Suppressed, Adopted and Invented Memories

The Death of Jesus in the Gospel of John

Authors

• Kari Syreeni Åbo Akademi University https://orcid.org/0009-0004-0636-251X

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30664/ar.131729

Keywords:

gospel of John, death of Jesus

Abstract

The Gospel of John reflects several layers of social memory and theological creativity concerning Jesus’s death. In the early material, there seems to be a suppressed awareness of Jesus’s fate and an unwillingness to unfold it in narrative form – something that recalls the hypothetical sayings gospel Q and the Gospel of Thomas. There is also a search for alternative, figurative ways to visualize the endpoint of Jesus’s earthly life. Eventually, the narrative memory of Jesus’s passion, as told in Mark and Matthew, was adopted with some modifications. Among the modifications of the passion storyline is the narrativization of the image of Jesus as a Paschal Lamb, an image already known to Paul. The most remarkable innovation, however, was the figure of the “Beloved Disciple” as an eyewitness to Jesus’s passion and death.