At SBL next week, one of my papers will deal with the portrayal of Jesus as a Galilean in the Gospel of John. I'll be presenting with Marianne Meye Thompson, James Crossley, and Jens Schroeter in one of the final sessions of the John, Jesus, and History group (9am CST, convention center 302C). This was organized by Craig Koester and he'll be publishing the proceedings.In general, I'll be arguing that the Gospel of John does care that Jesus was a Galilean and, in fact, cares quite a lot about it. That may sound like I'm stating the obvious to some of you, but I assure you that both things have been heavily contested (and also frequently defended) in Johannine scholarship. But the research for this paper has brought me to one of the real problem texts of the Gospel of John, John 4:44. This is where John's Gospel includes the proverbial saying of Jesus about a prophet not receiving honor in his hometown (patris), known also from the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Thomas.
Which city or region John 4:44 considers Jesus' patris is, however, not as clear as one might hope. I'll have my own answer to the question, but I wondered what readers of the Jesus Blog thought.
With only reading the verse in context and not consulting commentaries, what would you say is Jesus' patris in John 4:44?
I was not aware of this particular problem before, and always thought of galilee as his home region, but reading the context again I'm not that sure. I suspect John thinks of Judaea as Jesus' home region (as a son of David and born in Bethlehem, that isn't even a stretch), which is funny if you also take the polemics against "hoi ioudaioi" into account.
ReplyDeleteRight! This is precisely the problem!
DeleteI've argued (John's Use of Matthew, p. 112) that John 7:40-43 interlocks with Matthew's story of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem AND residence in Galilee.
ReplyDeleteI said just based on the text, damn it, Barker, not your monograph! You're breaking the rules here with all your elitist research.
DeleteHi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI did quite a bit of work on the term 'patris' in my book on the Homeless Jesus pp. 143-147, exploring its use through the LXX and in Philo & Andocides. Matthew also doesn't specify the location of Jesus's hometown (interpreters often read-in 'Nazareth' from Mark, but Mt. omits it) and I play with this ambiguity as you appear to be doing with John.
Robert, thanks for this. I'll follow up on your book. Matthew doesn't state it explicitly in context (neither does Mark, btw), but I think it's clear from context that Nazareth is the patris (Mark 1:9; Matt 2:23).
DeleteWe just read that passage tonight. I was a bit confused, since it seemed John claimed Galilee was his home, yet he seemed to be well recieved there. Looking forward to hearing what all the fuss is about
ReplyDelete