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Abstract
My dissertation is an investigation into the literary provenance and religio-historical setting of the Fourth Gospel. My investigation positions the document as a literary artifact composed around 100 CE and stemming from the religious culture of Greco-Roman Judaism, which includes the earliest literary compositions of Christianity. The mid-20th century discovery of ancient Judean apocalyptic writings at Qumran and the following academic circulation and discussion of this literature marked a major turning-point in Johannine scholarship. Prior to this, the notable Johannine scholar C. H. Dodd emphasized the crucial relevance of Greek Platonic literature to the project of contextualizing and interpreting the Fourth Gospel. Yet the study of the recently unearthed Qumranic texts has since led many leading scholars to ignore the relevance of Platonic sources and overestimate the historical significance of the literary affinities between the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gospel. Utilizing the textual findings and insights of both earlier and more recent Johannine scholarship, my dissertation re-integrates Dodd’s now widely ignored philosophical literary comparanda into its analysis, including above all the Middle-Platonizing Egyptian apocalypse Poimandres. My project engages both the Jewish literature found at Qumran, as well as the Greek Platonic literary tradition stemming from Plato. In light of this more complete set of historically relevant comparanda, I advance a novel and exegetically grounded interpretation of the religio-historical and literary significance of the Fourth Gospel, demonstrating both that and how its author has creatively braided together Jewish apocalyptic and Middle-Platonic idioms and assumptions.