Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John (Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars) - Softcover

Kittredge, Cynthia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819222496 ISBN 13: 9780819222497

Verlag: Morehouse Publishing, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

A scholarly evaluation of the fourth Gospel and Johannine community.

For contemporary Christians, Johns Gospel is a paradox. On the one hand, it stresses boundaries: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But on the other hand, it’s all about community: “I have no longer called you servant, but friends.”

Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John encourages readers to draw out the tensions between these two perspectives for an open, inclusive reading of this difficult Gospel―and to find in it reaching meaning for their lives. With a study guide that includes thoughtful, challenging questions for reflection and discussion, this is an ideal resource for individual and parish study.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Cynthia Kittredge is an Episcopal priest and dean and president at the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. She is the author of Community and Authority: The Rhetoric of Obedience in the Pauline Tradition and is a contributor to the New Oxford Annotated Bible. She holds a Th.D. from Harvard University.

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CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

By CYNTHIA BRIGGS KITTREDGE

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2007 Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2249-7

Contents

Chapter One

John Among the Gospels: Orienting John in History and Canon

The most important questions to explore at the outset of our conversation are how to conceive the relationship of John with the other gospels, how to understand the author of John, and how to imagine that the gospel tells the history of Jesus. These are immensely complex scholarly issues, but for the sake of this exploration I will try to simplify them and share how I have found it helpful to think about these questions. An expansive reading of John appreciates the distinctiveness of John's theological and artistic perspective, and views the difference from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as positive, creative tension. It understands the author of John, not as a named apostle, but as a leader or leaders of a community, drawing on the tradition of the disciple whom Jesus loved but does not name, who tell the story of Jesus and of themselves. Finally it conceives of the history reported by the gospel to be the story of Jesus told and retold by a community who elaborates upon that history as time passes and who rethink and retell Jesus' words and deeds in light of their sense of his ongoing presence with them.

Not the "Fifth Wheel" But the Fourth Gospel

    Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
    Bless the bed that I lie on.
    Four corners to my bed,
    Four angels round my head;
    One to watch, and one to pray,
    And two to bear my soul away.

Bible readers know John as one of four gospels in the New Testament. We begin with this fact because the existence of the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, affects how modern readers understand John. We know that there are several accounts of Jesus' life, of which John is one. This reality is summarized in the title for the Gospel of John, "The Fourth Gospel." To unpack this obvious fact, we need to review how the gospels came to be written, got their names, and became part of an authoritative collection of Scripture, or canon. This review will introduce how we will read John in relationship with the three other canonical gospels.

Canonization of the Four Gospels

The gospels that came to be known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were composed by anonymous authors from traditions about Jesus in the decades following his death and resurrection. These gospels were among various kinds of writings, especially letters of Paul, which were acquiring authority for Christian communities gathered for Scripture study, prayer, and worship. When the gospels were first written, those who used them considered them sacred writings, but they were not "in a Bible" as we know it. The "Scripture" read by believers in Jesus was the Hebrew Bible in its Greek form, the Septuagint. That canon of Scripture was also not fixed, but became settled as rabbinic Judaism organized itself in the late first and second centuries of the common era. At the time they were written, the gospels did not name their authors, but in the second and third centuries the Christian writers known as the Church Fathers, or the patristic writers, discussed these books, attributed them to apostles in the time of Jesus, and explained traditions about their apostolic origins. At the same time they spoke about which books were considered to have authority and which books were questioned and why. Naming the authors of the gospels was part of the process we now call "canonization" which happened gradually between the second and fourth centuries. Canonization was a key part of the process of describing Christian orthodoxy which at this time was taking shape and becoming specifically defined.

In the first half of the second century (100–150 CE) from what we know, it appears that the Gospel of John was valued not so much among those writers who shaped orthodoxy, but by those Christians whom the orthodox writers later strongly opposed, the Valen-tinian Christians. The first commentary on John was written by Heracleon (160–180) and there is no other reference to the apostle John or to the gospel in the early first century. The popularity of John among these other Christian groups may have cast suspicion upon this gospel on the part of some writers. By the time of the formation of the canon, John was embraced and claimed by orthodox Christianity.

The changes in the ancient reputation of John gives rise to the question of John's relationship with what scholars used to call "Gnosticism," or to other gospels which did not become part of the canon, such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. This question is important because of the extraordinary popular attention that these noncanonical gospels have received, especially since the book and the movie of The Da Vinci Code. Some scholars argue that John was written to oppose the approach to Christianity of the Gospel of Thomas. Others have claimed that John has characteristics typical of these heterodox groups. I have found that the strict opposition between "Gnosticism" and "orthodoxy" interferes with a sensitive and appreciative reading of John's gospel. The complex fabric of John resists simple categorization. I will point out where John's perspective is not in strict harmony with the perspective of developing orthodoxy, such as in its view of leadership in the community and the role of ongoing vision and prophecy An expansive reading attempts to move beyond the either-or question of "Gnostic or not?" in order to encourage both understanding and questioning of the vision of this gospel.

Patristic Interpretation of John within the Four Gospel Canon

As the four gospel canon came into being, the church fathers grappled with how the gospel fit or did not fit with the stories of Jesus told in the three gospels that had become important in the church. These leaders asked what seminarians and college students and parish readers continue to ask: "Is it OK that there is more than one version of the story of Jesus in the Bible? Does a variety of versions somehow undermine their claim to truth?" Marcion, a popular church leader, used one gospel, a version of Luke, and a number of letters of Paul. The second century ascetic Tatian and those who followed him used a harmony of the gospels called Diatesseron. Scholars know some facts about canonization from lists of canonical books and comments in the writings of the church fathers, but they are not able to reconstruct exactly how the canon came into being. History kept no schedule of meetings, recorded no minutes, nor spelled out the process in detail. In fact it is unlikely that these decisions were made in meetings; it is most likely that certain writings gained their authority by their circulation and use by Christian communities. But we do know that the answer on which orthodoxy came to agree was "Yes, it's OK. There must be more than one, and there cannot be more than four." The classic explanation of this fact of four gospels is made by Irenaeus in the second century:

The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, the church ... fittingly has four pillars, breathing out incorruption and revivifying men. From this it is clear...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Morehouse Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2007
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0819222496
• ISBN 13: 9780819222497
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 117
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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