Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community

1 Symbol, Meaning, and Mystery

THE STUDY OF JOHANNINE SYMBOLISM TAKES US TO A PROBLEM THAT LIES at the heart of all theological reflection: How do people know God? In the language of the Fourth Gospel, God is from above and people are from below, and to ordinary human eyes God’s presence is veiled, his activity elusive. John’s prologue says that no one has ever seen God (1:18a), a comment on the human condition that provides no exceptions. Throughout the Gospel Jesus will address listeners who do not know God, who have never heard God’s voice and have never seen God’s form (5:37; 7:28; 8:19). A cleft separates the human from the divine. Yet the Gospel also says that Jesus made God known (1:18b). He could reveal God because he came from heaven and did not speak on his own authority, but uttered the words of God in God’s own name (3:34; 5:43; 8:28).¹

The Son of God descended to bear witness to what he had seen and heard above, but when he crossed the chasm and entered the world he spoke with human beings who found him to be as inscrutable as God himself. The prologue acknowledges that the world knew him not (1:10), and the first scene ends with John the Baptist’s unsettling declaration that the one God has sent now stands in your midst and him you do not know (1:26). Jesus’ divine origin was hidden from human eyes; it could not be discerned by appearances (7:24). In the peculiar economy of the Gospel, Jesus must make God known, but God must also make Jesus known. No one comes to the Father except through Jesus (14:6) and no one comes to Jesus without being drawn by the Father (6:44).

According to the Fourth Gospel, people are drawn to Jesus, and so to God, through testimony.² The words spoken by and about Jesus, together with the actions he performed, are the vehicles through which revelation is given. Jesus came from above, but he could not reveal divine truths in heavenly language. Human beings belong to the earth and speak in worldly terms (3:31); therefore Jesus used familiar earthly images to convey his message. A teacher named Nicodemus slipped along the shadowed streets of Jerusalem to meet Jesus, and Jesus told him that entry into the kingdom of heaven was birth and that the Spirit was a wind blowing across the human landscape (3:3–8). Nicodemus stammered his incredulity, but Jesus responded, If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (3:12). The question goes to the crux of the issue: Those who belong to the world cannot comprehend unmediated heavenly truths. But as the Gospel unfolds we see that people can come to know Jesus and God when their own language, the language of the world, becomes a vehicle for divine communication.

Earthly images could be used to bear witness to divine realities because the earth is God’s creation. This is one of the main theological underpinnings of Johannine symbolism. In the beginning, God uttered the Word that brought all things into being, and without this Word was not anything made (1:3).³ To be sure, the creation itself yielded no sure knowledge of God, and when the creative Word became flesh in Jesus, people refused to receive him (1:10). Yet once in the world, Jesus called upon things that could be heard, seen, touched, and tasted to bear witness to the unseen God who sent him, so that the commonplace—bread made from barley meal, streams of cool water, and a glimmer of light—became vehicles of revelation. The Gospel declares that no one has ever seen God, but that the only Son has made him known (1:18) by using images from the creation to bear witness to the Creator; that is, through symbolic speech and actions.

A second and related problem is how revelation given at particular times and places can have broader, even universal, significance. The agent of revelation was Jesus, an individual who encountered a limited number of people in Roman Palestine during a career that lasted perhaps three years. The Gospel recounts the actions he performed and the words he spoke, while seeking to show that their significance transcends their immediate context. When Jesus fed a crowd beside the Sea of Galilee, he spoke about the bread that comes down from heaven to give life not just to his immediate listeners but to the world (6:33), and when he opened the eyes of one man born blind he announced that he was the light of the world (9:5).

The Gospel writer sought to disclose the abiding significance of what Jesus had said and done in the conviction that Jesus himself continues to abide among people through the Spirit or Advocate (14:15–17, 23). Like the belief that the world is God’s creation, a sense of the ongoing work of the Spirit undergirds Johannine symbolism theologically. The Spirit did not bring new revelation on the same order as Jesus had already given, but manifested Jesus’ presence and disclosed the significance of his words and actions to people living after his ministry on earth had ended (14:26). The Gospel presents the paradox that the divine is made known through what is earthly and the universal is disclosed through what is particular. This gives Johannine symbolism a tensive, dialectical quality that conveys transcendent reality without finally delimiting it. The Gospel’s testimony, given in symbolic language, is a vehicle for the Spirit’s work; and it is through the Spirit that the testimony becomes effective, drawing readers to know the mystery that is God.⁴

Johannine Symbolism in Its Literary Context

The ability of symbols to communicate things that cannot adequately be expressed by other means has attracted the interest of people working across a spectrum of scholarly disciplines. Each has its own ways of understanding what symbols are and what they do, and many would not share the fourth evangelist’s theological assumptions.⁵ We will draw questions and insights from various areas of research, while keeping our focus on the Fourth Gospel and trying to let our general observations about symbolism conform as much as possible to the distinctive contours of the text. Symbols can affect people with an immediacy that cannot be replicated in more discursive speech; yet as symbols capture the imagination they engage readers in an ongoing process of reflection. We begin this process of reflection by exploring patterns in the Gospel’s symbolism and their role in communicating the Gospel’s message.⁶

Defining Johannine Symbolism

A symbol, in the most general sense, is something that stands for something else. Here, however, we will focus the definition: A symbol is an image, an action, or a person that is understood to have transcendent significance. In Johannine terms, symbols span the chasm between what is from above and what is from below without collapsing the distinction. Images are things that can be perceived by the senses, such as light and darkness, water, bread, a door, a shepherd, and a vine. The actions that function symbolically in John’s Gospel include nonmiraculous actions, like driving merchants out of the Jerusalem temple and washing feet, as well as miraculous signs, like turning water into wine and raising Lazarus from the dead. The person who makes God known is Jesus, and those he meets represent types of belief and unbelief. Sometimes life and freedom have been called symbols because in John’s Gospel they refer to divine realities. Since, however, these concepts do not involve images that can be perceived by the senses, they will not be considered symbols here.⁷

Johannine symbolism is concentric, with Jesus at its heart; he has a unique role as the one who reveals God. The Gospel’s images and actions, in turn, help to show who Jesus is. These symbols, as we have defined them, include things that differ from each other in important ways.⁸ For example, a sign like turning water into wine brings the power of God into the realm of human experience in a manner different from a nonmiraculous action like cleansing the temple or a statement like I am the light of the world. Nevertheless, we will include the images, the actions, and representative figures in our study of the Gospel’s symbolism because they function similarly in the text. Each conveys something of transcendent significance through something accessible to the senses.

Given this range of symbolic elements, a useful distinction can be made between core and supporting symbols. Core symbols occur most often, in the most significant contexts in the narrative, and contribute most to the Gospel’s message.⁹ For example, the repeated statements identifying Jesus as the light of the world, (1:9; 3:19; 8:12; 9:5; 12:46) establish light as a core symbolic image with darkness as its counterpart. Elements such as day and night and sight and blindness play an important supporting role through their relationship to light. A recurring cluster of core and supporting images creates a motif. While the core symbols usually stand at the center of a narrative, the supporting images in a motif often remain in the background. For example, when Jesus proclaims, I am the light of the world (8:12), light is the core symbol on which attention focuses. In the passing observation that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night (3:2), however, the darkness is merely suggestive and its full import not readily apparent. Some core symbols, like the vine (15:1–17), appear only once and their significance is evident in a single context. The supporting elements in a motif, however, occur repeatedly and their effect is cumulative. The implications of Nicodemus’s coming by night, for example, unfold as images for darkness recur in the narrative.¹⁰

Transcendent realities are conveyed most clearly through core symbols. The Gospel begins by announcing that human beings receive light from the Word that was with God and was God (1:1–5), and later references to the light of the world recall Jesus’ divine origin (e.g., 3:19; 12:46). Similarly, when Jesus said, I am the bread of life, he added that he had come down from heaven and sharply distinguished himself from other forms of bread. He reminded his listeners that their ancestors ate a bread called manna in the wilderness and died but said that he was a kind of bread that would provide life everlasting (6:48–51b). Supporting symbols do not convey transcendent realities as directly as the core symbols do, but help to reveal the significance of the core symbols, as will be seen later.¹¹ Supporting symbols also help to disclose the wider or universal dimensions of the text. Many individuals in the Gospel, for example, speak for groups of people and even humanity generally.

Some of the core symbols are expressed in the form of metaphors. To speak metaphorically is to speak of one thing in terms appropriate to another.¹² A metaphor has two parts, both of which are sometimes present in a single sentence. When Jesus says, I am the bread of life, it is clear that he is speaking (a) of himself (b) in terms of bread. In other cases, a metaphorical statement may provide only an image without specifying what the image refers to; the referent must be supplied from the context. When Jesus invited people to come to him and drink, declaring, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water, he spoke metaphorically, but only by taking his statement in its larger context can readers tell that living water refers to the Spirit (7:37–39).

Symbols and metaphors are not identical, but are related on a continuum. One difference is that metaphors are expressed verbally, while symbols may be either verbal or nonverbal. Bread initially functions symbolically in actions like breaking five loaves, giving them to a crowd of five thousand people, and gathering up the fragments left over. Later, bread also functions symbolically in the metaphorical statement, I am the bread of life (6:11–13, 35). Another difference is that symbols, as we have defined them, involve images from the realm of sense perception, while the elements of a metaphor may be more abstract. Statements like I am the resurrection and the life and I am the way, the truth, and the life are metaphorical in form, but do not include symbols in the sense used here. Bread and water can be seen and touched, but a term like the resurrection is less tangible, and truth and life as such cannot be visualized. We will focus on images that can be perceived by the senses.¹³

If symbols consist of an image and a referent, they also need an interpreter to make the connection. All three elements must be present for an image actually to function symbolically; the symbol must mean something for someone.¹⁴ The primary images in John’s Gospel are taken from the fabric of daily life, and in most life situations they have no special meaning. A splash of cool water on our faces helps chase sleep from our eyes in the morning, and the aroma of fresh bread wafting through a bakery door sets our mouths watering, but unless we connect the water and the bread with transcendent realities, they are simply refreshing, not symbolic. In themselves, water and bread are potential symbols; they "actually become symbolic when they are seen to point beyond themselves."¹⁵

A challenge for interpreters is to discern which images in John’s Gospel should be understood symbolically. The text depicts the disastrous and often comic results of someone’s failure to detect the figurative nature of some of Jesus’ sayings. We can chuckle when Nicodemus is tripped up by the prospect of being born again, sputtering about the impossibility of entering his mother’s womb a second time. But as we make our way through the narrative we may find that our own footing is not so sure. We may be confident that a statement like people loved darkness rather than light (3:19) is symbolic, but does that mean that all references to darkness and night are symbolic? Mary Magdalene arrived at Jesus’ tomb in the dark on Easter morning (20:1), and Jesus appeared to his disciples later that evening (20:19). If we discern symbolic significance in the darkness in these passages, are we astute interpreters of the text or have we fallen prey to mere fantasy?

As we attempt to identify symbols in John’s Gospel, we will bear in mind that something can be both symbolic and historical. We can discern symbolic significance in images, events, or persons without undercutting their claims to historicity, and we can recognize that certain images, events, and people are historical without diminishing their symbolic value. Historically, it seems certain that Jesus died on a cross, yet the cross became the primary symbol for the Christian faith. Peter and Jesus’ mother were people who actually lived in Palestine in the first century, yet both came to have symbolic significance for the church. Accordingly, Mary Magdalene may well have come to Jesus’ tomb while it was dark; the question we will pursue is whether darkness has symbolic significance in this context.¹⁶

Recognizing Johannine Symbols

The symbols that are easiest to identify appear in the form of metaphors. Metaphors can be recognized because an incongruity or contradiction results when a person speaks of one thing in terms of another.¹⁷ For example, the statement I am the bread of life (6:35), taken at face value, means that Jesus is claiming to be a baked mixture of flour and water, which is absurd. This incongruity or absurdity at the literal level forces readers to make sense of the statement in a nonliteral way.¹⁸ As soon as readers realize that Jesus is not claiming to be a baked mixture of flour and water, they begin asking in what sense he is analogous to bread. As the discourse proceeds, it becomes clear that Jesus is not like bread in his physical makeup, but is like bread in that he sustains life. Understood on that level, the metaphor is intelligible.

When Jesus declared, I am the bread of life, the incongruity was readily apparent within the statement itself, but sometimes the incongruity appears only when the statement is read in a broader context. For example, the statement I am the good shepherd (10:11) could be true in a literal sense, since some people do tend sheep for a living. But the statement appears in a passage dealing with Jesus’ relationship to a group of people, and here it would be a mistake to think that Jesus is claiming to be an expert in animal husbandry. The statement becomes meaningful only when understood figuratively.¹⁹

The characters in the Gospel story often react to the incongruous aspect in Jesus’ statements, making them easier for readers to identify. A Samaritan woman found Jesus sitting alone beside a well and he asked her for a drink. The woman demurred, but Jesus told her that if she had asked, he would have given her living water (4:10). The woman immediately objected, since the well was deep and Jesus did not even have a bucket. Her objection in turn provided an opportunity for Jesus to elaborate further on the meaning of his statement. He distinguished the living water he was offering from ordinary well water, which quenches thirst only temporarily, and he told the woman to think of the water as a reality that springs up within a person and leads to eternal life.

The core symbols in John’s Gospel are often expressed in metaphors, but the supporting symbols are often imbedded in the fabric of the narrative, making them more difficult to identify. Some supporting symbols are connected to a core symbol in the same literary context. Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus is paradigmatic in this regard. The episode begins when Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night (3:2), a detail that seems insignificant when taken by itself. The full symbolic force of the night emerges only later, when Jesus says, the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil (3:19–21). The clear symbolic use of darkness at the end of the scene indicates that the night at the beginning of the scene also should be understood symbolically.

An image need not be connected with a core symbol in the same episode to function symbolically; it may acquire symbolic overtones as part of a recurring cluster of images, or motif, that is related to core symbols elsewhere in the Gospel. William Freedman has suggested that the elements of a motif can be identified by their frequency and their appearance at unlikely points in the narrative. An effective motif also will appear at significant points in the story and include elements that fit together in a coherent whole.²⁰ When attempting to identify elements that may function symbolically as part of a motif, we do well to say that some are almost certainly symbolic and that others are only possibly symbolic.

At the last supper, for example, Jesus gave a morsel to Judas, who immediately departed to betray Jesus; and the text says, it was night (13:30). The image of darkness is not further developed in this episode, but darkness and night frequently played symbolic roles earlier in the Gospel. Moreover, it would be odd to mention the night only when the betrayer goes out rather than in the description of the setting at the beginning of the episode if night has no symbolic import. Taken symbolically, the reference to night is highly effective, since it occurs precisely when Jesus’ betrayal is set in motion and it brings to their culmination the connections between darkness and hostility toward Jesus found earlier in the Gospel. Therefore, the reference to night in 13:30 almost certainly functions symbolically.

More problematic is the Easter story, which says, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, so she ran to tell two disciples that Jesus’ body had been stolen (20:1–2). The image of darkness is not clearly developed within this scene. The episode begins with darkness and ends when Mary sees Jesus (20:18), but her seeing is not explicitly connected with images of light. To say that it was dark as well as early seems redundant, which could suggest that the darkness is significant; but references to darkness, which were prominent in the first half of the Gospel, are rare after the departure of the betrayer in 13:30. There is a reminder that Nicodemus had come to Jesus by night (19:39), the disciples huddle behind closed doors on Easter evening (20:19), and finally Peter organizes a fruitless nighttime fishing venture (21:3). Recognition of Jesus is not correlated with light in these scenes, however, apart from the mention of morning in 21:4. Most importantly, these images are not associated with sin and evil as they were earlier in the Gospel (cf. 3:19–21; 12:35; 13:30). Although the darkness surrounding Mary’s visit to the tomb may reflect incomprehension, the symbolic import of the image is at most an intriguing possibility, not a certainty.

The symbolic character of actions in the Gospel can be identified in the same ways as the symbolic character of other images. Symbolic actions regularly exhibit an element of incongruity; that is, they contradict ordinary patterns of behavior. For example, people in the first century normally washed their own feet or sometimes had them washed by a slave, and the washing was done when a person entered the house. Therefore, when Jesus the master washed the feet of his disciples during the middle of a meal it was a clear break with social convention. Peter’s objection, Lord, do you wash my feet? (13:6), confirms the incongruity of the action. The significance of the act is elaborated in Jesus’ comments to his disciples.

The foot-washing scene contains both core and supporting symbols. The text says that Jesus rose from supper, laid down his garments, and wrapped a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash his disciples’ feet (13:4–5). The core symbol is the act of foot washing; the main supporting symbol is the removal of Jesus’ clothing. Like the foot washing itself, the removal of clothing contradicts social convention; people simply did not behave that way at meals. The Greek words used in this scene are also unusual; instead of the usual words for taking off (ekdyein) and putting on (endyein) clothing, the text says that Jesus laid down (tithenai, 13:4) and took up (lambanein, 13:12) his garments, using verbs found elsewhere for laying down and taking up his life (10:17–18). Therefore, by removing his clothing, Jesus heightens the sense of scandalous self-giving conveyed by the foot washing and anticipates his final act of self-giving in death by crucifixion.

The accounts of the miraculous signs in the Gospel also provide clues to the symbolic character of these actions. Like nonmiraculous symbolic actions, the signs do not fit within normal patterns of behavior. If a wedding guest surprised his host with a gift of 120 to 180 gallons of wine, for example, the gesture would have been unusual. But when Jesus transformed that much water into wine at a wedding, the action was extraordinary. The significance of the act is introduced by a conversation in which Jesus’ mother comments that the wine has run out and Jesus brusquely replies that his hour has not yet come (2:3–4). As the narrative unfolds it becomes clear that the hour is the hour of Jesus’ death. The meaning is further elaborated in a concluding comment, which says that the miracle of the wine manifested Jesus’ glory, a term referring to the power and presence of God (2:11).

The primary symbol in this episode is the transformation of water into wine, and the supporting symbols are the stone jars that held the water. The text states that the jars were for the Jewish rites of purification (2:6). If the statement is given full weight and the jars are understood to represent Jewish rituals, then the transformation of water into wine signals the beginning of a new order, which will transform and replace Jewish practices. The likelihood that the jars do play a representative role in the Cana story (2:1–12) increases when it is read together with the account of temple cleansing which follows (2:13–22), since the temple cleansing anticipates the replacement of the Jerusalem temple by the crucified and risen temple of Jesus’ body. Understanding the jars as representative of Jewish rituals is also congruent with subsequent portions of the narrative, where Jesus uses images from Jewish festival practices to convey something about himself and his mission.

Persons in the Gospel also can function symbolically, often in a complex way. A character’s symbolic or representative role is sometimes signaled by using plural forms of speech for individuals, which introduces an element of incongruity into the narrative. The encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus is, again, paradigmatic. Jesus and Nicodemus appear to be alone in this scene; no one else speaks or is said to be present. Jesus begins speaking to Nicodemus in the first person singular, but suddenly shifts to the first person plural in the middle of the conversation, saying, "Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen (3:11). The abrupt change to we suggests that Jesus now speaks both for himself and his followers, as he does elsewhere (9:4), since his followers will continue to bear witness to him after his ministry on earth has ended. As the narrative unfolds, a second dimension emerges: Jesus speaks not only for his followers but also for God. Jesus has come from above and utters the words of God" (3:32–34). The remainder of the Gospel unpacks what it means for Jesus to be God’s unique representative, the one in whom God’s Word is embodied (cf. 1:14).

Nicodemus plays an important supporting role in the text. Although he appears to be alone, he speaks in the plural: "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God (3:2). Jesus initially responds with singular forms of address but shifts to the Greek plural in the middle of the conversation, saying, you people do not receive our testimony; although I have told you people earthly things, you people do not believe (3:11–12). Nicodemus’s representative role is complex, like that of Jesus. He is first a man of the Pharisees and a ruler of the Jews (3:1), thus representing the Jewish authorities who regularly refuse to believe in Jesus elsewhere in the Gospel. Second, he speaks for those who believed when they saw the signs Jesus did, but whose faith was untrustworthy (2:23–25; 3:2). As a representative of both groups, Nicodemus stands over against the true believers for whom Jesus speaks in 3:11. The scope of Jesus’ words continues to widen, however, so that by the end of the discourse he speaks of the entire world as a realm of darkness estranged from God. Thus it finally appears that Nicodemus, who had come by night," represents a benighted world, squinting with incomprehension at the light of God that has appeared in Jesus.

The Structure of Johannine Symbolism

As the narrative unfolds, the particular images, actions, and characters vary, but certain patterns remain constant. Wayne Meeks, drawing on the work of Edmund Leach, compared the recurring patterns in John’s Gospel to a technique used in electronic communications. Sometimes a communicator must try to convey a message despite persistent static on the air-waves. In such cases, the message is repeated often, in as many different ways as possible. "From the repeated impact of varying signals, the basic structure which they have in common gets through."²¹ Similarly, interpreters of the Fourth Gospel must pay attention to the underlying structure of its symbolic system in order to discover what the author is trying to convey. The Gospel says that Jesus has come from above to declare to the world what he has heard from God, but the cleft separating the human from the divine creates interference in the channels of communication. Nevertheless, repetition of a similar idea in differing forms ensures that the basic message will get through.

The fundamental structure of Johannine symbolism is twofold. The primary level of meaning concerns Christ; the secondary level concerns discipleship. The movement from Christology to discipleship is apparent in symbolic images and actions throughout the Gospel. The clearest examples are the I am sayings of Jesus. The first half of John 6:35 reads, I am the bread of life, which makes a statement about Jesus. The second half reads, He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall never thirst, which says something about the believer. Similarly, 8:12 begins, I am the light of the world, which is a christological statement, and continues, he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, which says something about Jesus’ followers. Other examples of the movement from Christology to discipleship are: I am the door—if anyone enters by me he will be saved (10:9); I am the good shepherd; I know my own—and my own know me (10:14); I am the vine—you are the branches (15:5). In each case the image itself refers to Jesus, and a particular aspect or effect of the image is applied to his followers.

Elsewhere, the image itself is applied first to Jesus and second to the disciples. In 12:24 Jesus says, Unless a seed falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit. The primary level of meaning is christological. The preceding verse announced that the hour of Jesus’ glorification had come, and the image of the seed helps readers understand that Jesus’ ministry will come to fruition only through his death (12:23). On a secondary level, the image of the seed refers to Christian life, introducing sayings about the need to die to the self through service to Christ that leads to life everlasting (12:25–26).

This twofold pattern can help to clarify Jesus’ confusing comment, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water, in which water refers to the Spirit (7:37–39). The passage is perplexing because it can be punctuated in two different ways. According to one version the water or Spirit flows from Jesus’ heart; according to the other version it flows from the believer’s heart.²² The apparent ambiguity, however, is another instance where the same image has a primary and secondary level of meaning.²³ On the primary level, the text refers to Jesus. He is the source of the living water promised to the Samaritan woman (4:10); water will flow from his side as he hangs on the cross (19:34); and on Easter he will be the one to infuse the disciples with the Spirit that water signifies (20:22). On a secondary level, the text refers to the disciples. Those who receive the Spirit or drink from Jesus will have the Spirit’s living water well up in their hearts, as Jesus promised the Samaritan woman (4:14).

The same movement from Christology to discipleship appears in the symbolic actions. The account of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet includes two interpretations of the action. The first is christological and foreshadows the salvific character of Jesus’ death. Jesus told Peter, If I do not wash you, you have no part in me, adding that this washing provides a complete cleansing (13:8, 10). The second interpretation presents the foot washing as a model of discipleship. Jesus said, If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (13:14). The movement from Christology to discipleship in this text reflects the same symbolic structure found throughout the Gospel.²⁴

The miraculous signs follow a similar pattern. Perhaps the clearest example is the story of the blind beggar in John 9. The episode begins when Jesus smears mud on the man’s eyes and tells him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The man does so and is healed. On a primary level, the miracle is christological; by enlightening the eyes of a man blind from birth, Jesus demonstrates that he is truly the light of the world (9:5). On a secondary level, the passage is about discipleship. Much of the chapter explores what it means to see the light, both physically and through the eyes of faith. The haze begins to lift when the beggar’s eyes are healed, and it continues to dissipate as he perceives and testifies that Jesus is a prophet, who is from God, finally worshiping Jesus as the Son of Man (9:17, 33, 38).²⁵

Each symbolic image and action has distinctive facets of meaning, and attention to the unique connotations of each image will be vital for interpretation. Nevertheless, by concentrating the primary meaning of each image on Jesus and the secondary dimension on his followers, the Gospel repeatedly compels readers to come to terms with the reality of God in the person of Jesus, and to understand the meaning of their own lives in relation to him.

Johannine Symbolism in Its Cultural Context

The symbols in John’s Gospel are conveyed in language that was an integral part of a cultural context, and understanding the symbolism means entering into that context. The evangelist wrote the Gospel in Greek for a Greek-speaking audience, assuming that those who saw the letters on the page or heard the words spoken aloud could connect them with known realities. As words are read or heard by someone who knows the language, they evoke certain associations in the reader or hearer. The text can, of course, be translated into other languages, but in this process the connotations of words and expressions inevitably change, and we do well to identify the range of meanings associated with the Greek expressions used in the text. For the earliest readers, these associations would have come from the broad cultural matrix of the Greco-Roman world and their more particular ethnic and religious heritage, as well as from other portions of the Gospel. As various associations come to mind, readers must discern which seem appropriate to the literary context and which do not. There is an interplay between text and reader as the associations evoked by the text simultaneously inform the reader’s understanding of the passage and are adjusted to fit the literary context.²⁶

The Dynamics of Johannine Symbolism

The importance of the cultural context can be illustrated by considering one of the Gospel’s leading images. In John 10:11, Jesus is identified by the Greek word poimēn. The evangelist assumed that readers would understand that this combination of letters referred to someone who tended sheep, a person English speakers would call a shepherd. For those who knew Greek, the word poimēn would have evoked a cluster of associations from several sources. First, the broadest level was life experience. A shepherd was a common sight throughout the Greek-speaking world in the first century. The word might prompt readers to think of a figure with a weather-beaten face, dressed in coarse homespun clothing, with a wooden staff in one hand as he led a flock of sheep or goats out to pasture.

Second, associations might come from a reader’s particular ethnic and religious heritage. According to the Jewish Scriptures, some of the leading figures in Israel’s history had been shepherds. God appeared to Moses while he was tending sheep (Exod 3:1–6), and David learned the art of war by defending his flocks against predators (1 Sam 17:34–35). The term poimēn was used also metaphorically for Israel’s leaders, a future Davidic king, and even for God in both biblical and extrabiblical Jewish writings.²⁷ The Greek classics, which were the mainstay of education throughout the Greco-Roman world, used shepherd as a metaphor for leaders like Agamemnon the king. Philosophers and orators often compared the art of governing a people to the art of shepherding a flock.²⁸

Third, the Gospel itself establishes a certain cluster of associations around the word poimēn. Each time the image reappears it evokes and develops the associations found elsewhere in the narrative. John 10:1–5 introduces the image of the shepherd by describing how a shepherd enters the sheepfold, calls the sheep by name, and leads them out to pasture. In 10:7–18 Jesus identifies himself as the good shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep. In 10:22–30 he adds that no one will snatch the sheep out of his hand. At the conclusion of the Gospel, Jesus enjoins Peter to Feed my lambs. . . . Tend my sheep. . . . Feed my sheep (21:15–17). The emphatic

use of shepherd imagery suggests that Peter’s task must be understood in light of what Jesus said earlier in the Gospel about what it means to be a shepherd. Jesus makes a prophetic statement that reinforces the connection by anticipating that Peter, like Jesus the good shepherd, would lay down his life (21:18–19).

Thus far we have considered what the word poimēn might mean on the cognitive level, but symbols also evoke associations on the affective level.²⁹ For some people, especially in the western part of the Greco-Roman world, the image of a shepherd awakened nostalgia for the idyllic life of the shepherds who lie there at ease under the awning of a spreading beech and practise country songs on a light shepherd’s pipe.³⁰ For others, shepherds aroused suspicion, since they were often perceived as rough, unscrupulous characters, who pastured their animals on other people’s land and pilfered wool, milk, and kids from the flock.³¹ Therefore, on the affective level shepherding initially might attract or repel, or convey a sense of peace or uneasiness, depending on the reader’s background.

The Gospel text appropriates and transforms both the affective and cognitive associations readers might bring to the text. At the affective level, the text softens the suspicion often leveled at shepherds by acknowledging that those who came before Jesus were indeed thieves and robbers (10:8) but Jesus himself is the good shepherd. The title good shepherd, in turn, evokes the more positive attitudes toward shepherding, but the context tempers sentimentality by presenting a pastoral landscape that echoes with the cry of a wolf, not the gentle airs of a shepherd’s flute. At the cognitive level, readers must discern what Jesus means when he says, I am the good shepherd. If the context makes clear that Jesus is not claiming expertise in animal husbandry, the common use of the term shepherd for a leader, together with the references to the shepherd leading the sheep in John 10:3–4, suggests that he is claiming a special leadership role. The literary context then transforms the usual understanding of the shepherd metaphor by connecting it with Jesus’ crucifixion. Responsible leaders, like good shepherds, were expected to seek the welfare of the sheep and even risk their lives for the flock, but only Jesus, the good shepherd, would lay down his life for the sheep. Similar types of interaction between the text and readers occur with other images and actions.

The Spectrum of Johannine Readers

Modern readers of the Gospel must rely on ancient texts to provide a window into the setting in which the Gospel was composed and first read. The problem is that the Greek-speaking world of the late first century included many different kinds of potential readers for the Fourth Gospel. Johannine imagery has affinities with imagery in an astonishing range of ancient sources, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and Hellenistic Jewish texts, Greco-Roman sources, and later gnostic writings. We can focus our interpretive work by turning to the immediate audience for whom the Gospel was composed: the community of Johannine Christians. We will explore the social function of the Gospel’s symbols in chapter seven, here attempting only to make a preliminary identification of the cultural backgrounds of the people who were part of the Johannine community at the time the Gospel was completed. This can help us discern what sorts of associations they would have brought to their reading of the text and how the text would have appropriated and transformed these associations.

Some have argued that Johannine Christians belonged to an introverted community and that the Fourth Gospel is a closed system of metaphors whose meaning is clear to insiders but opaque to the uninitiated. The Gospel’s language has been called an enchanting barrier that advertises a treasure within and yet seems designed to make the treasure all but inaccessible to newcomers.³² We will seek to show the opposite, arguing that the final form of the Gospel presupposes a spectrum of readers who came from various backgrounds and approached the text from somewhat different points of view. The Gospel would have been accessible to the less-informed readers yet sophisticated enough to engage those who were better informed.

There are two types of reasons for thinking that the final form of John’s Gospel presupposes a spectrum of readers. First, literary studies have pointed out that some portions of the Gospel assume that readers are well informed about Jewish festivals like Passover and the Feast of Booths, and that they can follow intricate debates based on the Scriptures and Jewish traditions. Yet other passages assume that some readers are not so well informed, patiently interpreting the meaning of words like rabbi and messiah (1:38, 41), and explaining that Jews used stone jars for purification rituals and did not associate with Samaritans (2:6; 4:9b). The tension between passages presupposing a highly informed readership and those addressed to a less informed readership suggests that the audience of the completed Gospel included various types of people.³³ Second, historical studies have shown that the Gospel and the community in which it was composed developed over a period of time. Although the literary history of the text and the social history of the community cannot be reconstructed with certainty at each juncture, it seems probable that the final form of the Gospel engaged Christians of different backgrounds: Jewish, Samaritan, and Greek.³⁴

Jewish Christians were almost certainly at the center of the audience for which John’s Gospel was written. The opening scenes present Jesus as a rabbi and as the Messiah or Christ foretold in the Jewish Scriptures. The titles Son of God and King of Israel, which appear on the lips of Nathanael, also recall Jewish tradition (1:35–51). Jesus continues to be called a rabbi throughout the Gospel, suggesting that the title would have been significant for readers, and the evangelist regularly uses the Christ as a Jewish messianic expression rather than making Christ a part of Jesus’ name. The central portion of the Gospel explicates Jesus’ identity in terms of the Jewish festivals of the Sabbath, Passover, Booths, and Dedication or Hanukkah (John 5–10), and the major symbols in these chapters— bread, water, and light—are closely connected with their use in Jewish rituals at these festivals.

The central conflict in the Gospel involves the Jewish authorities on one side and Jesus and his followers on the other. Especially significant is the story of the man born blind, who was repeatedly questioned concerning Jesus by some of the Jewish leaders and eventually expelled from the local synagogue (9:22). Conflict with the synagogue and fear of expulsion was apparently a factor