Journal: Conspectus
Volume: CONSPECTUS 32:1 (Oct 2021)
Article: Is Jesus John’s Mouthpiece? Reconsidering Johannine Idiom
Author: Lydia McGrew

Conspectus 32:1 (October 2021) p. 42

Is Jesus John’s Mouthpiece? Reconsidering Johannine Idiom

Lydia McGrew

Independent

About The Author

Dr. Lydia McGrew is a widely published analytic philosopher and the author of Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, and The Eye of the Beholder: The Gospel of John as Historical Reportage. [email protected]

This article: https://www.sats.ac.za/is-jesus-johns-mouthpiece-idiom

Abstract

Scholars commonly move from the premise that Jesus in the Fourth Gospel speaks in Johannine idiom to the conclusion that the evangelist elaborated Jesus’s teachings. We can evaluate this claim better if we distinguish paraphrase from elaboration, restricting the former concept to reports that would be recognizable both in content and in historical context. We should further distinguish different things that could be meant by the phrase “Johannine idiom.” When we do both of these, we can see the weakness of the argument from idiom to elaboration. There is also positive evidence supporting the counterclaim that John was scrupulous in recording the teachings of the historical Jesus. Two lines of such evidence come from the narrator’s explanatory “asides” and from unexplained allusions in Jesus’s teaching in the Gospel of John.

Keywords

Johannine idiom, historical Jesus, paraphrase, Fourth Gospel, Johannine discourses, Gospel historicity

1. Scholarly Consensus: John Elaborates Jesus’s Teaching

Many Johannine scholars are convinced that John elaborates Jesus’s teachings at least somewhat, putting these elaborations into Jesus’s mouth.1 Scholars also

Conspectus 32:1 (October 2021) p. 43

tend to take it for granted that he does so more than the Synoptic evangelists. Even those who are not invested in a developmental thesis concerning Johannine Christology are inclined to assume Johannine elaboration, though sometimes not specifying where or how extensively it occurs. Here, for example, is George Eldon Ladd:

It would be fair to say that John and the Synoptics are today seen as being closer together than earlier in the twentieth century. John is regarded as deserving at least some respect as a historical source; the Synoptics are seen as theological documents that also involve deliberate interpretation of the tradition. Nevertheless, it remains true that the Fourth Evangelist is quite unique in the degree of freedom he has taken in retelling the story of Jesus. He thus repeatedly makes ex...