LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

to the colonized. Some of the Jews accepted the new ethics of the Empire and tried to enjoy gradually its benefits. For their own sakes, they collaborated with the Empire in the colonial society. They gained high positions and became rulers for the colonizer. As a result, they were both the colonized under the power of the Empire, and the colonizer as rulers of the colonial society.

While dominant power colonizes in the name of civilization, colonization results in de-civilization, brutal oppression and the degradation of the colonizer. Moreover, it reveals the buried instincts of the colonizer of covetousness, violence, race hatred and moral relativism.215 In the process of hybridentity, “internal” colonists can absorb these negative features. In the Gospel of John, these negative features of colonization can be found in the character of the Jewish leaders. They justify the use of violence to maintain their positions. Their covetousness drives them into de-civilization. They seek to kill Jesus without any hesitation and to justify their actions; they use their own judicial process as well as that of the Romans. Moreover, they put pressure on the Roman governor, Pilate, to sentence Jesus to death. They ask for the crucifixion of Jesus instead of releasing him. An example of their moral relativism is that they want to keep the Passover and the Sabbath according to the Law (19:31), but they are willing to commit the murder of an innocent man.216 The Jewish leaders in the Gospel act like the Romans who cruelly destroy their enemies by eliminating their opponent, Jesus. Their character is typical of collaborators who cooperate with the colonial power but who suppress the colonized in the colonial society.

      Summary of the Chapter

      In this chapter, I first discussed the textual features of the Gospel of John in relation to its purposes and its readership. I pointed out that as a postcolonial text the Fourth Gospel was written in a multicultural and hybridized society, and that it is highly possible that the purpose of the composition of this Gospel was for a variety of readers who were from multi cultural environments. Then, I described the two pillars of the background of the kingship of Jesus in the Johannine Gospel: Jewish traditions and Graeco-Roman traditions. Through a survey of the two major backgrounds to the Gospel, I clarified that the kingship of the Johannine Jesus is included in the use of various christological terms. The meanings of these titles could be understood by a variety of readers from varied backgrounds could understand in common when they read the Gospel. I also pointed out the importance of the combination of the two traditions in order to understand the kingship motif of Jesus in this Gospel. In the spiral of the mixture of the meaning of the christological titles from the two backgrounds, I demonstrated a common meaning of the terms, namely the kingship of Jesus. In particular, I have argued that the Gospel as a hybridized product of this multicultural society accommodates various multicultural aspects. This Gospel was written for multicultural readers in order to present the Johannine Jesus as king, to lead them to believe in him as the true king whom they would follow for eternity and to challenge them to live according to the ruling ideology of the Johannine new world. Therefore, the Johannine Gospel encourages its readers and seeks to consolidate their faith in Jesus, and challenges them to live/spread out the Johannine ideology of the new world in/to the world.

      Secondly, I researched the methodology of this book, postcolonialism. Because the Johannine world was under colonial power, the identity of the Johannine Jesus as decolonizer could be newly identified in colonialism. Therefore, a very different manner of reading of the Gospel in relation to the Jewish background or in relation to the Graeco-Roman world is not necessary. I also argued that the Johannine Jesus is regarded as the solution to the conflicts among the various groups, when we read the Gospel as a postcolonial text. In order to attempt a postcolonial reading of the Gospel, particularly to identify the kingship motif in the Johannine Jesus, I surveyed 1) differences and similarities between the center and the margins (mimicry), 2) the subtle relationship between the center and the margins (ambivalence), 3) hybridentity and diaspora in postcolonialism, as major theoretical tools of postcolonialism. While I defined the Gospel as a discourse of resistance and emancipation, I pointed out the complex and subtle relationship between the center and the margins in the Gospel.

      Finally, I argued that hybridentity and diaspora are in a sense unavoidable in a colonial society. Thus, it is necessary to admit that a postcolonial society is a hybridized and diasporic society. The postcolonial hope, therefore, is to make a new utopian society through mutual transactions of the center and the margin, thus overcoming institutionalized violence and suffering. The Johannine new world pursued in the Gospel is like this: entry into the new hybrid society, which overcomes institutionalized violence and sufferings means entering the new world of peace, forgiveness, service, freedom, and love. The postcolonial hope is linked to the Johannine Utopia where Jesus as the universal king reigns for all the people regardless of whether their origins were the center or the margin.

44. For more than one purpose and one potential audience, see Tanzer, “Salvation Is for the Jews,” 285–300, esp. 285–86.

45. Brown gives a clear definition of the terms, polemic, apologetic, and missionary: “The most virulent tract of one group of Christians against others usually wants to show how their position is wrong (apologetic), how they horrendously distort Jesus’ message (polemic), and how they can be brought to the truth represented by the writer of the tract (missionary)” (Brown, Introduction, 152).

46. In this Gospel, God the Father is presented as the one who sent Jesus the Son (5:23, 36, 37; 6:44, 57; 8:18; 12:49; 20:21), and Jesus as the one sent (3:34; 5:38; 6:29; 17:3), and as the one who has come into the world (5:43; 12:46; 16:28; 18:37; cf. 7:28; 8:42; see also 1:9, 11; cf. 1:5, 10; 1:15, 27, 30; 3:31; 3:2; 11:27; 7:27, 31, 41, 42; 6:14; 12:13, 15; 4:25–26). Particularly, although the term “mission” is not used in the Gospel, this motif using different terms, various forms of πέμπειν (5:37; 6:44; 7:28; 8:16, 26, 29; 12:49; 5:23; 7:33; 12:44, 45; 13:20; 15:21; 16:5; 5:24; 4:34; 5:30; 6:38, 39; 7:16; 9:4; 14:23) and ἀποστέλλειν (5:36; 20:21; 11:42; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25; 3:17, 34; 5:38; 6:29, 57; 7:29; 8:42; 10:36), is insistently repeated in the text.

47. See Sheppard, “Gospel of John,” 2; Okure, Johannine Approach, 1–3.

48. Okure, Johannine Approach, 3.

49. Segovia, “Final Farewell of Jesus,” 178–79.

50. Nissen, “Community and Ethics,” 194–95.

51. Perkins, Love Commands, 106.

52. On the Gospel of John as a missionary document for Diaspora Jews, see Smith, Jesus in the Gospel; van Unnik, “Purpose of the Fourth Gospel,” 410; Robinson, “Destination and Purpose,” 117–31; Nicol, Semeia, 146; Moule, Birth, 136–37; Carson, “Purpose,” 639–51.

53. For example, Philip and Nicodemus are Greek names, while Simon and Nathanael are Jewish names in the Gospel of John. This employment of the Jewish and Greek names implies that this Gospel “seems best . . . to posit a mixed audience for the immediate group addressed, bearing in mind the undeniably cosmic dimensions and setting of the Gospel” (Okure, Johannine Approach, 280–81).

54. See Esler, Community and Gospel, 220. Esler sees that religious and socioeconomic positions are important to understand the identification of the community.

Скачать книгу