The Discipleship Paradigm: Readers and Anonymous Characters in the Fourth Gospel

Front Cover
BRILL, Nov 15, 2021 - Religion - 174 pages
This volume examines the Fourth Gospel narrative in terms of its character portrayal, especially the portrayal of anonymous characters. It focuses on how characterization impacts readers, eliciting their involvement in the narrative, particularly the recognition of and response to Jesus' identity, and how anonymity facilitates that participation.
The first chapters examine the understanding of characterization in contemporary literary theory, then the author explores other contemporaneous narratives for the function of anonymous characters in those narratives. The final chapters examine specific character portrayals in the Fourth Gospel, demonstrating how the narratives of anonymous characters draw the reader into participation in the narrative and enables identification with those characters, especially the disciple Jesus loved, the Johannine paradigm of discipleship.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
The Analysis of Character
6
Textual Analysis of Fourth Gospel Characters
17
Anonymity Identity and Identification The Fourth Gospel Prologue and the Witness of John
35
Anonymous Women and Models of Discipleship
51
The Infirm the Blind the Dead and the Misplaced
83
The Disciple Jesus Loved
108
Conclusion
137
Bibliography
147
Index of Greek Terms
163
Index of Names
165
Index of Subjects
171
Biblical Interpretation Series
175
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2021)

David R. Beck, Ph.D. (1994) in New Testament, Duke University, is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. He has published an earlier version of his theory of Fourth Gospel anonymity in Semeia 63 (1993).

Bibliographic information