MetaCatholic

I want to pull a quick thread out of the comments on yesterday’s round-up. (You can skip below the quotes if you’re in a hurry.) In the course of the post I said:

Soloveichik says: “When someone asserts divinity, his interlocutor has only two options: Believe, obey, and worship, or back away slowly.” But did the historical Jesus assert such a thing, and what, in any case would it have meant in context?

Justin queried this in the comments:

You do not believe the historical Jesus claimed divinity? What do you make of John 10:30 or John 8:58?

I replied that I saw those verses as part of the evangelist’s creative meditation on the significance of Jesus, and then Michele of Reformed Chicks Blabbing asked in another comment:

How can you be sure? What is your proof? Are you denying that the interaction with the Jews took place? Or just the words that John attributed to Jesus.

Part of me was a bit surprised to be asked these questions, because I’m so used to reading and describing John as a highly creative narrative in my preaching and teaching as well as in my own thinking. The primary indicator seems to me to be style, and in particular the piecing together of two fairly obvious points:

• The style of Jesus’ speech in John is quite different from that of the Synoptic Jesus.
• The style of Jesus speech is of a piece with the style of the narrator.

The conclusion that the author is creatively writing Jesus’ speeches seems to me to follow fairly logically. This dovetails with the way in which the content and focus of these speeches are declarations – testimony – about Jesus’ identity and purpose. By contrast, in the Synoptics Jesus speech about himself is elliptical, ambiguous and riddled with riddles, and the main content is not himself, but the kingdom of which he sees himself as something like an inaugurating agent, a vehicle of the active presence of God restoring his people. (Begging about a million historical questions!) The rather strange conflict over exorcism that leads to the “blasphemy against the Spirit” saying (Matt 12:31 and parallels) is one of several texts that suggest Jesus saw this ambiguity as an intentional strategy to make space for God’s revelation.

Another pointer to the stylised nature of the dialogues in the gospel — well they’re often really monologues with prompts — is precisely at the heart of part of Michele’s question. Am I denying that “the interaction with the Jews took place”? This concept of “the Jews” is itself a highly stylised presentation. I do not think it can simply be explained by translating it as the “Judaeans” in contradistinction to the Galilean movement of Jesus. Its strangeness is well illustrated by the raising of Lazarus episode. Bethany, after all, is firmly located in Judaea, and the narrative seems fairly clear that is as as much the hometown of Martha, Mary and Lazarus as Nazareth is Jesus’. Yet, we read, “many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.” (John 11:19) Quite frankly, however, you translate it, this makes little geographical or historical sense, and the descriptor “the Jews” has to be read as a phrase describing a collective character in the Johannine narrative. This character stands in for diverse real people who had real doubts and questions about, or conflicts with, Jesus. But the drawing of the character is also coloured by the conflicts experienced at the time the gospel was written. The conflicts themselves are therefore equally stylised representations.

Leaving aside all the complicated philosophical stuff that is too much for a simple brain like mine, one reason the C. S. Lewis style “mad, bad or God” apologetic doesn’t work is that Jesus didn’t run round saying all those “I am …” claims that he makes in John’s gospel. The speech of Jesus in the gospel is largely a stylised representation of Jesus’ significance, given narrative form within the newly established genre of gospel, and I think, intentionally to supplement at least one of those prior gospels.