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The Destination and Purpose of St John's Gospel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

J. A. T. Robinson
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Extract

For whom and for what, to what audience and to what purpose, were the four Gospels written? This is one of the most elementary questions of New Testament study, and one might think that by now the answers could be given with some degree of certainty and consent. And of the first three Gospels I think this is broadly true. Naturally there will always be room for fresh lines of development and approach, but they are unlikely to modify very radically the conclusions which can be found set out in any text-book. If one had to reduce these conclusions to their barest summary, one could say, without immediate fear of contradiction, that St Matthew's Gospel was evidently written for a Jewish-Christian community, and that its overall purpose was broadly speaking catechetical; that St Mark's Gospel was composed for a predominantly Gentile community and that its primary purpose was kerygmatic, setting out, for the use of the Church, a summary of its proclamation; and that St Luke's Gospel, as he himself indicates, was again addressed, though more generally, to the Graeco-Roman world, and that its purpose was instructional, with the defence and confirmation of the Gospel as a dominant motif.

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Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , January 1960 , pp. 117 - 131
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

1 Cf., more fully, Moule, C. F. D., ‘The Intention of the Evangelists’, New Testament Essays, ed. Higgins, A. J. B. (Manchester, 1959), pp. 165–79.Google Scholar

2 It has even been doubted recently whether it was consciously addressed to any audience. Cf. C. Barrett, K., The Gospel According to St John (London, 1955), p. 115: ‘It is easy, when we read the Gospel, to believe that John, though doubtless aware of the necessity of strengthening Christians and converting the heathen, wrote primarily to satisfy himself. His gospel must be written: it was no concern of his whether it was also read.’Google Scholar

1 Studia Evangelica, ed. Aland, K., etc. (Berlin, 1959), pp. 382–411.Google Scholar

2 Οι έθνικοί occurs once in III John 7, but in its regular Jewish sense of ‘the heathen’. In this passage, indeed, as in Matt. xviii. 17, the έθνικοί are specifically contrasted with the έκκλησία: they are not contemplated as part of the Church.

3 So Knox, J., Criticism and Faith (New York, 1952), pp. 75–7.Google Scholar

4 Biblical Essays (London, 1893), p. 135Google Scholar

1 The words μ⋯ εﺍς τ⋯ν Δıασπορ⋯ν τ⋯ν ‘Ελλ⋯νων μ⋯λλεı ποηεν⋯εσθαı καı δıδ⋯σκεıν τοὺς Ελλρνας are unfortunately ambiguous. ‘The Diaspora of the Greeks’ could mean ‘the Greek-speaking Diaspora’ (i.e. Jews) and ‘the Greeks’ be an abbreviated way of referring to the same group. Or it could mean ‘the Diaspora resident among the Greeks’, in which case ‘the Greeks’ would be Gentiles. H. Windisch comes down in favour of the latter in Kittel, T. W. N. T. (art. Ελλην), ii, 506. But K. L. Schmidt, ibid. (art. διασπορά), 11, 102, insists on leaving both possibilities open (cf. H. J. Cadbury in The Beginnings of Christianity, v, 72 f.). The decision between them can in fact only be made in the light of the Johannine context as a whole. As there is no other reference in the Gospel or the Epistles to a Gentile mission, the probability would seem to be heavily in favour of the first interpretation.

1 For he too provides manna from heaven and water from the rock.

2 For a fuller discussion of this neglected Johannine category, see van Unnik, op. cit. pp. 389–405.

3 The Fourth Gospel, its Purpose and Theology (Edinburgh, 1920), p. 6.Google Scholar

1 In saying this I must dissent from the very interesting suggestions made by Dodd, C. H. in his article ‘A l'arrière-plan d'un dialogue Johannique’, Revue d' Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 1 (1957), 5–17. Dodd would see the background of John viii. 35–58 in the Jewish-Christian controversy of the early Church, and he points out a number of parallels with the Epistle to the Galatians. But in the Judaizing controversy the crucial question was ‘Who is the true Christian?’ (Need he observe the whole law to qualify?). In the Johannine controversy the question is rather ‘Who is the true Jew?’ (Is sonship of Abraham automatic by race?) This latter is the question posed also by John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 7–10; Luke iii. 7–9) in a purely Jewish context; and the Pauline parallels to John would appear rather to be Rom. ii. 17–29 (‘Who is the true Jew?’) and iv. 9–22 (‘Who is the true son of Abraham?’), where the Apostle is addressing himself to the Jews rather than to Judaizers. For the Judaizer the underlying question is ‘What does it involve for the Gentile to become a Christian?’ For John it is always: ‘What does it involve for the Jew?’ And his answer is: ‘Birth, not from Abraham (nor anything “of the earth”), but from above.’ There is a close parallel between ch. viii and ch. iii. Both recount the approach of Jews who believed in some way that Jesus came from God and that God was with him (cf. viii. 29 f. with iii. 2); and viii. 23 shows the issue to be the same as in that of the conversation with Nicodemus. Neither dialogue has any apparent connexion with the Gentile controversy.Google Scholar

1 Cf. the letter of R. Gamaliel I (Jet. Sanh. 18d) ‘to our brethren, the sons of the diaspora of Babylon, the sons of the diaspora of Media, the sons of the diaspora of the Greeks, and all the rest of the dispersed of Israel’ (quoted A. Schlatter, Der Evangelist Johannes, p. 198). It is to be observed that the phrase ‘the diaspora of the Greeks’ (where the parallels would lead us to expect ‘the diaspora of Greece’) is exactly that which John also uses in vii. 35.

1 Contrariwise, in xi. 45 f. and xii. 9–11 ‘the Jews’ are the common people as distinct from the authorities.

1 It is, of course, perfectly true that purely linguistically this could mean either to bring to faith or to deepen in faith. Cf. Dodd, C. H., The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1953), p. 9; C. K. Barrett, op. cit. p. 114; C. F. D. Moule, op. cit. p. 168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Bornhaüser, K., Das Johannesevangelium eine Missionsschrift für Israel (Gütersloh, 1928), sees very clearly that the Gospel is an evangelistic appeal to Israel, but his failure to isolate the particular section of Judaism which John has in mind makes much of his argument very vulnerable.Google Scholar

3 Though cf. Stather Hunt, B. P. W., Some Johannine Problems, pp. 118 f.Google Scholar

1 Most recently Jeremias, J., Jesus' Promise to the Nations (Stuttgart, 1956; tr. London, 1958), pp. 37 f. and 64–6.Google Scholar

2 See C. K. Barrett, op. cit., ad. loc., who, however, declines to accept what he admits ‘in a Jewish work this would naturally mean’.

1 Its relevance was first brought to my attention by Edwards, H. E., The Disciple who wrote these Things (London, 1953), p. 115.Google Scholar

1 Op. cit. (London, 1956), p. 215.Google Scholar

2 The term was used originally of the Qumran literature by Reicke, B., N.T.S. 1 (1954), 141.Google Scholar