After the exile the Jews were not the only inhabitants of Palestine. They lived among all kinds of non-Jews, and this made it necessary for them to preserve a clear identity if they were to avoid being absorbed into the other cultures in Palestine. This potential loss of Jewish identity had been a real threat on several occasions.159
In postcolonialism, however, the fear of loss that had been a real threat to the colonized on the one hand, works as a kind of resistance against the colonial power on the other. “Mimicry, as a repetition that is ‘almost but not quite’ the same as an original, queries not only the definition but the self-identity of the ‘original.’”160 Therefore, mimicry also produces a disturbing effect on colonial rule.161
Mimicry is another ambivalent (re)assertion of similarity and difference and it therefore poses a challenge to the normalized knowledge of colonized and colonizer; not least by making one an imitation of the other while preserving differences of, for example, liberty, status, and rights. . . . The imitation must always remain distinguishable from the original and so poses two troubling questions. On the one hand, it asks what constitutes the “original” and preserves its difference from any “imitation.” . . . On the other hand, it asks what “deformation” of this original is visible in the imitation, which is never exactly a copy and therefore something more or less than the “original.”162
In this respect, we can see that John uses mimicry in the Gospel, particularly, in the christological titles in terms of kingship. We can regard the employment and adaptation of them for kingly identification of Jesus as mimicry in terms of resistance. The Gospel of John adapts many christological titles originating in and used by a variety of cultures to introduce Jesus as king, but more fully describes Jesus as a universal and ideal king than those described as king in various other contexts. For example, Jesus as Messiah in the Gospel is a more fully idealized Messiah (Christ)/king than is found in Jewish culture (1:49; 7:31; 11:27). Jesus is truly the Savior of the World (4:42) rather than the Roman emperors. Jesus is of a truth the Prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15)163 who is to come into the world (7:14). Jesus is a more fully personalized, dramatized Lord and God (My Lord and My God) than any other one, and so on.
To attempt a new reading of the Gospel of John from a postcolonial perspective, therefore, I will employ three major postcolonial subjects in my book: 1) identity issues of the characters, using differences and similarities between the colonizer and the colonized (mimicry as a colonial process as well as a kind of resistance);164 2) a discourse of resistance and emancipation; 3) the ambivalent relationship between the center and the margin in hybridentity.
Literary Criticism and Postcolonial Theory
In this sub-section, in order to discover some bases of postcoloniality in this Gospel, I will deal with the relationship between literary criticism and postcolonial theory, and as an example, I will discuss the matter of the genre of the Gospels.
First, it is necessary to indicate that both inside and outside biblical scholarship there is a growing variety of conflicting views on the subject of the value of the Bible, the difference between biblical texts, and between biblical texts and other literary texts. Without any clear consensus of definitions of terms, of critical/philosophical understandings of disciplines, and of methods of interpretations of biblical texts, various interpretations of the biblical texts flood the world.165
We can say that literary theory provides not only a means of dealing with differences of critical opinion, but also provides the basis for constructing a more rational, adequate and self-aware discipline of literary studies. Jefferson and Robey say that “[l]iterary theory is not something that has developed in a vacuum, but has arisen for the most part in response to the problems encountered by readers, critics, and scholars in their practical contact with texts.”166 Questions raised by the readers might be answered in a number of different ways and the established ways of answering them should not be taken for granted. These ways of answering might cover a range of possibilities only; all elements in them can be open to challenge, and in practice most theories seem to concentrate on some more than others do, or even exclusively to others.
Since the 1970s, trends of biblical interpretation have rapidly changed and developed, the main focus of it passing onto the reader especially onto the modern reader.167 This new trend has a tendency to ignore the ancient background of the texts because of its tendency to make a distinction between the intention of the original author and the meaning of the text.168 However, in order to interpret the biblical texts better, I believe, we need to consult the products of the various scholarly works including not only those of traditional critics, but also those of post-modern critics.
In this sense, postcolonialism has significant advantages for the interpretation of the biblical texts as well as serious shortcomings. Some scholars are alarmed that one of the effects of imperialism as a major force is to reflect and reproduce dominant cultural assumptions about the margins, which not only fail to represent the diversity in the lives of the marginal groups but also promote unrealistic expectations about normal marginal behavior.169 Hence, postcolonialism has provided a useful corrective to the imperial perspectives of the interpretation of the biblical texts and has promoted a new perspective, which reads the biblical texts with the eyes of the margins. To borrow Alcoff’s phraseology, John as a voice of the margins in the first century offers the Johannine community at the margins the new world of Jesus as “a positive alternative and a vision of a better future.”170 The new world of the Johannine Jesus can motivate the readers to sacrifice their time and energy toward its realization in the colonized world.
However, postcolonial theory has a tendency which has denied the uniqueness of the biblical texts when compared with other texts (generalization of the Bible),171 and has a methodological limitation because it is problematic that it applies a post-modern critical theory to interpret biblical texts. In addition, another problem is a tendency to regard the biblical texts as unhistorical (neglect of the historicity of the Bible), although it is not the only problematic assumption in postcolonial theory.
Secondly, while emphasizing the postcoloniality of the Gospel of John, I take the view that the New Testament Gospels are uniquely special literature,172 so that even though the Gospel is a hybridized product of the colonial, imperial world, and there is similarity to the ancient Graeco-Roman texts, particularly ancient Greek biography, yet the Gospel has a uniqueness of its own.173 Many scholars regard the Gospel as a modified form of ancient Greek biography, while others do not. While criticizing modern categories of genre, which “are misleading and even inimical to actual understanding” of the biblical texts, Osborne also points out that the characteristics of the ancient genres are a key to interpreting biblical texts.174
Hence,