Otherness and Identity in the Gospel of John

Sung Uk Lim's book engages in a deconstructive postcolonial close reading of the sections of the Gospel of John where “minor” characters interact with Jesus. Lim's purpose is to both recover the agency and voice of those characters and to uncover how they contribute to a portrayal of Jesus’ identity. Lim begins his argument with a thorough description of his purpose and method. He then conducts a close reading of four character's interactions with Jesus. With Nicodemus, Lim discusses Otherness In-Between, since Nicodemus is a member of the Jewish community and Jesus represents the Johannine community. Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan Woman displays Otherness Within, as she and her neighbors are incorporated into the Johannine community. Pilate and the Jews (a complex aggregate character) exemplify Otherness Without, since they both stand in opposition to Jesus and exist outside of the Johannine community. Finally, the Mother of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple represent Otherness Beyond, because they are within the Johannine community but transcend clear-cut boundaries of race, ethnicity, and gender. Lim's argument is in dialog with the mainstream scholarship on the Gospel of John that emphasizes dualism and its rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion. From his deconstructive postcolonial perspective, he pushes back against the dualistic worldview that creates “others” in hierarchical, binary opposition. However, it is not clear whether Lim sees this dualism as inherent to the text of the Gospel itself, as a problem of interpretation, or as a combination of the two. Lim seeks to elevate the Gospel's minor characters, rather than seeing them merely as foils for Jesus, othered and pushed to the margins of the story. When introducing his framework, he discusses the weaponization of irony, a literary technique that many scholars identify in the narrative of the fourth Gospel, but one that victimizes the characters at which it is aimed, portraying them as ignorant and foolish. Throughout the book, Lim sheds light on these characters, recovering their agency, centering their voices, and blurring the stark boundaries that separate them from Jesus and his followers. Lim assumes the existence of a coherent and somewhat closed Johannine community, in line with the work of J. Louis Martyn. While this device is founded on well-established trends in Johannine scholarship and provides structure to his descriptions of otherness, Lim does not clearly describe his own understanding of this community. One can arrive at many of Lim's conclusions by other interpretative paths, as Susan Hylen, whom he commends, does. Providing his rationale for accepting a Johannine community as described by others would strengthen his argument. One of the most fascinating and difficult features of Lim's work is his definition of Jesus’ and the disciples’ mission among the Samaritans as a colonial project. Through this lens, Lim explores the character of the Samaritan Woman as a subaltern whose mimicry of the colonizer destabilizes the dualistic power dynamic between her and Jesus. This allows Lim to write an excellent recovery of the voice and agency of the woman, but it also has implications that the book does not fully explore. The history of Christianity is burdened with brutal colonialism. Does describing Jesus’ project in this way imply that God's mission to God's world is always colonial? A more thorough discussion of this aspect of Jesus’ ministry would have been of value. Lim's goal in Otherness and Identity in the Gospel of John is to reconstruct the identity of Jesus by examining the otherness of the minor characters in relationship with him. Nicodemus, an ambiguous character, shows that Jesus’ identity is multifaceted, “ontologically in-between heaven and earth,” “racially and ethnically both a Galilean and a Jew,” and “politically a ruled and ruling Jew” (69). Their interaction undermines exclusive hierarchical structures. The interaction between the Samaritan Woman and Jesus destabilizes boundaries between Jews and Samaritans and between colonizers and colonized, such that the differences within the Johannine community are blurred. In the trial scene between Pilate, Jesus, and the Jews, Jesus becomes a liminal character who shows that the “dualistic and hierarchical structure of earthly sovereignty is vulnerable to subversion through the intervention of heavenly sovereignty” (132). Finally, in his interaction with the Mother of Jesus and the Beloved Disciple, Jesus’ mothering as Sophia unites Galilean and Judean Jews and blurs the gender performed by Jesus. This creates a unity in diversity that ultimately undermines the supremacy of Rome and its ideology of homogeneity. Lim's book is a challenging read, but a rich one. It is an excellent exercise in deconstructive and postcolonial criticism. Lim's close readings of the Gospel uncover many interesting insights. In contrast to the hierarchical dichotomy with which these characters have been interpreted, Lim's dialogical construction of both these characters and Jesus envisions “the multifaceted nature of otherness in the Gospel” (164) and presents Jesus as embracing others and performing his own identity in an inclusive way.