What difference does it make to see Johns gospel as coming from a particular

community situation?

1) Jewish context
-

Polemical against the Jews

Often negative
o 7.19 (Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Wy are
you looking for an opportunity to kill me?
o 19.15 - jews are seen to deny their Jewish idenity here, and as a result of thsi
Christ suffers.
o In reflection of this, the early Christians are also seen to suffer violence a the
hands of the Jews, as in passages such as 12.42 and 16.2

But not so negative

o Jesus as a jew

Jesus is not merely a divine figure but very much rooted in his Jewish situation.
Lots of example of this: at a Jewish wedding, attends Jewish feasts, designates
the Jewish temple as my fathers house, approached as a rabbi by disciples and
Nicodemus, identified by Samaritan women as a Jews, he talks about Jews as
we and thus clearly identifies himself as this. John presents him as the
sacrificial lamb (Passover lamb). Apart from Son of God and saviour and the
world, most of the titles are Jewish the messiah, king of Israel, rabbi, Jew. He
says that he is for-told by Moses and the prophets.

7.22-24 presupposition of an appeal to accepted Jewish

practice to justify his acitons.
Jewishness of Jesus reflecting the Jewishness of John
o fulfilment of OT
Fulfil Isaiah John 12.38-41 fulfilment of Isaiahs prophecy
that He had blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts
To make sense of this conflict = particular sect (Wiles)

There is a lot of debate as to who it refers to. It is monolithic he never identifies the
Pharisees. There is clear overlap of ethnic, cultural and religious categories. Wildes
argues that it is a particular class of Jews. Not necessarily the Pharisees because they are
referred to separately at other times. Its not Jews as a nationality yet Jesus still
understands himself as a Jew in terms of nationality and religion. They are in opposition
to Jesus.

This overcomes the monolithic use of the word in both the neutral and
negative presentation of the Jews.

The Jews in relation to a specific class (Wiles) and must therefore be seen as in opposition to a
specific group. However, to make such a definitive dating as Martyn does with his emphasis on 85ce
is going beyond what the text can tell us. There are clearly problems with this emphasis on the 85CE
birkat ha minim as for while it seems evident that there has been a divide between the synagogue
and Johns community, the extent of this is debated (16.2 They will put you out of the synagogues.
Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship
to God). PROBLEMS WITH BHM

THUS all we can say is that there has been a previous break from a Jewish community shown through
the antagonistic tone of the passages. This can also be seen as a foil (Reinhartz), as this group took on
something above and beyond their historical identity. They represent the state of unbelief and
represent the unbelief of the whole. However, for John himself his context suggests that we should
st
not see a foil but rather reference to his reality of a conflict with a particular class of Jews. It is the 21
century reader who can take from this a wider foil of the unbelieving world.

The term the Jews.

At times the context its sometimes not so harsh: when the Jews sent priests and levites to ask Jesus
who are you (to John). There is clearly scepticism here but there is no hostility. However this is at the
beginning and is in the context of John the Baptist. What is clear, however, is that Johns Gospel
writes a polemic against the Jews.

2)
The result of this is a Christology centred around salvation for those who do
believe, independent of Jewish heritage. It is here that Bauckhams argument
falls down as he conflates Johns Christology which presents Jesus as opening the
Jewish faith to the Gentiles with the necessity that his Gospel was intended for a
wider Christian audience. Bauckham sees the inclusivity of Johns Gospel as
reflecting an evangelist without a specific community in mind, he argues that
Johns gospel is reflective of the early church which was not conducive to
parochialism citing Pauls letters as showing the inter-connectedness of
Christians at that time. According to B If we accept Markan priority, we must
accept the fact that Marks gospel was widely circulated in order that other
evangelists could be influenced by the text. Thus would expect wide circulation of
text, and John would write accordingly. He is not suggesting that John is writing
without a community rather writing from a particular community to a general
situation. It is absurd to suggest that John was writing to any sort of audience
without writing to his own community. B makes an unnecessary connection
between the universal language used within the gospel and Johns purported
audience as the general Christian community, ignoring the particularist aspects of
the Gospel. While it is clear that there is a universal language within John, and this is
what he picks up on in his exposition of the Gospels major symbolic images come
from common experience for all people of the time (light and darkness water,
bread, vine and wine, shepherd and sheep, judgement and witness, birth and
death), it is rather that this is symptomatic of his particular situation in relation
to the Jews.
3.
One cannot escape the fact that John is writing to a particular community
situation and that there is a clear pastoral element in the Gospel. Martyn rightly
picks up on the two levels to Johns Gospel, the second of which being a witness

to Jesus powerful presence in actual accents experienced by the Johannine

church. He developed this premise primarily on the bases of John 9, which he
sees as clearly unhistorical and primarily untraditional whilst being pastoral in
nature. It is predicated upon the appearance of 9.4 we must do the works of him
who sent me in a passage dedicated to miracles. Given that the works of the
Risen Jesus is not seen in John as having brought to a final end, Martyn proposes
that the extension of the miracles past verse 9.7 therefore points to a situation in
which John wishes to show how the Risen Lord continues his earthly ministry in
the work of his servant, the Christian preacher. Jesus works continue into the
life of Johannine community though the advocate.
IN 3:11 John alludes to the efforts of his community to testify in another
reference to the presence and authority o Jesus in the community, Johns Jesus
uses we to say that he and his followers speak of what we know, and testify to
what we have seen
The community sitz im leben of John is shown in passages such as 1.14 and
21.24 which refer to we rather than I. Similarly, aspects of his teaching on
servitude (13.1-20) suggest a community background.
This clearly negates Bauckhams suggestion that John has suppressed the
pastoral element of his gospel in order to address a wider audience. Rather it is
the very nature of his community situation from which John writes that informs
the universalist imagery and outward looking Christology that he presents.
Thus we can see that there is a universal message stemming from a particular
community. This marriage of the particular and universal is shown in 1.38 They said to him,
Rabbi (which translated means teacher), where are you staying?. Some have suggested that the
exclusivist nature of certain passages in which Jesus teaching is shown as unintelligible to those of
this world (Wayne Meeks), does not fit with the apparent universal message. However, these should
not be seen as conflicting, for if place the split of Johns gospel in the past then, infact more cohesive
with the gospel message as a whole is the idea that it was intended to be a universal message as God
sent his son for the world, however it is only those who believe and accept the message who receive
the whole truth and become not of this world. 15. 24 (If I had not done among them the works that
no one else did, they would not have sin. But not they have seen and hated both me and my father
highlights Jesus intention for all to believe as he did the works among them. Yet it was their
response which condemned them.

Conclusion
Therefore the polemic against the Jews and the subsequent inclusion of a wider
audience (with the Jews becoming a wider foil for unbelief) means that we have
to see John as addressing his community in order that they might be educated in
the wider mission of Christianity. His intended audience is his community, yet it
is clear with his message that the Gospel is intended for any person with hearts
softened, therefore, as Lincoln argues, we shouldnt conflate the audience and the
community that its intended for. His community is included in but does not exhaust

the latter. One must not conflate his Christological message about gentile salvation
with an intension to speak to the entire gentile church; He wrote to a particular
community in order to compel them to evangelise both the Jews and the gentiles. It
is through our 21st Century lense which can now perceive the foil of the Jews as
representing universal unbelief.