The Gospel of John and its original Readers: A new approach

The Gospel of John is part of the New Testament. Therefore, it is one of the core texts of Christianty. One of the tantalizing questions, however, is for whom this Gospel was originally written. Or, to phrase it differently: What the original community was that sets the background of this Gospel. The evidence in the Gospel seems to be contradictory. Therefore, as well a Jewish community as a Hellenistic environment have been proposed as possible solutions. Scholars only agree that it was written outside of the Holy Land, one possible location of origin might be Ephesus or Asia Minor. It is obvious that this question is of high importance. This is not only true from the perspective of a historian, but also from the perspective of the theologian. In case of a convincing answer the historian might be able to describe the earliest history of Christianity more accurately. This will deepen our insight into the early years of a religion which has had a huge influence on world history. The knowledge of its origins is, however, still missing many details. And the theologian will be able to better understand the Gospel itself: The presupposition of the original audience inevitably influences the interpretation and might even influence the translation of the text. Right now, it seems that all available arguments have been exchanged and no conclusion has been reached. Therefore, one could argue that the discussion is at a standstill. The proposed research project aims to use a linguistic technique (the collocation analysis of the Greek version of the Gospel of John) and to combine it with textual criticism. The evidence for textual criticism will be taken from manuscripts in Greek as well as the Latin and the Coptic translation of this Gospel. These early translations of the New Testament - and therefore also for the Gospel John - can reflect manuscript tradition which might give witness to a very early stage of the Greek text. The translations, however, provide also very important evidence as to what was presupposed in the Greek text of this Gospel. And it is only due to new electronic tools that the full evidence of the manuscripts is at the disposal of the researcher. At the same time these early translations give important evidence as to what might be the original setting in which the Gospel of John was written. As discussed in the application the translations and their textual variations in combination with the collocation analysis of the Greek text will give additional data which have not yet been used in the discussion. Therefore, it is obvious that the proposed project will add new - and maybe even decisive - information to an important debate.

Common opinion holds that the Gospel of John is the youngest of the four canonical Gospels. This is often connected to the hypothesis that the Gospel of John gives evidence of a distance to Jewish thought and practice. It seems that this opinion finds support in the way the text is interpreted. It might well be that the presupposition of a distance between the Gospel and Jewish thought supports an interpretation which neglects those instances where intimate knowledge of Jewish customs and the like can be found. The project used analytical tools designed to highlight areas of interest, combining methods from the study of literature and translational research. It was possible to arrive at new perspectives. One area of interest was the pericopa of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:442). This text is traditionally interpreted that it shows that Johannine Christianity is opening for non-Jewish believers. Thus, the Samaritan woman is often declared to be semi- pagan. The surprising result of the philological and literary analysis was that there are clear statements concerning the Samaritans embedded into the narrative of the text. These statements presuppose clearly intimate knowledge of Jewish identity and the relationship between Jews and Samaritans. These statements suggest a different interpretation of the passage. Within the narrative the Samaritan woman claims to be a daughter of Israel by calling Joseph her father to whom Jacob (who is also called Israel) has given the well. Thus, The claim is, that she is a daughter of Joseph who is son of Jacob, thereby assigning herself to the people of Israel claiming to be a member of the House of Joseph. Since the Samaritans combining the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh are members of the House of Joseph this is a very appropriate self-description of the Samaritan woman. These are quite detailed data concerning the Samaritans which are embedded in the narrative of an encounter between Jesus and the nameless woman. Taking these data into consideration it does not seem appropriate to see a person representing two tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Manasseh) as a representative of all those who do not belong to Israel. Further, the monotheism of the Samaritans is quite different from any form of syncretism: They venerate exclusively one God the God revealed in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Further results were possible in the area of the translation of Johns Gospel. It was possible to suggest more precise translations for selected verses; these improved translations have influence on the interpretation of the text. The use of new methods made it possible to obtain new results in an area (the Gospel of John) which has seen a lot of research.