Save

What is History? Reading John 1 as Historical Representation

In: Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus
Author:
Rafael Rodríguez Johnson University, 7900 Johnson Dr., Knoxville, tn 37998, USA, rrodriguez@johnsonu.edu

Search for other papers by Rafael Rodríguez in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Download Citation Get Permissions

Access options

Get access to the full article by using one of the access options below.

Institutional Login

Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials

Login via Institution

Purchase

Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

As Pontius Pilate nearly asked, What is history? This article draws upon memory and media studies to question the notion that we find history within the text of the Fourth Gospel. Rather than trying to identify and isolate history within John’s Gospel, our discussion aims to recover how the Gospel works as a set of historical claims, joining with or competing against other historical claims within the social sphere of its author, redactor, and/or audience. After a précis of memory’s and media’s significance for our question (What is history?), we will localize these abstract issues by turning to the Johannine portrayal of John the Baptist and his testimony for Jesus. This approach respects the Fourth Gospel as a written text that developed and was compiled/redacted in the late first century without imposing a rigidly atemporal conception of Johannine theology onto John’s claims about events six or seven decades earlier.

Content Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 590 65 10
Full Text Views 293 2 0
PDF Views & Downloads 152 9 0