John and Polysemy

Peter Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Wed, 16 Jul 1997 14:19:46 +0100

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by polysemy as your exchange with
John Moe suggests. Clearly 'irony' is part and parcel of Johannine
literary technique and depends to some extent upon the diverse semantic
fields of any particular word. It is my own feeling that John makes full
use of the diversity of semantic fields/domains. In fact, my PhD thesis
will be on the way that John makes use of polysemy/irony/semantic domain in
the Prologue to increase structural tension within the text and so lure the
implied reader further into his gospel. Here are some suggestions on more
of this, but I can't believe any of it is new...you'll just have to press
the delete button if I am making a fool of myself:

Paul Duke:
"So crucial is this irony to the Johannine message that it may fairly be
said, if we do not grasp the irony, we do not grasp the Gospel" Irony in
the Fourth Gospel, Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1985, p156

Mark Stibbe:
"Irony is a complex oppositional structure in which words or happenings can
be interpreted at two different levels, a superficial and a deep level"
John as Storyteller, SNTSMS 73, Cambridge: CUP, 1993

(Personally I think that Stibbe is underplaying the role of irony here, if
that is possible for one of the foremost emerging Johannine scholars!!!
Irony has multiple levels - it was the classic failing of the Gnostics and
Origen to limit this to two - the esoteric and exoteric)

David Wead:
"A literary device used by the author of the Fourth Gospel follows this
dual pattern. The author uses words with two meanings both of which may be
applicable. He probably did not intend to present an either/or situation
wherein commentators and Christians must make a choice of one meaning. He
intended a unique situation where both meanings of the word apply."

(Again, he is right as far as he goes. Note Miller's arguments that the
common presuppositional pool (thanks for the jargon, Rolf!!!) for LOGOS
covers at least 13 different areas regardless of lexical possibilities.
Double meaning is just a little simplistic for John)

See also the commentaries of:
Ben Witherington, John's Wisdom, Louisville: John Knox Press 1995
Francis Moloney, Belief in the Word, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1993
John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991

Hope I haven't offended anyone by offering these pointers, but when you
give a dog a bone....

Pete Phillips,
Cliff College, Sheffield, England

p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk
http://champness.shef.ac.uk/