Abstract: During the past decades, scholars have attempted to reconstruct the history of a Johannine community through reading John’s Gospel as a two-level drama. According to this understanding, the Gospel relates events that took place in the community after Jesus’ earthly ministry, while these events are presented as a story about Jesus himself. The present essay evaluates this allegorical reading of the Gospel, first through a search for ancient parallels that would constitute a genre of the two-level drama, secondly through a discussion of the alleged intra-textual indications of the Gospel’s allegorical character. The conclusion arrived at is that both the search for an ancient two-level genre and the search for hints of allegory in the text are unsuccessful. The hypothesis of a Johannine two-level drama is therefore highly implausible.
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 14
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