— — Camaldoli 2016 – papers

Introductory Session

Benjamin E. Reynolds – The Gospel of John’s Christology as Evidence for Second Temple Jewish Messianic Expectation: Challenges and Possibilities

James McGrath – The Gospel of John as Jewish Messianism: Formative Influences and Neglected Avenues in the History of Scholarship

 

Major Papers

Gabriele Boccaccini – How Jesus Became Uncreated

James Charlesworth – The Gospel of John’s Indebtedness to Judaism and Possibly the Incredible Self Glorification Hymn

Crispin Fletcher-Louis – Jesus is “Equal with God” because the Son of God is the Son of Man (John 5)

Charles A. Gieschen – The Divine Name that the Son Shares with the Father in the Gospel of John

William Loader – Wisdom and Logos Traditions in Judaism and John’s Christology

Adele Reinhartz – “And The Word Was God:” John’s Christology and Jesus’ Discourse in Jewish Context

Catrin H. Williams – Johannine Christology and Prophetic Traditions: The Case of Isaiah

Ruben Zimmerman – Jesus – the Divine Bridegroom? John 2-4 and its Christological Implications

 

Responses to Major Papers

Benjamin E. Reynolds – Response to Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Jesus is ‘Equal with God’ because the Son of God is the Son of Man (John 5)

Matthias Henze – Response to Adele Reinhartz, “‘And the Word was God’:John’s Christology and Jesus’s Discourse in Jewish Context”

Angela Kim Harkins – Response to James Charlesworth, “The Gospel of John’s Indebtedness to Judaism and Possibly the Incredible Self-Glorification Hymn”

Paul Anderson – Response to Gabriele Boccaccini, On Jewish Preexistence, the Jesus of History, and the Christ of Faith

Grant Macaskill – Response to William Loader: Wisdom and Logos Traditions in Judaism and John’s Christology

James Davila – Response to Catrin H. Williams, “Johannine Christology and Prophetic Traditions: The Case of Isaiah”

Chad Pierce – Response to Charles Gieschen

Kelley Coblentz Bautch – Response to Ruben Zimmerman’s “John and the Divine Bridegroom”

 

Short Papers

Jo-Ann Brant – Johannine Christology: Sacred Time, Sacred Space, Sacred Body

Andrew Byers – The One Lord and One People of the One God: The Fourth Gospel’s Vision of a Divine Messiah and a Divinized Israel

Wally Cirafesi – 1 Enoch, the ‘Temple Stone’ from the Magdala Synagogue, and a Priestly Son of Man in John 6:25–71: A Proposal

Douglas Estes – A Little ‘Light’ Christology: Jewish Messianism, the Stone of Magdala, and the Prologue of John

Deborah Forger – Reading the Gospel of John in Light of Philo of Alexandria: How Jesus’s λόγοι position him as the Messiah, the God who Speaks

Robert Hall – Parables of Enoch, Ascension of Isaiah, and John: Snatches of an Ancient Conversation

Matthias Henze – John’s Christology: A Comparative Reading with 2 Baruch

Jonathan W. Lo – The “Son of Man” and the Characterization of Jesus in John’s Gospel

Paul Mandel – The Exegesis of God: John 1:18 in Light of Jewish Traditional Practice

Mary J. Marshall – The Translocation and Transmutation of the Life-giver in the Fourth Gospel

Jocelyn McWhirter – Searching the Scriptures: Messianic Exegesis in the Fourth Gospel

Marida Nicolaci – Divine Kingship and Jesus’ Identity in Johannine Messianism

John Ronning – The “High and Lifted Up” Son of Man Christology of John’s Gospel

Shayna Sheinfeld – The Light Incarnate: An Exploration of Light in 2 Baruch and the Gospel of John

Beth Stovell – Son of God as Anointed One? Johannine Davidic Christology and Second Temple Messianism

Andrea Taschl-Erber – Christological Transformation of the Motif of “Living Water” (John 4; 7): Prophetic Messiah Expectations and Sapiental Tradition

Urban C. von Wahlde – Before Jesus “Died for Our Sins”: Evidence for a Purely Jewish Interpretation of the Ministry of Jesus at One Stage in the Development of the Gospel of John

Meredith Warren – When the Christ Appears, Will He Do More Signs than This Man Has Done? (John 7:31): Signs and the Messiah in the Gospel of John

Joel Willitts – David’s Sublation of Moses: A Davidic Explanation for the Mosaic Christology of the Fourth Gospel

Comment by Gabriele Boccaccini posted on June 11, 2016 at 8:54 am:

Some comments on William Loader’s paper — This is a very important paper for our discussion on the Jewishness of John. I completely agree with Loader’s overall argument that behind John there are Jewish speculations about the role of Wisdom/Word (En 42 and Sir 24, above all). I will focus here on 3 points that in my opinion needs to be emphasized.

(1) I agree with John Collins that some terms traditionally used in scholarship to described the phenomenon of the relation between Wisdom and Torah in Second Temple Judaism (in particular, “identification”) may be misleading, There is a big difference between Sirach and Baruch, which see the Torah as a manifestation of Wisdom on earth (there is no preexistence of the Torah) and the later Rabbinic Tradition, which would claim that the Torah is Wisdom and Wisdom is the Torah. Likewise there is a big difference between the Synoptics and Paul and Hebrews (who apply the language of Wisdom to Jesus, but there is no incarnation) and the Gospel of John which argues that Jesus is the Wisdom/Word who became flesh, and that the Word is Jesus. With Collins I would prefer not to talk of “identification” of the Torah with Wisdom before Rabbinic Judaism (and of Jesus with Wisdom/Word before John). I think it would be better to use terms like “association”, “connection”. It is only in the Gospel of John that the uncreated Word became flesh in Jesus, and Jesus is the Word and the Word is Jesus. Before John, we have different models of association, which as Loader says, prepared the path to the position of John, but were not yet identical to what John would claim.

(2) About John’s choice of the Word (instead of Wisdom), I also agree with Loader that “Logos better fits a depiction of the male Jesus.” I would add another fundamental reason. While there were discussions whether Wisdom was created or uncreated, everybody within Judaism agreed that the Word was uncreated, and this was crucial for John’s understanding of Jesus as an uncreated manifestation of God who became flesh.

(3) I am not afraid of using the term “replacement” when it fits, but the relation between Wisdom and Torah and the relation between Word/Wisdom and Jesus are asymmetrical. In Christianity (with John and after John) Jesus was identified with the “uncreated” Logos/Wisdom, while in later Rabbinic Judaism the Torah was identified with the “created” Wisdom. The Gospel of John did not “replace” the Torah with Jesus, but changed the terms of the relationship; and chronologically speaking, we should rather say that it was the Rabbis who “replaced” Jesus with the Torah, not the other way around. Probably it would be better to describe it as a parallel process. While in some Jewish apocalyptic circles Wisdom speculations were applied to the Messiah (leading to the identification of the Messiah Jesus with the “uncreated” Wisdom/Word); in proto-rabbinic circles the same speculations were applied to the Torah (leading to the identification of the Torah with the created Wisdom). In this sense I think that John represents a possible “Jewish” trajectory through which Wisdom speculations could develop. The fact that the majority of Jews followed a different path does not make this trajectory less “Jewish”.