Document Type

Book

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

The work of this project picks up where scholarship has left the conversation open regarding the Evangelist’s use of Scripture and its implications for the Fourth Gospel and Judaism through exploring where several Johannine streams intersect in the person of John the Baptist. I propose that his characterization brings together these major conversations and offers another perspective to the discussion regarding the Jewish nature of the Gospel. John the Baptist is portrayed as the archetypal witness to Jesus as his characterization is wrapped up in composite allusions to the Jewish Scriptures. This detailed intertextual weaving is a result of the cultural location of the Evangelist as a deeply Jewish writer in the Second Temple period. The previous chapter explored how the diverse range of authors in the Second Temple period utilized several of the passages in their writings that the Evangelist employed when characterizing John the Baptist. This interpretive context in the Second Temple period allows for a historical foundation for the Evangelist as he engages the same Scriptures. Though the conclusions of these Second Temple writers are not always that of the writer of the Fourth Gospel, engaging with the literary and interpretive history of this Gospel should be incorporated into conversations about the Evangelist’s own literary design and interpretive choices. For this reason, it is an important starting point before undertaking the intertextuality of the Evangelist as he weaves these Jewish texts together to characterize John the Baptist as not only the archetypal witness to Jesus but as the hermeneutic through which the Jewish Scriptures should be understood.

Comments

Originally published in M. Dillon, Amber. John the Baptist and Composite Intertextuality in the Fourth Gospel. 17 Mar. 2026, brill.com/display/title/74077?rskey=jvaQyz&result=1.

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