Session 1: John
Tyler Brown, Oxford University, ‘Re-entering the Womb (κοιλία): The Rewriting of Matthew’s Sign of Jonah in the Johannine Temple Incident and Conversation with Nicodemus’
Reviving older arguments, James Barker recently suggested Matt 18:3 rather than oral tradition inspires the Johannine “born again” saying in John 3:3, 5 (2025, 115). The paper shows that Nicodemus’s question in 3:4 also reflects Matthean influence. The Matthean Sign of Jonah (12:40) uniquely describes someone re-entering a “womb” (κοιλία) to be figuratively reborn. Matthew’s Sign of Jonah likely already influences the preceding Johannine Temple incident, where the request for a sign is answered by a statement about resurrection in three days (John 2:18–22; cf. Boismard et al. 1977, 109). In the ps.-Philonic De Jona, Jonah is in fact born ἄνωθεν (46.4). With Johannine irony, Nicodemus is half-right. While John’s “signs” program does not allow the importation of the synoptic Sign of Jonah as a denial of the sign-request, the meaning of the Matthean Jonah-sign as a Christologically focused symbol of resurrection and rebirth is carried over into the Temple incident and Nicodemus conversation. The paper thus illuminates one way the Fourth Gospel handles the refusal of the synoptic Jesus to give a sign.
James Bell, University of Exeter, ‘The shepherd metaphor in John 21:15–19: connections to Ezek 34 and Zech 13’
Scholarship has often discussed the ‘Good Shepherd discourse’ in John 10, but the commissioning of Peter as a shepherd by Jesus in John 21:15–19 is less explored. A particular aspect of the LEADERSHIP IS SHEPHERDSHIP metaphor in this passage which should be considered is its relationship to earlier usages of the metaphor in the Hebrew Bible. In this paper, I will use Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) to elucidate the different aspects or mappings of the LEADERSHIP IS SHEPHERDSHIP metaphor utilised in John 21:15–19 for Peter. I will then consider the connections between these mappings and Ezek 34 and Zech 13:7, arguing that these passages relate closely to John 21:15–19. I will further suggest that this implies that Peter is being considered as partly fulfilling the promise of eschatological Davidic shepherdship in Ezek 34 and the dying shepherd in Zech 13. This also suggests that the Christian community is perceived here as the eschatological covenantal people of God, under the promised shepherd-leaders.
AKMA Adams, University of Oxford, ‘Jesus and Jolene: One Lesson Exegetes Can Learn from Popular Music’
For centuries interpreters have tied themselves into exegetical knots trying to make sense of the Auseinandersetzung between Jesus and his anonymous Samaritan interlocutor in John 4. How did she accumulate so many spouses? What happened to them? What is Jesus’s interest in her most recent relationship? As Meredith Warren points out, scholars tend to show a leering interest in slut-shaming the Samaritan (in an conversation in which Jesus issues no criticism of her); that impulse obscures a possible straightforward explanation of Jesus’s odd-seeming questions and response. All that is required to make greater sense of John 4:16–19 is fluency in both Greek and American popular music, perhaps particularly the oeuvre of Dolly Parton. Rather than fussing over details in the laws of marriage and divorce, fatality statistics for husbands, and other matters that John doesn’t call to our attention, we need only remember Jolene: The Samaritan woman has had five men over the course of her life, and the one she has now isn’t her man.
Session 2: John & Revelation
David Ray Johnson, Regents Theological College, ‘Flesh, Resurrection, and the New Creation: A Johannine Embodied Eschatology’
This study examines the goodness of creation from an eschatological perspective as a motif shared in the Johannine literature (FG, 1–3 John, and Revelation). While Platonic assumptions have been considered as influences of the Johannine worldview, including the privileging of the spiritual over the material, this study argues that the Johannine texts affirm creation and materiality presented in their shared eschatological vision. This study provides a literary-thematic analysis of creation, materiality, and eschatology in the Johannine texts to demonstrate the affirmation of creation, particularly through the incarnation and bodily resurrection of Jesus, which underscores the hope for the resurrection of all the dead and the union of creation with the divine realm in the new creation (Rev. 21–22). This framework ultimately provides the ethical directive for the community to care for the bodily and material needs of others in love, grounded in the ‘flesh’ of Jesus (1 John 3.16–4.3). The study concludes that embodiment, creation, materiality, and eschatology are underlying motifs shared in the Johannine corpus.
Francis Watson, Durham University, ‘John the Prophet and John the Apostle: the Johannine Writings and the Montanist Controversy’
The early identification of the anonymous “beloved disciple” with the apostle John created a link with the prophet of the same name who authored the Book of Revelation, and who is associated with Ephesus and western Asia Minor. As a result, Montanist beliefs about the promised coming of the Paraclete and the imminent descent of the heavenly Jerusalem could both be traced back to “Johannine” texts, which thus became implicated in the fierce controversies generated by the “New Prophecy”. This paper investigates the anti-Montanist rejection of both texts that can plausibly be linked to Caius of Rome, drawing on the evidence of Irenaeus, Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Dionysius bar Salibi to reconstruct key themes in Caius’s lost Dialogue with Proclus, a Phrygian (i.e. Montanist). The paper aims to locate the Book of Revelation within a Christian prophetic tradition in Asia Minor that extends to Montanus, Maximilla, Priscilla, and beyond. Later ambivalence about the place of Revelation within the New Testament collection can be traced back to this early controversy.
Session 3 – John and Synoptics Joint Seminar
John Nelson, London, ‘The Next Quest for Jesus’ Physical Appearance’
The physical appearance of Jesus is more distinctive and recognisable than any other. Yet until recently, historical Jesus scholarship has largely overlooked the subject of Jesus’ physicality. This paper offers a critique of recent studies of Jesus’ appearance – including Joan Taylor’s ‘average-looking’ Jesus (2018) and Isaac Soon’s ‘little Messiah’ (2023) – and offers some further suggestions towards re-imaging Jesus’ physical appearance. Taking my cue from The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (2024), I propose that paying attention to the use (and absence) of physiognomy in ancient biography (Petrey, 2024) and insights from disability studies in the context of Jesus’ labour in ancient Galilee (Gosbell, 2018) offers two means to destabilise our cultural iconography of Jesus. By reading the Gospels’ silence on Jesus’ physical traits within its socio-historical and literary milieu, historians are enabled to think more sensitively about Jesus’ image.
Respondent – TBC