Gospel of the Lord : How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (9781467440318) by Bird Michael F

Author:Bird, Michael F.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inscribe Digital
Published: 2014-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion: The Johannine Question Revisited

The question of the origins of the Fourth Gospel and its sameness-­yet-­difference compared to the Synoptics continues to baffle all and sundry. D. A. Carson observes the stalemate: “The thesis that John is literarily dependent on one or more of the Synoptics has not been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, but neither has the thesis that John is literarily independent of the Synoptics.”223 If we are to move the debate forward then we simply have to develop new categories and frameworks for understanding the development of the Johannine tradition vis-­à-­vis the Synoptic tradition beyond dependent or independent because the relationship is more complex than this dichotomy allows.

In pursuit of a solution, it seems to me that John is independent in that his Gospel is very different from the Synoptics, mostly drawn on different traditions, and has its own unique goals and purposes. Yet John clearly knows something of the Synoptic tradition and the Synoptic Gospels. He seems to assume his readers’ familiarity with elements of the Synoptic storyline, hence his frequent parenthetical remarks. There are also some strong verbal connections with Synoptic material in places like John 6 and 18–20. The widespread movement of Christian leaders and the mutual interest that churches had in each other’s affairs make it unlikely that the Evangelist, writing presumably in Ephesus, had not come across a reading of Mark or Luke.224 Regardless of how John “knows” the Synoptics, he applies that knowledge in a way that makes his Gospel look somewhat removed and distant from them. Irrespective of whether John’s Gospel and its sources are pre-­Synoptic or post-­Synoptic, the Evangelist tells these stories freely without direct dependence on the Synoptics.225 The Fourth Gospel exhibits continuity with the earlier accounts but also a strong degree of freedom from them.226

To explain this, I suggest that we envisage the spasmodic interpenetration of Synoptic and Johannine tradition across each other in pre-­literary stages, recognize the independent nature of many of John’s sources, and imagine also John’s exposure to the Synoptic tradition through either a prior reading or from observing an oral performance of a Synoptic text, probably Mark and perhaps also Luke. This accounts for the Fourth Gospel’s overall differentiation from the Synoptics in conjunction with its conscious adoption of the Marcan framework, the presence of interlocking traditions, and John’s deliberate transposition of Synoptic units. When that complex relationship is combined with the fourth Evangelist’s somewhat maverick approach in telling the Jesus story encoded with symbolic meanings, amplifying a christology of sonship and messiahship, engaging in a midrashic interpretation of the sayings tradition, and richly interweaving Jewish sapiential motifs, then I submit that we have a plausible explanation as to why the Gospel of John is what it is.

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