John, Jesus and the Renewal of Israel
Overview
This innovative study is the first to consider the Gospel of John as story in the ancient media context of oral communication and oral performance. Richard Horsley and Tom Thatcher creatively combine the fields of Jesus studies and ancient media studies in their analysis. Taking the main conflict evident in John’s story of Jesus as the key to its plot, they discern how this Gospel portrays Jesus engaged in a concrete program of renewal and resistance.
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- Considers the Gospel of John in the ancient media context
- Discusses Jesus’ engagement in a concrete program of renewal and resistance
- Combines the fields of Jesus studies and ancient media studies
- Division in Roman Palestine
- Regional Histories, Shared Tradition, and the Renewal of Israel
- Taking the Gospels Whole
- Hearing the Whole Story
- John’s Story of Jesus
- Verisimilitude vs. Verification
- John’s Jesus and the Renewal of Israel
- The Prophet/Messiah and the Rulers of Israel
Top Highlights
“Thus in Josephus’s histories, while ‘the Judeans’ refers generally to those who live in Judea (as distinguished from ‘the Samaritans’ and ‘the Galileans’), the term often refers more particularly to the high priestly rulers of the Judeans in Jerusalem at the head of the temple-state.” (Page 41)
“We will instead treat the Gospel as a coherent narrative derived from a formative community memory that includes differing strands that have been brought together.” (Page 4)
“Most important, and most distinguishing this line of research from prior study, was the basic recognition that the Gospels are stories, sustained connected narratives with overarching themes and purposes, not just collections of sayings, episodes, and Christological statements.” (Page 5)
“Two key features of Clement’s theory remain foundational to most study of the Gospel of John today. First, John wrote last, and his book therefore represents a more advanced stage of theological reflection than do the Synoptics. Second, as a result of this advanced theological reflection, John’s story promotes a more sophisticated or ‘higher’ Christology than the Synoptics, ‘higher’ meaning that John’s outlook is ‘less Jewish’ than what we see elsewhere in the New Testament and more in line with Hellenistic philosophical ideas that move well beyond what Jesus himself would have articulated.” (Page 3)
“In retrospect, what appeared to be a ‘great divide’ between orality and literacy turned out to be mainly between the print-culture in which Western scholarship and modern culture more generally are deeply embedded and the oral communications that dominated most historical societies. In antiquity, there would have been no sharp divide between the literate, for whom communication was still predominantly oral, and the non-literate, who knew of the existence of writing even though they could not read.” (Page 76)
Recent scholarship on John’s Gospel has opened fresh perspectives on the book’s historical context and its significance for the study of the historical Jesus. This welcome volume by Richard Horsley and Tom Thatcher invites readers to consider the Gospel in light of the socially complex world of Roman Palestine. Following an interdisciplinary approach, they engage not only the best recent literary and historical work on John but also major developments in the field of media studies. The result is a contribution that will engage the attention of scholars and students alike.
—Craig R. Koester, professor and Asher O. and Carrie Nasby Chair of New Testament, Luther Seminary
Two skilled scholars here provide a brilliant and creative synthesis of literary and social-historical-political approaches. Richard Horsley and Tom Thatcher offer fresh ideas in an area of scholarship that has sometimes become stagnant . . . Their holistic approach to the Fourth Gospel is innovative, well-informed, and informative.
—Craig S. Keener, professor of New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary
Challenging an established scholarly history of isolating sayings from Gospel narratives and dissecting texts into sources, Horsley and Thatcher exhibit an admirable aptitude for synthesis. Their approach combines narrative criticism, text criticism, media studies, performance criticism, and a sociology of power relations into a unified theory. Thoughtfully perceptive and genuinely innovative, this timely book may well change the way we think about the Gospels as historical narratives, the feasibility of the Jesus quest, and the conventional divide between the Gospel of John and the Synoptics.
—Werner H. Kelber, Isla Carroll Turner and Percy E. Turner Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Rice University
- Title: John, Jesus, and the Renewal of Israel
- Authors: Tom Thatcher, Richard A. Horsley
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2013
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Pages: 207
- Era: era:Contemporary
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible. N.T. John › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Jews › History--168 B.C.-135 A.D
- ISBNs: 9780802868725, 080286872X
- Resource ID: LLS:JHNJSSRNWLSRL
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:52:56Z
Richard Horsley is distinguished professor emeritus of liberal arts and the study of religion at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Among his many previous books are Jesus and Empire and Jesus and the Powers.
Tom Thatcher is professor of biblical studies at Cincinnati Christian University and a founder of the John, Jesus, and history group in the Society of Biblical Literature. His other books include Jesus the Riddler: The Power of Ambiguity in the Gospels and Why John Wrote a Gospel: Jesus—Memory—History.