The Portrait of Mary in the Gospel of John - Dissertation Example

The gospel of John has attracted much scholarly attention regarding its concentration on God as the Father and Jesus as Son, and rightfully so. Despite the fact that these terms are used in the other gospels, the regularity of the terms’ usage and the profundity of the meaning in the gospel of John makes it exceptional as opposed to the other three gospels. The majority of the studies regarding John took on the Father-Son relationship from a theological point of view, which led to the use of tools of source criticism, form criticism and other similar critical techniques.

It was just lately that literary-critical strategies were used in the gospel of John, which is gradually gaining the scholarly community’s approval.Expression of grief over the fact that British scholars, in particular, have been slow in adopting new literary methods. This is explained in different sections. Section I offers a short opening about literary criticism concerning the gospel of John. Section II looks at how fathers and sons can be viewed as a real Johannine subject and medium for imparting meaning.

Section III, meanwhile, looks at how John wants the readers to know better about Jesus, form themselves upon him and answer to his challenge by means of depiction, titles and images of Jesus as Son and other relevant symbols.Section IDespite the fact that a new cohort comprised of Bible students are used to reading the Bible particularly as a form of literature, not everyone recognizes the same belief. Furthermore, these approaches have not been used that long enough and actually started around the ‘70s.

It was, in fact, Culpepper who protested that biblical scholars have not been fast enough to suit the standpoint of literary critics through his book “Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel”. Culpepper was the first person to go through the literary features of the gospel of John in a systematic manner. This study of the gospel begins with a basic and overt assumption – that the meaning is text-subjective. To be exact, it is found in the text’s final form and, by itself, a fitting literally interpretation evades historical, sociological and extrinsic factors.