John Painter

The Farewell Discourses and the History of Johannine Christianity.

The question of ‘traces’ of history in the Fourth Gospel is not new. In 1968 Louis Martyn published his History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel . His thesis, reduced to utter simplicity, was that the Gospel is a drama presented at two levels, one concerning Jesus and the other concerning the community of the evangelist in which the Jesus tradition had been shaped. Thus the Fourth Gospel is seen as a Jewish Christian composition shaped in the dialogue/conflict with the synagogue. More recently Raymond Brown has given us his own penetrating reconstruction of the history of the Johannine community. This is presented in four phases: from its beginning until the exclusion from the synagogue; the situation at the time the Gospel was written; internal division (Epistles); and the final disappearance of both groups in the second century, absorbed, either by the emerging great church or by Docetism, Gnosticism and Montanism.

The ‘Opponents’ in I John

The question of the ‘opponents’ in 1 John has long been recognized as significant for the study of that ‘letter’. The great commentaries by Theodor Haring, R. Law and Rudolf Schnackenburg make the conflict with the ‘schismatics’ the key to their interpretations. Most recently Raymond E. Brown 1 has presented a detailed account of the conflict in the context of the history of Johannine Christianity as the basis for his own commentary. I find myself in general agreement with the approach and position set out there. But I remain unconvinced on a number of important issues where I find that my views remain fundamentally unchanged, 2 not through stubbornness I trust. These views will need further elaboration and defence in due course. Before doing this certain preliminary matters need to be dealt with.

John 9 and the Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel

In recent studies John 9 has been used as a crux for the interpretation of the Gospe1.1 In this chapter, it has been argued, we find important indications of the context in which the Gospel was formed and that awareness of this context enables the reader to perceive the evangelist’s intention. What is more, the chapter has been used as an example of the evangelist’s compositional method. Recently Ernst Haenchen has challenged this position, arguing that most of ch. 9 is derived from a source which gives expression to views antithetical to those of the evangelist, who was responsible only for 9.4-5, 39-41.3 He contends that the attitude to signs reflected in the chapter (apart from 9.4-5, 39-41) is that of the source, not of the evangelist. In the

Christology and the History of the Johannine Community in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel

So much has been written about the Prologue that it must seem unlikely that anything new could be said about it with some claim to credibility. It is not that all problems have been resolved, or that all that needs to be said has been said. But perhaps, on the basis of existing evidence, it seems that what can be said with some probability has been said. Yet many issues remain unresolved. Are the form and content of the Prologue the consequence of the evangelists use of a source hymn? Or was the Prologue a specially written introduction for the Gospel? If the Prologue is based on a source hymn: What was the origin of the hymn? How did it come to the evangelist and why did he use it? What was in the hymn and what was added by the evangelist? Answers to these questions are fundamental to a precise understanding of the Prologue and could throw light on the history of the Johannine community.

James and Peter Models of Leadership and Mission

Differences between James and Peter are intelligible on the basis of tensions within the traditions concerning Jesus which have their roots in the models for Israel found in Jewish Scripture. Recognising that the criticism of the twelve is more serious than the criticism of the natural family sets the critique in context. Jesus sought out James because James had vowed not to eat until he had seen the Lord risen from the dead. A careful examination of the letters of Paul confirms that the role of James the brother of Jesus has been obscured in the Gospels and Acts. Galatians makes clear that James was known to Paul by reputation and in person. This understanding of the position of James is supported by the account in Acts and the letters of Paul, as well as the evidence of Hegesippus and the Pseudo-Clementines. Keywords: Acts; Galatians; James; Paul; Pauline mission; Peter; Pseudo-Clementines

Quest Stories in John 1-4

restricted piece of work, concentrating only on quest stories and only those in John 1~. It seeks to be more precise in identifying quest stories while recognizing their relation to the extensive development of the quest theme; for which the structure of Jn 1.19-4.54 is significant. The Johannine quest stories are best seen in relation to the Synoptic pronouncement stories’ which are similar to the chreiai3 of the Graeco-Roman biographies and rhetorical texts,’ here illustrated by the following examples:5

Theology, Eschatology and the Prologue of John

There is a long tradition recognizing the evangelist as a theologian of stature. In recent times C.K. Barrett referred to him as a theologian second only to Paul and Martin Hengel described John as “a towering theologian”. In this paper it is argued that the evangelist was a profoundly theological writer and that a complex eschatology formed an essential dimension of his theology which was shaped in the dialogue and debate with the synagogue resulting in the development of distinctive christological, theological and eschatological views that have significantly influenced subsequent Christian history.

Quest and Rejection Stories in John1

The purpose of this paper is to relate work done on pronouncement stories in the Synoptic tradition to the study of the Gospel of John. When Vincent Taylor2 coined the term ’pronouncement story’ he was building on the pioneering work of Martin Dibelius and Rudolf Bultmann who used the terms paradigm and apophthegm. More recently the genre has been related to the chreia discussed by ancient scholars. Taylor’s descriptive title has the advantage of drawing attention to the way a pronouncement gives climactic focus to a story which has been told for the sake of that pronouncement. Yet it should be noted that such stories are closely related to others without a distinctive pronouncement in Greek literature. Earlier work on the