The Fourth Gospel has always evaded me. During forty plus years of teaching, I wrestled with it each year in the Introduction to the New Testament course, and every three or four years I conducted a seminar on the gospel. I have spent plenty of time studying this gospel.
I have reached some firm conclusions. Rudolf Bultmann was right that the canonical version is not the original. The composition has suffered rearrangement, whether on purpose or by accident is unclear, probably both. Originally, like the Synoptics, the narrative stretched over a single year. A major source was the Sign Source, a collection of miracle stories (see the Complete Gospels). The Gospel of Mark is another source. The gospel went through several editions. In the final edition, the Logos Hymn was added as an introduction, and chapter 21 became a new conclusion resolving the conflict between Peter and the Beloved Student. John Ashton in Understanding the Fourth Gospel (1991) correctly identified the Dead Sea Scrolls as the gospel’s intellectual world.
Ernst Käsemann’s The Testament of Jesus (1968), while controversial, has had a major influence on my interpretation. He argued that the Fourth Gospel was docetic, that Jesus did not quite make it all the way down to earth. Judging the canonical gospels by the standards of later orthodoxy is not only anachronistic, but leads to them all falling short. But dealing with Käsemann’s argument remains a major interpretative issue. The traditional understanding of the Synoptics as physical and the Fourth Gospel as spiritual indicates the validity of Käsemann’s critique.
In my judgment, the author of the Fourth Gospel knows Mark 16, although I acknowledge that is a minority opinion. There are several reasons for this. 1) Since the women at the tomb is a Marcan creation, all parallel stories about the women derive from Mark. 2) The introductory language is similar and “On the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2//John 20:1) is exact, indicating copying. The source could be Luke 24, but Luke 24 is dependent on Mark 16, so in the end it makes no difference. 3) But the convincing piece of evidence for me is Mark’s introduction of a group of women as witnesses to Jesus’ death (Mark 15:40–41). In the Lucan parallel (23:49) the women are unnamed, part of the author’s strategy of disappearing the women as witnesses to Jesus’ death and resurrection. The parallel in John 19:25 does mention the women: “Meanwhile, Jesus’ mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Klopas, and Mary of Magdala were standing near his cross.” This indicates that the author of the Fourth Gospel knows Mark, not Luke.
Therefore, John 20 is a retelling of Mark 16. But the author of the fourth canonical gospel has a distinctive style. Unlike the Synoptics, which favor short pericopes, the Gospel of John employs monologues or long dialogues focused on a single character. Consider the Pharisee Nicodemus, who comes at night; the woman at the well in Samaria; the raising of Lazarus; the discourse at the last supper, which goes on so long the dinner would surely have gotten cold. In John 20, the author has taken Mark’s group of three women and reduced them to one, Mary Magdalene, the first one on the list. Unlike the anonymous Samaritan woman, this woman is named, singled out.
John 20, the first edition’s conclusion, revolves around Jesus’ encounters with two individuals: Mary Magdalene and Thomas. It has a clear structure.
Group: Mary Magdalene, Peter, and the Beloved Student at the Tomb
Individual: Mary Magdalene
Group: Students in the Upper Room
Individual: Thomas
I want to concentrate on the two individuals because they are clearly set up as contrasting parallels, as were Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman earlier in the gospel.
The Mary Magdalene episode plays on several cultural assumptions. Women were mourners and cared for the body at death. Upon finding a body missing, one would first suspect grave robbers, which were common as archaeologists frequently discover.
Mary, standing outside, is weeping. When she looks into the tomb, she sees two heavenly messengers, the first hint that the possibility of grave robbery has given way to some numinous realm. The narrator informs the reader/audience that the two beings are heavenly messengers. Mary does not know this. They ask, “Lady, why are you crying?” To which Mary responds once more that the body is missing. Upon turning away, she sees Jesus but does not recognize him, thinking he’s the gardener. Again, the narrator provides a reader with information denied Mary.
Her dialogue with Jesus is simply but carefully structured.
Says Jesus to her,
“Lady, why are you crying? Who is it you’re looking for?”
That one, thinking that he is the gardener, says to him,
“Please, mister, if you’ve moved him, tell me where you’ve put him so I can take him away.”
Says Jesus to her,
“Mary.”
Turning around, that one says to him,
“Rabbuni!” (which means in Hebrew “Teacher”).
Says Jesus to her,
“Let go of me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them this: ‘I’m ascending to my Father and your Father—to my God and your God’” (John 2:15–17).
The simple, repetitive, unadorned pattern guides an audience/reader to pay attention to the dialogue. The present-tense narration presents the story to the hearer as something happening now, right before the audience—the storyteller speaks directly to the audience. This is not narrated as a past event. All this indicates the artistry and rhetoric with which the tale is told. Unfortunately, it takes longer to explain than it does to experience. Moreover, most English translations, by putting the whole thing in the past tense, “Jesus said to her,” treat the story as historical narration, which it emphatically is not.
Jesus addresses Mary with the same address as the heavenly messenger, “Lady.” The KJV and most other English versions translate the Greek word literally as “woman,” which in English sounds disrespectful, but the Greek usage implies a more polite meaning. The SV “lady” perhaps sounds a bit too upper class, but it is a better translation than “woman.”
Jesus repeats the heavenly messengers’ question and adds: “Who is it you’re looking for?” Mary sticks with the grave robbery plot: “Please, mister, if you’ve moved him, tell me where you’ve put him so I can take him away.”
Jesus speaks her name, “Mary.” Naming echoes the Genesis creation story where YHWH calls creatures into life by naming them. Mary recognizes Jesus at the sound (logos) of his voice.
“She turns around and exclaims in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’ (which means ‘Teacher’).”
“To turn” is often a metaphor to turn toward God. John 12:39–40 quotes Isaiah, illustrating such a usage.
So they were unable to believe, for Isaiah also said,
“He has blinded their eyes,
and closed their minds,
to make sure they don’t see with their eyes
and understand with their minds,
or else they would turn <their lives> around
and I would heal them.”
Since she is facing him to speak to him, turn is metaphorical, noting a change.
Mary speaks in Hebrew, not Aramaic. Her name for Jesus is surprising. She calls him “teacher,” not a Christological title, as one might expect. On the other hand, throughout the Fourth Gospel, the followers of Jesus are referred to as “students” (in ecclesial speak “disciples”). They are never called “apostles” and only once is “the twelve” used, in reference to Thomas (20:24). In this context, it is very appropriate for a student to refer to a beloved teacher as “Rabbuni.”
Jesus says to Mary, “Let go of me,” which has traditionally been translated as “Don’t touch me,” ever since Jerome translated the Greek into Latin as Noli tangere. In the Renaissance, this Latin phrase named a whole category of paintings. Mary has often been seen as too unclean to touch Jesus, but the Greek makes no such implication. “Don’t keep clinging to me” is the correct sense. Or, as Jesus explains, “do not prevent me from ascending to the Father; do not try to keep me here.”
Jesus commissions Mary to “go to my brothers and tell them this: ‘I’m ascending to my Father and your (plural) Father—to my God and your (plural) God.’” Jesus’ confession equates “my” and “your.” He tells Mary to go to his “brothers,” not his students, as one might expect. Here Jesus stresses mutuality and equality. He is not superior, but a brother.
That this must be the correct confession is confirmed by Jesus calling his students his friends in the discourse at the last supper. Jesus directly contrasts “friend” with slave and master. “I no longer call you slaves, since a slave does not know what his master is up to. I have called you friends, because I let you know everything I learned from my Father” (15:15). Being a friend is then linked with love: “This is what I command you: you shall love each other” (15:17). This section of the discourse mounts a major attack on hierarchy.
Mary announces Jesus’ message to the students. The Greek word angellousa denotes making a formal announcement. It comes from the same root as the angeloi (heavenly messengers, angels) of verse 12. “I have seen the Master (kurios)” uses the formulaic language of Paul’s kerygma “I have seen Jesus our lord, haven't I?” (1Cor 9:1).
Jesus’ commissioning of Mary to deliver the message of the resurrection to his students marks the final attack on hierarchy. In the last discourse he disavowed the master/slave relationship in favor of friends. He now sends a female to deliver the decisive message to his brothers. “My father and your father” makes them all children.
While the Fourth Gospel presents Mary Magdalene’s story as the proper way to respond to the resurrection, the tradition has preferred to see Thomas’ confession as the story’s climax and point. Why? Because it meshes with the emerging imperial Christology of the fourth and succeeding centuries with its accent on Jesus’ divinity and physical resurrection. Also, pericope and single verse analysis have dominated traditional exegesis which means that each episode, pericope, or verse is isolated from its larger narrative context. But our reading of Mary’s story suggests that the traditional preference for Thomas should be reconsidered.
Thomas arrives eight days later. The Genesis reference in the Mary Magdalene episode was positive; here it is negative. Thomas arrives one day late! A warning to the reader. When Jesus challenges Thomas to touch him, he also chides him with the gnomic saying, “Be not faithless but faithful” (my translation). Jesus is not testing belief, but action. Like Mary, who keeps seeking Jesus, Thomas should be faithful to Jesus.
Thomas responds with his famous confession, “My Lord and my God.” Thomas’ confession challenges Jesus’ confession—”My father and your father. My God and your God.” Thomas invokes the preferred title of the then current Roman emperor, Domitian. Thomas has made a category mistake. He has mistaken his brother Jesus for the Roman emperor. He has opted for a master/slave model. So did the tradition.
The narrator continues to introduce Jesus’ speech in the present tense, “he says,” while framing Thomas’ confession with the formulaic "he answered and said" in the aorist (past) tense. Jesus and Thomas occupy different imaginative times. Jesus is in the present going forward; Thomas is in the past.
Jesus chides Thomas. “Do you believe because you’ve seen me?” (20:29) He concludes with a beatitude that contrasts Thomas with others. “Blessed are those who remain faithful without seeing,” pointing back to Mary Magdalene, who remains faithful. She recognized Jesus when he spoke her name. Thomas requires physical touch. In the Gospel of Thomas, Thomas is the all-knowing recipient of the secret revelation. In the Fourth Gospel, Thomas must touch and feel. These are two very different views of Thomas.
The narrator concludes this section and the original gospel by stating the narrative’s point:
Although Jesus performed many more signs for his students to see than could be written down in this book, these are written down so you will come to believe that Jesus is the Anointed One, the son of God—and by believing this have life in his name.
Substituting “trust” for “believe” brings us closer to the sense of the Greek. In the ancient world, the reader of a book would actually be a hearer. The narrator aligns the hearer/reader with Mary Magdalene as the model who hears the voice of Jesus. All this in a gospel that begins with logos. A word in Greek is a sound, not a collection of letters.
John 20 suggests a radical re-envisioning of Christology along lines of equality and mutuality, love and friendship, not imperial models of lord and master that traditional Christology has pursued.
At this post’s beginning I confessed that I have never felt I had a good handle on the Fourth Gospel, but I think I’m getting there. The Mary Magdalene episode is the key, at least for me, and I suspect that was also the author’s intention. The narrative leads in that direction.
Mary Magdalene does not see but hears. Jesus speaks her name. She responds not with a Christological title but with Rabboni, teacher. She hears the voice, logos, calling her. She does not need the physical proof of seeing or touching, as in Thomas’ case.
From its beginning this gospel has played down messianic and Christological titles as a strategy to go beyond language to insight. The linguistic puzzles and paradoxes Jesus employs serve to dissolve language. The reader’s task is not to discover who Jesus is but to experience the hearing of his call.
The author announces this strategy at the narrative’s beginning in the calling of the first group of students. After John the Baptizer proclaimed Jesus “the Lamb of God” (whatever that means?), two of John’s students followed Jesus and when Jesus asked what they were looking for they answered, “’Rabbi’ (which means ‘Teacher’), ‘where do you live?’” (2:38), which parallels Mary’s Rabboni with its translation. After spending the day with him, Andrew tells his brother Simon, “’We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated, ‘Anointed One’)” (2:41). Upon seeing Peter Jesus changes his name: “’You’re Simon, son of John; you’re going to be called Kephas’ (which means Peter <or Rock>)” (2:42). Again, this parallels Mary’s story. Eventually student leads to student until Nathanael, the last in the chain, pronounces the famous slur, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (2:46) and then confesses, “Rabbi, you are the son of God! You are King of Israel!” (2:49).
These calling stories run through a succession of messianic and Christological titles. No such insight dawns on the students in the Synoptic Gospels. But the stories do not seem to add up to much. Jesus tells Nathaniel, “Do you believe just because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You’re going to see a lot more than that” (2:50). Clearly messianic titles and signs are not enough.
This pattern repeats throughout the Fourth Gospel. Jesus always confronts his dialogue partner with a provocative or paradoxical saying demanding the hearer go beyond the literal to insight. Mary Magdalene is the only character in this gospel who breaks through, who gets beyond the titles and signs to Jesus himself when he speaks her name. As the perfect model of one who believes or trusts, Jesus commissions her to announce the resurrection to his students.
Virgina Woolf in her 1925 essay “On Not Knowing Greek” notes: “There is an ambiguity which is the mark of the highest poetry; we cannot know exactly what it means. . . . The meaning is just on the far side of language. It is the meaning which in moments of astonishing excitement and stress we perceive in our minds without words.” This, I think, precisely catches the strategy of the Fourth Gospel—to go just on the far side of language.
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