John, Jesus, and History, Volume 4: Jesus Remembered Within the Johannine Situation. Edited by Paul N. Anderson, Tom Thatcher, and Felix Just SJ. The Early Christianity and Its Literature. Atlanta: SBL, forthcoming, 2024
In order to further the task of identifying memories of Jesus in both canonical and non-canonical... more In order to further the task of identifying memories of Jesus in both canonical and non-canonical sources, the present essay looks at how early Christian memories of Jesus’ baptism in general, and their Johannine variants in particular, were utilized in the composition of the Apocryphon of John. Three blocks of material from the long recension of the Apocryphon will be analyzed: (1) the anointing of Christ in the pre-existing light-waters; (2) the Providence hymn that relates three descents into the cosmos of Christ as Providence with the third descent culminating in incarnation and baptism; and (3) the story of Adam’s creation and awakening, which in the long recension has been edited to cohere with the three descents of Providence from said hymn. Several recurrently attested memories of Jesus’ baptism are utilized in the composition of the Apocryphon. These include the descent of the spirit, the presence of a bird, the heavenly voice, the use of Psalm 2:7, a light phenomenon, and a dialogue between John and Jesus. By recurrent attestation, I draw inspiration from Dale Allison’s concept. Moreover, intertextual links between Jesus’ baptism and the Genesis creation story, which were already hinted at by Mark and openly explored by John, are further developed in the Apocryphon. Its author repeatedly evokes the Fourth Gospel, and the intertextual links to both Genesis and John form sometimes complex blends. Conceptual blending theory is a fruitful tool for analyzing intertextual relations and will be employed here.
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Both views have been connected with “Gnosticism” in previous scholarship. What is more, the standard interpretation is ultimately based on a mere few polemical passages in 1 and 2 John that have often colored the interpretation of the letters in general. Misguided mirror-reading and over-interpretation are also at play in readings of the polemical passages themselves. Such methodological problems derive in part from a lack of understanding of ancient rhetorical conventions.
Once insights from ancient rhetoric are applied to the reading of the letters, a different picture of the opponents begins to emerge. This picture matches well with polemical scenes in the Fourth Gospel but poorly with Ignatius’ letters or Irenaeus’ heresy catalog. A small but growing number of scholars–including B. Olsson and D. Streett–argue that the Johannine opponents are simply members of the local Jewish community, some of who had once been Christ-believers, but had since become convinced that Jesus was not the promised messiah after all. There is no strong evidence that any of them had held a “Gnostic”-like Christology of any kind.
On the other hand, as Käsemann famously stated, the Johannine gospel itself is “naïvely docetic.” The divinity of Jesus pervades the gospel and, since there are no birth or infancy narratives, it is easy to understand why some Valentinians later understood the Word having become flesh only at Jesus’ baptism. Also, while one does not have to accept Bultmann’s thesis of a Gnostic (Mandean) background of the gospel prologue, it is interesting to note that the prologue contains a rare feature that during the first two centuries is mainly found within the Classic Gnostic tradition; namely, application of Jewish Wisdom traditions to Jesus’ baptism. It thus remains possible that what might in retrospect be called heterodox tendencies did play a role in the Johannine “schism,” but that it was the Johannine author himself whose views approached Gnostic ones.
of bad repute whose literary portrayals seem influenced by the image of Jezebel. The purpose of my essay is to study these early Christian portrayals. However, in order to do so, we must first get acquainted with Jezebel of old before moving to an analysis of her symbolic counterparts: Jezebel of Thyatira in Revelation, Herodias in the Gospel of Mark, and Helen of Tyre in Irenaeus’s version of the Simonian myth.
stated that John’s Gospel was first properly accepted and adopted by
the Valentinians of whom the first one was Ptolemaeus. Ptolemaeus
not only considered the gospel to be apostolic but also wrote a commentary
on its prologue some time during the third quarter of the
second century. Such statements—based largely on the old paradigm
of the early catholic reluctance towards John’s Gospel, as well as on
Irenaeus’ description of a Valentinian “model system”—are in need
of correction. Ptolemaeus and the Valentinians do not appear to have
been the first Christians to accept the Fourth Gospel as apostolic.
Instead, it will be argued in this essay that Ptolemaeus adopted his way
of using the Fourth Gospel’s prologue as a proof-text for Valentinian
theology from an anti-Marcionite Roman discourse from the 150s.
This means that the Roman congregations had already accepted the
Fourth Gospel by the time Ptolemaeus wrote, and that consequently,
Valentinus himself was probably well aware of the gospel. The picture
drawn here of Ptolemaeus’ use of the Fourth Gospel will be based primarily
on his authentic Letter to Flora, preserved by Epiphanius (Pan.
33.3–7), and secondarily on the Ptolemaean commentary on John’s
prologue preserved by Irenaeus (Adv. haer. 1.8.5), whose ascription to
Ptolemaeus himself, however, is only stated in the Latin translation of
Irenaeus’ text, and is missing from the Greek fragment preserved by
Epiphanius. Other examples of Valentinian use of the prologue will be
discussed alongside these two primary “Ptolemaean” cases.