Re-Presenting the Johannine Community: A Postcolonial Perspective explores the characterization of the Johannine community in the Farewell Discourse of the Fourth Gospel from a postcolonial perspective. The community is scrutinized with the lens of an integrated literary-rhetorical and ideological-postcolonial approach. The disciples emerge as both the «Self», insofar as they resist an imperial reality represented by the «world», and the «Other», with respect to Jesus and the Father. As such, far from immutable and bland, the Johannine community is portrayed as chameleonic and engaged in an emerging strategy of resistance.
Text, Context and the Johannine Community adopts a new approach to the social context of the Johannine writings by drawing on modern sociolinguistic theory. Sociolinguistics emphasizes language as a social phenomenon, which can be analysed with reference not only to its broad context of culture, but also, through the use of register analysis, to its narrower context of situation. The Johannine writings have increasingly been seen as the product of a distinct Johannine Community, depicted by some scholars as a sectarian group, opposed both to wider Jewish society and to other Christian groups. This model has largely been constructed on historical-critical grounds, yet given our lack of reliable external information about the origin of the Johannine writings, a more fruitful approach may be to examine their lexico-grammatical and discourse features to determine what these imply about interpersonal relationships. This study compares selected 'narrative asides' from the Gospel of John with a passage section from 1 John and with the two shorter Johannine Epistles. It concludes that register analysis of these texts does not support the idea of a close-knit sectarian group.
Christian Origins and the Establishment of the Early Jesus Movement explores the events, people, and writings surrounding the founding of the early Jesus movement in the mid to late first century. The essays are divided into four parts, focused upon the movement’s formation, the production of its early Gospels, description of the Jesus movement itself, and the Jewish mission and its literature. This collection of essays includes chapters by a global cast of scholars from a variety of methodological and critical viewpoints, and continues the important Early Christianity in its Hellenistic Context series.
A number of disciplines aligned under "cultural criticism" have changed the shape of contemporary biblical studies not only by offering new methods but by questioning old goals and proposing new ones. Soundings in Cultural Criticism offers a collection of succinct essays in these fields by some of the foremost scholars in New Testament studies. Questions of historical reconstruction, textual interpretation, and present cultural deployment are addressed in an ideal second textbook for New Testament courses.
The poetic and symbolic nature of John's gospel betrays the weakness of historical-critical and other scientific" methods of scriptural exegesis: Although valuable for the insights they do provide, scientific methods are not sensitive to the spiritual dimensions of biblical revelation. Father Dumm therefore offers something more than the traditional chapter-and-verse commentary. Understanding that all of the gospels were written after the resurrection and, consequently, that the passion narrative greatly influenced how the earlier chapters were composed, Father Dumm gives more prominence to the climax of the career of Jesus: his passion, death, and resurrection. By beginning "at the end," Father Dumm uncovers the guiding principle of this gospel. In the process he makes some surprising discoveries about the dangers of religious ritual but finds remedy for these dangers in the importance of personal mystical experience within the context of a believing community. Chapters are "The Hour has Come," *Testifying to the Truth, - *Love Gives all, - *Love Conquers all, - *Love One Another, - *Abide in Me as I Abide in You, - *That They May be One, - *Conversion, - *Baptism, - *Eucharist, - *Enlightenment, - and *Eternal Life. - Demetrius Dumm, OSB, is a monk of St. Vincent's Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania. A professor of New Testament for almost fifty years, he is the author of several books and has given numerous retreats and workshops designed to allow scholarship to bear fruit in the spiritual life of the nonscholar. "
The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is a comprehensive treatment of a relatively new form of scholarship-one of the most compelling and contested theories to emerge in recent times, and a topic that actively seeks to expand the ways in which the Bible can be studied, interpreted, and applied. Generally speaking, postcolonialism aims to critique and dismantle hegemonic worldviews and power structures, while giving voice to previously marginalized peoples and systems of thought. This approach, often varied in form, has inevitably engaged with the text and reception of the Bible, a scripture that Western colonizers introduced to-and often imposed upon-their colonial subjects. With a globally diverse list of contributors, the Handbook aims to cover the perspective and context of the authors of the Bible, as well as the modern experiences of imperialism, resistance, decolonization, and nationalism. Moreover, the volume includes both a theoretical overview and an exploration of how the field intersects with related areas, such as gender studies, race, postmodernism, and liberation theology.
The first letter of John can rightly be called the Canticle of Canticles of the New Testament. Because of the power of its message which Augustine saw as a prolonged meditation on the love proper to God and to the Christian community, and the exquisite beauty of its form which invites and yet transcends analysis, the Letter has merited the privileged attention accorded to it by centuries of study, contemplation and liturgical celebration. In our own day the Letter is no less scrutinized, meditated and proclaimed. Indeed, the religious sensibility of our times reveals itself as particularly attuned to the Johannine articulation of Christian experience which is characterized by an emphasis upon interiorly, personal relationships, and discernment. The Letter begins not with the normal form of epistolary address, but rather with a solemn and moving Prologue which sets the tone for all that follows. The author situates himself among the privileged witnesses of Christ: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which are have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld and our hands have felt, concerning the word of life (1,1). His message is about eternal life, that fullness of knowledge and love which belong to God alone, and which the Father willed to share with us by sending His Son Jesus Christ.
Christology with a planetary vision, blurring the boundaries and breaking the rhetoric of polarities of domination and exclusion, is the need of the hour. It is only by taking seriously these two dimensions (intercultural and subaltern) that christological articulations can be made intelligible, understandable, and relevant. Intercultural Christology in John's Gospel unravels the intercultural intersections and subaltern dimensions of John's Christology. John's Christology, crossing the boundaries of traditional Messianic categories of Judaism, even while echoing those traditions in an intercultural milieu, and creating a hybrid space of "inter" by blurring the categories of "above" and "below," gives an impetus for developing such new expressions in any given subaltern context. Christological articulation in John has a multidimensional orientation: toward God, world, and life. Therefore, John's Christology could be termed a Christology with a planetary vision. John's Gospel articulates its Christology through an intercultural route from a subaltern negotiating space. The Johannine Messiah is a subaltern Messiah, and the Johannine community is a subaltern community. The evangelist is not the one who collaborated with the colonizers. Therefore, the text cannot be treated as a colonial document, as some of the postcolonial readers do. Rather the evangelist resists and disrupts, even while resonating with the surrounding linguistic and conceptual milieu. Therefore, a hermeneutical framework of intercultural resonance and subaltern subversive rhetoric is a key to unlock the Gospel. Such a hermeneutical approach is a viable option in any subaltern context.
Building on many years of research and study in Johannine literature, Andreas Köstenberger not only furnishes an exhaustive theology of John's Gospel and letters, but also provides a detailed study of major themes and relates them to the Synoptic Gospels and other New Testament books. --from publisher description
Few scholarly constructs have proven as influential or as durable as the Johannine community. A product of the era in New Testament studies dominated by redaction criticism, the Johannine community construct as articulated first by J. Louis Martyn and later by Raymond E. Brown emerged with an explanatory power that proved persuasive to scholars deliberating on the provenance and emergence of the Johannine literature for the next 50 years. Recent years, however, have seen this once dominant paradigm questioned by many of those working with the Gospel and Letters of John. The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate is dedicated to exploring the current state of the question while shining a light on new and constructive proposals for understanding the emergence of the Johannine literature. Some contributions accept the idea of a Johannine Community but suggest different ways we might know about the nature of that community. Others reject the existence of a Johannine Community, suggesting alternate models for understanding the emergence of these texts. These proposals are themselves set in perspective by responses from senior scholars.
