This thesis discusses the concept of "apprehension of Jesus" in the Gospel of John by focusing primarily on John's use of seeing, hearing, knowing, witnessing, remembering and believing terms. After briefly clarifying what is meant by a concept from a linguistic perspective, I analysed and examined the grammatical features of the key apprehension terms used. In view of the errors committed in previous studies of Johannine synonyms used for the apprehension terms, I set up the semantic fields for the concept of apprehension. On the basis of this linguistic foundation, I offer an exegetical analysis to investigate how the apprehension terms and related terms function in the contexts of the Gospel of John in order to show how John intends to affect his readers. Through my analysis of the selected passages and the persuasive strategies used in them, I argue for a new reading of the Gospel of John, proposing that there is a four-phased apprehension of Jesus where ideas of seeing, hearing, knowing, witnessing, and remembering collaborate with believing: (1) John 1-4. Initial encounters are characterised by a generally positive and sincere reception of Jesus which are guided by the message of the Jonannine preamble and monologues (1:1-5, 9-18; 3:16-21, 31-36); (2) John 5-12. Subsequent encounters are characterised by a largely negative and hostile response to Jesus; (3) John 13-17. Deepening encounters are focused on knowing Jesus in a more personal way and even beyond the time-frame of his earthly life; and (4) John 18-21. Heightened and climactic encounters engage the readers in a manner climactic to the overall plot. In a collaborative and progressive manner, the apprehension terms function in the four phases so as to demonstrate to the readers the multifaceted importance of faith; they highlight the characters' apprehension of Jesus and contribute to encourage faith in the readers. After identifying the author's persuasive strategies we shall be able to work out what his intended impact on the readers was. First, by depicting different characters' apprehension of Jesus, I shall show that John has a dual goal of faith-engendering and faith-fostering targeted to believing as well as non-believing readers. Second, by understanding how Jesus' own apprehension of the spiritual reality is relevant to the readers' perception of him, I shall show that the Gospel of John reminds readers of the importance of the "present"-ness of a living, omniscient, and divine Jesus. Third, an evaluation of John's strategy in helping his readers to understand the role of Jesus' signs and words will show that the activities of seeing signs and hearing words function complementary to bring about apprehension. The activities of "seeing" signs and "hearing" words in the parst are now associated with reading John's trustworthy testimony in the present. Finally, regarding the role of faith in perceiving Jesus, I explain that readers' belief/unbelief, as part of their apprehension/perception process, is open to challenging possibilities upon encountering and knowing the narrated Jesus. The readers of the Gospel of John should be struck by the fact that belief/unbelief is not only the end result of their process of apprehension of Jesus; it is also paradoxically their presupposition prior to the same apprehension in the Gospel of John. Thus, these four impacts generated from the four apprehension phases highlight the author's thoughtful concerns for his readers in subsequent generations. These findings present an original contribution to the significance of the concept of apprehension of Jesus which is insufficiently appreciated in current Johannine scholarship. They serve as the basis for opening new avenues for reflection and research.

PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Thesis (D.M.A.)--Boston University, 1953. PLEASE NOTE: pages 51 and 52 were missing in the physical thesis. / 2031-01-02

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This thesis offers a focused study on the benefits of discipleship in the Gospel of John (GJohn). While previous research has considered the meaning of the terms disciple and discipleship, characterization of the Johannine disciples, and various characteristics of discipleship, in the current study I investigate certain themes that can be understood as compensatory benefits of discipleship in GJohn. I argue that these benefits can be grouped under three primary benefits that John deploys to promote discipleship. These three primary benefits are: membership in the divine family, the Father and the Son abiding in the believer through the Spirit, and royal friendship with Jesus. I have identified these three primary benefits based on either the benefit’s strategic placement in the text, or prominence in the Gospel, or peculiar meaning in GJohn. In addition to the three primary benefits, I argue that John features corollary benefits that appear in the surrounding narrative of the three key benefits. The corollary benefits of membership in the divine family are life, love, knowledge of God and of the truth, freedom from sin, walking in the light, salvation, avoidance of judgment/destruction, resurrection, protection, performance of great works, affirmation of genuine discipleship, honor, glory, and unity/oneness of the Father and the Son with the other disciples. The corollary benefits to abiding—which are contingent upon the disciples’ abiding in Jesus—are the presence of the Paraclete, love, peace, joy, avoidance of judgment, answered requests, the ability to perform great works, fruit, and affirmation of genuine discipleship. The corollary benefits to royal friendship with Jesus are love, knowledge of the Father, fruit, joy, and answered requests. The corollary benefits that are constituent of more than one primary benefit—love, affirmation of genuine discipleship, avoidance of judgment, joy, knowledge, answered requests, fruit, and performance of great works—are examined in the context of the primary benefit that develops the accompanying benefit most thoroughly. My study is rooted in a close reading of the text, with an exegetical and a narratival analysis of John’s presentation of discipleship. In chapter 1, I frame my argument in light of the existing literature on discipleship. In chapters 2 through 4, I investigate the three primary benefits and the affiliated corollary benefits. In chapter 2, I argue that followers of Jesus are integrated into the family of God by divine initiation. The disciple is then granted eternal life that enables him to relate to God, Jesus, and other members within the divine family, which results in the aforementioned additional benefits. In chapter 3, I argue that the theme of abiding with God and Jesus has a present and a future dimension in GJohn. In chapter 4, I argue that John depicts Jesus as a royal figure who invites his disciples into a friendship in which they experience the privilege of being members of his royal circle. In chapter 5, I suggest that John presents the benefits of commitment to Jesus against the general backdrop of the hostility of “the Jews” and the world toward Jesus and his followers. This opposition might have been a factor in the then-current experience of Johannine believers, or it might be reflective of the experience of a prior time which continued to form part of the outlook of the Johannine believers. In light of the potential cost of following Jesus, we can understand certain Johannine themes as compensatory benefits that are deployed in GJohn to promote continuous discipleship. In chapter 6, I synthesize my findings.

This thesis deals with the question of the concept of freedom in the Gospel of John and the relationship between freedom and truth. The first part of this thesis is focused on the research of concepts of freedom and truth from the Old Testament to the New Testament, it is a description of historical background in which both terms were formed and transformed. This thesis also includes a detailed exegesis of the text of J 8.31-36, which served as the starting point. Due the fact that notion of freedom is most often found in the New Testament in the Gospel of John and Paul's Epistles, I insert a chapter charting the occurrence and use of the concept of freedom in Paul's epistles. In the main part of the thesis I compare the use of the concept of freedom in the Gospel of John and in Paul's letters.

One of the distinctive features of the Fourth Gospel is the emphasis placed on the divine name (ὄνομα). The name occurs eight times (5.43; 10.25; 12.13, 28; 17.6, 11-12, 26), in key passages and in striking expressions such as “I have made known your name” (17.6) and “your name, which you gave me” (17.11). This thesis uses historical-critical methodology in a close reading of the Fourth Gospel to determine why John is so attracted to the name category. It is argued that, for John, the divine name was fundamentally an eschatological category with a built-in duality or “associative” significance, which he derives primarily from his reading of Isaiah. It is plausible that Isaiah was the primary impetus for John’s interest in the divine name, because name language is bound up with the “I am” expression and glory language in Isaiah— both of which more clearly underlie John’s “I am” sayings and glory motif. Furthermore, the significance of the name in Isaiah as the object of eschatological expectation (Isa 52.6), and as a concept by which God is associated with his Servant, attracted John to the name category as ideal for his nuanced presentation of Jesus. In John’s use of the name category, it is possible to distinguish the question of significance from that of referent, meaning, and function. This, in turn, facilitates a clear evaluation of possible catalysts for John’s name concept. It is demonstrated that a variety of Jewish and Christian background influences contributed to John’s name concept at the level of referent, meaning, and function. However, the eschatological and associative significance of the name in the Fourth Gospel is particularly indebted to the name concept in Isaiah. This is significant, in part, because Isaiah places such emphasis on the exclusivity of God. It may be that a zeal for God’s exclusivity had generated accusations against the community of believers known to John, that, by their allegiance to Jesus, they were guilty of blaspheming the name in particular. The name was, perhaps, a “flashpoint” for the community, and the text of Isaiah a key battle-ground for defining fidelity to God, and the identity of the people of God. By associating Jesus with the divine name, John legitimates the allegiance of believers to Jesus in the face of Jewish opposition, as well as comforts those who were troubled by the continued absence of Jesus, with the point that they were yet identified by the divine name (17.11), and that eschatological revelation of the name promised in Isaiah was extended to their own time as well (17.26b).

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

This dissertation examines temporal frames in the Gospel of John and the Johannine letters and traces the ways that these texts and those who received them constructed and employed temporality to shape belief in Christ. Building on existing scholarship on Johannine literature and temporality, I situate these writers and their readers within their contemporary Greek, Roman, and Jewish social and rhetorical contexts, exploring the use of temporal markers, calendrical calculations, and claims about the past, present, and future in ancient discourses of self-definition. The Gospel of John uses an account of Jesus’s life and deeds to assert the God of Israel’s exclusive prerogative to create, control, and dominate not only time but also earthly authorities. The writer(s) of the Gospel place the Logos “in the beginning,” situate events within Jewish temporal frames, and align Jesus’s resurrection with solar time to portray Jesus as a sovereign, divine agent. The Johannine letters also employ temporality, but differently. The letters link the past with the present to establish an identity for the audience by assuring them of their genealogical and temporal bonds with Jesus. The letters seek to distance perceived opponents, who are labeled “Antichrist,” by describing them as agents of the devil who sinned “from the beginning.” A later group of Christ believers known as the “Quartodecimans” received and adopted Johannine temporality for their own purposes. Celebrating Easter in full coordination with the Passover, for example, Melito of Sardis envisioned God’s salvific work in a continuity that directly linked salvation from the Exodus to Jesus’s death and resurrection. Melito employed temporality to create a mobile and porous boundary between Christ believers and other groups and to claim the theological superiority of his own group. This analysis of Johannine literature indicates that ancient writers widely employed claims about temporality to distinguish their perceived audiences from other groups. These writers sought to persuade the followers of Christ to adopt particular temporal outlooks and to ascribe them to concomitant theological assertions. They thus established their exclusive authority to interpret Jesus’s life and deeds and defame false teachings.

New Testament text critics are fueled by a search for origins. But in the absence of an autograph, questions of origins are complicated at best. The fruit of that search for origins has resulted in the creation of hypothetical, eclectic texts—texts which have left us translating and interpreting the Bible in a form that no community in human history has before. Far from being failed projects, however, these eclectic versions aptly represent the problem of the One and the many, a problem not easily solved: When faced with hermeneutic duties, can we effectively speak of New Testament texts without speaking of their thousands of various and actual instantiations in the world? The answer, of course, is both yes and no; but the timid no has typically taken a back seat to the boisterous yes. This thesis develops a new literary historical hermeneutic based on the Categories of C. S. Peirce, a philosophical approach that will demonstrate the need for both an ideal (the yes) and a concrete (the no) approach to New Testament criticism. After this need has been demonstrated, the Gospel of John will then be under examination, both in its ideal and in one of its more concrete forms: P66, a second century Greek papyrus manuscript of the Gospel. The nature of the interpretive communities that have made use of the Gospel will also be considered.