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Authors: Amy-Jill Levine
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evidence exists to determine whether the Fourth Gospel had access to a complete text of one or more of the Synoptics. For this reason, it is not possible to date John on the basis of a literary dependence upon one or more other canonical Gospels.
Dating the Gospel based on its theology is equally problematic. A late first-century or early second-century dating has been suggested on the basis of the Gospel’s high Christology, which focuses primarily on Jesus’ role as the Son of God rather than on his human aspect. Earlier examples of exalted views of Jesus, such as Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2.6–11), make this a less useful criterion for determining the Gospel’s date.
Nor are the historical circumstances in which the Gospel has been written of much assistance. No external evidence exists for the historical first audience of the Gospel, but on the basis of internal evidence it has been argued that the Gospel was written within and for a particular group of Christ-believers, often referred to in scholarly literature as the Johannine community. The particular circumstances that led to the final version of the Gospel are often reconstructed from three references to expulsion from the synagogue on account of confessing Jesus to be the messiah (9.22; 12.42; 16.2). Because expulsion on these grounds would be anachronistic to the time of Jesus, it is often argued that these passages refer to an exclusion of Jewish believers in Christ from the synagogue, either in John’s community or more broadly. Exclusion from the synagogue, it is argued, would have been tantamount to complete and forcible removal from the Jewish community, with numerous social and economic consequences. Proponents of this interpretation argue that the traumatic experience of expulsion was written into the community’s story of Jesus and suggest that experience can be reconstructed by reading the Gospel on two levels: as a story of Jesus set in the first third of the first century CE that simultaneously recounts a story of the Johannine community set in the last decade or two of the first century. External corroboration for this hypothesis has been sought in the liturgical curse on the heretics, “Birchat ha-minim,” euphemistically called a Blessing on the Heretics, that was added to the Eighteen Benedictions that constitute the central prayers of the Jewish liturgy. The theory is that at some point in the late first century, Jewish authorities added this curse to the daily liturgy as a way of flushing undesirables, including Jewish Christ-confessors, out of the worship service and thereby from the community as a whole. If this theory is correct, it would provide a basis for dating the Gospel to the late first century, after 85 CE.
This construction is flawed on both literary and historical grounds. From a literary-critical point of view, there is no evidence that the Gospel in fact encodes the history and experience of the community in its story of Jesus. With the exception of the expulsion passages, no other parts of the Gospel lend themselves easily to this two-level reading. The well-documented theological diversity within first-century Judaism, as evidenced by the widely differing views of the Pharisees and Sadducees on fundamental matters such as the authority of oral tradition and the belief in bodily resurrection and the distinctive views expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, makes it unlikely that Jews would have been excluded from the synagogue for believing Jesus to be the Messiah. Indeed, in the period of 132–135 similar claims were apparently made for Simeon Bar Kosiba to be a messiah, by the prominent Rabbi Akiva, whose status and stature within early rabbinic Judaism did not suffer as a result. Finally, the manuscript evidence for Birchat ha-minim as a whole does not support the view that the curse would have been in existence at this time in a form that could have served to exclude Jewish Christ-confessors from the synagogue.
Dating the Gospel based on its theology is equally problematic. A late first-century or early second-century dating has been suggested on the basis of the Gospel’s high Christology, which focuses primarily on Jesus’ role as the Son of God rather than on his human aspect. Earlier examples of exalted views of Jesus, such as Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2.6–11), make this a less useful criterion for determining the Gospel’s date.
Nor are the historical circumstances in which the Gospel has been written of much assistance. No external evidence exists for the historical first audience of the Gospel, but on the basis of internal evidence it has been argued that the Gospel was written within and for a particular group of Christ-believers, often referred to in scholarly literature as the Johannine community. The particular circumstances that led to the final version of the Gospel are often reconstructed from three references to expulsion from the synagogue on account of confessing Jesus to be the messiah (9.22; 12.42; 16.2). Because expulsion on these grounds would be anachronistic to the time of Jesus, it is often argued that these passages refer to an exclusion of Jewish believers in Christ from the synagogue, either in John’s community or more broadly. Exclusion from the synagogue, it is argued, would have been tantamount to complete and forcible removal from the Jewish community, with numerous social and economic consequences. Proponents of this interpretation argue that the traumatic experience of expulsion was written into the community’s story of Jesus and suggest that experience can be reconstructed by reading the Gospel on two levels: as a story of Jesus set in the first third of the first century CE that simultaneously recounts a story of the Johannine community set in the last decade or two of the first century. External corroboration for this hypothesis has been sought in the liturgical curse on the heretics, “Birchat ha-minim,” euphemistically called a Blessing on the Heretics, that was added to the Eighteen Benedictions that constitute the central prayers of the Jewish liturgy. The theory is that at some point in the late first century, Jewish authorities added this curse to the daily liturgy as a way of flushing undesirables, including Jewish Christ-confessors, out of the worship service and thereby from the community as a whole. If this theory is correct, it would provide a basis for dating the Gospel to the late first century, after 85 CE.
This construction is flawed on both literary and historical grounds. From a literary-critical point of view, there is no evidence that the Gospel in fact encodes the history and experience of the community in its story of Jesus. With the exception of the expulsion passages, no other parts of the Gospel lend themselves easily to this two-level reading. The well-documented theological diversity within first-century Judaism, as evidenced by the widely differing views of the Pharisees and Sadducees on fundamental matters such as the authority of oral tradition and the belief in bodily resurrection and the distinctive views expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, makes it unlikely that Jews would have been excluded from the synagogue for believing Jesus to be the Messiah. Indeed, in the period of 132–135 similar claims were apparently made for Simeon Bar Kosiba to be a messiah, by the prominent Rabbi Akiva, whose status and stature within early rabbinic Judaism did not suffer as a result. Finally, the manuscript evidence for Birchat ha-minim as a whole does not support the view that the curse would have been in existence at this time in a form that could have served to exclude Jewish Christ-confessors from the synagogue.
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