Vines, Vineyards, and John 15

It has traditionally been thought that in the discourse of John 15 Jesus identifies himself as the vine and his followers as branches. Recently a different interpretation, in which Jesus is the vineyard and his disciples the vines, has begun to catch on. This article investigates the arguments of its original advocate, Chrys Caragounis, and finds them wanting. It shows that the new interpretation fails to appreciate that, whatever the evidence from more popular sources, any shifts of meaning for the two Greek terms involved cannot be clearly demonstrated from the LXX. Indeed, this critique demonstrates that the new proposal fails to identify correctly the LXX source of the imagery in John 15 and to acknowledge the significance of the evidence for an unbroken chain of interpretation of the two terms that runs from its source in Ezekiel through John 15 to the major Christian writers of the early centuries CE. It also refutes the alleged difficulties for traditional exegesis brought forward in the case for a shift of meaning and concludes that there is no convincing reason for abandoning the more appropriate reading of Jesus as the vine and his followers as branches.