What a great article! Thank you for addressing this important topic. I always find it interesting that not many people discuss the 2,000 years of racism of the church, especially against the Jews. It breaks my heart that that Jesus said that the greatest commandment is love for God and others, and on it hang the "whole law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:36-40), and it's the first things that Christians ignore.
Thanks Katheryn. The absence of enemy love is often alleged in John. But I think the post-traumatic setting of the Fourth Gospel’s audience explains this. Jesus waits until after Judas departs to issue the “new command” to love one another” (John 13:30, 34). The audience experienced betrayals similar to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus (see 5:15-16; 9:13-14, 20-23; 1 John 2:9-11, 18-19; 3:10-16). So the command to “love one another just as I have loved you” means loving those within the community who are or might be hateful enemies and betrayers. (Related to those citations from 1 John, I just learned of a womanist commentary on the Johannine epistles written for women from Muslim backgrounds that focuses on religious trauma. Looks really good: https://a.co/d/083PSqsJ)
Aaron, thank you for sharing this. The challenge with the trauma‑theory reading is that it depends on John coming from a Jewish‑Christian setting, but most scholars see the Johannine community as a late, highly Hellenized group shaped by Logos theology, dualism, and a sectarian identity that had already moved far from the Jewish Jesus‑movement. Scholars like Raymond Brown, J. Louis Martyn, Adele Reinhartz, and Paula Fredriksen note that John reflects a different stream of early Christianity, which is why the ethical core of Jesus’ teaching, including enemy love, does not appear in the same way. If trauma is involved, it is more likely connected to Roman pressure and community conflict than to preserving Jesus’ original ethical vision.
I can agree to disagree here :-). What “most scholars” say about John’s sitz im leben is hard to generalize. I don’t think it’s an either/or issue between Jewish vs Roman conflict, and I have lots of scholars on my 5 shelves of Johannine literature to support an intra-Jewish conflict background. But as I’ve said, Wong’s study is ground-breaking. Trauma from Rome is a historical given for any colonized people in the Roman world, but doesn’t account for all or even most of the trauma evidenced in the FG text.
Aaron, thank you for the thoughtful exchange. One historical point worth adding is Hegesippus. His second‑century testimony describes the earliest Jesus‑movement as fully Jewish, Torah‑observant, and unified around the teachings of James and the Jerusalem community. He reports no Johannine‑style sectarian split, no intra‑community betrayal trauma shaping ethics, and no shift away from Jesus’ command to love enemies. In Hegesippus’ account, the earliest followers of Jesus remained within Judaism and were known for righteousness, justice, and fidelity to the commandments. That picture does not align with a late, traumatized, Hellenized Johannine community developing a new ethic in response to internal betrayal. It aligns with continuity with Jesus, not divergence. And we can agree to disagree here, but we have to factor in the earliest sources that witnessed and preserved the history of the Nazarenes. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html
What a great article! Thank you for addressing this important topic. I always find it interesting that not many people discuss the 2,000 years of racism of the church, especially against the Jews. It breaks my heart that that Jesus said that the greatest commandment is love for God and others, and on it hang the "whole law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:36-40), and it's the first things that Christians ignore.
Thanks Katheryn. The absence of enemy love is often alleged in John. But I think the post-traumatic setting of the Fourth Gospel’s audience explains this. Jesus waits until after Judas departs to issue the “new command” to love one another” (John 13:30, 34). The audience experienced betrayals similar to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus (see 5:15-16; 9:13-14, 20-23; 1 John 2:9-11, 18-19; 3:10-16). So the command to “love one another just as I have loved you” means loving those within the community who are or might be hateful enemies and betrayers. (Related to those citations from 1 John, I just learned of a womanist commentary on the Johannine epistles written for women from Muslim backgrounds that focuses on religious trauma. Looks really good: https://a.co/d/083PSqsJ)
Aaron, thank you for sharing this. The challenge with the trauma‑theory reading is that it depends on John coming from a Jewish‑Christian setting, but most scholars see the Johannine community as a late, highly Hellenized group shaped by Logos theology, dualism, and a sectarian identity that had already moved far from the Jewish Jesus‑movement. Scholars like Raymond Brown, J. Louis Martyn, Adele Reinhartz, and Paula Fredriksen note that John reflects a different stream of early Christianity, which is why the ethical core of Jesus’ teaching, including enemy love, does not appear in the same way. If trauma is involved, it is more likely connected to Roman pressure and community conflict than to preserving Jesus’ original ethical vision.
I can agree to disagree here :-). What “most scholars” say about John’s sitz im leben is hard to generalize. I don’t think it’s an either/or issue between Jewish vs Roman conflict, and I have lots of scholars on my 5 shelves of Johannine literature to support an intra-Jewish conflict background. But as I’ve said, Wong’s study is ground-breaking. Trauma from Rome is a historical given for any colonized people in the Roman world, but doesn’t account for all or even most of the trauma evidenced in the FG text.
Aaron, thank you for the thoughtful exchange. One historical point worth adding is Hegesippus. His second‑century testimony describes the earliest Jesus‑movement as fully Jewish, Torah‑observant, and unified around the teachings of James and the Jerusalem community. He reports no Johannine‑style sectarian split, no intra‑community betrayal trauma shaping ethics, and no shift away from Jesus’ command to love enemies. In Hegesippus’ account, the earliest followers of Jesus remained within Judaism and were known for righteousness, justice, and fidelity to the commandments. That picture does not align with a late, traumatized, Hellenized Johannine community developing a new ethic in response to internal betrayal. It aligns with continuity with Jesus, not divergence. And we can agree to disagree here, but we have to factor in the earliest sources that witnessed and preserved the history of the Nazarenes. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/hegesippus.html
Hi Aaron, I suggest you read the following paper by Ruth Magnusson Davis.
“In defence of Luther and his much maligned book ‘The Jews and their Lies’.”
https://academia.edu/resource/work/48818160
Thanks for sharing Barbara, adding that to my growing bibliography for a (someday maybe) deeper study of the reception history of John.