Resurrection in John
(avg. read time: 40–80 mins.)
In my planned series of books on resurrection in the NT, the Gospel according to John will have its own separate volume (as will Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation). Therefore, let the reader understand, this post will be but a relatively short preview of what I would like to write. Like with my entries on resurrection in Matthew and resurrection in Mark, I am still experimenting with the presentation, and I am not sure yet if I am going to try a more fixed pattern that allows for “local” variation depending on what needs to be explored in particular books, or if I am going to do something different each time. Do not be surprised if there is a lack of consistency in presentation between these posts.
One reason why I plan on devoting a separate volume to John, besides how different the Gospel is from the Synoptics that will share a volume (along with the unique synoptic analysis that will be part of that volume), is that John is more thoroughly shaped by resurrection than the other Gospels. I do not mean this on a structural level, as all the canonical Gospels ultimately serve as stories telling us about the resurrected Christ before he was resurrected and thus as filling out the context of the major Gospel events. Every Gospel builds to Jesus’s resurrection. But no other Gospel has as many resurrection references (despite John being the second-shortest Gospel), no other Gospel has a more extensive resurrection narrative, the general resurrection has a more pronounced presence in the Gospel according to John, and the influence of resurrection belief, whether of Jesus’s resurrection or the general one, has more pronounced influence at many other points of John’s narrative and of the teachings presented in John than any of the other Gospels. To show this, first, I begin with the explicit references as my anchor points and work outwards, so to speak. Second, I examine many statements about “life” (ζωή) to see how they connect to the hope of eschatological/resurrection life and how they contribute to John’s particular eschatological picture. Third, I look at other concepts connected with resurrection, including cases where the context licenses other verbs to refer to resurrection, and how they operate in John. Fourth, I analyze the resurrection narratives and how they bring many of the theological elements we see elsewhere in John together.