Text, Context and the Johannine Community: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the Johannine Writings

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Text, Context and the Johannine Community adopts a new approach to the social context of the Johannine writings by drawing on modern sociolinguistic theory. Sociolinguistics emphasizes language as a social phenomenon, which can be analysed with reference not only to its broad context of culture, but also, through the use of register analysis, to its narrower context of situation. The Johannine writings have increasingly been seen as the product of a distinct Johannine Community, depicted by some scholars as a sectarian group, opposed both to wider Jewish society and to other Christian groups. This model has largely been constructed on historical-critical grounds, yet given our lack of reliable external information about the origin of the Johannine writings, a more fruitful approach may be to examine their lexico-grammatical and discourse features to determine what these imply about interpersonal relationships. This study compares selected ‘narrative asides’ from the Gospel of John with a passage section from 1 John and with the two shorter Johannine Epistles. It concludes that register analysis of these texts does not support the idea of a close-knit sectarian group. Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations Preface Chapter 1: THE RISE AND FALL OF A PARADIGM? THE JOHANNINE COMMUNITY IN RECENT SCHOLARSHIP 1.1. Introduction: Paradigms, Texts and Contexts 1.2. The Rise of the Johannine Community 1.2.1. Martyn: Making a Two-Level Drama out of a Crisis 1.2.2. Culpepper: The Johannine School 1.2.3. Cullmann: The Johannine Circle 1.2.4. Brown: The Community of the Beloved Disciple 1.2.5. Wengst: Scattered Johannine Communities 1.2.6. Meeks: Johannine Sectarianism 1.2.7. Conclusions: Reasons for the Rise of the Community Paradigm 1.3. The Fall of the Johannine Community 1.3.1. Morris, Carson, Köstenberger: Defenders of Apostolic Authorship 1.3.2. Hengel, Brodie: John, the Towering Theologian 1.3.3. Kysar: The Maverick Postmodernist 1.3.4. Thyen: The Literary Game-Player 1.3.5. Bauckham and His School: The Gospel for All Christians 1.3.6. Klink: The Sheep of a Large Fold 1.3.7. Reinhartz: Building Skyscrapers on Toothpicks 1.3.8. Conclusions: Reasons for the Fall of the Community Paradigm 1.4. Conclusions: Texts, Contexts and Paradigms Chapter 2: THE COMMUNITY OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF RAYMOND BROWN’S MODEL OF COMMUNITY 2.1. Introduction 2.2. The Gospel According to John: The Community Emerges 2.2.1. Introduction 2.2.2. Brown: The Enigma Code Breaker 2.2.3. Brown: The Scientist 2.2.4. Brown: The Catholic Scholar in the Modern Critical World 2.2.5. Brown: The Redaction Critic – His Five-Stage Theory of Composition 2.2.6. Brown’s Community Reading of the Text 2.2.7. Conclusion: Community, Language and Context 2.3. The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Community Disintegrates 2.3.1. Introduction 2.3.2. Brown’s Four-Phase Model of the Community’s History 2.3.3. Brown’s Stated Methodology 2.3.4. Other Aspects of Brown’s Methodology 2.3.5. Historicity and Brown’s Two-Level Community Reading 2.3.6. The Model of Community in The Community 2.3.7. Conclusion: Community, School and Individual 2.4. The Epistles of John: The Two Communities 2.4.1. Introduction 2.4.2. The Two Communities 2.4.3. The Community and the School 2.4.4. Conclusion: Brown, Text and Context 2.5. Introduction to the Gospel of John: A Tentative Move to a Synchronic Reading of the Text? 2.5.1. Introduction 2.5.2. A Shift to a Synchronic Reading? 2.5.3. A Three Stage Theory of Composition 2.6. Conclusions: A School, a Community and Texts Chapter 3: TEXT AND CONTEXT: THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIOLINGUISTIC THEORIES OF REGISTER 3.1. Introduction: The Social Nature of Language 3.2. Genre, Register, Style and Dialect: De??nitions 3.2.1. Genre 3.2.2. Register 3.2.3. Style 3.2.4. Dialect 3.3. Varieties of Language: Contexts of Culture and Situation 3.3.1. Situation and Communities 3.4. Two Approaches to Register Analysis 3.4.1. Michael A. K. Halliday and Systemic Functional Grammar 3.4.2. Douglas Biber and Multidimensional Analysis 3.5. Examples of Register and the Problem of Corpus 3.6. Language: Literary and Non-Literary 3.6.1. The Implied Reader? 3.7. Relation of Register to Form Criticism: Sitz im Leben 3.8. Applications of Register Analysis to Gospel Contexts 3.8.1. Stanley E. Porter and Register in New Testament Greek 3.8.2. Philip F. Graber and the Context of the Parable of the Sower 3.9. A Model for Analysing Tenor in the Johannine Writings 3.9.1. Lexico-Grammatical Choices 3.9.2. Discourse Choices 3.10. Conclusions Chapter 4: THE ANTILANGUAGE ANTISOCIETY: THE CONTRIBUTION OF SOCIOLOGICAL COMMENTATORS 4.1. Introduction 4.2. Meeks: ‘The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism’ 4.3. Leroy: Riddles and Misunderstanding – The Sondersprache of the Johannine Community 4.4. Malina: The Pioneer of Antilanguage in Johannine Studies 4.4.1. The Gospel of John in Sociolinguistic Perspective 4.4.2. Halliday and Antilanguage 4.4.3. Malina’s Use of Halliday 4.4.4. Malina’s Other Work on Antilanguage 4.5. Petersen and the Language of the Sons of Light 4.6. Neyrey and the Sociology of Secrecy 4.7. Thatcher: Riddles as Antilanguage 4.8. Rohrbaugh: Nicodemus Meets Antilanguage 4.9. Esler and Piper: Antilanguage and Lazarus 4.10. David Reed: The Anti-Roman Empire Community 4.11. Conclusions: So Much Antilanguage, So Little Sociolinguistics 4.11.1. Not Enough Data 4.11.2. Antilanguage May Not Mean Antisociety 4.11.3. Relexicalization: New Words or New Meanings? 4.11.4. A Closed Text? Chapter 5: THE REGISTER OF THE JOHANNINE WRITINGS: DO THEY REFLECT A PARTICULAR COMMUNITY? 5.1. Introduction 5.2. Narrative Asides in the Gospel of John 5.2.1. A Variety of Embedded Registers: Narrative Asides 5.2.2. Previous Studies of Narrative Asides in the Gospel of John 5.2.3. The Tenor of Certain Narrative Asides in the Gospel of John 5.2.4. John 2.21-22 and John 12.16 5.2.5. John 19.35-37 5.2.6. John 20.30-31 5.2.7. John 21.23-25 5.2.8. Conclusions: No Sign of a Community 5.3. Register in the Epistles of John 5.4. Reasons for Writing in 1 John 2.7-17 5.5. 2 John: A Formal Letter to a Community? 5.6. 3 John: A Real Letter to a Real Person? 5.7. Conclusions: The Register of the Johannine Writings Chapter 6: CONCLUSION: THE DEATH OF THE JOHANNINE COMMUNITY? 6.1. Review 6.2. A Possible Context for the Johannine Writings 6.3. Areas for Further Research 6.3.1. A Bigger Corpus 6.3.2. Methodology: Paradigms, Science and Subjectivity 6.4. Conclusion: A Plea for Caution Bibliography Index of References Index of Authors