’s consistently careful citation style can be used to support increased confidence in the Gospel’s historicity.”30
23 Freed, Old Testament Quotations, 6. See also the discussion by Ruth Sheridan, Retelling Scripture: “The Jews” and the Scriptural Citations in John 1:19–12:15, BIS 110 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 113. Schuchard follows Freed in seeing wisdom traditions influencing the FE’s reworking of Isa 40:3 (Scripture within Scripture, 11), but Sheridan differs from both Menken and Freed/Schuchard (Retelling Scripture, 110–16).
24 Goodwin, “How Did John Treat His Sources?” 73.
25 Paul J. Achtemeier, “Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Antiquity,” JBL 109 (1990): 3–27.
26 Schuchard, Scripture within Scripture, xvi.
27 Ibid. He quotes Achtemeier, “Oral Environment,” 27.
28 Schuchard, Scripture within Scripture, xvii. He states, “My own investigation will show that, even if John cited from memory, his citations do, in fact, represent precise and therefore perceptible recollections of a specific textual tradition.”
29 William Randolph Bynum, The Fourth Gospel and the Scriptures: Illuminating the Form and Meaning of Scriptural Citation in John 19:37, NovTSup 144 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
30 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 8. See also William Randolph Bynum, “Quotations of Zechariah in the Fourth Gospel,” in Abiding Words: The Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia D. Myers and Bruce G. Schuchard, RBS 81 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015), 47–74.
The concern for the Gospel’s historical portrayal of Jesus is often interwoven with its use of Scripture.31 If the evangelist quoted his source text(s) inaccurately, it is typically inferred that the FG’s historicity is problematic. Goodwin’s assessment of the FE as an inept “proof-texter,” who makes up the material during the writing process, is a case in point.32 Another approach scholars take to these so-called inaccurate quotations is a consideration of how the FE interpreted Scripture in relation to the contemporary practices and techniques of his day. Nevertheless, the tension that scholars attempt to resolve here with the FE’s interpretive method is the same as it was with the sources: Since Scripture does not speak of a dying or crucified Messiah, how does the FE extricate specific texts from their host contexts and give them a Christological meaning?
The FE’s Interpretative Method
Explanations of the FE’s practices have been found in the broader context of early Jewish and Christian interpretations of Scripture. To the modern novice observer, the FE appears to be proof-texting or misquoting Scripture. While this is a suitable observation, scholars have attempted to explain the method in more detailed ways within the exegetical practices of the ancient world that would have been familiar to the FE.33 One of the main debates that has arisen from the attempt to find a precedent for the FE’s practices is whether the evangelist is indebted to Jewish exegetical methods, Greco-Roman ones, or some combination of each.
The debate was largely sparked by Dodd’s groundbreaking According to the Scriptures34 where he challenged Rudolf Bultmann’s insistence that the FE was indebted primarily to Hellenistic sources. The Jewish Scriptures, traditions, and their exegetical practices (by implication) were viewed as more foundational for the earlier kerygma.35 Dodd’s argument was strengthened, and won the day, with the discovery of the DSS and the subsequent explorations into the varied interpretive methods of early Judaism. More recently, however, there has been renewed interest in reviving Greco-Roman rhetorical practices, which were widespread in antiquity, as models for better understanding the FE’s use of Scripture.36
31 See Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views, SBLSymS 44 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2007); Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, Volume 2: Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, ECL 2 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2009); and Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, and Tom Thatcher (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, Volume 3: Glimpses of Jesus through the Johannine Lens, ECL 18 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2016).
32 Whereas the opposite is also the case: A source text quoted accurately suggests that the FG is historically reliable, as Bynum maintains.
33 Bruce G. Schuchard, “Conclusion,” in Abiding Words: The Use of Scripture in the Gospel of John, ed. Alicia D. Myers and Bruce G. Schuchard, RBS 81 (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2015), 239.
34 Dodd, According to the Scriptures.
35 Rudolph Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, ed. R. W. N. Hoare and J. K. Riches, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1971).
36 Alicia D. Myers’s work in the FG is a prime example of a Greco-Roman approach, which will be discussed below.
Jewish Exegetical Models
Many scholars posit that the FG’s quotations have a pesher-like quality to them,37 although, as Myers critiques, “few go far in fleshing out this characterization.”38 My focus is on the “few” exceptions. Daniel Patte, for example, understands the FG’s use of Scripture within an eschatological pesher-like interpretative environment such as the one represented at Qumran.39 Patte argues that scholars should see pesher as exemplifying the typological perspective of Second Temple Judaism as a whole, which is a sentiment that has been adopted by many scholars who are interested in the FG’s use of Scripture, including Donald Juel, Richard Longenecker, Martin Hengel, and J. Harold Ellens.40 Ellens, as a more recent example, typifies this approach in his treatment of John 1:51, which is compared with early Jewish practices.41 He concludes that the FE interprets his sources in a loose manner, subjecting them to the will of his theological themes, conveying “more isogesis than exegesis,” as he puts it, but methodologically it remains a typical example of Jewish pesher 42 It is worth noting that the status of the FG as an adequate source for the historical Jesus quest is never far from his thoughts.43
In contrast to Patte’s conclusion that the FG’s Christocentric hermeneutic is well within a pesher-like interpretive method, Stephen Witmer offers another proposal.44 Witmer agrees that the FG displays pesher-like qualities, particularly the Bread of Life discourse in John 6:22–58.45 But for Witmer, the lack of the line-by-line interpretation, which is characteristic of pesher technique at Qumran, along with the FG’s “radical Christocentric hermeneutic,” distinguishes it sharply from the exegetical practices at Qumran.46
Although the majority of Johannine scholars have pointed to pesharim, others have argued that the FG’s techniques are more akin to rabbinic models of exegesis. Focusing on John 6:31–58, Peder Borgen has been influential in comparing the method in the FG to the
37 Lindars, New Testament Apologetic, 265–70. Apart from those listed below, see also Raymond E. Brown, “ The Qumran Scrolls and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles,” in New Testament Essays (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965), 102–31.
38 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 10.
39 Daniel Patte, Early Jewish Hermeneutic in Palestine, SBLDS 22 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), 161–67, 321–23. Lindars similarly built upon Dodd’s work on testimonia combining it with Qumran practices, specifically the interpretive model of pesher, which he ties closely to the Johannine uses of Scripture (New Testament Apologetic, 15–16).
40 Juel, Messianic Exegesis, 49–57; Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 80–87; Martin Hengel, “ The Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel,” in The Gospels and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and W. Richard Stegner, JSNTSup 104, SSEJC 3 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 380–95; J. Harold Ellens, “A Christian Pesher: John 1:51,” Proceedings: Eastern Great Lakes Biblical Society 25 (2005): 143–55.
41 Ellens, “A Christian Pesher,” 152.
42 Ibid.
43 Ellens writes, “The Son of Man logia in John probably tell us something significant about the historical Jesus, namely, that the logia, or at least the concept of Jesus being the Son of Man, most likely comes directly from his mouth” (145). It would have been beneficial for Ellens to have interacted with previous scholarship, especially Rudolf Bultmann (Theology of the New Testament [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951], 9, 29–30).
44 Stephen E. Witmer, “Approaches to Scripture in the Fourth Gospel and the Qumran Pesharim,” NovT 48 (2006): 313–28 (esp. 327–28).
45 Ibid., 322–26.
46 Ibid., 313, 327–28.
midrashic practices in synagogue contexts and in Philo.47 Borgen’s study not only supports a Jewish background to the FG’s interpretive approach, as opposed to a Hellenistic one, but also has sparked interest in broader relationships between other New Testament writings and more technical Jewish exegetical practices, such as rabbinic middoth. For instance, Frédéric Manns seizes on Borgen’s insights and offers a thorough study that addresses the potential relationship between the FG’s use of the middoth of Hillel and that of Paul.48 The claim that rabbinic interpretive methods were used by the FE is problematic, however. The main problem is the difficulty of retroactively applying rabbinic sources back onto the time period of the FG’s composition, which could be anachronistic. Although it may be plausible that the FE knew and used what would later be called rabbinic interpretive techniques, it is unclear how confident one can be in assuming that they reflect firstcentury interpretive techniques, especially Christocentric ones.
Although midrash does not regularly contemporize Scripture as pesher does, many Johannine scholars have assumed the FG relies on Jewish exegetical practices while allowing room occasionally for Christological expansions.49 A. T. Hanson summarizes this scholarly presumption by concluding that the FE, who was well acquainted with the methods of Jewish exegesis of Scripture, was not unlike his contemporaries since “New Testament writers had no other starting place when they set out on the enterprise of reinterpreting Scripture in a christocentric sense.”50
Problems persist, however, and such a claim is weaker than it looks at first glance. For one thing, Jewish exegetical practices in the Second Temple period cannot fully or precisely account for the FE’s interpretive practices, as Witmer observes. Yet, most scholars still claim that the FG exhibits a Jewish exegetical method without defining the specific techniques used, as Myers notes. Moreover, some do not distinguish between pesher or midrash; and when pesher is selected as the main method, the inconsistencies between Jewish examples and the FE’s practices are overlooked. Witmer concludes that very few of the scholars who claim that the FG employs a pesher method do so after a thorough survey and careful consideration of what the pesher genre is and how it is utilized within Second Temple Judaism.51 Likewise, Myers argues that these terms (pesher, midrash, and middoth) run the risk of becoming a “loose description, providing little more than an assertion of John’s Jewish milieu rather than a substantial statement concerning John’s interpretive practices.”52
Ancient Greco-Roman Rhetoric
While recognizing the importance of Jewish exegetical practices, some scholars have suggested that a fuller picture of the FG’s use of Scripture (and indeed all of the New
47 Peder J. Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo, NovTSup 10 (Leiden: Brill, 1965).
48 Frédéric Manns, “Exégèse Rabbanique et Exégèse Johannique,” RB 92 (1985): 525–38.
49 Alicia D. Myers, Characterizing Jesus: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Fourth Gospel’s Use of Scripture in Its Presentation of Jesus, LNTS 458 (London: T&T Clark, 2012), 11.
50 A. T. Hanson, “John’s Use of Scripture,” in The Gospels and the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and W. Richard Stegner, JSNTSup 104, SSEJC 3 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994), 360.
51 Witmer, “Approaches to Scripture,” 313.
52 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 11.
Testament writings) can be achieved by looking at the role of Greco-Roman rhetoric.53 Dennis Stamps, for example, urges scholars to move toward an appreciation of GrecoRoman techniques, which would have been well known in antiquity (even Palestine), in conjunction with Jewish exegetical practices.54 Stamps’s recommendation is not new, however. In 1949, Daniel Daube demonstrated similarities between Hillel’s middoth and Greco-Roman rhetorical practices.55 Daube’s observations were later supported by Saul Liebermann in 1962, who suggested that the Jewish interpretive rules for gezera shewa and qal-walhomer should be recognized as similar to the Greco-Roman rhetoric of synkrisis, although patterned to fit a Jewish context.56
Building on Philip Alexander’s work, which demonstrates that Jewish hermeneutics were influenced by Greco-Roman rhetoric, Myers provides perhaps the most thorough application of ancient Greco-Roman rhetoric to the FG’s use of Scripture.57 For Myers, since Jewish writers functioned in a Greco-Roman environment, they can be assumed to be affected by the practices of this milieu. As she states, “Learning more about Greco-Roman rhetoric can help us not only in understanding more about Jewish interpretation practices in general, but also provide insight into their rhetorical goals and possible effects on their audiences.”58 Myers calls her approach “literary-rhetorical criticism”59 and relies heavily on George Kennedy’s insights into rhetorical theory in antiquity.60 Kennedy’s theory proves to be especially popular among Johannine scholars due to the Gospel’s frequent speeches.61
The richness of this approach unsurprisingly produces nuances. For example, C. Clifton Black argues that rhetorical criticism can be applied to Jesus’s lengthy discourses but not to the narratives or to the FE’s use of Scripture.62 Myers’s study
53 Issues of influence overlap with the well-traversed discussion of the FG’s paradoxical treatment of the Jews.
54 Dennis L. Stamps, “Use of the Old Testament in the New Testament as a Rhetorical Device: A Methodological Proposal,” in Hearing the Old Testament in the New Testament, ed. Stanley E. Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 26–33.
55 David Daube, “Rabbinic Methods of Interpretation and Hellenistic Rhetoric,” HUCA 22 (1949): 251, 259.
56 Saul Liebermann, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.—IV Century C.E., TS 18 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962), 59–61.
57 Myers, Characterizing Jesus. Her use of “rhetorical criticism,” which focuses on Greco-Roman rhetoric, should not be confused with rhetorical criticism that is practiced within the literary critical realm of narratology.
58 Ibid., 15.
59 Ibid., 2.
60 George A. Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism, Studies in Religion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984).
61 For example, Harold W. Attridge, “Argumentation in John 5,” in Rhetorical Argumentation in Biblical Texts: Essays from the Lund 2000 Conference, ed. Anders Eriksson, Thomas H. Olbricht, and Walter Übelacker, ESEC 8 (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 188–99; George L. Parsenios, Rhetoric and Drama in the Johannine Lawsuit Motif, WUNT 258 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010).
62 See Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 4–5; C. Clifton Black, “‘The Words That You Gave Me I Have Given to Them:’ The Grandeur of Johannine Rhetoric,” in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith, ed. R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 220; Kennedy, New Testament Interpretation, 108–9.
counters this claim and demonstrates how the FG’s use of Scripture shares properties with Greco-Roman rhetoric.63 Following Jerome Neyrey, Myers argues that “classical handbooks and progymnasmata provide a number of examples of quoting and alluding to existing material in ways meant to increase the persuasiveness of one’s work.”64 Within this framework, the FG’s use of Scripture functions to characterize Jesus in ways that are reminiscent of these classical handbooks and progymnasmata.
Though most scholars cite Jewish interpretive practices as the prime mode for the evangelist’s own interpretive use of Scripture, the Greco-Roman milieu can no longer be ignored.65 Rhetorical critics have demonstrated that the unique Christocentric hermeneutic that the FE evinces makes comparisons with other Jewish interpretive techniques, such as those found at Qumran, of limited value.66
Sociohistorical Approaches
Jaime Clark-Soles presents the most thorough treatment of the FG’s use of Scripture for sociohistorical purposes, which provides a bridge between historical-critical approaches and literary ones.67 Clark-Soles’s aim is not only to reconstruct the sociohistorical setting within which the Johannine community found itself but also to understand how the scriptural quotations functioned rhetorically within the broader narrative. Building on J. Louis Martyn’s “two-level drama” and Wayne Meeks’s hypothesis of the ascending/descending redeemer “myth,” Clark-Soles explores how the FE’s use of Scripture reveals that the Johannine community was a “break-away” group.68 Clark-Soles concludes that the use of Scripture mirrors other sectarian communities, such as the one at Qumran. In so doing, the FE employs Scripture as an authoritative voice to reinforce the community’s elect status after its expulsion from, and conflict with, the “parent” Jewish group.
Ruth Sheridan raises literary concerns with Clark-Soles’s historical analysis, particularly her methodological move from a literary phenomenon (i.e., scriptural citation and allusion) to a sociohistorical situation (i.e., a sectarian community experiencing expulsion).69 For Sheridan, Clark-Soles is too confident in reading literary artifices as analogues of the community’s situation since the FG’s “story of Jesus—with all its literary artifice—is heavily cloaked in what could be called ‘mythical’ language.”70
63 Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 5.
64 Myers, “Abiding Words,” 13. See also Jerome H. Neyrey, “Encomium versus Vituperation: Contrasting Portraits of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 126 (2007): 529–52.
65 Schuchard, “Conclusion,” 240. As he summarizes, the FG’s “interpretive techniques and rhetorical strategies are similarly both Jewish and Greco-Roman.”
66 Ibid., 240.
67 Jaime Clark-Soles, Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Social Function of the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
68 Ibid., 4–5, 7–8, 13, 209, 316. J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), 29. The “two-level drama” points to the Johannine community wrestling with its recent expulsion from the synagogue. Wayne A. Meeks, “ The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” JBL 91 (1972): 44–72. Meeks argues that the myth was intentionally meant to exclude outsiders from understanding its message.
69 Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 34.
70 Ibid.
Clark-Soles assumes this mythical language can be translated into sociological realities. Sheridan counters that not only is it possible that such a mythical worldview existed prior to the split with “the Jews,” and therefore not reflective of it, it is also possible that the FG’s mythical elements “obscure rather than reveal the historical situation of the community.”71
For Sheridan, the sociohistorical mimetic function assumed of texts by ClarkSoles is directly undermined by post-structural approaches, such as intertextuality, where texts refer to a web of other texts.72 For this reason, Sheridan is less optimistic about reconstructing the world behind the text and instead prefers the world of the text. Nonetheless, Sheridan praises Clark-Soles’s rhetorical analysis of how Scripture functions to characterize “the Jews” but marginalizes historical concerns in favor of literary ones.73
2. Literary Perspectives
As a generalization, whereas historical-critical approaches attempt to ascertain meaning behind the text, for example, in reconstructions of authorial intention, sources, and the community, literary approaches move toward examining the final form of the narrative.74 As such, meaning inhabits the final form of the text (as received), which is assumed to be unified and whole. This reduces or, for some, eliminates the need to atomize the FG as historical critics have done. Two key areas of literary studies that have been applied to the use of Scripture in the FG (and the New Testament) include rhetorical analysis, which is closely connected to narrative criticism, and intertextuality.
Narrative and Rhetorical Criticism
R. Alan Culpepper’s groundbreaking Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel introduced Johannine scholars to the merits of applying a formalist literary theory to the FG, which highlighted the mutually beneficial value of narrative and rhetorical criticisms.75 The connection between narrative and rhetoric criticisms is somewhat seamless since
71 Ibid., 35, n. 180.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., 36–37.
74 John Ashton, Studying John: Approaches to the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 142–43, disparages narrative-critical readings of the Gospels for being “easier” and “smoother” than the “rough” alternative of historical criticism. For Ashton, narrative critics incorrectly assume the Gospel text to be a “smooth,” unified composition, but redaction-critical analysis has exposed the fact that the Gospels were not composed in a single “sitting.” Sheridan disagrees, arguing that, despite their composite nature, it must be said that the Gospels can still be read as a unified piece of writing (Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 58, n. 35).
75 R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1983). For a recent survey, see Tom Thatcher, “Anatomies of the Fourth Gospel: Past, Present and Future Probes,” in Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past, Present and Future of the Fourth Gospel as Literature, ed. Tom Thatcher and Stephen D. Moore (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 2008), 1–34.
a narrative is a form of rhetoric.76 Many who have been unsatisfied with the varied results of historical-critical approaches follow Culpepper in investigating the FG’s plot and its rhetorical characterization of Jesus.77 Such studies emphasize how the FG narrative persuades the implied reader/audience of a particular characterization of Jesus. But as Myers notes, this rhetorical approach has not been aptly applied to the FG’s use of Scripture.78
Judith Lieu notes this void in scholarship as well and attempts to fill it by investigating how the narrator, Jesus, and his opponents employ Scripture. In so doing, she finds that the FG is more subtle in its appeals to Scripture than the Synoptics.79 In her analysis of how Jesus is characterized, she notes how Scripture is used to reinforce Jesus’s omniscience in a manner that is discernable to the narrator and the Gospel audience rather than to the characters within the story.80
Myers adopts Lieu’s initial investigation but suggests that there is much more potential in play, especially in relation to the use of Scripture by the characters in the story. Where Lieu is broader in her approach, Myers focuses on the characterization of Jesus; and where Culpepper uses modern categories of characterization, Myers uses ancient practices of rhetoric to understand the FG’s persuasion via the characterization of Jesus.81 Still, there is considerable agreement among these rhetorical/narrative practitioners since they are all interested in showing how the reader is impacted by characterization.82
Andreas Obermann fills an important gap by addressing the rhetorical function of Scripture at the level of the narrative.83 Building on Faure’s significant observation that
76 Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 52. As Sheridan argues, “Narratives are intrinsically rhetorical: they seek to persuade readers to accept a particular ideological position.”
77 See Jeffrey Lloyd Staley, The Print’s First Kiss: A Rhetorical Investigation of the Implied Reader in the Fourth Gospel, SBLDS 82 (Atlanta, GA: SBL, 1988), 47–48; Norman R. Peterson, The Gospel of John and the Sociology of Light: Language and Characterization in the Fourth Gospel (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1993); Mark W. G. Stibbe, John as Storyteller: Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Colleen M. Conway, Men and Women in the Fourth Gospel: Gender and Johannine Characterization, SBLDS 167 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1999); Myers, Characterizing Jesus; Sheridan, Retelling Scripture
78 Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 7–8.
79 Judith Lieu, “Narrative Analysis and Scripture in John,” in The Old Testament in the New Testament: Essays in Honor of J. L. North, ed. Steve Moyise, JSNTSup 189 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 2000), 144–63.
80 See Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 8; Lieu, “Narrative Analysis,” 161–62.
81 Although Myers’s approach is rhetorical in that she is interested in how Scripture functions to persuade audiences/readers, her application differs from rhetorical criticism as employed within literary approaches. “Rhetorical criticism is one branch of narratology and is often referred to as the ‘New Rhetoric,’ distinguishing it from the ‘classical’ model of rhetoric prevalent in the ancient Greco-Roman world” (Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 51). New Rhetoric can be traced to the work of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969).
82 Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 51, n. 1. See also Judith Lieu, “Us or You? Persuasion and Identity in 1 John,” JBL 127, no. 4 (2008): 807, where she remarks that, contrary to Myers, the “New Rhetoric” when applied to early Christian texts cannot be considered “anachronistic.”
83 Andreas Obermann, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift im Johannesevangelium: Eine Untersuchung zur johanneseichen Hermeneutik anhand der Schriftzitate, WUNT 2/83 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996). See Myers’ helpful summary of Obermann and Sheridan’s work as well as her own in “Abiding Words,” 16–17; see also Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 27–32.
the FE uses two distinct formulae (one form in 1:1–12:38 and the second in 13:1–19:42), Obermann argues that the two formulae reveal two distinct rhetorical conceptions of Scripture held by the FE.84 Where Faure argues that the FG is based on two distinct sources, Obermann, who assumes a cohesive narrative, focuses on their function within the world of the text itself.85 Obermann argues that the formula in the first half (1:1–12:38), which is about Jesus’s public ministry, is used to show how Scripture is a witnesses to Jesus.86 Whereas the formula in the second half (13:1–19:42), which is about Jesus’s death and departure, is used to show how Scripture is explicitly fulfilled in Jesus.87 Indicative of this observation is the construction of Jesus’s last word(s): “It is finished (τετέλεσται).” The deeper dual meaning of this statement is that both Jesus’s work is fulfilled and that Scripture is now complete.88 Accordingly, for Obermann, the FE is a “Scripture-Theologian” (Schriftteologe) whose narrative portrayal of Jesus and his understanding of Jesus’s personal and theological significance is unreservedly rooted in the Jewish Scriptures.89 Obermann even goes as far to say that the FE is consciously writing a neuer heiliger Schrift—a new holy Scripture—of his own and that the Johannine community reads it as such.90
Sheridan expands on Obermann’s work by applying a more literary critical perspective, but only to the first half of the Gospel’s use of Scripture, concentrating on how “the Jews” are characterized. In so doing, she focuses on the FG’s paradoxical anti- and pro-Jewish ethos from the ideal reader’s perspective. Whereas Obermann observes that the first half of the FG presents Scripture as speaking directly to “the Jews,” as though they are the primary audience of the narrative, Sheridan focuses on the rhetorical function that calls attention to the FG’s polemic against “the Jews” and the way Scripture is employed for its ideal reader.91 She concludes that “The ideal reader— who is always more ‘informed’ than ‘the Jews’ in the story—succeeds in coming to faith in Jesus through a process of ‘othering’ ‘the Jews’ by constructing them as negative characters in the context of the OT citations.”92
Audience Criticism
A rhetorical approach also extends into the conceptual world in front of the text with analyses of audiences.93 In an audience-critical approach, the locus of meaning shifts from historical contexts or authorial intention to the reader(s). While this does
84 Obermannm, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift, 80–81.
85 Ibid., 78, 80, 333–34, and 345–48.
86 Ibid., 78–89, 325–50.
87 Ibid., 80.
88 Ibid., 355–56. See also Francis J. Moloney, “ The Gospel of John as Scripture,” CBQ 67 (2005): 456.
89 Obermann, Die christologische Erfüllung der Schrift, 430.
90 Ibid., 420–21.
91 Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 30–31, 235.
92 Ibid., 235. Earlier she explains, “I begin by considering how narratives work to persuade readers to accept certain ideological positions, in other words, by discussing the intrinsically rhetorical dimension of all narrative. This is important because the reader of the Fourth Gospel is persuaded to take up the Christological meaning of the Scripture’s witness to Jesus even as ‘the Jews’ reject it, and in so doing, to ‘other’ ‘the Jews’ in the process of reading” (50).
93 Ibid., 51–57; see also Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 17–20.
not deny the existence of an actual author, it focuses on the “implied author” as the voice of a “second self” that is distinguished from a historically situated author. The point is that an actual author cannot be perfectly reflected in the authorial voice of a narrative.94 Likewise, an ideal reader, which is an inference constructed from the text, is not to be confused with the actual, historically situated reader.95 For Sheridan, this distinction between actual and ideal author(s)/reader(s) is theoretically necessary to avoid anchoring meaning to speculative historical reconstructions.96
Like Sheridan, Myers builds on Peter Rabbinowitz’s theory of four different types of audiences that are present when a text is read or heard: the actual audience, the authorial audience, the narrative audience, and the ideal narrative audience.97 Sheridan prioritizes the fourth audience, but Myers wishes to bridge the actual audience with the ideal audience so as to avoid, in Rabbinowitz’s own words, “perverse” interpretations of texts. Therefore, as Myers reasons, “one needs both synchronic analyses that follow the argument of a text in its final form and diachronic research concerning the historical and social context of a written work in order to comprehend it.”98 Where Sheridan avoids historical reconstructions,99 Myers engages the historical context as a means of deducing more plausible authorial audiences.100 In this way, Myers distinguishes her approach from previous studies that have attempted to reconstruct the Johannine community.101
94 Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1991), 131. See also Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 52–53. As Geert Hallback explains, an “implied author” is the “omniscient consciousness responsible for the story as a whole.” See Geert Hallback, “ The Gospel of John as Literature: Literary Readings of the Fourth Gospel,” in New Readings in John: Literary and Theological Perspectives. Essays from the Scandinavian Conference on the Fourth Gospel, Arhus, 1997, ed. Johannes Nissen and Sigfred Petersen (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 35. Contrast Hallback with the recent criticism of “omniscience” in narrative criticism offered by Jonathan Culler, “Omniscience,” in The Literary in Theory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 183–204.
95 Hallback, “The Gospel of John as Literature,” 35.
96 Sheridan, Retelling Scripture, 58–59.
97 Peter J. Rabbinowitz, “ Truth in Fiction: A Reexamination of Audiences,” Critical Inquiry 4 (1977): 126–29. For Rabbinowitz, since all these audiences are present, it is possible to encounter a text from different vantage points. See Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 17. Myers also builds on the works of H. R. Jauss and Gian Biagio Conte. See H. R. Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982); Gian Biagio Conte, The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Virgil and Other Latin Poets, ed. Charles Segal (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
98 Myers, Characterizing Jesus, 18.
99 Although it should be noted that she does not entirely avoid historical concerns. She admits, “It must nevertheless be acknowledged that the Gospel’s negative rhetorical portrayal of ‘the Jews’ was born out of a particular historical situation, and that this rhetoric had what could be called a ‘positive’ value for the Johannine community—the Scripture’s Christological witness evidently confirmed them in their decision to follow Jesus in the face of possible persecution from some factions of the religious leadership … An ‘ideal reader’ of the Gospel in the first century would therefore possibly not have been perturbed by the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the text; the biblical tale is recast and reappropriated in Jesus for the sake of the believing community” (Retelling Scripture, 243).
100 Myers (Characterizing Jesus, 19) follows Charles H. Talbert, Reading Luke-Acts in Its Mediterranean Milieu, NovTSup 107 (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 16–17. For Myers, this approach is not a means to an original meaning; rather, it is about discovering more plausible meanings based on generally known and accepted historical and cultural facts from Mediterranean antiquity (p. 18).
101 For example, Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York: Paulist Press, 1979); J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology of the Fourth Gospel, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 2003).
Intertextuality
The focus that rhetorical critical approaches have on both the world of the text and the world in front of the text is also a characteristic shared by those who appeal to intertextuality, which is a term that has received considerable attention. For some, the term is used to refer to meaning that is found in the world in front of the text, whereas for others it assumes that meaning is found in the world behind the text as well.
Since Richard Hays’s seminal work on Paul’s use of Scripture, intertextuality has had a substantial impact on New Testament studies and shows no signs of abating.102 Though many New Testament scholars do not integrate the theory that gave rise to intertextuality as a term and concept, its use has nevertheless found a home for inquiries into the use of Scripture in the New Testament in general and the FG in particular.103
The concept of intertextuality at its most basic level is that “every text is written and read in relation to that which is already written and read.”104 Thus, intertextuality moves away from “traditional notions of agency” and fixed points of meaning.105 Texts are perceived not as islands. That is, they cannot be understood in isolation.106 Moyise shows how an intertextual approach to the use of Scripture in the New Testament can be distinguished from more conventional historical-critical approaches, noting that two primary paths have been taken by historical critics. Some have argued that the embedded Scripture texts generally retain their original meanings, though, on occasion, they extend their meanings so that they can be applicable in their new host context in the New Testament.107 Most, however, have acknowledged the differences between the original meanings in the Jewish Scriptures and their newly acquired meanings in
102 Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989); Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016).
103 For example, Susan Hylen, Allusion and Meaning in John 6, BZNW 137 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005); Catrin H. Williams, “Isaiah in John’s Gospel,” in Isaiah in the New Testament, ed. Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Catrin H. Williams, “‘He Saw His Glory and Spoke of Him’: The Testimony of Isaiah and Johannine Christology,” in Honouring the Past and Shaping the Future: Religious and Biblical Studies in Wales. Essays in Honour of Gareth Lloyd Jones, ed. Robert Pope (Leominster: Gracewing, 2003); Gary T. Manning, Echoes of a Prophet: The Use of Ezekiel in the Gospel of John and in the Literature of the Second Temple Period, JSNTSup 270 (London: T&T Clark, 2004); Andrew C. Brunson, Psalm 118 in the Gospel of John, WUNT 2/158 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Margaret Daly-Denton, David in the Fourth Gospel: The Johannine Reception of the Psalms, AGJU 47 (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Diana M. Swancutt, “Hungers Assuaged by the Bread of Heaven: ‘Eating Jesus’ as Isaian Call to Belief: The Confluence of Isaiah 55 and Psalm 78(77) in John 6.22–71,” in Early Christian Interpretation of the Scriptures of Israel, ed. Craig A. Evans and James A. Sanders, JSNTSup 148, SSEJC 5 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997), 218–51; Robert L. Brawley, “An Absent Complement and Intertextuality in John 19:28–29,” JBL 112 (1993): 427–43.
104 Stefan Alkier, “Intertextuality and the Semiotics of Biblical Texts,” in Reading the Bible Intertextually, ed. Richard B. Hays, Stefan Alkier, and Leroy A. Huizenga (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 4.
105 Steve Moyise, “Intertextuality and Historical Approaches to the Use of Scripture in the New Testament,” in Reading the Bible Intertextually, ed. Richard B. Hays, Stefan Alkier, and Leroy A. Huizenga (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 23.
106 Ibid. As Steve Moyise notes, a text “can only be understood as part of a web or matrix of other texts, themselves only to be understood in the light of other texts.”
107 A radical example is Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “ The Single Intent of Scripture,” in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text? ed. G. K. Beale (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1994), 55–69.
the New Testament.108 Moyise observes that despite the apparent differences in these two positions, they actually share an assumption that texts have a single meaning.109 Intertextuality, properly understood within its initial post-structuralist milieu, severely problematizes the notion of a text’s singular meaning since it approaches the formation of meanings from the perspective of the reader. Intertextuality, as Julia Kristeva envisions, is less a bridge to understanding the meaning of texts as it is a canyon distancing them.110
In this light, as Moyise urges, intertextuality “is not a method but a theory (or group of theories) concerning the production of meaning,” which presupposes that the meaning of texts is always in flux, “open to revision as new texts come along and reposition it.”111 Accordingly, this post-structuralist environment involves conceptions of power. Texts compete with one another, regardless of authorial intentions or motivations to do so. Every text is inevitably intertextual and so every text decenters as well as pluralizes the meanings of any previous texts at the level of the reader or the interpreter. Stefan Alkier calls this ongoing process of intertextuality a “hermeneutical consequence.”112 However, this hermeneutical consequence appears to be mostly ignored and Moyise’s observation that conventional historical-critical approaches assume a single, fixed meaning appears to persist, even if it is brought in through the backdoor and at times hard to detect.
There are two ways intertextuality is applied to the FG’s use of Scripture. Whereas some apply it in a restricted sense reminiscent of source or redaction-critical approaches,113 others are more cognizant of its post-structuralist theoretical context and consequences. Gary Manning and Richard Hays provide good examples of the former, while Margaret Daly-Denton exemplifies the latter.
108 Lindars, New Testament Apologetic. The aim here is to understand the motivations for ascribing these new meanings in light of similar practices in the ancient world, especially at Qumran and among other Jewish groups.
109 Moyise, “Intertextuality and Historical Approaches,” 24.
110 Julia Kristeva, “Word, Dialogue, and Novel,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi, trans. Léon S. Roudiez and Seán Hand (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 35–36.
111 Moyise, “Intertextuality and Historical Approaches,” 23.
112 Alkier, “Intertextuality and the Semiotics,” 3.
113 Thomas Hatina cautions that a restricted use of intertextuality has been separated from its post-structural environment and has been used for pragmatic reasons for source-critical aims. See Thomas R. Hatina, “Intertextuality and Historical Criticism in New Testament Studies: Is There a Relationship?” BibInt 7 (1999): 28–42; Thomas R. Hatina and Michael Kozowski, “Introduction: Complexity of Contexts and the Study of Luke’s Use of Scripture,” in Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 3: The Gospel of Luke, ed. Thomas R. Hatina, Studies in Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity 16, LNTS 376 (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 10–11. This criticism echoes Kristeva’s own criticism of a more limited and methodologically pragmatic use of intertextuality, even going as far as forfeiting her original term in exchange for clarifying her theory’s position, stating, “The term inter-textuality denotes this transposition of one (or several) sign system(s) into another; but since this term has often been understood in the banal sense of ‘study of sources,’ we prefer the term transposition, because it specifies that the passage from one signifying system to another demands a new articulation … If one grants that every signifying practice is a field of transpositions of various signifying systems (an inter-textuality), one then understands that its ‘place’ of enunciation and its denoted ‘object’ are never single, complete, and identical to themselves, but always plural, shattered, capable of being tabulated” (Julia Kristeva, Revolution in Poetic Language, trans. Margaret Waller [New York: Columbia University Press, 1984], 59–60).
Manning’s study, Echoes of a Prophet, looks at the use of Ezekiel in the FG and in the wider context of the Second Temple period.114 Following Hays, Manning’s definition of intertextuality is difficult to distinguish from that of source criticism. Citing Hays, Manning understands intertextuality as discerning “how a New Testament author understood his Old Testament source and adapted material from the older text for use in his own work.”115 Evident here is Manning’s focus on the author, as opposed to what one might expect in an intertextual approach (namely the reader). Although Manning claims that his approach is “a new formulation of the historical-critical study of literary parallels,”116 it is nonetheless indistinguishable from previous source- or redaction-critical studies.117 Moreover, he assumes that intertextuality only considers “the congruence” between two literary contexts, which is inconsistent with the poststructuralist notion that intertextuality reveals the indeterminate role of readers.
In Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, Hays provides an additional example of the type of intertextual study that ignores and restricts post-structuralist insights.118
Using Erich Auerbach’s notion of “figural interpretation,” Hays proposes reading backward beginning with the evangelists. Thus, though it is not explicitly noted by Hays, the author/evangelist is privileged. Although for Hays, the context of the previous (Old Testament) authors is of no concern, which may allow for his overall (biblical) theological coherence.119 Regarding the FG’s use of Scripture, Hays notes that the number of explicit citations in the FG, along with allusions and echoes, pales in comparison with the Synoptics.120 Hays surmises that the evangelist engages Scripture as a “source of symbols” and explains that the “intertextual references tend to focus on vivid visual images that evoke the scriptural background rather than upon the citation and exposition of chains of words.”121 Thus, “John reads the entirety of the Old Testament as a web of symbols that must be understood as figural signifiers for Jesus and the life that he offers.”122 It might appear as though Hays simply selects from any Jewish Scripture to act as an intertext, but he has previously provided seven criteria for what constitutes a legitimate or plausible textual echo in order to curb such rampant subjectivism.123
114 Manning, Echoes of a Prophet
115 Ibid., 5. Redaction critical aims come to the surface again as he explains that “the study of intertextuality” only begins “when a possible parallel in earlier literature is discovered.” He continues, “From there, the student of intertextuality seeks to learn how the later author interacts with the source document, transforms it, and uses it to advance the later work.”
116 Ibid.
117 Ibid., 4. Also, for Manning, scriptural echoes that he discovers are assumed to be recognizable by the FG’s actual audience. In this way, he is sitting in for the actual audience. This is done despite citing Samuel Sandmel, “Parallelomania,” JBL 81 (1962): 1–13.
118 See Hatina, “Intertextuality and Historical Criticism,” 36–37.
119 Hays, Scripture in the Gospels, 2–3.
120 Ibid., 284. Hays estimates approximately 70 in Mark, 124 in Matthew, 109 in Luke, and 27 in John.
121 Ibid., 343–44. The notion that a scriptural quotation reflects a wider context rather than just a “chain of words” has been axiomatic within historical-critical studies since the work of Dodd (see Moyise, “Intertextuality and Historical Approaches,” 31). This is not a conception inaugurated by proposing intertextuality.
122 Hays, Scripture in the Gospels, 344. See also his Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2014), 92.
123 Hays, Letters of Paul, 29–33. Hays offers these seven “tests”: the availability of the intertext; its volume; recurrence; thematic coherence; the historical plausibility of the interpretation; its
