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New Testament Christology, while reflecting an intersection of cultures and its resultant conflicts, is “rooted in the Jewish Messianology.”1 Messianism in Judaism was fluid and was developed over a period of time. The fluidity is intricately connected with the experience of the Jewish people under different colonial rules that made their stamp on the land of Palestine and its people. It is argued that first-century CE Palestine, even Jerusalem, at the time of Jesus was a cultural crossroads, where Roman, Jewish, Hellenistic, and other Mediterranean influences, such as Egyptian and Persian, converged.2 Any writing produced in such a matrix of conflicting and complex cultures and subcultures would not go uncontaminated by these influences. The Gospel according to John is no exception, and this helps readers assume a confluence of horizons and the resultant conflicts in John’s Christological reflections.
John’s Christology as an Intercultural and Subaltern Christology: The Rationale
Christology in John’s Gospel seems to be a reflection of the sociopolitical issues as a result of the complex and conflicting intersection of different cultures and subcultures in an imperial setup. John seems to have accommodated and disrupted the Messianic beliefs of the late Second Temple period to create his own voice in the making of his Christology. If so, is it possible to treat John’s Christology as intercultural and subaltern? What are the intercultural and subaltern dimensions of Johannine Christological affirmations? In this book, I examine the creative Christological articulations in John’s Gospel as well as its intercultural-subaltern elements to see if John’s model could be employed as a springboard for developing an intercultural and subaltern Christology for India—or, for that matter, any subaltern context.
John’s Gospel, like any other writings of the New Testament, was produced in a hybrid milieu under Roman imperial rule. In the imperial world, there is an interlacing of sociopolitical and religious/theological without strictly delimiting these. Therefore, John’s Gospel could be seen, as Carter would argue, as a document engaging with “somatic, communal and political dimensions.”3 Substantial research has documented the incarnational Christology in John and has used it to build contextual Christologies as part of an enculturation method. But often such studies have limited their research to the prologue and especially to its classic statement in John 1:14. The social implications of Johannine Christology thus remain underexplored. Scholarly studies, however, have paid attention to the different possible backgrounds of John’s Gospel, allowing either a Hellenistic or a Jewish cultural milieu, with its varied corollaries, to play the main role in shaping Christological affirmations. Though these studies have contributed a lot in informing us of the various background details, a substantial study on the issue of sociopolitical and religiocultural hybridity and the way in which John accommodates and disrupts the Messianic beliefs of the late Second Temple period to create his own voice has not been attempted. Even though in John’s Gospel, there is a potential interface of the words, codes, and symbols of the Roman imperial cult and the biblical, intertestamental, and postbiblical literature, at times, the evangelist has disrupted the meaning to create his own voice. Thus, John’s voice at times affiliates with and other times disrupts both the Roman colonial and Jewish nationalistic and collaborative voices. These conflicting and complex cultural intersections and the subaltern dimensions of John’s Christology need further investigation.
The Religiocultural and Sociopolitical Hybridity of the World of John’s Gospel
There is no consensus among Johannine scholars with regard to the precise social milieu of John’s Gospel. Among scholars, there are three theories, with modifications in their details, regarding the origin of this Gospel. They are the Jewish setting with a predominantly Palestinian or Hellenistic background, the Gentile Christian context outside Palestine, and the Gnostic and Mandaean environment. However, the complexity of the social setting behind the Gospel is an indication of the hybridity and cross-fertilization of religious ideas and concepts of first-century CE Palestine. Hybridization takes many forms: linguistic, political, and cultural.4 The language in which John’s Gospel has been written seems to be that of a community in transition, whose current language (Koine Greek) was not everyone’s mother tongue. Therefore, they developed their own unique version of the language. The author was skilled in using this hybrid language that gave voice to the intercultural or bilingual reality of the community.5
An Ephesian context, as many of the scholars would suggest Ephesus as the place of composition of this Gospel, positions the Gospel and its audience in the Roman imperial world.6 At the same time, the Johannine Jesus followers were also part of the Jewish synagogue community. The historical context of the Gospel attests to a lot of sociopolitical unrest and resistance, which at times broke out as war against the Romans. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple could not annihilate several other facets of Judaism, such as the apocalyptic and merkabah mystical traditions.7 The milieu of John’s Gospel was flooded with sociopolitical and religiocultural hybridity, syncretistic and mysterious religious sects, and resistant literature using various nuances of rhetoric that mimic and mock the dominant ideologies. The interpretation of John’s Gospel needs to take this into serious consideration.
Social Conflict and Alternative Cultural Traditions in the Late Second Temple Matrix
A glance into the social conflicts and the alternative cultural traditions in the late Second Temple matrix would be helpful in understanding the hybridity of the wider milieu of John’s Gospel. The social structure of ancient Judaea reflects a fundamental division between the rulers and the ruled. In the sixth century BCE, under the Persian imperial administration, the ancient Judean people had been ruled by a temple-state.8 Persian imperial policy favored the revival and consolidation of subjects’ legal and cultural traditions. Thus, the temple-state exerted its authority over the people through the Torah as its constitution, and its interpretations provided the social permissions or taboos. The cultural heritage of the temple-state contained traditions that challenged the power and privilege of the rulers as well as the traditions that legitimated their dominant position. Any careful reader of the Old Testament could envisage a tension between the official ideology of kingship and popular kingship.9 David himself was originally acclaimed as a popular king, but he transformed his kingship into an established monarchy. The tradition of popular kingship continued in the northern tribes who broke away from the Davidic dynasty after the death of Solomon. It is argued that the popular kingship continued as a counter to the mythologized idea of imperial kingship.10
The Emergence of Messianism and the Longing for Liberation in Judaism
The origin of the Messiah in Judaism, though debated, has political roots and is related to the institution and decline of monarchy in Israel. According to Buber, the inability of monarchs to live up to their anointing is one reason for the birth of Messianism, or “believing in the anointed one who will fulfil his anointing.”11 Beuken argues for the origin of the Messiah in the preexilic period in the figure of Yahweh’s anointed and as a product of prophetic consciousness.12 For Horsley, it mimicked the imperial ideologies of the surrounding world and was at times a counter to such imperial ideologies.13 Israel was a tribal federation led by charismatic prophets and governed by appointed judges under a direct theocracy. The constant demand of the people to have a king and be like other nations sprouted in the context of the continuous attacks of the Philistines, who plundered their resources and brought devastation on their economy, which was based on agricultural produce. Kingship, as Legrand avers, was a political acculturation whereby Israel became like the Syro-Phoenician state.14 Therefore, it is argued that the institution of monarchy in Israel was a sociopolitical approximation of the kingship ideologies of neighboring countries. This was given a divine legitimation, and thus the second king, David, is described as “the anointed one of the God of Jacob” (2 Sam 23).
The rule of God mediated dynastically rather than charismatically, on the other hand, is unlikely to satisfy the criteria of direct theocracy. The expectation of the Messiah was not simply as a religious redeemer of souls but as a “theopolitical Messiah” of the people and the country. While Assyrian h...
