From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 19:36:41 EST
At 5:49 AM +0300 1/10/01, Steve Godfrey wrote:
>Dear Carl,
>
>I am admittedly buying into L&N's general definition of the semantic ranges
>of AGAPAO and FILEO while disagreeing with their application to John 21.
>The grounds for my rejection are the contextual indicators of John 21 (the
>charcoal fire, the 3-fold structure, the delicious shore breakfast), as well
>as John's style: as you described it, simplicity masking massive depth. We
>agree that John means something by using these synonymns. While your
>proposal certainly has merit, it seems to me that being restored from shame
>better fits the immediate context, as well as the wider context (e.g. Peter
>writing in reflection on this moment in 1st Peter, "shepherd the flock of
>God").
Well, I think we have been making some progress on this matter. I
particularly liked Steven LoVullo's latest note. Where I think the
discussion has been going wrong hitherto is the assumption that FILEW is
the weaker term and that the exchange works down finally to Jesus's
acceptance of Peter's weaker term; but if we suppose that FILEW is in fact
a STRONGER term, however slightly, than AGAPAW, we have what seems really
far more likely (to me, at least): an exchange that works toward a positive
climax of warm mutual acceptance by Jesus and Peter.
Other people have been mentioning their preferred critical discussions of
this passage; my own is Raymond Brown's; I haven't read it for a while, but
I think it was in his _Community of the Beloved Disciple_ rather than in
the 2-volume Anchor commentary on the gospel; he argues that chapter 21 of
the gospel and the first letter together mark the coalescing of once
separate communities of believers--the apostolic community headed by Peter
and the Johannine community headed by one whom the gospel names only as hON
HGAPA hO IHSOUS (usually taken to mean "the disciple whom Jesus loved" but
just possibly better understood as "the disciple to whom Jesus gave
preferential treatment"). In chapter 20 both Peter and the "BD" are
acknowledged in the narrative as "witnesses to the resurrection," but in
chapter 21, Peter is recognized as the shepherd of Jesus' flock while the
BD is pointed to as one who would outlive the martyred Peter: both are
therefore respected authorities in the larger community of believers. At
any rate, this perception of the function of the story makes it seem the
more likely to me that Peter's affirmation of FILIA is NOT a declaration of
a lesser devotion to Jesus than would have been an affirmation of AGAPH.
I don't know how much longer we shall keep on beating this into the ground.
Some, of course, still do favor, as you seem to do, AGAPAW as a stronger
term, while others think FILEW is slightly stronger, while many others (I
have no idea of the relative numbers, nor do I care since numbers don't
prove anything) may still believe that they are so nearly synonymous that
there's no significant difference whatsoever. But I do think this has been
a more useful go-round on this matter than we've ever had before.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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