scholarly journals The Conflict between Johannine Community and the Jewish Synagogue in the Farewell Discourse (Jn.13:31-16:33)

2017 ◽  
Vol 88 (null) ◽  
pp. 7-31
Author(s):  
Seon-Jeong Kim
2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zorodzai Dube

What does it mean to live in a society where everything good is located within one ethnicity, and geography? In reading the gospel of John, one gets the impression that faithful disciples, the Holy Spirit and morality are exclusively located within the Johannine community and can only permeate to the outside through the good work of the insiders – the disciples. Everything is asymmetric – morality, ideal disciples and good virtues – these originate from within John’s community. Outside John’s community, it is darkness that awaits the illuminating lights of John’s disciples, without which they will remain in perpetual darkness. Despite recent theories that position John as a missionary and an open community, still it does not remove the asymmetric nature of the gospel. The study builds on views inspired by scholars such as Jonathan Draper (1992:13) to argue that John used the Holy Spirit to naturalise identities. From this perspective and if read from the South African context of racism, ethnicity and gender, John makes the reader think about the consequences and implications of exclusive social boundaries.Keywords: Spirit, identity, boundary making, modernity, Social cohesion


Author(s):  
Dirk Van der Merwe

A group of people within the Johannine community (2:18) contributed towards destroying the fellowship of this community. Because 1 and 2 John do not provide direct evidence of the identities of the community’s heretically inclined members, they are defined in different ways by different scholars. A search for socio-religious circumstances which contribute towards determin-ing the opponents and adherents of the author which created the agenda for the reconstruction of the phenomena that caused this schism. The nature of the schism comprises “Pneumatological,” “Christological” and “ethical” issues encoded in the polemical language of slogans, dialectic discourse, confessions and denials. The schism in 1 John proves to be a matter of different interpretations of a shared tradition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 001452462097729
Author(s):  
Justin Paley

This article challenges the interpretive decision made by many scholars to group 3 John with the rest of the Johannine Epistles (and sometimes John’s Gospel). This interpretative method fails to treat 3 John, as well as the rest of the Epistles, on their own terms. It also often places these texts within a hypothetical ‘Johannine Community’ and its various phases of development. However, if 3 John is read on its own, the text itself points us to interpret it within a Jewish framework. The seemingly lack of interest in Jews and Judaism, rather than being a sign of a later date when this group was no longer rooted in any Jewish community and no longer cared about such issues, is a sign that the epistle dates from a period before this community of Christ-believers began to markedly differentiate themselves from other Jews. These points, as well as the author’s use of τὸν ἐθνικός when describing the missionary work by some of those within the community, may also suggest that the conflict between the Elder and Diotrephes was related to disagreements over the nature of missionary work within the early Jesus movement.


Scrinium ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-153
Author(s):  
Joseph L. Grabau

This paper explores the possibility of recovering a tradition of Donatist readings of John’s Gospel, by highlighting five of the so-called Donatist ‘anonymous’ homilies of the Vienna Collection (Sermones Escorial. 16, 19, 20, 22 and 23; cf. Leroy 1994/1999; Bass 2014/2016; Dossey 2010; and Shaw 2011). After pointing out their relatively limited, threefold Johaninne interest – chapters 4 and 8, and the ‘farewell discourse’ of chapters 14-17 (Tilley 1997) – I then focus on Sermo Escorial. 16, presenting its exegetical and theological strategies in the light of Donatist ecclesiology and its North African context. Here, I argue that a particular use of John 4:23, in conjunction with a modified form of a well-known concept of Cyprian (nulla salus extra ecclesiam), stands in sharp opposition to any of Augustine’s interpretations of the same verse. Thus, I suggest, Augustine seems both to correct Donatist views of salvation and the church, as well as a Donatist reading of the verse in question. This thesis is to be linked up with other Johannine citations in future research.



2011 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert J. Malan

In ecumenical circles, John 17:11b, 21–23 has been understood as Jesus’ prayer for church unity, be it confessional or structural. This article questioned such readings and conclusions from historical, literary and sosio-cultural viewpoints. The Fourth Gospel’s language is identified as ’antilanguage’ typical of an ’antisociety’, like that of the Hermetic, Mandean and Qumran sects. Such a society is a separate entity within society at large, but opposes it. Read as a text of an antisociety, John 17:11b, 21–23 legitimises the unity of the separatist Johannine community, which could have comprised several such communities. This community opposed the Judean religion, Gnosticism, the followers of John the Baptist and three major groups in early Christianity. As text from the canon, this Johannine text legitimates tolerance of diversity rather than the confessional or structural unity of the church.


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