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

7: Response: The Combination of a Literary and a Historical Approach to the Gospel of John

145 Marinus de Jonge ends his interesting contribution to this volume with the affirmation that “exegetes can never limit themselves to synchronic analysis. I remain convinced that only literary analysis combined with historical criticism will lead to a full picture of the state of affairs.” Before arguing for the combination of a literary and a historical approach to the Gospel of John, he discusses the progress of academic discussion during roughly the last thirty years, following his own steps within Johannine research and indicating different periods of thought. I agree with De Jonge that only in the combination of a literary and a historical approach to the Gospel of John may we find answers to the many questions this Gospel is raising. I would go even further than De Jonge by saying that only with a carefully executed combination of methods can we avoid the risk of too premature and superficial answers to important but very complex questions. What do I mean by that? Let me formulate the issue in a question that will focus my short response to De Jonge’s essay: Where are the limits of both approaches and where are the undiscovered potentials of both approaches? I understand the Gospel of John as a narrative that relies, as every fiction does, upon its socio-historical context without being a historical report. First of all, then, the important impulses from narrative criticism 7: Response THE COMBINATION OF A LITERARY AND A HISTORICAL APPROACH TO THE GOSPEL OF JOHN Peter G. Kirchschlaeger 146 PETER G. KIRCHSCHLAEGER have to be considered: the text as a narrative has its narrative structure. This structure is built from different narrative elements and components: the plot (system of relations and system of actions—what and why), the different characters and their characterizations (who), the point of view (why), focalization (who sees) and the setting (when and where). But, second , because the text is related to its socio-historical context, an interest in the historical situation of the time of the formation of the text is legitimate. As Hans–Josef Klauck pointed out in his introduction to the inaugural session of the Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti Seminar at the 2005 Society of Biblical Literature meeting, the contextualization of the biblical texts is part of all traditional historical–critical exegesis and not merely an idiosyncratic element of the religionsgeschichtliche Schule. Both approaches, narrative and historical, must be pursued in isolation from one another but, at the end of the day, ultimately combined dialectically. The literary approach has given us new insights about the meaning of the Gospel of John. One difficult challenge, however, is the need for the cautious implementation of some very attractive theoretical models. Let me demonstrate what I mean by returning to an example noted by De Jonge. The question raised by Klaus Scholtissek regarding whether we are dealing with réécriture or with relecture in the Gospel of John is very important and of significance for Johannine research (see Scholtissek 1999–2004; 2000b; 2004b). The problem, however, as De Jonge notes, is that Scholtissek “does not explicitly indicate how one is able distinguish between ‘relecture’ and ‘réécriture’” while he “regards ‘relecture’ and ‘réécriture’ as two complementary aspects of a continuous process of reflection within the Johannine communities.” An undiscovered potential I see in the persistent search for a figurative meaning is to take more seriously the genre of the Gospel of John: a “Gospel” does not aim to report historical facts, but rather the message of Jesus Christ. At the same time, its historiographical character stands for the importance and significance of history for the Gospel of John. Because I see highlighting the historical approach as my more urgent task, and considering the brevity of this response, I will end my reflections on the literary approach and elaborate further only on the limits and undiscovered potentials of the historical approach. The historical approach to the Gospel of John has to consider that every text can create a new historical situation. Therefore, the relation between the text and its historical context has to be—based on the interaction theory—a dialectical one. In the case of the Gospel of John, the text of the Gospel itself is the most important source of information about its socio-historical context. Although we can find relevant indi- A LITERARY AND A HISTORICAL APPROACH TO JOHN 147 cations about its context, we have...