Johannine Sabbath Conflicts as Juridical Controversy

There is unanimity among Johannine scholars that one distinctive characteristic of the Fourth Gospel is the fact that the evangelist presents Jesus as caught in long-drawn out juridical confrontations between himself and ‘the Jews’. Martin Asiedu-Peprah examines the two Sabbath conflict narratives in the Fourth Gospel from a narrative-critical perspective and thus takes a fresh look at the Johannine juridical metaphor. In doing so, he attempts to pursue a three-fold objective. First, he determines the precise nature of the juridical metaphor used in the two narratives and on the strength of it, he undertakes a critical reading of the texts under study with the view to shedding new light on their meaning. Then he examines the role of this specific juridical metaphor in the two narratives. The question here is: for what purpose and how is this specific juridical metaphor used within the narrative framework of the two narratives? Finally, he explores the historical setting of the two narratives and infers from it the social function the juridical metaphor would have played within the Johannine Sitz im Leben. In the light of his results, Martin Asiedu-Peprah makes an attempt to examine very briefly the entire section of John 5:1-10:42 to see if the presence of the juridical controversy pattern in this section can throw light on one crucial issue in Johannine research, namely, the purpose of the Gospel in its present form.