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use either tense to refer to both coming to faith and continuing in the faith.”90 On the one hand, John might write the Gospel to believers in order to consolidate their faith in the time of persecution and conflict, and in order to challenge them to evangelize the world, which was negative toward Jesus and his followers. On the other hand, to the non-believers, at least, it could be presented as an evangelistic document, which challenges them to have faith in the Johannine Jesus. Consequently, I argue that the Gospel functions as a multipurpose document.

If these two variant readings could be acceptable, in addition, how did those readers in the first century, “you” in John 20:31, understand Jesus? Lincoln sees that “you” of 20:31 “can be seen as embracing a wide variety of implied readers” in terms of different levels of understanding and knowledge of the Jesus story, of Hebrew or Aramaic terms, of Jewish customs, and of Scriptures and Synoptics.91 Lincoln’s comment exactly explains the reason why among many other titles and concepts employed to designate Jesus in the Gospel, John emphasizes Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God at the end of the Gospel to present clearly the purpose of its composition. In other words, the Johannine kingship motif is central to John’s purpose of introducing Jesus as king to first-century readers in a multicultural society.

      Therefore, all the questions about the purpose of the Gospel can be explained in relation to the kingship of Jesus, because Jesus is described in terms, which indicate his kingship in the Gospel. Furthermore, the Johannine Jesus has already predicted in the Gospel that his followers will find themselves in situations where they will be treated harshly by the world (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2). By adapting many christological titles and using them distinctively in the text, the Gospel on the one hand is simply giving maximum emphasis to the portrait of Jesus as king and its impact on its readers to encourage their faith. On the other hand, through representing Jesus as king and his kingly function, the Gospel challenges the readers to evangelize the world.

      Therefore, the purposes of the Gospel could be summarised thus: The Johannine Gospel was written with multi-purposes for multi-recipients. It was written for the insiders of the community which consisted of people of many different backgrounds, in order to consolidate their faith in Jesus as king and to challenge them to live out that faith for the new world; simultaneously it was written for the outsiders of a multicultural society in order to lead them to believe in Jesus as king.

      Backgrounds of the Gospel of John and Kingship

      In the previous section, I discussed the different purposes of the composition of the Gospel for the multicultural readers in the Johannine community in order to explain the necessity of the identity of Jesus as king, because the kingship of Jesus gives answers to their various needs. In this section, I will survey the kingship of the Johannine Jesus in terms of multicultural backgrounds: Jewish and Graeco-Roman.

      Two Pillars of the Background of the Gospel of John and the Kingship Motif

My argument is that the kingship of Jesus functions as one of the crucial characteristics of Johannine Christology, reflecting its multicultural features. In order to argue this, first, I have to say that specific terms, which conveyed royal concepts originating from the various cultures, are employed in the Gospel to designate the identity of Jesus as king. MacRae argues that many of the most striking elements of Johannine symbolism and literary technique are simply not paralleled in Jewish literature but in other more unmistakably Hellenistic types, both Jewish and non-Jewish.92 Smith also contends that although the origin of Johannine Christianity is to be understood as processes centering on Judaism and Jewish Christianity, the motifs in the Johannine literature go beyond Judaism and reflect a later stage in the development of the Johannine community.93 McGrath also concludes that “the paradox of Johannine Christology is an aspect of John’s development of traditions he inherited, utilizing motifs current in his day and age.”94 Horbury further argues that there was a strong relationship between Christianity and Judaism, emphasizing the significance of messianic hope within the Scripture and Jewish traditions in the Second Temple period.95 In addition, he argues that there was a close resemblance to contemporary Gentile cults of heroes, sovereigns, and divinities so that the cult of Christ was essentially a “Gentilized manifestation of Christianity.”96

It is not easy, therefore, to define the meaning of the christological terms employed in the Gospel to depict the Johannine Jesus without prior understanding of the terms in relation to the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman,97 or other cultural backgrounds.98 The meanings of the terms have been originated, developed, and changed in various different contexts through the hybridization of various cultures.99 It is important to know, however, that even though the terms in the different contexts could convey different nuances of meanings, there must be common meanings, which penetrate the terms in general.100

For example, the term “the Christ” is closely related to the kingship of Jesus in the Gospel, although it could be understood as having different meanings in different contexts.101 To begin with, the meaning of “the Christ,” namely “the Messiah” in Hebrew, might be defined slightly differently in Jewish society from that of other societies. In Jewish society after the Exile the political features of the term had been emphasized more and more. Under the oppression of foreign powers, the Jews had anticipated a Messiah as the descendant of King David, who would emancipate them from oppressive foreign powers.102 The concept of the Messiah had emphasized the kingly messiah of the Jews as a savior in Jewish society. In the Gospel of John, however, the term “the Christ” is not only an indicator of the Jewish messianic king, but also when the term is applied to Jesus it is used to describe Jesus as the universal king who could unite all the differences of the colonial world into one harmonious whole.103 The Johannine Jesus, therefore, rejects his earthly kingship but affirms his higher kingship in front of Pilate (18:33–38), and also that people such as John the Baptist (chapter 1), Andrew and Philip (1:41), the Samaritan woman (4:29), the crowds (chapter 7), and Martha (11:27) who meet Jesus and confess him as the Christ are not only the Jews in this Gospel. The more important thing is that they are mainly people on the margins of society who cannot go into the center of the colonial environment. It is important, therefore, to understand the kingship of the Johannine Jesus in a multicultural and hybridized society, rather than simply according to ethnic or religious backgrounds. In the Graeco-Roman world, on the other hand, the concept of the Christ had no special religious significance prior to the influence of ancient Jewish and Christian usage.104 To understand the proper meaning of the Christ in the Gospel of John, therefore, knowledge about the Jewish term “the Messiah” is needed.

In the Graeco-Roman background, however, “the Savior of the World” was used to designate kings and generals, including Roman emperors, who were victors in ancient wars.105 The term “the Savior of the World” (4:42), which is employed to confess the identity of the Johannine Jesus from the lips of the Samaritans,106 is closely linked to the term “the Messiah” in the context (4:29, 42). If this is accepted, therefore, those terms which point to the identity of the Johannine Jesus as king could be understood in relation to kingship.

      In

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