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Gospel better, we need to define the genre of the Gospels. I define the Gospels as a unique genre, which though similar to types of ancient literature which quickened, and grew in the first century owing to cultural mixture, yet it displays unique characteristics of its own.175 In other words, just as the Gospels display a mixing of genres176 (narrative, parables, proverbs, poetry, biography, teaching, and apocalyptic) and still function overall as Gospels (“like and yet not like”),177 the Gospel of John functions as unique literature and as a postcolonial text.178 While introducing the flexibility and various literary types of Hellenistic biography which continued to change and develop, Aune contends,

It is methodologically incorrect to try to link the Gospels rigidly only with that specific type of ancient biography. . . . The canonical Gospels then constitute a subtype of Hellenistic biography, one that exhibits the syncretistic insertion of a Judaeo-Christian message in a Hellenistic envelope.179

Aune concludes that the Gospels are on a par with the other forms of early Christian literature, which “reflect the complexities of the syncretistic world within which they arose.”180 I can endorse this description, but would prefer to substitute “colonial” for “syncretistic.” What we see in the evangelist’s adaptation of ancient biographical genres is a classic example of postcolonial “mimicry,” producing something that is “like and yet not like” other ancient genres.

A simple list of the possible genres of the Gospels suggested by modern scholars shows the potential for postcolonial mimicry in the Gospel of John. There is a variety of possible categories of scholarly views on the definition of the genre of the Gospels: 1) not a unique genre; 2) a unique literary type (kerygma, replacement for the Torah; an unliterary form of folk literature); 3) Hellenistic romance or popular fiction; 4) OT biographical narratives; 5) Jewish novel; 6) Greek comedy or tragedy; 7) Hellenistic biography (Bios); 8) a pool of genres and narrative devices; 9) an ancient revelatory biography.181 It is justifiable to say that scholars have been able to find partly the generic features of various ancient genres in the Gospel, but there is no exact fit with ancient genres and no consensus among scholars. This suggests that we should regard the Gospel as a hybridized text. The Gospel contains hybridized features of a variety of cultures in the Roman colonial world (e.g., the employment of variety of christological titles). The Fourth Gospel is a kind of postcolonial literature, not only as a mixture of a variety of culture and literature including mixing genres, and as a hybridized product of the multicultural society, but also as a unique writing about the life and death of Jesus. That is, there is no other text that describes the life of Jesus in more detail than the Gospels. It is important to acknowledge the uniqueness and rarity of the gospels concerning the life of Jesus.182 In this respect, therefore, I contend that in terms not only of genre but also of content, the Johannine Gospel is a product of hybridentity in a multicultural society.

      In summary, the concept of hybridentity as a key concept of a postcolonial theory may be employed not only to denote the complication of the presence and absence of the colonial areas (Jewish society), but also to feature the discourse of power and resistance, of rejection and acceptance, with and against the dominance of the Imperial Roman culture.

      Hybridization and Identity

One of the visions of postcolonialism is the pursuit of one world, in which all people have an equal right to benefits, material as well as cultural.183 To accomplish this postcolonial vision, to begin with, it is necessary to recognize individual, ethnic, and especially national identities, because self-identity is the starting point of the accomplishment of postcolonial visions.184 Generally speaking, postcolonialism draws and pays attention to problems of identity in relation to broader national histories and futures,185 because of this postcolonial vision.186 Therefore, it is said that we never reach one ideal world without any objective confrontation with colonial histories as well as postcolonial realities in the society.187 To reach one world by overcoming colonial histories, problems of identity should be pointed out.

In this respect, identity problems arising in the (post) colonial society must be complicated, because there exist delicate, complex, and not easily explained matters between the colonizer and the colonized.188 There must exist simultaneously “differences and opposition” and “similarity and mutual transactions” between the colonizer and the colonized. Attempts to identify individuals, groups, or a whole society in the (post) colonial environment often result in discovering in them different identities, which the colonized would never expect as their identities.

      Hybridentity (= Hybrid Identity)

      Hybridentity is a useful term which is employed to explain the intricate relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and ambivalent conditions in colonial societies. Most postcolonial writing, which has concerned itself with cultural exchange as a mutual process in the colonial and postcolonial societies, emphasizes the strength of the hybridized nature of postcolonial culture.

[Most postcolonial writing] lays emphasis on the survival even under the most potent oppression of the distinctive aspects of the culture of the oppressed, and shows how these become an integral part of the new formations which arise from the clash of cultures characteristic of imperialism. Finally, it emphasizes how hybridentity and the power it releases may well be seen to be the characteristic feature and contribution of the post-colonial, allowing a means of evading the replication of the binary categories of the past and developing new anti-monolithic models of cultural exchange and growth.189

      Because the mutual transactions and influences generate hybridentity in both societies, the notion of in-between-ness or ambivalence in the concept of hybridentity gives some space for achievement of the postcolonial vision: globalization, one ideal world, or international welfare.

Some postcolonial critics’ works, however, tried/trended to “downplay the bitter tension and the clash between colonizer and colonized and therefore misrepresent the dynamics of anti-colonial struggle.”190 Although hybridentity, because of cultural transactions, occurred mutually in (post)colonial societies, it does not mean an equal-value-transaction among the cultures. Accordingly, when one group among culturally discrete groups has dominated the others and when this cultural domination of one group is linked with political and economic profits, it has produced huge suffering in those colonial societies; its side effects have been felt unceasingly in those colonial and postcolonial societies.

In addition, when the culture in the colonial society is manipulated by the dominant culture that influences or causes mutations in every area of the society, it breeds ambivalent and uncertain conditions, blurred cultural boundaries both inside and out, as well as an otherness within the society.191 Ultimately, the society experiences an alteration, a different society from that of its master but similar to its master’s. In the process of colonization, therefore, a problem of colonial identity arises between the colonizer and the colonized.

      In many cases, the conflict and competition is generated radically and intensely in colonial resistance against the dominant

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