What We Have Heard from the Beginning: The Past, Present and Future of Johannine Studies

4: Response: Inspecting an Aerial Photograph of John’s Engagement with Sources

83 For close to five decades, Dr. Thomas Brodie has undertaken what has clearly been an adventurous, indeed life–changing, journey in the company of John’s Gospel. This journey has led him to tackle some of the thorniest issues in Johannine scholarship—including the relationship between John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels, its indebtedness to the Jewish Scriptures, its possible historical value—and, ultimately, to ask what makes John “tick.” As his overarching aim has been to develop a new theory of the Fourth Gospel’s composition, a theory which, by his own admission, takes the form of an overview or “aerial photograph” (Brodie 1993a, 68–69) to be scrutinized by others, one may justifiably ask: What are the implications of Dr. Brodie’s research on the Gospel’s literary development for our understanding of John’s compositional methods? Can John be wholly explained by his theologically creative use of extant (written) sources? Dr. Brodie belongs to a small, but growing, group of scholars who believe that John’s literary independence from the Synoptic Gospels can no longer be maintained. He goes much further than most, however, by proposing a pattern of literary relationships that amounts to John’s systematic use—and total transformation—of the whole of Mark, significant portions of Matthew and Luke–Acts, and even the letter to the Ephesians. 4: Response INSPECTING AN AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH OF JOHN’S ENGAGEMENT WITH SOURCES Catrin H. Williams 84 CATRIN H. WILLIAMS His “test” analysis of John 9 in The Quest for the Origin of John’s Gospel (Brodie 1993a, 48–66) draws, to a significant degree, on his own criteria for determining literary dependence, which include external plausibility, thematic and verbal similarities, and intelligibility of differences (cf. Brodie 2004, 43–49). The next generation of Johannine scholars, if attracted to this maximalist hypothesis, will need to establish even tighter controls and more precise points of contact for a significant number of passages in the Fourth Gospel in order to test whether John has in fact undertaken a complete refashioning of earlier “Christian” material, especially the Synoptics. And if John, as Dr. Brodie claims, had ready access to a wide range of extant sources, could the same be true of his first readers or hearers? With the rise of audience–oriented approaches to New Testament texts, the dialogical function of the Fourth Gospel in relation to its addressees (as well as to its sources) urgently needs to be explored. Did John presume that his audience was adequately equipped to recognize the contours and content of his Synoptic source texts? And if so, how was the audience meant to interpret the evangelist’s “complex literary transformation ” of that material? Further reflection upon these issues may clarify what is meant by John’s “use” of the Synoptic Gospels. Dr. Brodie forcefully, and rightly, challenges us to revisit the notion that oral transmission offers a partial explanation for the composition of John. Nevertheless, I am less confident that now is the time to begin the funeral of oral tradition. This would surely be a premature move, one that would require the eulogist to examine every relevant Johannine passage and ask whether a theory of oral transmission or a theory of thorough reshaping of written sources more plausibly accounts for the similarities and differences between John and the Synoptics. Dr. Brodie is also right to highlight the important distinction between oral transmission and orality, recalling his illuminating conversation with Walter Ong about the prominence of oral/aural techniques in ancient writings. The impact of Professor Ong’s insights is, of course, much in evidence in the work of Michael Labahn, who uses the concept of orality to offer a very different account of John’s relationship with the Synoptics. Labahn proposes that the Synoptic Gospels influenced John indirectly, not in terms of literary dependence but rather through a process of “secondary orality.” His approach suggests that the Johannine tradition was influenced by the continual oral retelling of the Gospel of Mark (which, as Dr. Brodie would agree, is a function suggested by its oral/aural features), but not by direct copying from that text (Labahn 2000a, 272–76). The extent to which one can describe the product of this process of retelling as “oral tradition” requires further discussion, but the increasing recognition among scholars of the highly oral character of the first–century world and of the com- INSPECTING AN...