The Discipleship Paradigm: Readers and Anonymous Characters in the Fourth Gospel

This volume examines the Fourth Gospel narrative in terms of its character portrayal, especially the portrayal of anonymous characters. It focuses on how characterization impacts readers, eliciting their involvement in the narrative, particularly the recognition of and response to Jesus' identity, and how anonymity facilitates that participation.
The first chapters examine the understanding of characterization in contemporary literary theory, then the author explores other contemporaneous narratives for the function of anonymous characters in those narratives. The final chapters examine specific character portrayals in the Fourth Gospel, demonstrating how the narratives of anonymous characters draw the reader into participation in the narrative and enables identification with those characters, especially the disciple Jesus loved, the Johannine paradigm of discipleship.

David R. Beck, Ph.D. (1994) in New Testament, Duke University, is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, NC. He has published an earlier version of his theory of Fourth Gospel anonymity in Semeia 63 (1993).