The Gospel of John

¶ … John 14:31

A "Difficulty" in the Gospel of John

The Gospel of John can be subject to analysis from the perspective of its narrative construction. Under such critical gaze, there appear questions about the author's puzzling arrangement of material. Take, for example, the case of John 14:30-31. Jesus talks at the Last Supper about going away from them. The farewell discourse section seems to end in 14:30-31 when Jesus says, "I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. . . . Rise, let us go hence." This statement seems to indicate that Jesus has completed his upper room discourse and awaits his own imminent arrest. Yet before he goes out to the garden where he is arrested, a whole series of further discourses occur (chapters 15-17). The text seems so misaligned that Bultmann could argue that John 14:25-31 is the conclusion to the discourses.

He solved the dilemma by rearranging the text so that John 15-17 comes before John 14. Directly after 14:31 he places John 18:1. Bultmann's solution to change the sequence assumes that original order was inadequate, but it does not explain why. Further, the content of the discourses was not altered by the displacement. So how can such a difficulty be explained?

There have been a number of attempts to understand this problem. Some have chosen to omit the sentence in 14:31 entirely. Haenchen proposes a different plausible view. In his mind, the supplementer, who was familiar with the synoptic tradition, wanted to keep the final words ("Rise . . ., ") but could not insert them after chapter 17 because 18:1-4 blocked the way. He says, "He therefore gave them an emergency location in 14:31."

They introduce Gethsemane, but the Evangelist cannot use them there since they contradicted his Christology. Gethesemane is not even mentioned by name. Haenchen argues further that chapters 15-17 are discourse in transit as they leave and go toward Kidron valley. The problem with this view is that 18:1 implies that Jesus and disciples had not left before he spoke John 15-17. It says, "When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples across the Kidron valley." Haenchen's final solution is to say that the text between is displaced from time, a kind of testament or catechism on polity that is ahistorical. He does not, however, say where the text came from.

Another main way of seeing the problem is to claim that the writer has used different sources to create his gospel. These sources preceded him in the Christian tradition, and may have included both the synoptic gospels and other non-canonical or lost texts. In putting different sources together, he has been forced to make decisions. When he relied on tradition and not his own account, he is not able to make a coherent well-flowing narrative. It comes out disjointed.