10/4/16 Explorations in the Gospel of John WEEK ONE: A NEW PASSOVER LAMB A Few Housekeeping Matters Part One 1
10/4/16 Welcome! • Did everyone get handouts? (They’re important!) • Everyone is welcome here, so be nice! • The Purpose of the Footnotes: • If this is your first Bible Study, don’t worry about them. • If they cause you a headache, don’t worry about them. • If they stir up interest in your mind, enjoy them. • Bible Translations My Goals (in descending order of importance) • 1. To grow in faith as we meditate upon the inspired Word. • 2. To have fun while we grow as the Lord’s beloved disciples. • 3. To increase our biblical literacy and see how the Bible fits together. • 4. To show how the Bible has impacted our Catholic tradition. • 5. To provide a sense of how biblical professionals do their job. • 6. To prepare a class on John, because it’s not the last time I’ll teach it J . 2
10/4/16 Excursus: How Does the Catholic Church Interpret the Bible? Part Two Pius XII, Encyclical Letter Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943) • Jesus is fully human and fully divine. So too is the Bible. • “ For of the modes of expression which , among ancient peoples, and especially those of the East, human language used to express its thought, none is excluded from the Sacred Books , provided the way of speaking adopted in no wise contradicts the holiness and truth of God […] For as the substantial Word of God became like to men in all things, ‘except sin,’ so the words of God, expressed in human language, are made like to human speech in every respect, except error.” (no. 37; EB 559; emphasis added) • “Not a few things, especially in matters pertaining to history, were scarcely at all or not fully explained by the commentators of past ages, since they lacked almost all the information which was needed for their clearer exposition.” (no. 31; EB 555) 3
10/4/16 PBC, Instruction Sancta Mater Ecclesia (1964) • In this instruction about the Church’s teaching on the historicity of the Gospels, the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) affirmed that there were three stages of development. (Incidentally, almost all non-Catholic Christians would agree.) • Stage 1: Words and Deeds of Jesus • Stage 2: Apostolic Preaching ( kerygma ) • Stage 3: Written Gospels by the Evangelists to Specific Situations Benedict XVI, Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini (2010) • Speaks of the need for sound, rigorous scholarship as well as a deep prayer life. • Our Catholic tradition has long affirmed that prayer and study form complementary paths to seeking God. We must use both our heads and our hearts! • “A notion of scholarly research that would consider itself neutral with regard to Scripture should not be encouraged. As well as learning the original languages in which the Bible was written and suitable methods of interpretation, students need to have a deep spiritual life, in order to appreciate that the Scripture can only be understood if it is lived.” (no. 47) 4
10/4/16 Concrete Applications to John’s Gospel • Authorship: A broader concept in the ancient world than today. • St. John the Apostle, the traditional author, likely exercised a significant role in producing the Gospel, but it wasn’t as simple as him writing it down as he walked along the street with Jesus. See Jn 20:24: “It is this disciple [= Beloved Disciple] who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.” • Historicity: The Gospel is a bios , a “life”. In this ancient literary genre (see Martin and Wright, pp. 19-20): • The narration is selective ; it chooses only certain details to tell. • The author shapes the material for theological purposes. • Its written for the formation of the hearers. • Let John be John! Don’t try to fit it into another Evangelist’s framework. The Top Ten Things You Need to Know about John’s Gospel Part Three 5
10/4/16 #10: The author of the Fourth Gospel did not think it important to identify himself. • While the traditional position maintains that John, the son of Zebedee, is the author, the Gospel does not identify him. (However, there are good reasons to think that St. John was an author, at least to some extent.) • Don’t get lost in speculation! #9: John’s Gospel is both quite simple and extraordinarily complex. • “A pool sufficiently shallow for an ant to wade in, and sufficiently deep for an elephant to drown in.” • Simple Structure • Complicated Discourse 6
10/4/16 #8: John writes for one clear reason: faith. • John tells us why he wrote: • An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may [come to] believe. (Jn 19:35 NAB) • Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of [his] disciples that are not written in this book. 31 But these are written that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name. (Jn 20:30 NAB) • There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written. (Jn 21:25 NAB) • Again, John’s Gospel is historical in that it relates real events about a real person, but it is not a history in the modern sense of a neutral, descriptive account. #7: John did not care about being politically correct. • “The Jews” = a character in John, likely due to the original historical situation of the community to whom the Gospel was addressed. • “He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.” (Jn 1:11 NAB) • In interpreting the text, we need to understand that “the Jews” refer to specific people in the 1 st century. The term does not apply to all Jews across all ages. • Avoid two extremes: • Minimizing John’s Gospel because it contains words that are difficult to explain. • Interpreting John’s Gospel in a manner that is anti-Semitic. 7
10/4/16 #6: John is the patron saint of the double entendre. • More than any other book of the New Testament, John is a literary masterpiece. • It is filled with double-meanings and dramatic irony, in which one of the characters does not know something that the Christian reader does. • It’s OK to laugh! • Be aware that texts can have multiple shades of meaning. #5: John’s Gospel is not like the other three Gospels. • Unlike Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the Synoptic Gospels), John: • Does not narrate Jesus’ Baptism, Transfiguration, or Last Supper. • Includes no parables. • Makes explicit mention of three celebrations of Passover (Jn 2, 6, 13-21), indicating a ministry of at least three years. • Includes lengthy, enigmatic discourses and reveals the true identity of Jesus through controversies with “the Jews”. • Mentions “I am” sayings in which Jesus reveals his relationship with the Father (like the revelation of God as “I AM” at the Burning Bush). See Ex 3:14. 8
10/4/16 #4: In John, the “world” is a bad thing. • John is not Luke, who has a more optimistic perspective. See Lk 2:10, for example. • “He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him.” (Jn 1:10 NAB) • For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. … 19 And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.” (Jn 3:16-17, 19 NAB) • Jesus: “I do not pray for the world” (See Jn 17:9 NAB) #3: John focuses on Christ’s divinity. • John is not Mark, whose main focus is on how a disciple must imitate Christ’s suffering. See Mk 8:34-38, for example. • John often glosses over Jesus’ sufferings in order to allow his role as the eternal Son of God and Word of the Father to shine forth. See Jn 1:1,14. • Jesus’ Passion is his “glory” for the Fourth Evangelist: • "I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it and will glorify it again.“ … 32 And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." 33 He said this indicating the kind of death he would die. (Jn 12:27-28, 32-33 NAB) 9
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