Rhetoric and Drama in the Johannine Lawsuit Motif PDF Download

Author: George L. Parsenios
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161502620
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 196

View

Book Description
George L. Parsenios explores the legal character of the Gospel of John in the light of classical literature, especially Greek drama. Johannine interpreters have explored with increasing interest both the legal quality and the dramatic quality of the Fourth Gospel, but often do not connect these two ways of reading John. Some interpreters even assume that the one approach excludes the other, and that John is either legal or dramatic, but not both. Legal rhetoric and tragic drama, however, were joined throughout antiquity in a complex pattern of mutual influence. To connect John to drama, therefore, is to connect John to legal rhetoric, and doing so helps to see even more clearly the pervasiveness of the legal motif in the Gospel of John. Tracing the legal character of seeking in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, for example, sheds new light on the legal character of seeking in the Fourth Gospel, especially in the enigmatic comment of Jesus at John 8:50. New insights are also offered regarding the evidentiary character of the signs of Jesus, based on comparison with Aristotle's comments about signs and rhetorical evidence in both the Poetics and Rhetoric, as well as by comparison with plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. To call the signs of Jesus evidence, however, does not remove them from the dialectical tension inherent in Johannine theology. If the signs are evidence, they are evidence in a world in which the basis of forming judgments has been problematized by the appearance of the Word in the flesh.

Author: Per Jarle Bekken
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004278680
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 319

View

Book Description
The study sheds fresh light on aspects of the lawsuit motif in John from the background of Diaspora-Jewish and Greco-Roman data and perspectives. – John’s narrative of the attempts on Jesus for such crimes as breaking the Sabbath, blasphemy, and seduction are illuminated from Philo’s perspectives on vigilante execution. – Furthermore, John’s narrative of the official Jewish and Roman forensic procedures against Jesus can also be situated within the framework of the Greco-Roman administration exemplified by the legal papyri from the Roman Egypt. – Philo’s expectation of an eschatological emperor, who shall rule over many nations, provides a cultural context for the way John’s gospel re-inscribed Jesus as the true “Emperor” of all the nations.

Author: James H. Charlesworth
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567681564
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 624

View

Book Description
James H. Charlesworth begins from a burgeoning point of scholarly consensus: More and more scholars are coming to recognize that the Fourth Gospel is more historically complex than previously thought. Charlesworth outlines two historical horizons within John. On the one hand, there is the Jewish background to the text (complete with the evangelist's knowledge of Palestinian geography and Jewish customs) which Charlesworth perceives as offering a window into pre-70 Palestinian Judaism. On the other hand, the gospel also reflects a post-70 world in which non-believing Jews, with more unity, begin to part definitely with those who identified Jesus as the Messiah. Split into four sections, this volume first examines the origins of the Fourth Gospel, its evolution in several editions, and its setting in Judea and Galilee. Charlesworth then looks specifically at the figure of Jesus and issues of history. He proceeds to consider this Gospel alongside earlier and contemporaneous Jewish literature, most notably the Dead Sea Scrolls. Finally, the volume engages with John's symbolism and language, looking closely at key aspects in which John differs from the Synoptic Gospels, and raising such provocative questions as whether or not it is possible that Jesus married Mary Magdalene. From one of the New Testament's most noted scholars, this book allows deeper understanding of the ways in which the Gospel of John is a vital resource for understanding both the origin of Christianity and Jesus' position in history.

Author: Alicia D. Myers
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 1628370955
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 302

View

Book Description
A collection of essays by experts from around the world Like the other New Testament Gospels, the Gospel of John repeatedly appeals to Scripture (Old Testament). Preferring allusions and “echoes” alongside more explicit quotations, however, the Gospel of John weaves Scripture as an authoritative source concerning its story of Jesus. Yet, this is the same Gospel that is often regarded as antagonistic toward “the Jews,” especially the Jewish religious leaders, depicted within it. Features: Introduces and updates readers on the question of John’s employment of Scripture Showcases useful approaches to more general studies on the New Testament’s use of Scripture, sociological and rhetorical analyses, and memory theory Explores the possible implications surrounding Scripture usage for the Gospel audiences both ancient and contemporary

Author: Alicia D Myers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567103897
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

View

Book Description
This study explores how the Fourth Gospel's use of Scripture contributes to its characterization of Jesus. Utilizing literary-rhetorical criticism, Myers approaches the Gospel in its final form, paying particular attention to how Greco-Roman rhetoric can assist in understanding the ways in which Scripture is employed to support the presentation of Jesus. It offers further evidence in favour of the Gospel's use of rhetoric (particularly the practices of synkrisis, ekpharsis, and prosopopoiia), and gives scholars a new way to use rhetoric to better understand the use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel and the New Testament as a whole. The book proceeds in three parts. First, it examines ancient Mediterranean practices of narration and characterization in relationship to the Gospel, concluding with an analysis of the Johannine prologue. In the second and third parts, it investigates explicit appeals to Scripture that are made both in and outside of Jesus' discourses. Through these analyses, Myers contends that the pervasive presence of Scripture in quotations, allusions, and references acts as corroborating evidence supporting the evangelist's presentation of Jesus.

Author: Eve-Marie Becker
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 056769190X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320

View

Book Description
John's Transformation of Mark brings together a cast of internationally recognised biblical scholars to investigate the relationship between the gospels of Mark and John. In a significant break with the prevailing view that the two gospels represent independent traditions, the contributors all argue that John both knew and used the earlier gospel. Drawing on recent analytical categories such as social memory, 'secondary orality,' or 'relecture,' and ancient literary genres such as 'rewritten Bible' and bioi, the central questions that drive this volume focus on how John used Mark, whether we should speak of 'dependence,' 'familiarity with,' or 'reception,' and whether John intended his work to be a supplement or a replacement of Mark. Together these chapters mount a strong case for a reassessment of one of the key tenets of modern biblical criticism, and open up significant new avenues for further research.

Author: Thomas R. Hatina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0567684113
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 299

View

Book Description
This volume is the fourth in a set of volumes, which together explore current approaches to the study of scripture in the Gospels. Thomas R. Hatina's latest edited collection begins with an introduction surveying methodological approaches used in the study of how scriptural allusions, quotations, and references function in John, with subsequent essays grouped into four categories that represent the breadth of current interpretive interests. The contributors begin with historical-critical approaches, before moving to rhetorical and linguistic approaches, literary approaches, and finally social memory approaches. Each study contains not only recent research on the function of scripture in John, but also an explanation of the approach taken, making the collection an ideal resource for both scholars and students who are interested in the complexities of interpretation in John's context as well as our own.

Author: Sunny Kuan-Hui Wang
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 9783161547355
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 280

View

Book Description
In this book, Sunny Kuan-Hui Wang explores the relationship between sense perception and testimony in the Gospel of John. While Johannine scholars tend to focus on one or the other, she shows that sense perception and testimony are both significant and are used together with the intention of drawing readers into the narrative so that they become witnesses in an emotionally engaged way. It is argued that John's use of sense perception together with testimony is rooted in Jewish literature. Yet John also employs a Graeco-Roman rhetorical technique, enargeia , which appeals to the persuasive power of sense perception to make his narrative vivid. John does not downplay sense perception. Rather, he uses it in the context of testimony as a means of persuasion to draw the readers, in their imagination, into the experience of the first disciples and thus deeper into faith and witness.

Author: Adele Reinhartz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1978701187
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

View

Book Description
The Gospel of John presents its readers, listeners, and interpreters with a serious problem: how can we reconcile the Gospel’s exalted spirituality and deep knowledge of Judaism with its portrayal of the Jews as the children of the devil (John 8:44) who persecuted Christ and his followers? One widespread solution to this problem is the so-called “expulsion hypothesis.” According to this view, the Fourth Gospel was addressed to a Jewish group of believers in Christ that had been expelled from the synagogue due to their faith. The anti-Jewish elements express their natural resentment of how they had been treated; the Jewish elements of the Gospel, on the other hand, reflect the Jewishness of this group and also soften the force of the Gospel’s anti-Jewish comments. In Cast out of the Covenant, this book, Adele Reinhartz presents a detailed critique of the expulsion hypothesis on literary and historical grounds. She argues that, far from softening the Gospel’s anti-Jewishness, the Gospel’s Jewish elements in fact contribute to it. Focusing on the Gospel’s persuasive language and intentions, Reinhartz shows that the Gospel’s anti-Jewishness is evident not only in the Gospel’s hostile comments about the Jews but also in its appropriation of Torah, Temple, and Covenant that were so central to first-century Jewish identity. Through its skillful use of rhetoric, the Gospel attempts to convince its audience that God’s favor had turned away from the Jews to the Gentiles; that there is a deep rift between the synagogue and those who confess Christ as Messiah; and that, in the Gospel’s view, this rift was initiated in Jesus’ own lifetime. The Fourth Gospel, Reinhartz argues, appropriates Jewishness at the same time as it repudiates Jews. In doing so, it also promotes a “parting of the ways” between those who believe that Jesus is the messiah, the Son of God, and those who do not, that is, the Jews. This rhetorical program, she suggests, may have been used to promote outreach or even an organized mission to the Gentiles, following in the footsteps of Paul and his mid-first-century contemporaries.

Author: Charles Raith
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532601263
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275

View

Book Description
The Gospel of John: Theological-Ecumenical Readings brings together leading Catholic, Orthodox, and Evangelical theologians to read and interpret John's Gospel from within their ecclesial tradition, while simultaneously engaging one another in critical dialogue. Combining both theological exegesis and ecumenical dialogue, each chapter is uniquely structured with a main essay by a Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical theologian on a section of John's Gospel, followed by two responses from theologians of the other two traditions. The chapter concludes with a final response from the main author. Readers are thus provided with not only a deep and engaging reading of the Gospel of John but also the unfolding of a rich theological-ecumenical dialogue centered on an authority for all Christians, namely, the Gospel of John.