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“No Longer in the World” (John 17:11): The Transformation of the Tragic in the Fourth Gospel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2005

George L. Parsenios
George L. Parsenios
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary
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Extract

Ancient gospels, canonical and noncanonical, present the resurrection of Jesus with varying degrees of thoroughness and detail. While the Gospel of Peter vividly describes the actual moment that Jesus rises (9.34–10.45), the Gospel of Mark excludes even a postresurrection appearance of Jesus—ifthe common opinion is correct that Mark ends at 16:8. Luke, by contrast, so fully documents Jesus' postresurrection activity that the events extend into the book of Acts. The Gospel of John distinguishes itself from the others as well, not only by uniquely depicting Jesus' postresurrection appearances, but also by portraying Jesus as the resurrected one prior to the crucifixion. Even before he meets Pilate, Jesus proclaims, “I have overcome the world” (16:33). And even before he ascends the cross, Jesus has ascended to the Father and announces, “I am no longer in the world” (17:11). This feature ofthe Fourth Gospel has received various historical, literary, and theological interpretations. The following paper will offer a literary interpretation based ona comparison of the Gospel of John with Greek tragedy. The argument will proceed in two phases, first demonstrating basic connections with the tragic evidence,and then exploring how the Fourth Gospel twists tragic techniques to its own purposes.

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 98 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 1 - 21
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© 2005 Cambridge University Press

Ancient gospels, canonical and noncanonical, present the resurrection of Jesus with varying degrees of thoroughness and detail. While the Gospel of Peter vividly describes the actual moment that Jesus rises (9.34–10.45), the Gospel of Mark excludes even a postresurrection appearance of Jesus—if the common opinion is correct that Mark ends at 16:8.1

As the oldest and best manuscripts indicate. For a discussion of the ending of Mark, see, e.g., Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted (Mifflintown, Pa.: Sigler Press, 2002).

Luke, by contrast, so fully documents Jesus' postresurrection activity that the events extend into the book of Acts. The Gospel of John distinguishes itself from the others as well, not only by uniquely depicting Jesus' postresurrection appearances, but also by portraying Jesus as the resurrected one prior to the crucifixion. Even before he meets Pilate, Jesus proclaims, “I have overcome the world” (16:33). And even before he ascends the cross, Jesus has ascended to the Father and announces, “I am no longer in the world” (17:11). This feature of the Fourth Gospel has received various historical, literary, and theological interpretations. The following paper will offer a literary interpretation based on a comparison of the Gospel of John with Greek tragedy. The argument will proceed in two phases, first demonstrating basic connections with the tragic evidence, and then exploring how the Fourth Gospel twists tragic techniques to its own purposes.

The Gospel of John as Drama

Certain preliminary matters require attention before the argument can proceed, however.2

For further discussion of the dramatic character of the Fourth Gospel, as well as specific attention to the use of dramatic exits in the Farewell Discourses, see George L. Parsenios, Departure and Consolation: The Johannine Farewell Discourses in Light of Greco-Roman Literature (NovTSup 117; Leiden: Brill, 2005) 12–22, 49–76.

To speak of the dramatic quality of the Fourth Gospel is not new, and previous analyses tend toward one of two poles. Some use the term “dramatic” too specifically, and claim that John meets the basic criteria of a tragedy as Aristotle defines them in chapter 12 of the Poetics.3

F. R. M. Hitchcock, “Is the Fourth Gospel a Drama?,” in The Gospel of John as Literature: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Perspectives (ed. M. Stibbe; Leiden: Brill, 1993) 15–24. Aristotle's Poetics is used to evaluate the Gospel of Mark in Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (trans. John Bowden; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) 34. We must note, however, the ambivalence of classicists regarding Aristotle's value in clarifying tragic stagecraft. Oliver Taplin (The Stagecraft of Aeschylus: The Dramatic Use of Exits and Entrances in Greek Tragedy [Oxford: Clarendon, 1977] 25) writes, “Aristotle's Poetics is the most influential critical work on Tragedy ever written, and with good reason. But its influence has not been wholly for good.” The present study will rely not on the theoretical work of Aristotle, but on actual dramas, much like scholars who clarify Paul's rhetorical technique by reading actual speeches as well as rhetorical textbooks. See, for instance, Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991; repr., Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), esp. 8–11.

But the gospel does not look anything like ancient—or modern—dramatic works. It does not follow a metrical scheme, and there is no shift from speech to song.4

For a full outline of the structure of a Greek tragic play, with particular attention to Sophocles' Antigone, see Mark Griffi th, Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 12–13.

On the other extreme are those interpreters who employ the term “dramatic” not as a marker of genre but as an adjective meaning “arresting” or “moving.”5

R. H. Strachan, The Fourth Evangelist: Dramatist or Historian? (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1925); James Muilenberg, “Literary Form in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 51 (1932) 40–43; and C. Milo Connick, “The Dramatic Character of the Fourth Gospel,” JBL (1948) 159–70. Raymond E. Brown refers to the “dramatic” quality of the gospel regularly, as in his treatment of Jesus' trial before Pilate; see The Gospel according to John (2 vols.; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday) 2: 843–72, esp. 858.

This approach holds no promise for seeing in John any actual interface with ancient dramatic techniques.

The following analysis stands at the midpoint between these two extremes. While it is clearly a mistake to read John as a thoroughgoing Greek tragedy, the gospel is “dramatic” in more than the loose sense. Other scholars have already recognized this circumstance, and have read John as a prose work that bears more than a passing resemblance to techniques or tropes in ancient drama.6

See, for instance, the suggestive but brief article of William Domeris, “The Johannine Drama,” JTSA 42 (1983) 29–35. John's use of a prologue has been loosely but not assiduously compared to the use of the prologue in ancient dramas; see Elizabeth Harris, Prologue and Gospel: The Theology of the Fourth Evangelist (JSNTS 107; Sheffi eld: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994). Studies in Johannine irony have also devoted attention to dramatic irony. See, for example, George W. MacRae, “Theology and Irony in the Fourth Gospel,” in The Word in the World: Essays in Honor of F. L. Moriarty (Cambridge, Mass.: Weston College, 1973) 83–96; repr. in The Gospel of John as Literature (ed. M. Stibbe; Leiden: Brill, 1993); and Paul D. Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta, Ga.: John Knox, 1985). See also Mark Stibbe, John as Storyteller (SNTSMS 73; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For the use of two-actor scenes, especially in John 9, see J. L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Harper and Row, 1979) 26. For an insightful article that applies ancient comedy to the book of Acts in a manner similar to that employed in this article, see J. Albert Harrill, “The Dramatic Function of the Running Slave Rhoda (Acts 12: 13–16): A Piece of Greco-Roman Comedy,” NTS 46 (2000) 150–57. Only after this paper was in the final stage of revision did I become aware of Jo-Ann A. Brant, Dialogue and Drama: Elements of Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2004).

For these scholars, the author of the Fourth Gospel thinks in dramatic categories.7

Ludger Schenke (“Joh 7–10: Eine dramatische Szene,” ZNW 80 [1989] 188) states, “Der Autor denkt in Kategorien des ‘Dramas’.” For a study of the entire gospel with loose recourse to dramatic concerns, see idem, Johannes Kommentar (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1998); and idem, Das Johannesevan-gelium. Einführung, Text, dramatische Gestalt (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1992), esp. 211–23. While tSchenke does not rely exclusively on Aristotle's Poetics to determine to what extent the Gospel of John is a drama, he relies much on Aristotle, which is not an entirely helpful way to determine to what extent the Gospel of John relies on ancient dramatic material (see n. 3, above).

To argue this is no different from claiming that John borrows structural and thematic motifs from ancient biographical literature.8

R. A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

A related concern, however, arises with the use of texts so far removed in time and space from the Gospel of John, especially since much of the argument in the present study is based on comparison with fifth-century Athenian tragedy. To be responsible to the evidence, the argument focuses on a recurring feature of Greek tragedy and does not presume to identify a debt to a particular work. The intention is not to say that John follows this or that author, but that the Fourth Gospel was influenced by broadly used tropes that were readily available. The Gospel of John reflects what Easterling has dubbed the “theatricalization of ancient culture.”9

P. E. Easterling, “From Repertoire to Canon,” in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy (ed. eadem; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) 226.

Easterling relies on this phrase to explain the influence of Greek tragedy far beyond the chronological and geographical boundaries of classical Athens. Well into the Roman Empire, classical tragedy exercised considerable cultural and literary influence. This is not so obvious from the sparse evidence about the production of plays, but it is indeed evident in the ripples of influence in various other social and literary contexts, especially in the prose authors of the Roman Empire.10

The dramatization of Roman social life is reflected in the grisly practice of staging public executions and punishments in the form of dramatic productions. See K. M. Coleman, “Fatal Charades: Roman Executions Staged as Mythological Enactments,” JRS 80 (1990) 44–73.

Greek prose authors like Thucydides and Herodotus, of course, had steeped their histories in tragic motifs, and Polybius was also indebted to tragic models.11

Charles Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) 171. On Polybius, see F. W. Walbank, “History and Tragedy,” Historia 9 (1960) 216–34.

But closer in time and place to the Gospel of John, Josephus relies on dramatic models at great length for character development and the staging of scenes in the production of his Bellum Judaicum.12

Jonathan Price, “Drama and History in Josephus' BJ” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature Josephus Seminar, Boston, Mass., 1999); and Louis Feldman, “The Influence of the Greek Tragedians on Josephus,” in Hellenic and Jewish Arts: Interaction, Tradition and Renewal (ed. A. Ovadiah; Tel Aviv: Ramot Publishing House, Tel Aviv University, 1998) 51–80.

Greek and Roman novels also borrow heavily from dramatic patterns.13

Regarding the Satyricon of Petronius, see Gerald N. Sandy, “Scaenica Petroniana,” TAPA 104(1974) 329–46; and Gianpiero Rosati, “Trimalchio on Stage,” in Oxford Readings in the Roman Novel (ed. S. J. Harrison; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 85–104.

Lucian and Plutarch refer as well to tragic performances or themes, and often write with dramatic models in mind.14

On Lucian as a source of information on theater productions in the second century C.E., see M. Kokolakis, “Lucian and the Tragic Performances in his Time,” Platon 12 (1960) 67–106. On the dramatic character of Lucian's writing, see Diskin Clay, “Lucian of Samosata: Four Philosophical Lives (Nigrinus, Demonax, Peregrinus, Alexander Pseudomantis)” ANRW 36.5: 3406–50, esp. 3414–20. For an analysis of Plutarch's condemnation of tragedy, as well as the nevertheless very full use of tragic elements in the Demetrios, see Phillip de Lacy, “Biography and Tragedy in Plutarch,” AJP 73 (1952) 159–71. More recently, see J. M. Mossman, “Tragedy and Epic in Plutarch's Alexander,” in Essays on Plutarch's Lives (ed. Barbara Scardigli; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 209–28; and G. Zanetto, “Plutarch's Dialogues as Comic Dramas,” in Rhetorical Theory and Praxis in Plutarch: Acta of the IVth International Congress of the International Plutarch Society, Leuven, July 3–6, 1996 (Collection d'Études Classiques 11; ed. L. Van der Stock; Louvain: Peeters, 2000) 533–41.

The legacy of tragic poetry, therefore, sounds more clearly when we keep our ears tuned to these various prose authors.15

John's Jewish background does not distance him from these broad cultural trends. Not only does Josephus swim in this dramatic stream, but two hundred or so years before the Gospel of John was written, Ezekiel the Tragedian wrote the Exagoge, a verse rendering of the Exodus of Moses that is heavily indebted to the dramatic style of Euripides. The standard text and analysis of the Exagoge is H. Jacobson, The Exagoge of Ezekiel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

The present essay will argue that the Gospel of John also resonates with the echoes of Athenian tragedy in the Roman Empire.

The Hour of Jesus

The particular concern of the present paper is that Jesus' Farewell Discourses and prayer (John 13–17) present him in an ambiguous temporal relationship to the events and effects of the “hour” of his death. The reader has anticipated the arrival of the hour ever since Jesus said to his mother at the Cana wedding, “My hour has not yet come” (2:4). The gradual but steady approach of “the hour” has been one of the definitive chronological devices sustaining the plot of the gospel, and the reader's expectation extends until chapter 12, when Jesus announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (12:23).16

Francis Moloney (Glory Not Dishonor: Reading John 13–21 [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998]12) notes the interplay between the Jewish festal cycles and the development toward the hour, and writes, “There have been two ‘times’ running through the story.”

But, when Jesus finally heralds the arrival of the hour, the steady linear stream of time overflows its boundaries. Past, present, and future are mingled together inscrutably in the Farewell Discourses.

Afew examples will demonstrate the confusion. Jesus announces his departure by informing the disciples, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer” (13:33). And yet, in his prayer to the Father he has already left them behind, saying of the disciples: “While I was with them … ” (

, 17:12).

17

See 16:4b as well. I follow Frey in taking the shifts in verb tense seriously, and not viewing them merely as an issue of style. See Jörg Frey, Das johanneische Zeitverständnis (vol. 2 of Die johanneische Eschatologie; WUNT 110; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998) 23–147.

Jesus also refers to his death as a coming conflict with Satan (“Behold, the ruler of this world is coming,” 14:30), but soon thereafter heralds his success in the conflict as a past event: “Take heart, I have overcome the world,” with

in the perfect tense (16:33). Later, Jesus opens chapter 17 by praying, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your son … ” (17:1; compare 17:5), and yet has already insisted earlier in chapter 13, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified” (13:31), with

in the aorist tense. Finally, Jesus can announce his imminent departure from the world by saying, “In a little while, the world will no longer see me” (14:19), but then unexpectedly, and seemingly prematurely, states, “And I am no longer in the world,”

(17:11). It is as though two discourses have been blended together, one that Jesus delivers around the table on the night of his betrayal, and one that he delivers from the realm of the Father after the Ascension. Jesus is alternately here and there, before and after, above and below.

Historical critics attribute this circumstance to the intrusion of the Johannine community's own temporal perspective, and their theories have driven Fourth Gospel studies for over thirty years, eliciting either emulation or opposition.18

There are two classic expressions of this approach. First is J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (3d ed.; Louisville, Ky.; Westminster John Knox, 2003). Raymond Brown applies Martyn's insights on a few passages to the entire gospel in his The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist Press, 1979). Second is the methodologically different, but equally influential, work of Wayne Meeks, “The Stranger from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” JBL (1972) 44–72, repr. in The Interpretation of John (ed. John Ashton; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986) 141–73. For recent developments, see John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); and Jaime Clark-Soles, Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Social Function of the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden: Brill, 2003). For critique, see, for instance, Tobias Hägerland, “John's Gospel: A Two-Level Drama?” JSNT 25 (2003) 309–22; Colleen Conway, “The Production of the Johannine Community: A New Historicist Perspective,” JBL 121 (2002) 479–95; and Jörg Frey, Ihre Probleme im Spiegel der Forschung seit Reimarus (vol. 1 of Die johanneische Eschatologie; WUNT 96; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), esp. 336.

The gospel is read as a “two-level drama,” in which the life of Jesus is merged with the life of the Johannine community. The present essay does not directly engage such historical approaches, but concerns itself with a more limited issue: the one-level drama of the gospel's literary presentation of Jesus. How is this narrative technique to be understood within the context of ancient literature?

Previous literary analysis has not addressed the temporal confusion in the Farewell Discourses in an entirely adequate fashion. Regardless of their different methodological starting points, narrative critics generally follow Culpepper's Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel in borrowing the language of Gérard Genette to discuss the temporal order of events in John.19

See R. Alan Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadel-phia: Fortress, 1983) and Gérard Genette, Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method (trans. Jane dE. Lewin; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1980). Culpepper is followed by, for instance, Frey, Zeitverständnis, 165–67, 236–41, 269–76; Andreas Dettwiler, Die Gegenwart des Erhöhten. Eine exegetische Studie zu den johanneischen Abschiedsreden (Joh 13:31–16:33) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Relecture-Charakters (FRLANT 169; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995) 261–62 and passim; and Gail R. O'Day, “‘I Have Overcome the World’ (John 16:33): Narrative Time in John 13–17,” Semeia 53 (1991) 153–66.

Genette employed the terms “analepsis” and “prolepsis” to describe those cases where actions or utterances present “anachronies” and violate strict narrative order.20

Culpepper, Anatomy, 53–57.

An analepsis is an allusion to an event that happened earlier, whether within the narrative or even before the narrative began.21

Culpepper (ibid., 56–61 and passim) subdivides Genette's categories even further, so as to accommodate the Johannine evidence.

By contrast, a prolepsis is an allusion to an event that will happen either later in the story, or even after the story has concluded.22

As is the case with analepses, prolepses can also be further subdivided into even more sub-categories (ibid.).

An example of a proleptic statement in the Gospel of John is Jesus' repeated assertion, “My hour has not yet come” (2:4; 7:6, 8, 30; 8:20), which finds its fulfillment when the hour is announced in chapters 12 and 13.23

Ibid., 62.

Somewhat more questionably, Culpepper assigns much of the Farewell Discourses to the category of prolepsis. He recognizes that, especially in chapter 17, Jesus speaks both prospectively and retrospectively about his death and resurrection. Because the Johannine community already knows Jesus as the resurrected Lord, this style of speaking permits Jesus to communicate directly to his disciples, even though within the story he is still among his disciples on the night when he was betrayed. Culpepper writes, “The link between Jesus and the later time is thereby maintained in the farewell discourse by Jesus' proleptic speech.”24

Ibid., 37.

But the category of prolepsis, helpful in understanding the phrase “My hour has not yet come,” is less useful for the evidence of the Farewell Discourses. For Jesus does not allude to his victory over the world as an event in the future. Rather, he says, in the perfect tense, “I have conquered the world” (16:33). And, while Jesus does on occasion refer to his departure from the world as a future event (13:33), he also announces, in the present tense, “I am no longer in the world” (17:11). The future, then, is not the subject of a proleptic allusion. The future is now. Gail O'Day's comment on 16:33 is insightful. She writes,

John 16:33 is more than (or other than) proleptic because it does not anticipate or look ahead to the moment of Jesus' victory. Instead, it announces that this is the moment of victory. It does not bring the narrative present into the future, but brings the future into the narrative present.25

O'Day, “I Have Overcome,” 162.

The narrative category of prolepsis is inadequate, then, to explain the anachronies of the Farewell Discourses. What is needed is a literary model that will help to explain what some have come to call the Fourth Gospel's temporal “fusion of horizons,” which is especially prominent in the Farewell Discourses.26

The Gadamerian phrase is taken up first by T. Onuki, Gemeinde und Welt im Johannesevange-lium. Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach der theologischen und pragmatischen Funktion des johanneischen “Dualismus” (WMANT 56; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1984) 34; it is considerably developed by Frey, Zeitverständnis, 133, 249–50 and passim.

The entire gospel is written from the postresurrection perspective, so that the events of the hour of Jesus influence the story long before they are actually narrated. While all gospels are, obviously, written from the postresurrection perspective, the Synoptic Gospels only imply this perspective. John explicitly states that Jesus' words and deeds can only properly be understood after the resurrection: “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this” (2:21).27

Nils Dahl, “Anamnesis: Memory and Commemoration in Early Christianity,” in Jesus in the Memory of the Early Church (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1976), esp. 28–29. See 12:16: “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorifi ed, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.”

The Fourth Gospel establishes a tension between, on the one hand, Jesus as one who still walks toward his death and, on the other, Jesus as one who has already been resurrected and glorified.28

Writing of the arrival of the hour at 13:31, Frey (Zeitverständnis, 135) comments, “Die Pers-pektive scheint zwischen der einen und der anderen Aussage zu wechseln, von der nachösterlichen Retrospektive zum Standpunkt des auf seinen Tod zugehenden Jesus.”

In the Farewell Discourses, at the point where one temporal realm is closest to the next, the chronological categories are especially blurry. This is the moment in which Jesus' narrative status prior to the resurrection is most nearly equal to his actual postresurrection status.29

See Frey, Zeitverständnis, 247–52 and passim.

What we see in John fi nds a suggestive parallel in a recurring aspect of Greek tragedy.

Farewell to the Light of the World

The moment of death regularly elicits last words from those about to die in ancient literature and society.30

For the general importance of last words at the moment of death, see John T. Fitzgerald, Jesus' Last Will and Testament: Wills, Friendship and the Fourth Gospel (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, forthcoming). In biblical and early Jewish literature, figures approaching death offer a speech in the testament form (e.g., Moses in Deuteronomy 34), which is generally assumed to be the model for Jesus' Farewell Discourses. For an introduction to the relevant issues in assigning John 13–17 to the testament category, see Fernando Segovia, The Farewell of the Word: The Johannine Call to Abide (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991) 5–20. For attempts to compare John to biblical forms other than the testament, see Martin Winter, Das Vermächtnis Jesu und die Abschiedsworte der Väter. Gattungsge-schichtliche Untersuchung der Vermächtnisrede im Blick auf Joh. 13–17 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Ashton, Understanding, 443–78; Parsenios, Departure and Consolation, which compares the Farewell Discourses to tragic exits to death (ch. 2), ancient consolation literature (ch. 3) and the literary symposium (ch. 4); and, Paul Holloway, “Left Behind: Jesus' Consolation of His Disciples in John 13:31–17:26,” ZNW 96 (2005) 1–34, which is an elaborate and elegant interpretation of the Farewell Discourses in light of ancient consolation literature.

Tragic plays also place a speech on the lips of dying or departing characters, and the first stage in relating the Fourth Gospel to tragic practice is to compare some of the vocabulary of the Farewell Discourses to that of tragic literature.

Although the unique characters of Greek tragedy die in various and different ways, certain recurring vocabulary and situations accompany almost all tragic deaths.31

The following discussion is based on Fiona Macintosh, Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 1994) 98–125; and eadem, “Tragic Last Words: The Big Speech and the Lament in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama,” in Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond (ed. M. S. Silk; Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) 414–25. Unless otherwise noted, texts and translations of classical literature are taken from the LCL editions.

Most frequently, tragic characters meet the shadow of the grave by bidding a final farewell to the light of the sun. Aristophanes ridicules this common device in the Acharnians. As a severely wounded Lamachus approaches death, the feather from Lamachus's helmet bids farewell to the light of its life, the dying Lamachus (1184–1185):

.

O brilliant visage, now for the last time do I behold you, light of mine. I am no more.32

For the interpretation that we have here the death of the feather, and not of Lamachus, see A. M. Dale, “A Heroic End,” BICS 8 (1961) 47–48; repr. in idem, Collected Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969). For Aristophanes' similar parody of tragic “welcome home” scenes, see M. S. Silk, “Pathos in Aristophanes,” BICS 34 (1988) 98–103.

As he mocks the tragic farewell, Aristophanes includes three terms that appear in many speeches prior to death:

,

, and

.

33

Aeschylus: Ag. 1323–1324. Sophocles: Trach. 1144; Aj. 856; Ant. 808–809, 879–880; Oed. tyr. 1183; and Oed. col. 1549–1550. Euripides: Alc. 206–208, 244; Hec. 367–368, 411–412, 435–437; Hipp. 672, Orest. 1017; and Iph. Aul. 127, 1249–1251, 1281–1282, 1509. See also Macintosh, Dying Acts, 99.

These three terms are not always precisely the ones used in tragic speeches. For instance, instead of referring simply to

, one might speak of the “light of day” (

; Sophocles, Trach. 1144), or address the Sun directly (

; Aeschylus, Ag. 1323). This slight variation in terminology will be important below. Nevertheless, whatever the precise terms used in a given case, tragic characters regularly approach death by bidding farewell to the light of the world, which they claim to see for the last time, and which they will see no longer. The typical handling of these themes in tragic last words bears a more than passing resemblance to Jesus' Farewell Discourses, so a brief review of the evidence is in order.

The reference to the light (

) has the least obvious connection to the Farewell Discourses of Jesus. But this may not necessarily disassociate John from the tragedians. Even in tragic practice the particular circumstances of a dying character can suppress this element. For instance, Sophocles'Ajax includes a complex interaction between the themes of light and darkness.

34

For the imagery of light and darkness in Ajax, see Herbert Musurillo, The Light and Darkness: Studies in the Dramatic Poetry of Sophocles (Leiden: Brill, 1967), esp. chapter 2; W. B. Stanford, “Light and Darkness in Sophocles' Ajax,” GRBS 19 (1978) 189–97; idem, Sophocles: Ajax (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963), in the index s.v. “Light Symbolism” and “

”; and David Cohen, “The Imagery of Sophocles: A Study of Ajax' Suicide,” GR (1978) 24–36.

“In the continuing dialectic between light and darkness, Ajax refers to the darkness as his light and banishes the light from his life (394–400),” and thus his “accompanying apostrophe to the light that is his no more” avoids any actual mention of the light (416–421).35

Macintosh, Dying Acts, 101–2.

In the same way, Jesus cannot bid farewell to the light, since he is himself the Light. When Jesus dies, he does not salute the light of the world for the last time, but rather, as the Light, he bids farewell to the world (see John 12:35, 36, 46).36

The content of John's dualism of light and darkness is illuminated by comparison with the Dead Sea Scrolls. See James Charlesworth, “A Critical Comparison of the Dualism in 1QS 3:13–4:26 and the Dualism Contained in the Gospel of John” in John and Qumran (ed. James Charlesworth; London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1972) 76–106; and Ashton, Understanding, 205–37. Regardless of John's similarities with Qumran, he has written a narrative, not a treatise. Further research might well connect John's narrative use of light/darkness imagery with the narrative use of this dualism in the tragedians.

As in the case of Ajax, therefore, Jesus' unique status in relation to the light of the world can well explain his failure to bid farewell to the light.

Nevertheless, Jesus does bid farewell to his followers, and the two other common themes in Aristophanes' parody connect Jesus' farewell to tragic last words. It bears recalling first that there can be some variation in terminology. For instance, Aristophanes'

can in a few cases be coupled with or replaced by a cognate form of

. In Sophocles' Trachiniae (1256), Heracles ascends his funeral pyre and refers to his death as “the last end of this man” (

).

37

My translation.

When Oedipus departs, not to death but to a life of blind exile, he laments his fate by exclaiming, “O, Light, may I now look on you for the last time” (

).

38

Oed. tyr. 1183.

Thus, when the Johannine narrator introduces Jesus' farewell meal with his dis-ciples by stating, “He loved them to the end [

],” the phrase may well mimic tragic practice and evoke the finality depicted in tragic death scenes.

39

That this term is often taken to mean either “to the end” or “to the furthest extent” is not a problem. John very reasonably means both. See Francis Moloney, The Gospel of John (SP 4; Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998) 373–74. Cognates of the term appear as well at 17:4 and 17:23. The latter example refers to the perfection of the disciples and not the completion of Jesus' work, though the two cannot be too sharply divided.

Echoing this,

is the last of Jesus' words from the cross (19:30; compare 19:28).

40

The particular significance of the term and its appearance in the perfect tense are debated. For the perfect tense in John, see Frey, Zeitverständnis, 96–114. For an analysis of this verse in particular, see also Craig Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003) 193–96; Roland Bergemeier, “Tetelestai Joh 19:30,” ZNW 79 (1988) 282–90; and L. T. Witkamp, “Jesus' Thirst in John 19:28–30: Literal or figurative?,” JBL 115 (1996) 489–510.

But on the level of vocabulary, the surest connection to tragic last words in John is the repetition of

. Among the numerous examples, see, for instance, Sophocles' Antigone, where Antigone meets her fate with the words, “No longer (

) may I, poor creature, look upon the sacred eye of the shining sun (879–880)…. I am led away and there is delay no longer (

)”(939).

41

For further examples, see Sophocles, Trach. 1144–1146; Aj. 416–421; and Euripides, Alc. 270–272, 322, 387–392; Orest. 21–1026; Iph. aul. 1281–1282.

The term

occurs eight times in John 13–17, as Jesus bids farewell to the world, most especially when he claims, “I am no longer (

) in the world (17:11).

42

In addition to 17:11, see the following:

(14:19);

(14:30);

(15:15);

(16:10);

(16:16);

(16:25). John 16:21 refers to the temporary character of labor pains, and so it is not immediately evocative of the themes discussed here.

Thus, of the three recurring themes in dramatic speeches before death, two (

,

) appear with some prominence in John, while the suppression of the third (

) is explicable even according to tragic procedures. Nevertheless, that the terms are used in John is not as important as preciselyt how they are used. This is especially true in the case of

. For, tragic characters march to death very much like Jesus, who announces that he is no longer in the world (17:11)—even as he continues to sit at the table with the disciples.

Dying into Death

When tragic figures deliver their last words before death, they do not die in an instant. Rather, they “die into death,” making tragic dying a process, not a single moment.43

The phrase is from MacIntosh, Dying Acts, 90. The idea that death is a process enters into tragedy very naturally from ancient Greek social and religious practice, in which death is treated very much like a process. Robert Garland (The Greek Way of Death [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press] 13) distinguishes three stages of death: (1) dying; (2) being dead but uninterred; and (3) being dead and interred. The time when the soul separates from the body is a taxing process, and requires meticulous care by survivors on behalf of the dying person. Thus, the process of dying begins when death approaches. The process terminates only with the celebration of the thirtieth-day rites (ibid,39). Emily Vermeule (Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry ([Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979] 21) sees the funeral, rather, as the end of the process of death. In either case, death is a process. Macintosh is able to connect these social practices to the Greek and Irish stage with very interesting effect, especially because the conventions apply not only to ancient Greek social life and drama, but to modern Irish social life and drama as well. Irish dramatists follow Greek dramatic practice in presenting death as a process, due to the broader revival of classical literary traditions in modern Ireland. Even more importantly, the general conception of death as a process prevailed in early-twentieth-century Ireland no less than it had in ancient Athens. The parallels between the Greek and Irish treatment of death on the stage operate, then, on multiple levels. See Macintosh, Dying Acts, esp. 1–38.

A parade example of the phenomenon is the death of Alcestis in Euripides' Alcestis.44

In the present discussion of Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Trachiniae, I follow very closely Macintosh, “Tragic Last Words”; and eadem, Dying Acts.

In her final speech, Alcestis is gradually extracted from the living environment around her, simultaneously speaking of her death prospectively and retrospectively. The premise of the play is that the god Apollo has granted to Admetus the opportunity to avoid death, provided that Admetus can fi nd someone to die in his place. His wife, Alcestis, agrees to stand in her husband's stead, and her last words before death are the point of concern here.45

For various interpretations of the treatment of death in Alcestis, see Charles Segal, “Euripides' Alcestis: How to Die a Normal Death in Greek Tragedy,” in Death and Representation (ed. Sarah Webster Goodwin and Elisabeth Bronfen; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) 213–41; J. W. Gregory, “Euripides' Alcestis,” Hermes 107 (1979) 259–70; Wesley D. Smith, “The Ironic Structure in Alcestis,” Phoenix 14 (1960) 127–45; and Anne Pippin Burnett, “The Virtues of Admetus,” CP 60 (1965) 240–55.

Like Jesus, Alcestis is both still alive and already dead in her last words. A discussion between a maidservant and the chorus signals her liminal status. When the chorus leader inquires, “I would like to know whether the queen yet lives or has died” (139–140), the maidservant responds, “You might call her both living and dead” (141). And when we do finally see and hear Alcestis, this dual status is reflected in her words.

Although she opens her final conversation with her sons and husband with the familiar valediction to the sun (244), she is soon engrossed by the darkness of the underworld, and begins to address her comments both to her husband, who sits beside her, as well as to Charon, ferryman of the dead (252–258). In the same breath, she asks her husband whether he can see Hades as she does (259–260), and then she commands Hades to release her (263). Given that she is speaking to figures who inhabit two realms, whom does she address a few lines later, when she commands, “Let me go, let me go now” (266)?

46

It becomes clear whom she addresses only in the next line (267), as she asks to be returned to her bed and then calls to her children.

She seems already to be removed from the scene around her. Like Jesus, she speaks as one approaching death, and yet as one whose death is already a reality. In 267, she again addresses directly her attendants among the living, and finally announces to her children, “Children, children, your mother is no more [

'].” She then bids farewell to the boys, in what commentators refer to as her “first death.”

47

Alcestis only appears to die twice because she first delivers her last words in the form of a lyric ode, and then again in spoken trimeters. Because of this alternation in vocal delivery, A. M. Dale (Euripides: Alcestis [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974] 74) writes, “The thread of action does not necessarily run continuously through both of these in a strict sequence of time…. [The] situation is realized first in its lyric, then in its iambic aspect.” “The dying-scene of Alcestis is split and experienced by us twice over through the diffractive effect of lyric and spoken presentation. It is as though Alcestis dies twice,” writes John Gould (“Dramatic Character and ‘Human Intelligibility’ in Greek Tragedy,” Papers of the Cambridge Philological Society, n.s., 24 [1978] 50). See also J. McCaughey, “Talking about Greek Tragedy,” Ramus 1 (1972) 30–31.

But there is more.

The “second death” follows in the ensuing verses as she addresses her husband for the last time. She looks forward to her demise prospectively just as much as she looks backward to it in the past. Alcestis and Admetus both rely on past-tense verbs in discussing her death. She laments, “[H]onoring you, and having caused (

) you instead of me to see the light, I am dying (

).”

48

Alc. 282–284. See Macintosh, Dying Acts, 140.

The aorist participle

indicates that she has already died. Yet, the resumption of the present tense (

) indicates that the process of death continues. Admetus also speaks to her as though she has already died: “While you lived, you were my wife” (329). After continuing to bid farewell to her husband, however, she finally informs him, as she did her sons, “You may say that I no longer (

) exist” (387).

49

My translation:

.

Even this is not the end. She speaks further, until Admetus urges Alcestis to look at their children, and she repeats, “I no longer exist” (390). And although, by her own account, she no longer exists, she bids her husband a final post mortem farewell, “

” (391). In her final words to her sons and husband, then, Alcestis is both about to die and already dead. As the maidservant informs us even before we see Alcestis, she is equally among the living and the dead (141).

A similar case occurs in Euripides' Hippolytus when the eponymous hero dies. When Theseus inquires of a messenger what news he brings, the messenger responds,

Hippolytus no longer exists (

), to all intents and purposes, And yet he sees the light of day with little strength (1162–1163).

50

Translation in Macintosh, Dying Acts, 70.

The phrase “to all intents and purposes” limits the expression that Hippolytus is no more, because, as we will see, he still speaks.51

LSJ (s.v.

, II.4) explains that the expression here translated “to all intents and purposes” (

, 1162) means “to speak loosely,” as opposed to precisely. A similar use occurs in Aeschylus, Pers. 714. See Macintosh, Dying Acts, 70.

And yet, for all intents and purposes, he is no more. As with Alcestis, even though he does not die for another three hundred lines of the play, Hippolytus does indeed “no longer exist.” Also like Alcestis, Hippolytus pronounces himself dead and describes the realm of the dead (1447), but still speaks as one among the living (1448–1456). After announcing his demise a second time (1457), he tells his father to cover his face and attend to his garments (1458). His last words, therefore, are also post mortem.

The moment of Heracles' death in Sophocles' Trachiniae is as elusive and confusing as those of Hippolytus and Alcestis. Heracles certainly occupies a unique place in Greek tragedy, and his status as a demigod accounts for much of the play's unusual character.52

M. S. Silk (“Heracles in Greek Tragedy,” Greece and Rome 32 [1985] 6) writes that “Heracles lies on the margins between human and divine; he occupies the no-man's land that is also the nogod's land.” On the play's unusual ending, see P. E. Easterling, ICS 6 (1981) 56–74; Philip Holt, “The End of the Trachiniae and the Fate of Heracles,” JHS 109 (1989) 69–80; and Charles Segal, “Sophocles' Trachiniae: Myth, Poetry and Heroic Values,” YCS 25 (1977) 99–158

But as is obvious by now, his unstable status between life and death is not at all unusual.

The play ends with Hyllus, the son of Heracles, leading his father off to be burned on Mt. Oeta. Heracles, thus, never dies in the course of the play, but this does not prevent the play's characters from announcing his death as final on several occasions. The cause of his death is his wife's mistake. Hoping to lure his wandering eye back to her, she turns to a poisonous gift from the centaur Nessus, one of Heracles' vanquished foes. Because his wife believes the poison to be a beneficent charm, she sends it to Heracles, who suffers its evil effects.

Heracles' son Hyllus wrongly assumes that his mother killed Heracles out of jealousy, and twice condemns his mother for a murder that is over and done:

Know that on this very day, you killed your husband, by which I mean my father. (739–740)53

My translation. The text reads as follows:

. Here, the aorist participle

is used in supplement to the imperative

, so that the participle functions as a dependent statement, as though introduced by

. The tense of the participle has the same force as the tense of the corresponding indicative form, in this case the aorist. The statement thus indicates that the act of murder has already been accomplished in the past. See Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (1920; repr., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984) §2106.

You have disregarded what is meet and right, having slain the noblest man of all those on the earth. (811–812)

These two statements frame Hyllus's condemnation of his mother (731–812). The reality of Heracles' death is reasonable to assume. But, between these two announcements of Heracles' demise is another statement that makes the matter less certain. Hyllus informs his mother, “In a moment you will see him, either still alive or having just died” (805–806).54

My translation.

Events soon become even more complicated when Deianeira, Heracles' wife, kills herself. The chorus's response to her death is important, for they do not mourn her death alone, but two deaths: that of Deianeira which they have just witnessed, and that of Heracles, whose body they are waiting to see (884–886, 947–952). They sing a ritual lament that has all of the key features of a threnos.55

Regarding lines 947–952, P. E. Easterling (Sophocles: Trachiniae [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982] 193–94) writes, “The first strophic pair has all the features of a threnos: initial hesitation expressed in terms of questions … antithetical style, effects of assonance and repetition.” See also Margaret Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) 161–62.

Recognizing the threnetic character of the passage is important because the chorus's ritual dirge indicates the certainty of both deaths, the one they have seen confirmed and the one they assume.56

Macintosh, Dying Acts, 68.

Both Heracles and Deianeira are treated as already dead and deserving of appropriate lamentation.

The chorus's certainty that Heracles has died, however, disappears as quickly as it was established. As they see his bier approaching, they wonder, “How are we to determine whether he has died or is asleep?” (969–970). Their ambivalence lasts until the close of the play, when Hyllus carries Heracles to Mt. Oeta to be burned alive. The entire latter half of the play, then, has seen Heracles declared dead time and again, although he does not actually die during the course of the drama. Heracles, then, has been killed (

, 739–740;

, 811–812), and yet is not dead for certain (805–806). And, while the chorus sings a ritual lament for the dead Heracles (884–886, 947–952), it also wonders whether or not he has actually expired (953–961, 969–970).

At a very basic level, then, a fundamental similarity unites the death of Jesus and the deaths of tragic characters. As they draw nearer to death, Jesus and his tragic counterparts travel back and forth across the threshold that separates life and death. These dying figures either are pronounced dead by others, or pronounce themselves dead, many times before they actually die. In the Fourth Gospel, this manner of speaking lasts for five chapters. In the tragic examples cited above, it persists over hundreds of lines.

The similarity between the Fourth Gospel and the tragedies, however, appears most clearly in light of a vast difference that separates them. In order to recognize just how alike John is to tragic models, we must first examine a fundamental point on which John differs from the tragedians. For, Jesus does not stand on the threshold between life and death, but on the threshold between life and glorification in new life—the resurrection and ascension. When Jesus declares that he “is no longer in the world,” he does not imply that he has descended into the underworld like Alcestis or Hippolytus, but that he has returned above to the Father. So, as tragic characters slowly descend into death, Jesus gradually rises into his glorification. What is true of death in tragedy is true of the resurrection in John.

And just such a twist in expectations is precisely what we should expect from the Fourth Gospel. Attridge has recently demonstrated that whenever the Fourth Gospel relies on traditional conventions or a generic model, those raw materials never look the same after John has deployed them. The genre is always “bent.”57

Harold W. Attridge, “Genre Bending in the Fourth Gospel,” JBL 121 (2002) 3–21.

John's use of the testament demonstrates the procedure well. Scholars regularly see affinities between Jesus' final speech and the biblical testament form. But at a certain level of abstraction, John has radically bent the generic expectations of the testament. Whereas the typical testament emphasizes the impending departure and ensuing absence of the dying character, John's testament promises that, in spite of leaving, Jesus will continue to be present to his disciples in a variety of ways. By steering the basic style of the testament in an entirely new direction, the Fourth Gospel has bent its model genre.58

Ibid, 17–18.

The same is true of John's use of tragic death scenes, inasmuch as the emphasis that tragedy places on death is taken up in John and applied to the glorification and resurrection of Jesus. The remainder of this essay will demonstrate how John has adapted his tragic models.

The Processes of Death and Resurrection

Recognizing that death is a process in Greek tragedy, Fiona Macintosh has analyzed the various factors that make a death “tragic.” She sees special significance in the obscurity that surrounds the moment of death. Dying almost always occurs offstage, and the audience hears of it from messengers.59

People die onstage in only two (perhaps three) plays: Alcestis, Hippolytus and, debatably, Ajax. In those cases where deaths do occur onstage, the driving motivation for enacting the death scene is to emphasize the guilt of those responsible for the death. For discussion and bibliography, see Macintosh, Dying Acts, 130–57.

For this reason, the death scene is actually no scene at all. The thing most anticipated is never given.60

Ibid, 55–58.

Only its buildup and aftermath receive attention: the precise moment of death “can never be captured in an instant, but is always an elusive future or past event in an essentially endless process.”61

Even the reports of death neither focus on the moment of death, nor provide a detailed narrative of the events surrounding the death. Messengers regularly do not provide the entire logos of offstage disasters, but report instead the necessary pathos. In Aeschylus's Persians, for instance, the messenger is referred to as one who will tell the whole logos (

, 246), but then himself introduces his report as the whole pathos (

, 254), and three times insists that he does not report all of the details (329–330, 429–430, 513–514). What he reports is the sense of calamity that attended the defeat. See James Barrett, Staged Narrative: Poetics and the Messenger in Greek Tragedy (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002) 29–30. See also Macintosh, Dying Acts, 126–57.

But it is wrong to suggest that the manner of dying is what makes tragic characters unusual. It is their manner of living that sets them apart, since there is never a time when dying characters are not dying. To clarify what this means, notice how the Old Man (

) in the Trachiniae comments on the status of Heracles: “For he's only just on the verge of living” (

, 976). The quotation offers an important insight into the perception of death in Greek tragedy. Macintosh writes,

The fact that Heracles is conceived of as being on the verge of living, and not (as we would expect) on the verge of dying, is particularly illuminating. For Heracles, during the Trachiniae, is more of death than he is of life…. But Heracles is neither completely in death nor in life during the course of the play. Heracles, in these terms, can be both killed and alive, both mourned and yet not die within the span of the dramatic action, because he occupies a transitional state which makes him both of and not of this world simultaneously.62

Macintosh, Dying Acts, 69.

For Heracles, therefore, as well as for Hippolytus and Alcestis, the comment of Admetus is definitive: “The one so destined has already died, is dying and is no more.”63

(529).

The process of dying has begun long before each drama opens. So says Sophocles' Antigone: “My life has died from long before” (559–560).64

George Lukács (“The Metaphysics of Tragedy,” in Soul and Form [trans. Anna Bostock; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1974] 159) formulates this reality in a powerful statement: “The dying heroes of tragedy … are dead a long time before they die.” In the same paragraph, Lukács writes, “The tragic experience, then, is a beginning and an end at the same time. Everyone at such a moment is newly born, yet has been dead for a long time.” Macintosh (Dying Acts, 78) concludes, similarly, “The cost of tragic status is an exclusion from the process of living.”

Indeed, there is never a time when tragic characters are truly alive. Macintosh writes as follows:

Tragic existence means being denied access to the process of living, and being forced to die into death. Death in tragedy does not inform the tragic characters' lives, it is the form of their lives, and consequently gives them a supra-human status as specters in the land of the living.65

Ibid, 90.

All of this can certainly be said of the Johannine Jesus, as long as we recognize that we are speaking not of his death, but of his glorification and resurrection. Macintosh's reference to the “supra-human status” of tragic characters, for instance, calls to mind the claim of Johannine scholars that Jesus in John is not human, but is “God striding across the earth.”66

See Ernst Käsemann, “The Structure and Purpose of the Prologue to John's Gospel,” in New Testament Questions of Today (trans. W. J. Montague; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969) 159, 161. See also idem, The Testament of Jesus: A Study of the Gospel of John in the Light of Chapter 17 (trans. Gerhard Krodel; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968). For an important response to Käsemann in particular, as well as a clear review of the relevant problems, see Marianne Meye Thompson, The Humanity of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988).

If those destined to die in tragedy have already died, are dying, and are no more, then, in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus has risen, is risen and is no longer in the world, but has ascended to the Father—even before these events are actually narrated. The composer of the gospel is so aware of Jesus' resurrected status that this awareness influences even the portrayal of Jesus prior to his glorification. The whole narrative reflects the glory of events that have already occurred in real time, but have not yet occurred in the narrative. Ignoring this aspect of the gospel, Käsemann famously argued that the death of Jesus was irrelevant for the theology of John.67

“In John the glory of Jesus determines his whole presentation so thoroughly from the outset that the incorporation and position of the passion narrative of necessity becomes problematical” (Käsemann, Testament of Jesus, 7).

For Käsemann, if Jesus' death is a revelation of glory, one must recognize that Jesus reveals his glory elsewhere, for instance, at the wedding at Cana (2:11). Thus, the death of Jesus is no more important than the wedding miracle, since the death provides but another means of accomplishing what the miracle already has. This line of interpretation fails to account, however, for the postresurrection perspective of the gospel. Far from signaling the diminished significance of the death and resurrection, the revelation of glory at the wedding indicates that all of Jesus' earthly life is narrated from the perspective of his glorification in death.68

The gospel does, however, distinguish between the pre- and post-Easter presentation of Jesus, especially in the Spirit's postresurrection power to enable people to perceive Jesus properly: see Thompson, Humanity of Jesus, 126. See also D. Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 102.

That Jesus reveals his glory before he is glorified in the narrative only further emphasizes that he has been glorified (in actual history) before the narrative begins, and that the whole narrative is infused with this reality.

Thus, in the case of both Jesus and tragic figures, two competing personalities vie with one another: their actual status, as people already on the other side of death, and their narrative status, as people who are not yet slain. The personae stand side by side and blend into one another. When the narrative finally depicts their death, nothing more happens than that their true character is revealed. Bloch writes of tragic death that

death is merely the making visible of a shape which is already present any-way, in its essence; just as, for example, Michelangelo already saw the statue in the block and all his chisel had to do was remove the superfluous material around it.69

Ernst Bloch, “Death as the Chisel in Tragedy,” in The Principle of Hope (trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight; 3 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986) 3:1169. Compare Macintosh, Dying Acts, 67.

Furthermore, as the moment of death approaches, the lines that separate the com-peting realities break down. The alienation of dying characters from the realm of the living “is most acute when the distance between them and death becomes foreshortened.”70

Ibid, 104

As death approaches, it is as though the true identity of the dying character struggles to break free from behind the tragic mask that has allowed the character to appear alive. This is why Alcestis, Hippolytus, and Heracles speak of themselves, and are spoken of, as both alive and dead even though their death is not yet final. Within the narrative, there is a predominantly white area of life, and a predominantly black area of death. At the point where the two collide, there is a gray area where the character is both alive and dead.71

There are other examples of the phenomenon, particularly in the Oresteia. See ibid, 79–90.

The same is true of Jesus. As noted above, the postresurrection perspective that shines through the entire book becomes most glaringly present as Jesus draws near to the resurrection. The arrival of his “hour” signals the beginning of a process—the process whereby he becomes in the narrative what he actually is in reality: glorified and resurrected. The events of the crucifixion/resurrection/ascension are many chapters away, but in 13:31 and 17:1, Jesus emphasizes that “now” his hour has arrived. The hour, then, encompasses not only Jesus' death and resurrection, but has begun already in the Farewell Discourses.72

O'Day (“I Have Overcome,” 158–59) notes, “All adverbs of time, particularly adverbs of temporal immediacy (nun, arti, euthus; eg., 13:31–33; 16:22, 31–32; 17:5, 13) reinforce the arrival of the hour. Once we enter the farewell discourse, then, all preparatory time has passed and the ‘hour’ of reckoning has arrived…. The gap between the present moment and the impending futurehas been closed by the ‘now’ of 13:31.”

And, as the dramatic mask that conceals his resurrected status comes off in the arrival of the hour, Jesus begins to speak as one who is already resurrected. In the same way that tragic death is a process, not an isolable moment, so too is Jesus' hour not an individual moment in time, but a process. About the arrival of the hour, Moloney writes, “Jesus has not yet returned to the Father, but a process has begun by means of which Jesus will be glorified…. He is passing from this world to the Father.”73

See Moloney, Gospel of John, 466. This seems similar to the opinion of Dodd (Interpretation of John, 403), who writes in regard to the verb tenses of the Farewell Discourses, “The past tense of the verses is chosen because Jesus is in effect already accomplishing his Passion.”

Other factors further tie Jesus' “process of glorification” to the tragic “process of dying.” For, as death approaches, and tragic characters begin to “die into death,” their separation from the living and their disassociation from the surrounding environment is accentuated in a variety of ways. For instance, although their last speech is often a dialogue, characters will eventually break off contact with their interlocutors. In Sophocles' Antigone, Creon interrupts Antigone's last words by commanding his soldiers to take her away, but she continues speaking, oblivious to his order. A similar circumstance occurs in the final speech of Cassandra in Eu-ripides' Trojan Women (294–461).74

Macintosh, Dying Acts, 95–96.

With the Greek victory in the Trojan War, a messenger informs Cassandra that she must accompany Agamemnon to his home. The messenger demands that he is in a great hurry to remove her (294–296), but she delivers two lengthy speeches that cover almost two hundred lines of text. Even when the messenger repeats his order (419–420), Cassandra continues, oblivious to his command.

Jesus acts similarly in the Fourth Gospel. Of course, no one else commands Jesus to march to his death.75

For this common christological characteristic of the Gospel of John, see, for example, Moloney, Glory Not Dishonor, 52.

But when he himself announces the departure from the Last Supper (“Arise, let us go forth,” 14:31), he immediately appears to ignore the command, and announces, “I am the true vine” (15:1) and continues speaking until 18:1. The effect of this delay mirrors the delays of Antigone and Cassandra. Interpreters have long debated whether Jesus actually departs at 14:31, and where he is when he speaks the greater part of his Farewell Discourses.76

On the relevant problems, see Moloney, Glory not Dishonor, 52–53; and Dettwiler, Die Gegenwart, 37.

He thus seems to be abstracted from his surroundings, speaking at an indefinite time in an indefi nite place.77

For more on the dramatic character of Jesus' puzzling departure, see Parsenios, Departure and Consolation, especially ch. 2.

Before proceeding further, a possible objection requires attention. The idea that tragic death is a process, and not an isolable moment, relies on the fact that the moment of tragic death passes unseen in almost every extant Greek tragedy. Jesus' death, by contrast, is vividly portrayed. At first glance, this sharply distinguishes Jesus' death from tragic procedure. But it need not do so. In the first place, death is not always unseen. In two (perhaps three) instances, characters die onstage in order to emphasize the blame of their murderers.78

See n. 59, above.

Jesus' death surely follows this pattern, and emphasizes not only the moment of his death, but also the fault of those who kill him.79

Many grisly realities not depicted on the Greek stage were depicted on the Roman stage. There was, then, in the Empire a tendency toward greater “realism” in depicting violent events, which could also explain the presentation of Jesus' death. For the development of the process, see Richard C. Beacham, The Roman Theatre and Its Audience (London: Routledge, 1991), esp. 125.

Even more to the present point, however, this essay does not argue that Jesus dies as a tragic figure dies, but that he rises as a tragic figure dies. John has bent the expectations of tragic deaths, so that Jesus follows the tragic model to a point, but then deviates markedly from normal expectations. Not Jesus' death, but his resurrection, resembles death in tragedy. And, in keeping with this understanding, the moment of the resurrection is not depicted. Unlike the Gospel of Peter, and exactly like the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Fourth Gospel remains silent about the moment of Jesus' resurrection. Once more, then, a feature of death in Greek tragedy characterizes the resurrection in the Fourth Gospel.80

We should note that even some tragedies reverse the standard tragic practice, so that the play ends on a positive note, as when Alcestis returns to life. But here, we are not only concerned with the reversal of tragedy, but with the application of devices associated with death to the resurrection. For a similar discussion of the transformation of tragedy in Jesus' crucifixion alone, see Stibbe, John as Storyteller, 121–47; Stibbe compares John 18–19 to Euripides' Bacchae.

A final point of comparison between tragedy and John remains. The death of tragic characters is contagious, spreading to surviving mourners as news of the death is made known. Jesus' resurrection spreads with the same effect, and even in the same manner. When a character dies offstage in tragedy, the death is announced visually and orally to the surviving characters and to the audience, either by the report of a messenger (

) or when the body is exposed to view, which in later tragedy involved the rolling out of the body on the

, a trolley-like device that mechanically discloses interior scenes.

81

For a helpful description of the device and its use, see Oliver Taplin, Greek Tragedy in Action (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978) 11–12 and ch. 7; and Rush Rehm, The Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002), in the index s.v. ekkuklema. For the argument that the device was not yet available for Aeschylus's use, see Taplin, Stagecraft, 443.

John follows both means of disclosing the news of the resurrection. Mary Magdalene is twice the messenger of the resurrection, first when she fi nds the tomb empty and announces it to Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple (20:1–2), and later when she fi nds the risen Jesus, who sends her to report (

, 20:18) the news of the resurrection to the others. And after her announcement, the risen Jesus himself appears to the remaining disciples (20:19). Jesus' resurrection, therefore, is made known in the same way that death is made known in tragedy. A messenger's report accompanies the appearance of the dead—or risen—figure.

More important, the disciples' response to Jesus' appearance exactly reverses the response of tragic mourners to death. News of tragic death slays those who hear it. In Euripides' Andromache, Peleus learns of the murder of Neoptolemus, and cries out, “I no longer exist, and I am destroyed” (

,

, 1077). Hearing a report of death drives him to imitate the language of a dying character. The same response accompanies seeing the dead body. In Sophocles' Ajax, when Tecmessa discovers the corpse of Ajax, she exclaims, “I am destroyed” (

, 896). When Teucer sees Ajax dead, he also experiences a form of death, exclaiming, “When I heard [of your death], I mourned quietly while I was still far off, but now that I can see I am stricken to death!” (1000–1001).

82

For more examples, see Macintosh, Dying Acts, 173–82.

In the case of the Gospel of John, the disciples know Jesus' fate, and so they hide in fear of the Jews (20:19). But Mary Magdalene rejoices when Jesus appears to her at the tomb (20:16–18). The same change comes over the once-fearful disciples: “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (20:20). Thomas sees neither of the first appearances, but proclaims, “My Lord and my God!” when he recognizes that Jesus is risen (20:28). Chapters 20–21 continue to narrate the joy and strength that the disciples demonstrate in the wake of Jesus' presence among them, most particularly when Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon them (20:22). The glory and new life of the resurrection are transferred to the disciples. Like tragic death, the resurrection is contagious. Once more, then, the tragic is transformed in the Fourth Gospel.

Conclusion

The transformation of tragic procedure in the Gospel of John does not necessarily begin with John. In narrating the resurrection in this way, John conforms to the model set by the synoptic portraits of Jesus, in which a messenger first shares the news of the resurrection,83

Compare Mk 16:1–8; Mt 28:1–8; Lk 24:1–12.

followed by Jesus' appearance.84

Compare Mt 28:9–10, 16–20; Mk 16:9–18; Lk 24:10–11, 36–43.

Although Mark's ending is debatable, the resurrection is certainly contagious in Matthew and Luke. We noted above that John has made explicit the postresurrection perspective that the other gospels imply. And now, it appears that the synoptics also have a vaguely dramatic presentation of Jesus' resurrection, which John extends to the whole narrative. If we assume that John knew the Synoptic Gospels, or at least the traditions behind them, might we argue that the Fourth Gospel exploits and extends the dramatic trends present already in other narrations of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection? Was John's expansion of the postresurrection perspective simultaneously a further exploitation of tragic techniques already latent in traditions about Jesus? We can only speculate.

We can identify with greater certainty, however, a basic symmetry between the presentation of death in Greek tragedy and the presentation of the glorification and resurrection of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel. Tragic characters die in a slow process that begins before the play opens, and accelerates as the critical moment approaches. Their last words, therefore, reflect speakers who are both alive and dead. Likewise, Jesus is already glorified and resurrected before the Gospel of John opens, and when the process of his hour commences, he can already speak of its conclusion. Further research will surely yield additional connections between the Fourth Gospel and Greek tragedy. Whatever connections we discover between John and dramatic procedures, however, we must expect the Fourth Gospel to “bend” its tragic models, much as it has done in depicting the death of Jesus. For, while tragic characters endure a slow process of dying into death, the Johannine Jesus gradually rises into his glorification and ascends into the ascension. Even as he speaks to his disciples, Jesus is no longer in the world.

Footnotes

Throughout this paper I shall refer to the composer(s) of the Gospel of John, the author(s), the composer(s), etc. as John, for ease of writing, but make no specific claims thereby regarding authorship. Wayne A. Meeks and Nicholas P. Constas provided helpful critique and advice in the preparation of this paper, and their assistance is greatly appreciated. Errors of style and substance that remain are, of course, my own.