The views expressed in this article are of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
The Scriptural Tale in the Fourth Gospel: With Particular References to the Prologue and a Syncretic (Oral and Written) Poetics
Edward H. Gerber
Brill (2017). 396 pp.
Whether the Fourth Gospel is shallow or deep is a perennial question informed readers raise of John. It is to the depth of John’s Gospel—and its “coherent scriptural sub-story”—that Edward Gerber intends to plumb in his work, The Scriptural Tale in the Fourth Gospel. Gerber’s main contention is that the Gospel tells the story of Jesus by way of a highly evocative retelling of the stories of Adam and Israel. The Gospel does this through a storytelling framework of number-patterning that was effective for hearers in oral contexts. Much of what John communicates is driven by this patterning because it evokes the stories of Israel filtered through the community memory that was available—to some degree—to the original readers of the Gospel (p. 62). Gerber spends much of his time on the prologue, attempting to demonstrate that it displays the Adam/ Israel framework that is called on by John throughout the Gospel. The evocative stories of Adam and Israel form this “coherent scriptural sub story” (what Gerber calls the “scriptural tale”) retold within the Gospel (p. 350). Gerber’s approach to understanding this evocative communication is through what he calls “syncretic poetics,” a theory that considers not just literary phenomena but also oral phenomena still detectable in the text. Once established, Gerber suggests that there are seven primary “moves” that the story of Israel undergoes (many which also comprise the big ideas of the Old Testament), and that John contains deep structures that are built on each of these seven moves—forming a series of heptads that extend from the prologue to the end of the Gospel.
The layout of Scriptural Tale also follows a heptadic scheme, with three sections. In the first section, “A Story Told?” the first chapter orients the reader to the intent of Gerber’s research. Here he notes that while there is clear and incontrovertible evidence that the Fourth Gospel looks back to the foundational narratives, there has been little work in the way of trying to find a structuring scheme (a “storyboard design,” p. 19) to the Fourth Gospel that may relate to these stories. Gerber gathers a number of durable examples for how and why ancient writers would retell old stories in the process of telling new stories. In the second chapter, Gerber explains the importance of narrative knowledge to the community of believers who produced the Fourth Gospel. These believers would have remembered and recited the primary stories of their community, as at a fundamental level, these stories (and their connection to them) are what held the community together. In then turning around and telling the story of Jesus, it would be natural for the community to frame it in a way that made sense to them—in light of the events of the foundational stories of their faith. Chapter Three centers on Gerber’s method, with much interest expressed in the work of John Miles Foley on ancient theories of orality. Gerber’s point here includes a critique of recent works in biblical intertextuality, such as those of Richard Hays, because of their dominant focus on literary (“verbal”) allusions and avoidance of oral (“aural”) allusions, even though NT texts were products of predominantly oral, not literary, cultures. Instead of rejecting literary allusions, Gerber’s approach is to use insights from both literary and oral allusions found in the text.
In Part Two, “A Story Told in the Beginning?” the fourth chapter spotlights the prologue of John. Gerber argues that the prologue “previews and spearheads what the Gospel then unfolds,” pointing to not just thematic and structural relationships between the prologue and the body of the Gospel, but also “according to their implicit stories” (p. 118). Gerber suggests that “the constellation of language and themes used in the prologue also appear to assume and evoke an idiosyncratic and eschatologically-charged story-pattern rooted specifically in Adam and temple theology” (p. 119). Thus, “this story is about Adam and Israel’s decisive role or vocation in a cosmos that is conceptualized in temple terms … [which] the Fourth Evangelist has in mind and evokes in the prologue as a deliberate anticipation of what will be worked out and, indeed, ‘played with,’ more fully in the rest of his Gospel” (p. 123). To do this, Gerber suggests that there are seven steps to the “rise-and-fall” structure of the Adam/Israel stories, which can be synthesized into a “template of eschatological hope,” is present in a number of ancient texts (Ezekiel, Zechariah, Sirach, Joseph and Aseneth, etc.), and is evoked in the prologue. Turning to Chapter Five, Gerber builds off the previous chapter to explain how “vv. 1–13 [of the prologue] retell the career of the Logos asarkos while highlighting the Logos’ successive ‘failures’ to find a home in Adam, the world, and Israel … these rejections imply a failure by humanity of its vocation as the image-bearers and/or idols of God that is then shown to be answered in vv.14–18 by the Logos ensarkos” (p. 160). Gerber starts with an often-held idea, that the Logos is a “complex figure” summoned by John to serve as an actor … in a larger drama” (p. 166). Next, Gerber goes verse by verse through the prologue to explain the story patterning of the prologue against the two primary narratives of Adam and Israel. Key to Gerber’s argument is John 1:14, “the climax of the prologue” and “utterly exceptional” in its theological thought (p. 120), a statement that claims “that the very one in whose image Adam was made, a being quite possibly understood as the ‘heavenly’ Adam and Image of God himself, had become his own earthly reflection” (p. 208). The goal, then, of the prologue is to show that “Jesus as the Incarnate Logos is shown by [John] to be the answer to the problem of Adam and Israel’s failures of vocation” (p. 208). These two chapters are the heart and strength of Gerber’s work.
The third part, “A Story Told to the End?” opens with the sixth chapter, wherein Gerber suggests that “a traditional oral form in cooperation with other oral-traditional elements has informed the underlying macrostructure of the FG” (p. 239), with this macrostructure informed from the seven foundational stories of the OT. In order to create this macrostructure, Gerber argues that the Fourth Gospel is comprised of approximately five heptads: Seven Days (1:1–2:11), Seven Signs (2:1–12:50), Seven Days (12:1–19:42), Seven Days (20:1–31), and Seven Disciples (21:1–25) (p. 244). The primary reason for heptads is for oral configuration and as a media device to tell (and retell) the Johannine story. In the penultimate chapter, Gerber attempts to show how the story-pattern of the seven foundational stories—primarily creation, Israel’s exodus, and the Promised Land conquest/resettlement—were packaged within the first four heptads. These stories, Gerber concludes, were an intentional outworking of the scriptural tale started in the prologue. Included is a brief conclusion that summarizes some of the key moves of the book.
Gerber’s thesis is audacious in its scope in trying to resolve several issues that Johannine studies have long wrestled with. His attempt to refocus the poetics of the Fourth Gospel to include oral cultural considerations is needed, and it allows him room to make arguments that would go unnoticed if just considering the final form of the text. His theological development of the Logos asarkos/ensarkos concept as it relates to the revelation of Adam/Israel is worth further pursuit. Gerber has convincingly argued that the Gospel is imbued with the ‘narrative stuff ’ of the Primary History—at a far deeper level than is often supposed when merely hunting for quotes, allusions and echoes. And yet, the need to fit all of this raw material into a patterned form is less convincing, at least for this reviewer. The problem with the evocative is just that, it is evocative. Thus, it is hard to make and defend definitive statements about evocations in what is also claimed to be an intentionally-structured format. More work may need to be done to bridge the gap between strong evocations and strong narrative organization. Highly recommended for those working on the Gospel of John and all theological research libraries.
Douglas Estes is adjunct professor of New Testament and Practical Theology at Friends University in Wichita, KS. He is the editor of Didaktikos: Journal of Theological Education and is a regular science contributor at Christianity Today. Douglas has written or edited eleven books, as well as more than fifty essays and articles for both popular and scholarly publications. He is a member of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
