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A Tomb with a View: John 11.1–44 in Narrative-Critical Perspective1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Mark W. G. Stibbe
Mark W. G. Stibbe
Affiliation:
(St Mark's Church, Grenoside, Sheffield S30 3QT, England
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Extract

It is one of the more surprising facts of academic life that no one has as yet attempted a detailed literary analysis of John 11.1–44. This narrative text, perhaps more than any other in the New Testament, calls out for sustained aesthetic appreciation. In many ways, John's story of the raising of Lazarus represents the pinnacle of the New Testament literature. It is a tale artfully structured, with colourful characters, timeless appeal, a sense of progression and suspense, subtle use of focus and no little sense of drama. Yet, even in the context of the well-documented paradigm shift from historical to text-immanent approaches to the Gospels, I know of no article or book which has exposed this story to a synchronic and aesthetic interpretation. This article is therefore a long overdue contribution to Fourth Gospel research. In it, I shall be examining John 11.1–44 from the following, recognizably literary, angles: context, genre, form, plot, narrator and point of view, structure, characterization, themes, implicit commentary, and reader response. My hope is that this article helps readers not only to appreciate the riches of John's storytelling, but also demonstrates in accessible terms how to approach the New Testament narrative literature.

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Articles
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New Testament Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , January 1994, pp. 38 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

2 Though Gail O'Day has written a chapter on the raising of Lazarus in her The Word Disclosed, John's Story and Narrative Preaching (St Louis, Missouri: CBP, 1987) 76–99.Google Scholar

3 See in particular Stephen Moore's Literary Criticism and the Gospels (New Haven: Yale University, 1989).Google Scholar

4 Culpepper, Alan, in his celebrated Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983)Google Scholar, introduced biblical scholars to the concept of ‘implicit commentary’ (pp. 149–202).

5 The term, ‘narrative echo effect’, comes from the work of Tannehill, R. C.. It is used in his Narrative Unity of Luke–Acts: A Literary Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).Google Scholar

6 See Culpepper, Anatomy, 56ff. The terms analepses and prolepses are taken from the work of Gerard Genette.

7 The request-rebuke-response structure is visible in 2.1–11 and 4.46–54. Giblin, C. H. alerts us to this structural pattern in his ‘Suggestion, Negative Response and Positive Action in St. John's Portrayal of Jesus’ (NTS 26 [1980] 197–211)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have changed the terminology to ‘request-rebuke-response’ for greater clarity.

8 For all the comments on focalization which follow, indebted to Michael Toolan's, J.Narrative. A Critical Linguistic Introduction (London & New York: Routledge, 1988) 67–76.Google Scholar

9 For a full discussion of this theme, see my article in JSNT 44 (1991) 20–39Google Scholar, ‘The Elusive Christ: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel’.

10 See the stories of the Samaritan woman (4.4–42), the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany (12.1–11), Mary Magdalene (20.10–18), all of which depict women fulfilling significant ministerial roles. For further comments, see Sandra Schneider'essay, s, ‘Women in the Fourth Gospel’, reprinted in my book, The Gospel of John as Literature (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993).Google Scholar

11 I have discussed the identification of the BD as Lazarus in my John as Storyteller. Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992) 78–80,154–7.Google Scholar

12 For a discussion of semiotics and the semeiotikos, see my section on ‘Semiotics’ in A Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation (London/Philadelphia: SCM, 1990) 618–20Google Scholar. For a structuralist approach to John, , see my article, ‘Return to Sender’, in Biblical Interpretation 1.2(1993)189–206.Google Scholar

13 Frank Kermode has alerted biblical scholars to the carnal and spiritual senses of narrative in his ground-breaking, Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University, 1979)Google Scholar. See chap. 1 (pp. 1–21).

14 ‘We all find ourselves compelled both to recognize and on occasion to articulate our reasons for the recognition that certain expressions of the human spirit so disclose a compelling truth about our lives that we cannot deny them some kind of normative status. Thus do we name these expressions, and these alone, as “classics”.’ – Tracy, David, The Analogical Imagination (London: SCM, 1981) 108.Google Scholar

15 For an excellent treatment of this concept, see chapter 6 (‘Gaps, Ambiguity and the Reading Process’) in Sternberg's, M.Poetics of Biblical Narrative (Bloomington: Indiana State University, 1985) 186–229Google Scholar. Sternberg writes: ‘From the viewpoint of what is directly given in the language, the literary work consists of bits and fragments to be linked and pieced together in the process of reading: it establishes a system of gaps that must be filled in’ (p. 186).

16 West, Morris, The Clowns of God (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981) 300–1.Google Scholar