The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls: The ... - josephprestonkirk

284 THE DIFFERING APPROACH TO A THEOLOGICAL HERITAGE
effects on the history of theology but also in other areas, such as the history
of art or literature. This phenomenon can be expressed concisely in
the lovely expression that the Gospel of John is like “a book in which a
child can wade and an elephant can swim.” 6 This paradoxical image
expresses the thought that even readers without a high level of education
or an exact knowledge about the origins of Christianity can understand
the central message of the Fourth Gospel. By explanations the author
thus helps readers without personal experience of the praxis of Jewish life
to understand the details of his narrative (cf. John 1:41; 2:6; 4:25; 11:55;
18:20, 28b; 19:40; etc.). The depth of many motifs and argumentations,
however, appears to presuppose that the readers know the writings and
traditions of the Old Testament as well as a number of elements of the
Gospel traditions. It is possible to show this matter briefly with one example.
In 8:12 the Johannine Jesus says about himself that he is the Light of
the World. Those who follow him will not walk in the darkness, but will
have the light of life. This impressive motif is an equivalent to the
Prologue of the Gospel. In speaking about Jesus, the Prologue has already
said that the Word of God is the light that came into the darkness—and
this light was the life of everyone (1:4–5, 9). Now, in the narrative context
of chapter 8, Jesus says about himself what the text-external reader
of the Gospel has already known before.
It is really easy to understand this central idea of the Christology of
the Fourth Gospel on a first and basic level. But it also implies a second
level, if someone tries to understand it in the sense of the Gospel of John’s
hermeneutics of Scripture. The fundamental importance of the Old
Testament for the Gospel of John is already indicated in the paraphrasing
interpretation of Gen 1:1–4 in the Prologue, which can be seen as a christological
manual for reading the whole Gospel. Accordingly John 5:39
emphasizes that the Scriptures witness to Jesus, and the Prologue culminates
in the statement that Jesus is the “exegete of God” ( John 1:18). The
6. On the origins and various uses of this image, see Paul N. Anderson, Navigating
the Living Waters of the Gospel of John: On Wading with Children and Swimming with Elephants
(Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 2000), passim; Paul F. Barackman, “The Gospel
according to John,” Int 6 (1952): 63; Robert D. Kysar, The Fourth Evangelist and His
Gospel: An Examination of Contemporary Scholarship (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1975), 6. A
corresponding view is put forward by Richard J. Bauckham, “The Audience of the
Fourth Gospel,” in Jesus in Johannine Tradition (ed. R. T. Fortna and T. Thatcher;
Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 101–11, esp. 111, writing that the Fourth
Gospel can be read and understood by a particularly broad readership: “In fact, FG
[the Fourth Gospel] may envisage a wider readership than perhaps any other New
Testament Text.”