15 May 2024 John 17:11-19
“Holy Father, keep them in Your name that you have given Me….” John 17:11
“Holy Father, keep them in your name that You have given Me…” (John 17:11). It is rather hard to say what this means. Which name is Jesus talking about? Neither this specific text, nor the entire Gospel of John, gives us much of a clue. So why does John say this? The simplest answer seems to be that the people the John was writing for did understand it. It was part of the specific vocabulary of that community, most likely Greek-speaking believers in Ephesus, and it therefore didn’t need to be explained. John did not have us in mind when he wrote his gospel, but rather the sophisticated and literarily mature Gentile converts of Ephesus. Even in antiquity John was known as a “spiritual gospel” that used sophisticated literary devices to express abstract and complex theological understandings. Many historians date the fourth gospel to the early second century because they believe only a second- or third-generation Christian audience would be able to understand a gospel as deep as John’s.
John’s community in Ephesus was not the only unique community in the earliest Christian world. Others also had their own specific vocabulariesand theological emphases. Perhaps the largest and earliest of the New Testament communities was the one associated with churches founded by the Apostle Paul. Paul’s writings were the first to emerge in the Christian world, and because Paul was focused on the Gentile mission his communities had a specific vocabulary rich in emphases on the righteousness of God, which God makes available to all people, both Jew and Greek, none of whom have any valid claim on God’s mercy. It is a mercy freely given to all, and so all, both Jew and Greek, are invited to receive it.
Then there is the community associated with Peter and the Gospel of Mark, which appears to have been addressed to a mixed group of Jewish and Gentile believers who were facing persecution because of their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. Many believe that persecution to have been the one undertaken by Nero in the aftermath of the great fire of A.D. 64, the persecution that claimed the lives of both Peter and Paul in Rome. The fact that Mark omits a great many of the details contained in the other gospels (e.g. any mention of Jesus’ birth, the Sermon on the Mount, post-resurrection appearances) leads most historians to make Mark the earliest of the gospels, and its focus on faith in the face of fear makes it uniquely valuable for a community under persecuting pressure.
Then there are the communities associated with the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. The third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles are regarded by most historians as two parts of a unified narrative that was literarily sophisticated and clearly had models like the Greek historians Thucydides and Herodotus in mind. Luke, who was originally Greek, clearly also was a great admirer of the Apostle Paul, and there is evidence that they worked together on the Gentile mission, even though they didn’t agree on all theological issues.
In short, the New Testament is not a monolith, but is a community of different accents. Different communities formed around different vocabularies and theological emphases, all of which focus in their own unique ways on Jesus as Messiah and Lord. Much is made today of the very fragmented nature of the Christian Church – some estimate that there are as many as 45,000 different Christian denominations. That may seem like a lot, but given the fact that there are over 2.5 billion Christians in the world today, 45,000 denominations would give each one about 55,500 members each. That many people in each denomination could reasonably make each one a meaningful accent in the Christian chorus, each one adding something unique and complimentary, much the same as the various accents in the New Testament itself. Rather than casting snarky aspersions at the great variety of Christian groups, maybe it would be better to listen for the harmonies in them all, the same harmonies that exist in the book that they all have in common and revere.
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