While much of the New Testament has been subjected to the anti-imperial current of scholarship, relatively little has been written about John’s response to Rome until very recently. In recent years scholars have suggested that John, while clearly presenting a high Christology and a conflict with a group known as “the Jews,” is also interested in Rome. This series of posts will examine some of the current scholarly proposals on the Johannine response to the Roman Empire. Before moving into our consideration of those proposals it will help to begin with a series of objections that have been offered against anti-imperial readings of the Fourth Gospel.
Objection #1: By comparison, the Gospel of John is less interested in Rome than the Synoptic Gospels. While it is true that the Fourth Gospel is less concerned with Rome than the Synoptics, this objection actually reveals very little about the Johannine view of Rome. Each gospel is an autonomous narrative and should be treated as such before an attempt is made to compare the gospels to one another. This means that we must read John’s Gospel on its own terms without imposing emphases or categories from other New Testament texts. Thus, if we are going to evaluate John’s view of Rome, we must look at the Fourth Gospel independently of its canonical counterparts.
Objection #2: Specific references to Rome and Roman political terms are largely absent from the Fourth Gospel. This objection also contains some truth, though it requires qualification. I like to remind my students that it is possible for a concept to be present even when the terms that denote that concept are absent. Take for example, the following statement:
“The Colts are going to the Super Bowl to face the Redskins in a battle of epic proportions.”
For those, “in the know,” it would certainly be ridiculous to read this statement as if it were describing a literal battle between horses and red-skinned people inside a large open container. Instead, anyone remotely familiar with the context and cultural scripts would immediately recognize that the statement refers to a major event in professional American football. Serious fans will know instinctively that it refers to the National Football League’s championship game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Washington Redskins (GO REDSKINS!!!). However, the basic terms, “football,” “game,” “team,” “championship,” and “NFL,” as well as the names of both cities are absent from the sentence. Despite the omission of these terms, the statement is filled with enough culturally-scripted information to allow the concept to be grasped by those familiar with the background. In the same way, those familiar with the setting of first century Palestine would have possessed sensitivities to cultural scripts that contemporary readers may miss. This includes subtexts related to the Roman Empire. What makes this observation more important is that some scholars build their case for John’s anti-imperial reading on the very omission of explicit references to Rome. Warren Carter refers to this, in part, as John’s “rhetoric of distance.”
Objection #3: John’s Gospel is inherently theological and is not interested in politics or in promoting a political ideology. The modern, mainly Western insistence on separating politics and religion would have been foreign in the context of 1st century Palestinian culture. One’s view of God (or the gods) had immediate implications and practical relevance for the development of one’s political views and vice versa. Thus, terms such as “king,” “kingdom,” “son of God,” “Lord,” etc. often had important political implications in light of the Roman occupation, as well as religious implications for Jews and Jewish followers of Jesus. Therefore, we must be careful to avoid hastily dismissing the potential political significance behind explicitly theological terms in John.
Now that we have addressed some of the superficial (and frankly, lame) objections against finding Rome in John, we can begin to discuss the three books mentioned in the first post.
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