MİSYONERSAVAR YAZILAR

Estimated Range of Dating: 50-90 A.D.

As SQ's title indicates, it was first of all the word "sign" that suggested the survival of an older layer in the text of the present gospel. On the one hand, this term - and particularly its connection with faith - is used only rarely and negatively in the Synoptics and there never of the miracles Jesus had performed; and on the other hand, in the Fourth Gospel also "signs-faith" sometimes comes in criticism (e.g., 4:48; 6:26) but at other points - presumably pre-Johannine - is to be understood in an entirely positive sense.

Further, in the first part of the gospel there are what seem to be vestiges of a pattern of numbering the signs (2:11, 4:54). In fact, it is these miracle stories and others now unnumbered, together with Jesus' dialogues and long monologues ("discourses") now growing out of them, that alone comprise his public activity. What in the other gospels, and in far more diverse form, has been called his "ministry" can only be described in this gospel as his self-presentation in the performing of signs and in extended talk about them.

Thus, to many scholars there has seemed to lie behind the present text a protogospel that presented only Jesus' signs, and a series of them, and did so wholly affirmatively. They were significations (that is, demonstrations) of his messianic status, on the basis of which his first disciples and then many others believed in him; those who "came and saw" (1:39) immediately recognized him as the one so long hoped for in Jewish expectation.

On the contents of the Signs Gospel, Fortna states (op. cit., p. 19): "the following deeds of Jesus, less the Johannine insertions they now contain, would have comprised the bulk of SQ: changing water into wine (2:1-11), healing an official's son (4:46-54) and a lame man (5:2-9), feeding the multitude (6:1-14) - probably together with crossing the sea (6:15-25), giving sight to a blind man (9:1-8), and raising Lazarus (11:1-45). (Some would also include the catch of fish now found at 21:1-14.) An articulated series emerges from the reconstruction, not merely a gather of miracle stories, and a few other passages are also to be included: part of chap. 1 (at least the gathering of the first disciples in vv 35-49) as introduction and, as conclusion, 20:30-31a, and perhaps also parts of 12:37-41."

There is considerable debate over whether the Signs Gospel may have contained a passion narrative or instead contained only a collection of seven miracle stories. In the reconstruction offered by Fortna, a passion story is included.

On the dating of the Signs Gospel, there is little to go on. The reference to the Pool of Bethesda as still standing in 5:2, even though it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, suggests a dating before the year 70 CE or not too long afterwards. The latest possible date is set by its incorporation into the Gospel of John.