Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.

), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING

CHARACTER IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Cornelis Bennema

1. Introduction
In the last thirty odd years there has been an increased interest in the bible as literature and story.
Literary methods have been applied to the Gospel of John (with great success), taking the gospel
to be the story of Jesus Christ—a story with a plot, events and characters. While much has been
written on events and plot, character appears to be the neglected child. There is no
comprehensive theory of character in either literary theory or biblical criticism, and therefore no
consensus on how to analyse and classify characters.1 Too often scholars perceive character in
the Hebrew bible (where characters can develop) to be radically different from that in ancient
Greek literature (where characters are supposedly consistent ethical types). Many also sharply
distinguish between modern fiction with its psychological, individualistic approach to character
and ancient characterization where characters lack personality or individuality. When it comes to
John’s gospel, most if not all Johannine characters are regarded as ‘flat’ or ‘types’, showing little
complexity or development.
I have challenged these views and proposed a different approach to character in the
Gospel of John, arguing that the differences in characterization in the Hebrew bible, ancient
Greek literature and modern fiction are differences in emphases rather than kind.2 It is therefore
better to speak of degrees of characterization along a continuum. I then outlined a comprehensive
approach to understanding character in the Gospel of John, consisting of three aspects. First, I
study character in text and context, using information from the text and other sources. Second, I
analyse and classify the Johannine characters along three dimensions (complexity, development,
inner life), and plot the resulting character on a continuum of degree of characterization (from
agent to type to personality to individuality). Third, I evaluate the characters in relation to John’s
point of view, purpose and dualistic worldview. In a separate work, I have applied this theory to
John’s gospel, showing that only eight out of twenty-three characters are ‘types’.3

1
Nevertheless, the study of character has recently received attention in literary and media theory: Jens
Eder, Fotis Jannidis and Ralf Schneider (eds.), Characters in Fictional Worlds: Understanding Imaginary Beings in
Literature, Film, and Other Media (Revisionen, 3; Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 2010). Regarding biblical
criticism, the most recent work on understanding character comes from Sönke Finnern, Narratologie und biblische
Exegese: Eine integrative Methode der Erzählanalyse und ihr Ertrag am Beispiel von Matthäus 28 (WUNT, II/285;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 125-164.
2
Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Theory of Character in the Fourth Gospel with Reference to Ancient and Modern
Literature’, BibInt 17 (2009), pp. 375-421. Although I differ from her, Colleen M. Conway also criticizes scholars’
tendency to ‘flatten’ the Johannine characters (‘Speaking through Ambiguity: Minor Characters in the Fourth
Gospel’, BibInt 10 [2002], pp. 324-41).
3
Cornelis Bennema, Encountering Jesus: Character Studies in the Gospel of John (Milton Keynes:
Paternoster, 2009). Besides the two essays in this volume, I have been invited to contribute to other works on the
subject: essays on Judas, the chief priests and the crowd in S.A. Hunt, R. Zimmermann, and D.F. Tolmie (eds.),
Character Studies in the Fourth Gospel (WUNT, I; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming 2013), on character
analysis in relation to the Markan miracle stories in B. Kollmann and R. Zimmermann (eds.), Hermeneutik der
frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming 2013), and on the Johannine

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

Although I have not changed my views on how to understand Johannine characters, I

wish to return to the subject for two reasons. First, the publication of my twofold work on
Johannine characters coincided with that of Susan Hylen’s Imperfect Believers: Ambiguous
Characters in the Gospel of John,4 and Christopher W. Skinner’s John and Thomas—Gospels in
Conflict? Johannine Characterization and the Thomas Question.5 Both Hylen and Skinner
provide a theoretical framework for analysing Johannine character.6 Although we each attempt to
provide correctives to the trend amongst scholars to view most Johannine characters as one-
dimensional or ‘flat’, we also differ. While I suggest that Johannine characters be analysed along
the continua ‘complexity of traits’, ‘character development’ and ‘inner life’, Hylen appears to
use a continuum of ambiguity and Skinner one of misunderstanding.7 This raises the question
whether our approaches are conflicting, mutually exclusive or complementary. Could I, for
example, enhance my theory by adding a fourth continuum of ambiguity or misunderstanding?
Second, in reviewing my work, Richard Rohrbaugh, an authority on the social and cultural world
of the New Testament, questions the legitimacy of applying modern literary methods to analyse
characters in ancient texts. He alleges that I naïvely use modern trait names for understanding
ancient characters, and questions how I infer a character’s traits from the text.8 By engaging with
these views, I aim to explain and sharpen my argument rather than merely repeating what I said
in 2009, hopefully stimulating further discussion.

2. Theoretical Prolegomena regarding the Study of Character in Antiquity

In this section, I will revisit two pertinent hermeneutical issues: (i) the legitimacy of applying
modern literary methods to study ancient characters; and (ii) the appropriateness of the method
of inference to reconstruct characters from a text. Is it hermeneutically viable and valid to
compare ancient and modern characterization or are we comparing apples and oranges? I will
draw on my earlier work to show that while there are differences in characterization in the
Hebrew bible, ancient Greek literature and modern fiction, these are differences in emphases
rather than kind.9 I will seek to address Richard Rohrbaugh’s criticism of my alleged
anachronism and ignorance, arguing that it is not only legitimate but also necessary to draw on
modern labels to infer a character’s traits.
Regarding the nature of character, most people sharply distinguish between modern
fiction and its psychological, individualistic approach to character and ancient characterization
where character lacks personality or individuality. And within ancient literature, the common
perception is that while character in the Hebrew bible can develop and be ‘round’, character in
ancient Greek literature is static or ‘flat’—based on Aristotle’s well-known view on character as

characters as moral agents in L.D. Chrupcała (ed.), Rediscovering John: Essays in Honour of Frédéric Manns
(AnBib; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, forthcoming 2013).
4
Louisville: WJK, 2009.
5
PTMS 115; Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. Frances Taylor Gench has also studied some Johannine
characters recently but she does not provide a theoretical foundation (Encounters with Jesus: Studies in the Gospel
of John [Louisville: WJK, 2007]).
6
Hylen, Believers, ch. 1; Skinner, John and Thomas, ch. 2.
7
It is unclear whether Hylen and Skinner view ambiguity and misunderstanding as a character trait (which
they contend most Johannine characters possess) or as a continuum (even if they do not use the term).
8
Richard L. Rohrbaugh’s review in BTB 41 (2011), pp. 110-11.
9
Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, pp. 379-98.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

fixed ethical types (cf. his Poetics 6.7-21). Many biblical scholars assume that the Aristotelian
view of character was representative of all ancient Greek literature and also influenced the
Gospels. I have found these distinctions to be untrue. I have demonstrated that from the fifth
century BCE to the second century CE, from classical tragedy to comedy to biography,
historiography and novel, there are significant instances where character can be complex,
change, have inner life and even show personality.10 The notion that all characters in ancient
Greek literature are flat, static and one-dimensional, which many scholars have derived from
Aristotle’s thought, appears therefore to be a caricature. Characterization in ancient Graeco-
Roman literature was more complex and varied, and capable of approaching modern notions of
character at times. Consequently, we can no longer uphold that, in contrast to modern fiction,
ancient literature has no psychological interest in character or that characters cannot move
towards personality or even individuality.11 We must, however, remain aware that
characterization in ancient and modern literature is not identical but has different emphases: the
ancients did not give character as much individual and psychological emphasis as the moderns
do in the Western world. Hence, differences in characterization in ancient and modern literature
are differences in emphases rather than kind, and it is better to speak of degrees of
characterization along a continuum.12 Both ancient and modern literature portray flat and round,
static and dynamic characters, although in modern fiction character is much more developed and
‘psychologized’.
Regarding the method of character reconstruction, the main difficulty is that one can
rarely read character from the surface of the text. Many scholars have recognized that in ancient
literature characterization is often indirect—information about a character is conveyed primarily
through the character’s speech and actions rather than the narrator’s statements—and the reader
is thus obliged to reconstruct the character through inference or ‘filling the gaps’.13 But the
practice of inference is employed in modern literature too—it is unavoidable. Seymour Chatman,
for example, argues that we reconstruct character by inferring traits from the information in the
text.14 In fact, as Chatman asserts, to curb ‘a God-given right to infer and even to speculate about

10
Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, pp. 383-89. I referred for example to Sophocles’s Ajax and Antigone;
Euripides’s Medea, Electra, Orestes and Antiope; Plutarch’s Lives; Tacitus’s Annals; Chariton’s Chaereas and
Callirhoe; Heliodorus’s Aethiopica; Apuleius’s Golden Ass; and Tatius’s Leucippe and Clitophon.
11
See especially the essays in C.B.R. Pelling (ed.), Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
12
Fred W. Burnett has excellently argued this case (‘Characterization and Reader Construction of
Characters in the Gospels’, Semeia 63 [1993], pp. 3-28 [6-15]). Skinner supports Burnett’s view (John and Thomas,
29).
13
See especially Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), ch. 6;
Adele Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983), pp. 33-42; Meir
Sternberg, The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama of Reading (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1985), ch. 6; Shimon Bar-Efrat, Narrative Art in the Bible (JSOTS, 70; Sheffield: Almond
Press, 1989), ch. 2. Bar-Efrat points out that in real life too we usually infer people’s character from what they say
and do (Art, p. 89).
14
Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca/London:
Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 119-20. Cf. Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary
Poetics (London/New York: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2002), pp. 36, 59, 128-30; Uri Margolin, ‘Individuals in Narrative
Worlds: An Ontological Perspective’, Poetics Today 11 (1990), pp. 843-71 (847-49); Jonathan Culpeper,
‘Reflections on a Cognitive Stylistic Approach to Characterisation’, in G. Brône and J. Vandaele (eds.), Cognitive
Poetics: Goals, Gains and Gaps (Applications of Cognitive Linguistics, 10; Berlin/New York: De Gruyter, 2009),
pp. 139-49. The reader’s need to infer character-traits from the information dispersed in the text goes back to

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

characters’ would be ‘an impoverishment of aesthetic experience’.15 Thus, in both ancient and
modern literature, character is reconstructed from the information provided in the text. The only
difference is that in ancient literature there is less direct characterization and one has to resort to
the device of inference or gap-filling more than in modern fiction.
How then should we respond to Rohrbaugh’s stated aversion to using modern literary
methods to study ancient characters and to using a method of inference that has inherent
tendencies to be speculative, imaginative and ignore cultural differences? Should the sparse
portrayal of character lead us to despair in reconstructing character or abandon the task
altogether? No, but caution is demanded. I contend that there is reasonable evidence that
character in ancient Hebrew and Greek literature could be complex, change and even show
personality, suggesting that character in ancient and modern literature rather than being distinct
is to be viewed on a continuum. It would then be legitimate to use insights from modern fiction
to study character in ancient literature. I maintain that we can apply aspects from modern literary
methods to study character in ancient narratives as long as we take the necessary precautions.
The interpreter must be aware, for instance, that by applying such methods she or he fuses the
modern and ancient horizon, and uses modern terminology to understand characters in ancient
literature. That is, in the reconstruction of characters, the interpreter merges two horizons and
bridges a vast cultural gap.16 I must explain why this is legitimate and even inevitable.
Commenting on the bible’s reticence in characterization, Robert Alter for example asserts
that ‘[w]e are compelled to get at character and motive . . . through a process of inference from
fragmentary data, often with crucial pieces of narrative exposition strategically withheld, and this
leads to multiple or sometimes even wavering perspectives on the characters.’17 Nevertheless,
Sternberg emphasizes that the reader’s task of gap-filling is legitimate and by no means an
arbitrary process since any hypothesis must be validated by the text.18 Even though readers
reconstruct characters differently from the same text, just as scholars differ on the meaning of a
text, this does not nullify the task of inference. Any interpretation involves an element of
speculation because the reader-interpreter tries to make sense of the text in the absence of the
author. In this process, the interpreter does not merely repeat the author’s ipsissima verba but
engages in the task of understanding the meaning of the text—whether that meaning be ‘behind’,
‘in’ or ‘in front of’ the text. In other words, the hermeneutical task involves a level of abstraction
or aggregation—the interpreter explores the meaning of the text and this includes acts of
analysis, comparison, extrapolation, inference, and so on. At the same time, rules of syntax and
genre, relation to the wider text and knowledge of the socio-cultural setting of the text provide
the necessary hermeneutical parameters to control the process of interpretation. Thus, the modern
interpreter must aim to speak about the meaning of the text within its original literary and socio-
historical context.19

Wolfgang Iser, ‘The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach’, New Literary History 3 (1972), pp. 279-99
(284-85).
15
Chatman, Story, p. 117.
16
This so-called ‘new hermeneutic’, rooted in the work of philosophers M. Heidegger and H. Gadamer, is
developed extensively by A.C. Thiselton in The Two Horizons (Exeter: Paternoster, 1980) and New Horizons in
Hermeneutics (London: HarperCollins, 1992).
17
Alter, Art, p. 126.
18
Sternberg, Poetics, pp. 188-89.
19
I consider myself a ‘critical realist’. On the one hand, I do not claim to understand the Johannine
characters as a first-century Jewish or Graeco-Roman reader would (that is impossible); on the other hand, my
understanding of the Johannine characters is not an uncritical twenty-first century Western reading of the text. As I

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

But what about the use of modern labels to name a character’s traits? If we accept
Chatman’s definition of character as a ‘paradigm of traits’ in which traits have to be inferred
from the deep structure of the text, it would be natural that the trait-names we assign are derived
from what we know of real people in the real world. This means we would use contemporary
language to describe a character. It is inevitable, for example, when we infer a character’s traits
from the deep structure of an ancient text that we use trait-names that are familiar to our modern
world. Chatman thus argues that because the trait is not often named explicitly in the text but
must be inferred, readers will usually rely upon their knowledge of the trait-name in the real
world, so traits are culturally coded.20 We must also remember that the names for traits are
‘socially invented signs . . . Trait-names are not themselves traits’.21 Chatman forcefully asserts
that ‘characters as narrative constructs do require terms for description, and there is no point in
rejecting those out of the general vocabulary of psychology, morality and any other relevant area
of human experience.’22 This holds true both for the study of character in modern literature and
in ancient narratives. Using modern terminology to analyse and describe characters in ancient
literature is acceptable provided we remember that we sometimes use terms or categories
unknown to the ancient authors and audiences. Simon Goldhill, for example, points out that
‘[s]ince the description of character necessarily involves the mobilisation of (at least) implicit
psychological models, it is unlikely that the criticism of Greek tragedy can expect wholly to
avoid an engagement with psychological and psychoanalytic theory.’23 Robert Tannehill likewise
defends the use of insights from modern fiction to ancient biblical narratives:
there are qualities which all narratives share and further qualities which various narratives may
share, even when some make use of historical fact, if the author has a strong, creative role.
Because of the importance of the novel in modern literature, qualities of narrative are often
discussed in terms of the novel. With proper caution the biblical scholar can learn from this
discussion.24

As long as we are vigilant about the differences between a collectivist, ancient

Mediterranean culture and an individualistic, modern Western culture, I maintain that it is
possible to speak of an individual in antiquity without transposing a modern individualistic
notion of identity onto the text. We can do so by using the concept of a ‘collectivist identity’ or
‘group-oriented personality’, where the individual’s identity is embedded in a larger group or
community.25 As Burnett asserts, there is evidence that there was a move from the typical to the
individual in the ancient Greek and Roman world, allowing for the reader to construct a

carefully seek to consider the linguistic, literary and socio-cultural aspects of the Johannine narrative, I maintain that
my understanding of the Johannine characters is nevertheless a Johannine understanding.
20
Chatman, Story, pp. 123-25.
21
G.W. Allport and H.S. Odbert, Trait-Names: A Psycholexical Study, Psychological Monographs 47
(Princeton, 1936), p. 17, cited in Chatman, Story, p. 124.
22
Chatman, Story, p. 138. Stressing that we need ‘substantive rules of inference’, Margolin claims that
these can be borrowed from any actual-world model of readers if the text world coincides with it in its broader
outline or is at least compatible with it (‘Individuals’, pp. 852-53).
23
Simon Goldhill, ‘Modern critical approaches to Greek tragedy’, in P.E. Easterling (ed.), The Cambridge
Companion to Greek Tragedy (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), p. 343.
24
Robert C. Tannehill, ‘The Disciples in Mark: The Function of a Narrative Role’, JR 57 (1977), pp. 386-
405 (387).
25
Cf. Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Louisville: WJK,
3rd edn, 2001), pp. 60-67.

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Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

character’s individuality.26 Similarly, Patricia Easterling notes that even though the Greeks were
not interested in the individual’s unique private experience found in modern literature, they had
an interest in individuals as part of a community.27 In the same way, Louise Lawrence argues
that even the primarily collectivist Graeco-Roman and Jewish cultures testify to the existence of
individualistic traits.28
So, on the one hand, I unequivocally agree with Rohrbaugh that knowledge of the social
and cultural world of the New Testament is essential for understanding the personality, motive
and behaviour of ancient characters. On the other hand, since ancient characterization is often
indirect, we are compelled to infer aspects of character from the sparse information in the text
with the assistance of modern terminology. And this is where the tension lies. I contend that the
usage of modern trait-names to identify the traits of ancient character must be governed by
knowledge of the first-century world. This is precisely why the first aspect of my theory is the
study of character in text and context, where the latter refers to the socio-cultural first-century
environment (cf. section 3.1).29

3. A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Johannine Character

Having clarified that the nature of character in ancient and modern literature is more alike than
not and that to infer character from indicators in the text is both legitimate and inevitable, we can
start to think of a comprehensive, non-reductionist theory for analysing character in the
Johannine narrative. I propose a three-dimensional approach.

3.1. Character in Text and Context

On the one hand, characters do not have ‘lives’ beyond the text and hence we reconstruct
character from the information in the text. With regard to John’s gospel, the author primarily
employs indirect characterization, so we must infer character from the character’s speech and
actions, and what other characters say about that character, rather than the narrator’s speech.30
On the other hand, since John’s gospel claims to be a non-fictional narrative and therefore refers

26
Burnett, ‘Characterization’, pp. 11-12.
27
Patricia E. Easterling, ‘Character in Sophocles’, Greece and Rome 24 (1977), pp. 121-29 (129).
28
Louis J. Lawrence, An Ethnography of the Gospel of Matthew: A Critical Assessment of the Use of the
Honour and Shame Model in New Testament Studies (WUNT, II/165; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 249-59.
29
Ironically, based on his belief in the validity of cultural continuity, Malina concedes that he uses
anthropological models of contemporary Mediterranean culture to understand cultures in the first century (New
Testament World, p. xii; cf. Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel
of John [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998], pp. 19-20). But how do we know that nothing has fundamentally changed in
the last two millennia or the extent to which modern Spanish and Italian societies are comparable to first-century
Palestinian society? Who then engages in anachronism I dare ask. Although elsewhere Richard Rohrbaugh addresses
the issue of extending sociological models diachronically (e.g., he uses the concept of sacred space in relation to the
temple before and after 70 CE), he only refers to a time continuum of 50 years (‘Models and Muddles: Discussions
of the Social Facets Seminar’, Forum 3.2 [1987], pp. 23-33 [28-30]). Of course, at higher levels of abstraction one
can always find correspondence—sacred space, purity, honour/shame, and so on exist in every culture and time—
but the question is whether we can assume, for example, that the purity system in modern Italy is an appropriate
model for that in first-century Palestine.
30
Occasionally the author provides direct characterization. For example, the narrator’s information about
Judas’s betrayal of Jesus and being a thief in 12.4, 6 reveals traits of disloyalty and dishonesty.

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Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

to events and people in the real world, we must fill the gaps from our knowledge of the socio-
historical context of the first-century Mediterranean world (rather than our imagination).
Narrative critics tend to limit themselves to the text, but I shall demonstrate the need to go
occasionally beyond the text for the reconstruction of character.
John’s gospel claims to be a non-fictional narrative by a reliable eyewitness to the events
recorded (19.35; 21.24). This implies that the Johannine characters have historical referents and
must be interpreted within the socio-historical context of first-century Judaism and not just on
the basis of the text itself. In other words, the dramatis personae in the Johannine story are also
composites of real historical people. This demands that we also look outside John’s gospel at
other sources that can assist us in reconstructing the Johannine characters. The historical data
available to us from other (literary and non-literary) sources should supplement the data that the
text provides about a character. Frank Kermode has said that in constructing character we
(should) augment the text ‘by inferring from the repertoire of indices characteristics not
immediately signalled in the text, but familiar from other texts and from life’.31 Marianne Mey
Thompson argues similarly: ‘“Actual readers” of the gospels may well have access to the
characters in the narrative in other ways, whether through oral or written tradition, and these
other “narratives” surely influence the way they read.’32
In comparing fictional and non-fictional narratives, Petri Merenlahti and Raimo Hakola
state that in case of the latter, (i) the author vouches for the veracity of the narrative and assumes
that the reader believes it; and (ii) the narrator represents the author and his point of view and
therefore there is continuity between ‘reality’ and the narrative world.33 Indeed, the Johannine
author (or a later editor speaking for the author) explicitly states that his story is true and
therefore can be believed (19.35; 21.24), and since there is no real distinction between the author
and narrator in John’s gospel, the narrator reliably represents the author’s voice and view.34
Merenlahti and Hakola then state why non-fictional narratives must be seen in context:
Because a non-fictional narrative claims to refer to events and circumstances of the ‘real’ world, it
is natural that the readers try to fill any gaps the narrative may have, making use of all available
information about the events and circumstances in concern. What readers of a non-fictional
narrative think of a character depends not only on what the narrator reveals but also on what else
the readers may know about the person who is portrayed as a character in the narrative . . . The
natural way to read a Gospel would be to make connections between character groups of the story
and the ‘real’ groups which those characters intend to portray . . . An ‘intrinsic’, text-centered
approach does not seem to match properly the nature of the Gospels as non-fictional narratives.35

These arguments readily apply to John’s gospel. One cannot simply assume, for example, that
‘the Jews’ in John’s gospel is a monolithic group—either in composition or in its response to

31
Frank Kermode, The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1979), p. 78.
32
Marianne Meye Thompson, ‘“God’s Voice You Have Never Heard, God’s Form You Have Never Seen”:
The Characterization of God in the Gospel of John’, Semeia 63 (1993), pp. 177-204 (181).
33
Petri Merenlahti and Raimo Hakola, ‘Reconceiving Narrative Criticism’, in D. Rhoads and K. Syreeni
(eds.), Characterization in the Gospels: Reconceiving Narrative Criticism (JSNTS, 184; Sheffield: SAP, 1999), pp.
35-38.
34
Cf. Culpepper, Anatomy, pp. 42-43. Jeffrey L. Staley, however, argues that the Johannine narrator is not
consistently reliable, resulting in the entrapment or victimization of the reader (The Print’s First Kiss: A Rhetorical
Investigation of the Implied Reader in the Fourth Gospel [SBLDS, 82; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988]), but his case
has not won much support.
35
Merenlahti and Hakola, ‘Narrative Criticism’, pp. 40-43.

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Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

Jesus. So it is essential to study the ‘referent’ of ‘the Jews’, which relates to the group’s identity
as real people in the time of Jesus or the author.36 As for the character of Pilate, we must
examine the works of Josephus and Philo since many scholars contend that these sources portray
Pilate differently from John’s gospel. Besides, we should also look at the Synoptic portrayal of
Pilate, especially since a good case can be made that the Johannine author knew Mark’s gospel.37
This invites a comparison of how the various sources portray Pilate.
At the same time, John may have ‘fictionalized’ or embellished aspects of his characters
by leaving out, changing or adding certain details from his sources—as historians and
biographers often do. For example, John (the Baptist) appears in this gospel as an eloquent
witness to Jesus while the Synoptics present him as a rough-hewn figure preaching a baptism of
repentance. The so-called Beloved Disciple was either as perfect as this gospel portrays him or
may have been somewhat ‘idealized’. If the Gospels belong to the genre of the ancient Graeco-
Roman biography (as many scholars contend today),38 they need not be historically accurate in
every detail.39 In fact, no serious scholar claims that the Gospels contain the ipsissima verba
Jesu. The authors may have used literary ‘creativity’ but what matters is that the reader does not
disbelieve their credibility. As Merenlahti and Hakola explain, while not everything in non-
fictional narratives is necessarily historical, this does not make them fictional narratives since
they do claim to describe the real world; what counts is that the reader does not doubt the
author’s explicit or implicit truth claims.40
This is an important shift in narrative criticism. Too often, narrative critics restrict
themselves to the text of the gospel and the narrative world it evokes, effectively reading the
gospel as a fictional narrative that is disconnected to reality.41 Instead, we need a form of

36
I have undertaken this study elsewhere, arguing that the referent of the term ‘the Jews’ cannot be
resolved entirely narratologically (Cornelis Bennema, ‘The Identity and Composition of οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι in the Gospel of
John’, Tyndale Bulletin 60 [2009], pp. 239-63).
37
Cf. Richard Bauckham, ‘John for Readers of Mark’, in idem, The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking
the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), pp. 147-71; Paul N. Anderson, The Riddles of the Fourth
Gospel: An Introduction to John (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2011), pp. 126-29. In my analysis of the Johannine Pilate
elsewhere in this volume, I shall therefore also refer to the Markan Pilate. This does not mean that I will read the
Johannine Pilate through a Markan lens, but that I assume that John knew Mark’s characterization of Pilate and
either confirms or augments his portrayal.
38
The compelling case for this has been made by Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A
Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2nd edn, 2004; orig. SNTSMS, 70;
Cambridge: CUP, 1992), pp. 213-32.
39
Cf. Andrew T. Lincoln, Truth on Trial: The Lawsuit Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Peabody: Hendrickson,
2000), pp. 369-97.
40
Merenlahti and Hakola, ‘Narrative Criticism’, p. 38. Sternberg argues similarly for the Hebrew bible as
historiography: ‘history-writing is not a record of fact—of what “really happened”—but a discourse that claims to
be a record of fact. Nor is fiction-writing a tissue of free inventions but a discourse that claims freedom of invention.
The antithesis lies not in the presence or absence of truth value but of the commitment to truth value’ (Poetics, pp.
24-35 [quotation taken from p. 25]). Thus, the historicity of the characters in John’s gospel does not exclude the
possibility that the author used a legitimate degree of artistic freedom to portray his characters. Besides, the Gospel
authors were theologians; they wrote from a post-Easter perspective and interpreted the pre-Easter events with a
specific (theological) agenda in mind. The primary concern of the Johannine author is to assure his readers that his
story of Jesus is a true and reliable testimony (cf. 19.35; 21.24).
41
Although James L. Resseguie presents a more ‘mature’ form of narrative criticism, stating that the
narrative critic should be familiar with the cultural, linguistic, social and historical assumptions of the audience
envisioned by the implied author, he nevertheless contends that this information must be obtained from the text itself
rather than from outside the text (Narrative Criticism of the New Testament: An Introduction [Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2005], pp. 32, 39).

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

historical narrative criticism that takes a text-centred approach but examines aspects of the
world outside or ‘behind’ the text if the text invites us to do so.42 In other words, we should
reconstruct the Johannine characters from the information that the text of John’s gospel provides
and supplement it with relevant information from other sources.43

3.2. Character Analysis and Classification

One of the earliest and most well-known classifications in literary criticism, by E.M. Forster,
categorizes characters as ‘flat’ and ‘round’. Flat characters or types are built around a single trait
and do not develop, whereas round characters are complex characters that have multiple traits
and can develop in the course of action. Forster’s criterion for deciding whether a character is
round or flat is its capacity to surprise the reader.44 Differently, W.J. Harvey uses the categories
of protagonists (the central characters in the narrative), cards (characters who support and
illuminate the protagonists), ficelles (typical characters who serve certain plot functions) and
background characters (characters who serve a mechanical role in the plot or act as chorus). 45
Where Forster classifies characters according to traits and development, Harvey classifies them
according to narrative presence or importance.46 Thus, Harvey’s classification does not improve
our understanding of the characters themselves but only of how active they are in the plot. If we
accept Chatman’s definition of character as a paradigm of traits, Forster’s ‘psychological’
classification has scope but is still too reductionistic since not every character would fit neatly
into either one of his categories.47 This has prompted some people to refine Forster’s
classification. Adele Berlin, for example, uses the categories of full-fledged character (Forster’s
round character), type (Forster’s flat character) and agent (the plot functionary), but she
considers these categories to be degrees of characterization rather than fixed categories.48 Some
biblical scholars hold the same position. Meir Sternberg and Shimon Bar-Efrat, for example,
perceive biblical characters as moving along a continuum rather than existing as two
contingencies, either flat or round.49 Similarly, Fred Burnett concludes that ‘it would seem wise

42
Almost twenty years after Narrative Fiction was first published, Rimmon-Kenan points to new forms of
narratology, including a cultural and historical narratology that is context-orientated, and historical and diachronous
in orientation (Narrative Fiction, pp. 140-42). Cf. Finnern, who labels it ‘postclassic narratology’ (Narratologie, pp.
35-36).
43
Cf. J.A. Darr who proposes an extratextual approach (Herod the Fox: Audience Criticism and Lukan
Characterization (JSNTS, 163; Sheffield: SAP, 1998), pp. 89-91. Mark W.G. Stibbe also asserts that ‘characters in
the gospels need to be analysed with reference to history, and not according to the laws of fiction’ (John as
Storyteller: Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel [SNTSMS, 73; Cambridge: CUP, 1992], p. 24). Martinus C.
de Boer provides the best defence for a combined historical and narratological approach to John’s gospel (‘Narrative
Criticism, Historical Criticism, and the Gospel of John’, JSNT 47 [1992], pp. 35-48). I do not go as far as Raymond
E. Brown, who identifies seven historical groups of people behind the representative figures within the gospel (The
Community of the Beloved Disciple [New York: Paulist Press, 1979], pp. 59-91).
44
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (New York: Penguin, 1976 [orig. 1927]), pp. 73-81.
45
W.J. Harvey, Character and the Novel (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), pp. 52-73.
46
Cf. D. Marguerat and Y. Bourquin, How to Read Bible Stories: An Introduction to Narrative Criticism
(London: SCM, 1999), p. 60.
47
For a critique of Forster, see Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, pp. 40-41; Stibbe, John as Storyteller, p.
24; D. François Tolmie, Jesus’ Farewell to the Disciples: John 13:1–17:26 in Narratological Perspective (BIS, 12;
Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 122-23. However, even Forster admits that a flat character could acquire ‘roundness’
(Aspects, pp. 74-75, 112-13).
48
Berlin, Poetics, pp. 23, 32.
49
Sternberg, Poetics, pp. 253-55 (cf. his chs. 9–10); Bar-Efrat, Art, pp. 86-91.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

to understand characterization, for any biblical text at least, on a continuum. This would imply
for narratives like the Gospels that the focus should be on the degree of characterization rather
than on characterization as primarily typical.’50
The classification of characters as points along a continuum is a significant development
but the question of how such a continuum should look has not been resolved. I suggest using the
non-reductionist model of Jewish scholar Yosef Ewen to analyse the Johannine characters. He
advocates three continua or axes upon which a character may be situated:
 Complexity: characters range from those displaying a single trait to those displaying a
complex web of traits, with varying degrees of complexity in between;
 Development: characters may vary from those who show no development to those who
are fully developed;
 Penetration into the inner life: characters range from those who allow us a peek inside
their minds to those whose minds remain opaque.51
While Ewen’s classification is a big step forward, I suggest we go a step further. After analysing
the character along the three continua, I classify or plot the resulting character on a continuum of
degree of characterization as (i) an agent, actant or walk-on; (ii) a type, stock or flat character;
(iii) a character with personality; or (iv) an individual or person.52
We have dealt with the first aspect of Ewen’s model of character classification—
complexity—in section 2, saying that we must infer the character’s traits from the text. Now I
must elaborate on the other two aspects of Ewen’s model. Regarding the second aspect,
development is not simply that the reader becomes aware of an additional trait later in the
narrative or a character’s progress in his or her understanding of Jesus.53 Instead, development
occurs when a new trait replaces an old one or does not fit neatly into the existing set of traits,
implying that the character has changed.54 This coheres with Forster’s criterion of a character’s
ability to surprise the reader. We can therefore speak of development when tension becomes
apparent within a character’s set of traits. Speaking of penetration into the inner life, it appears at
first that we are not privy to the inner thoughts, emotions or motivations of the Johannine
characters—only Jesus’ inner life is well portrayed.55 François Tolmie, for example, concludes
that no inner life of the Johannine characters is revealed.56 This is however a mistaken notion;
50
Burnett, ‘Characterization’, p. 15 (original emphasis).
51
Ewen’s works are only available in Hebrew but his theory is summarized in Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative
Fiction, pp. 41-42.
52
In classifying ancient characters, the categories ‘personality’ and ‘individual/person’ are not used in the
modern sense of an autonomous individual but refer to a ‘collectivist identity’ or ‘group-oriented personality’ where
the individual identity is embedded in a larger group or community (cf. n. 25).
53
Pace Resseguie, Narrative Criticism, p. 153.
54
Cf. Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, p. 39.
55
Jesus is zealous about his Father’s affairs (2.17); has insight into people’s lives (2.24-25); can be tired
(4.6), agitated (11.33, 38), sad (11.35), troubled (12.27; 13.21), and joyful (11.15, 15.11; 17.13); he loves people
(11.5; 13.1, 23, 34); he knows his betrayer (6.70; 13.11, 21). Cf. S. Voorwinde, Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth
Gospel: Human or Divine? (LNTS, 284; London: T&T Clark, 2005).
56
Tolmie, Jesus’ Farewell, p. 142. Except for Jesus and the disciples, whose inner life is revealed ‘a little’
(without providing examples), he considers the inner life of all other characters as ‘none’. Part of Tolmie’s problem
is that he only examines a section of the narrative (Jn 13–17) to reconstruct characters. If he had considered the
entire Johannine narrative, his analysis would undoubtedly have rendered different results. Similarly, Culpepper,
who only mentions what the narrator conveys about the characters’ inner life, regards these inside views as ‘brief’
and ‘shallow’, concluding that the author shows ‘no interest in exploring the more complex psychological
motivations of his characters’ (Anatomy, pp. 22-26 [quotation from p. 26]). However, despite many inside views
being brief, they convey profound understanding of a character. The brief insights about Judas’s dishonesty and that

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

John’s gospel portrays the inner life of many characters.57 Evidence of inner life is one aspect
that moves a character towards roundness or individuality. The inner life of characters gives the
reader insight into their thoughts, emotions and motivations, and is usually conveyed by the
narrator and sometimes by other characters.58
I do not necessarily restrict myself to Ewen’s model of three continua; the number of
continua to analyse characters could well be extended. For example, Baruch Hochman uses no
less than eight continua upon which a character may be located.59 At this point, I return to Susan
Hylen and Chris Skinner whom I mentioned in the Introduction. Hylen presents an alternative
strategy for understanding characters in John’s gospel. Rather than viewing many Johannine
characters as ‘flat’ or one-dimensional, she argues that John’s characters display various kinds of
ambiguity.60 Although Hylen does not use the term ‘continuum’ in relation to ambiguity (she
views ambiguity as a trait), since she contends that all Johannine characters possess this trait,
ambiguity effectively functions as a continuum on which she positions the various Johannine
characters. Although I applaud her endeavour to resist treating the Johannine characters in a
reductionist way, I also have a few critical observations. First, I am uncertain how Hylen differs
from Colleen Conway, who also criticizes the ‘flattening’ of Johannine characters, arguing that
the Johannine characters portray varying degrees of ambiguity, causing instability and resulting
in responses to Jesus that resist or undermine the gospel’s binary categories of belief and
unbelief.61 Second, Hylen often observes (correctly in my view) that certain characters are not
perfect in their belief and understanding, and this ‘imperfection’ she labels as ‘ambiguity’.
However, can imperfect faith not still be adequate (i.e. sufficiently authentic) without being
called ambiguous? And does an ambiguous action immediately make one an ambiguous
character? Since no one is perfect, holds perfect beliefs and is completely consistent throughout
life, everyone would be ambiguous. Thus, the concept as Hylen uses it loses its meaning. Third, I
wonder whether Hylen attributes the Johannine characters with more ambiguity than the author
intended. Would the author have intentionally built ambiguity into each of his characters? We
should not confuse diversity in modern interpretations with the author’s (supposedly) intended
ambiguity. Otherwise we could conclude that the entire Bible is intentionally ambiguous.

he is influenced by the devil can hardly be called shallow. We can obviously not expect the same elaboration and
kind of inner life as in a modern novel. For a more sustained critique of Tolmie and Culpepper’s method of character
classification, see Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, pp. 408-10.
57
See Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, pp. 405-407; idem, Encountering Jesus, pp. 203-204, showing that
sixteen out of twenty-three characters reveal aspects of their inner life.
58
Berlin, Poetics, p. 38. Cf. Bar-Efrat, who provides numerous examples of the inner life of characters in
the Hebrew bible (Art, pp. 58-64).
59
Baruch Hochman, Character in Literature (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 86-140.
D.B. Gowler, for example, utilizes Hochman’s model in his character study of the Pharisees in Luke–Acts, although
he admits that this model is not entirely adequate to evaluate character in ancient narrative (Host, Guest, Enemy and
Friend: Portraits of the Pharisees in Luke and Acts [ESEC, 2; New York: Peter Lang, 1991], pp. 53-54, 306-17,
321). Although Colleen M. Conway refers to Hochman’s classification, she does not utilize it herself (Men and
Women in the Fourth Gospel: Gender and Johannine Characterization [SBLDS, 167; Atlanta: SBL, 1999], p. 58).
Based on Jens Eder’s work on character in film, Finnern proposes multiple Gegensatzpaare (‘opposite/contrasting
pairs’) to analyse characters (Narratologie, pp. 157-161). However, it is unclear whether he intends to use them as
binary categories (e.g. a character is either static or dynamic) or as continua (e.g. a character can be positioned on a
spectrum of development that ranges from static to dynamic). Moreover, Finnern does not clarify what he will do
with the results.
60
Hylen, Imperfect Believers, ch. 1.
61
Conway, ‘Speaking through Ambiguity’, pp. 324-41. For my own critique of Conway, see Bennema,
Encountering Jesus, pp. 210-11.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

Ambiguity, as witnessed in the variety of interpretations, may be more the result of modern
hermeneutical enterprises than the author’s intentional design.
Regardless of my evaluation of Hylen’s work, I accept that many (if not all) Johannine
characters show various degrees of ambiguity and I did therefore consider whether we could use
a continuum of ambiguity. Along with the other three continua, should I perhaps have extended
Ewen’s model to include a continuum of stability (to use a positive category) on which to
position the various Johannine characters? I eventually decided against this move. To me,
plotting various characters on a continuum of stability will not translate or correspond linearly to
the degree of characterization. Let me explain. While a higher degree of complexity,
development or inner life results in a higher degree of characterization (moving the character
towards individuality), we cannot say the same regarding stability. A greater degree of stability
(or lesser degree of ambiguity) does not necessarily point towards personality or individuality.
Conversely, a greater degree of instability or ambiguity does not necessarily point in the
direction of the character being a type. For example, both Peter and the man born blind have a
high degree of characterization (individual and personality respectively).62 But whereas Peter is
unstable on many occasions—he grasps Jesus’ identity at a crucial time (6.68-69) but otherwise
often misunderstands Jesus; he denies Jesus contrary to his earlier bold claims; he defects but is
restored later—the blind man shows a remarkable high degree of stability under relentless
pressure from his interrogators. Similarly, many types appear stable (often because the text
simply dispenses little information about them), but Thomas displays instability, fluctuating
between courage/commitment (11.16) and misunderstanding (14.5), between unbelief (20.24-25)
and belief a week later (20.28). Thus, although I assume we can plot the various characters on a
continuum of stability or ambiguity, such a continuum will not contribute to our understanding
of character and its degree of characterization.
The same would apply to Skinner’s approach of looking at the Johannine characters
through the lens of misunderstanding. While Skinner does not use the term ‘continuum’, he
contends that every Johannine character is uncomprehending to a degree.63 Considering the
Johannine prologue as the greatest source of information about Jesus, Skinner states that ‘[e]ach
character in the narrative approaches Jesus with varying levels of understanding but no one
approaches him fully comprehending the truths that have been revealed to the reader in the
prologue. Thus, it is possible for the reader to evaluate the correctness of every character’s
interaction with Jesus on the basis of what has been revealed in the prologue.’ 64 Agreeing with
Skinner that all Johannine characters show misunderstanding, I also considered creating a
continuum of understanding (to use a positive category). However, plotting characters on a
continuum of understanding would be difficult if not impossible because it is hard to measure the
degree of a character’s understanding. Does Thomas, for example, misunderstand Jesus to a
greater extent than Peter? Besides, even if we could plot characters on a continuum of
understanding, it would, again, not contribute to the degree of characterization. For example,
while characters such as Thomas, the crowd and Peter frequently misunderstand, they have
different degrees of characterization—Thomas is a type, the crowd has personality and Peter is
an individual. Conversely, both the Beloved Disciple and Thomas have a low degree of

62
Cf. Bennema, Encountering Jesus, p. 204.
63
Skinner, John and Thomas, p. 40.
64
Skinner, John and Thomas, p. 37.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

characterization (‘type’), but the former exhibits near perfect understanding while the latter often
misunderstands.65
In sum, although we could turn a trait that most Johannine characters possess (whether
ambiguity, misunderstanding or something else) into a continuum, I question whether it would
contribute to our understanding of character and the degree of characterization.66 In fact, the
choice to use a continuum of complexity in terms of a character’s traits virtually excludes the use
of individual traits to create other continua. I suggest therefore, that we first analyse and classify
a character along Ewen’s three continua (complexity, development, inner life), and then plot the
resulting character on a continuum of degree of characterization (from agent to type to
personality to individual). The results of the character analysis can be aggregated in the
following table:67

Character Complexity Development Inner Life Degree of Characterization

Character 1 0 0 0 agent
Character 2 – 0 0 type
Character 3 –/+ 0 – personality
Character 4 + + – personality
Character 5 ++ + + towards individual
Character 6 ++ ++ + individual
Key: 0 = none, – = little, + = some, ++ = much

3.3. Character Evaluation

Besides analysing and classifying the Johannine characters, we must also evaluate them from the
author’s ideological point of view. Any meaningful communication, whether verbal or non-
verbal, has a specific message that the sender wants to get across to the receiver. Authors thus
have an agenda, implicit or explicit, and the author of John’s gospel belongs to the latter
category. As 20.30-31 indicates: ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his
disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may (come to or
continue to) believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you
65
Bennema, Encountering Jesus, pp. 203-205. When it comes to evaluating a character’s response to Jesus
(see section 3.3), misunderstanding may be an inadequate response but misunderstanding itself does not determine
whether the character’s overall response is adequate or inadequate—other aspects are responsible for that. For
instance, the crowd’s frequent misunderstanding of Jesus taken together with being divided, fearful, dismissive and
unbelieving cause the overall response to be inadequate. Conversely, the Twelve frequently misunderstand Jesus but
remain at his side; the Samaritan woman and the man born blind struggle to understand but are open-minded and
eventually reach sufficient understanding to make an adequate belief-response to Jesus.
66
Both Hylen and Skinner’s works have made me consider expanding my model with further continua and
my decision not to do so is in no way a negative appraisal of their study. The social sciences are perhaps better
suited to providing appropriate continua to extend Ewen’s model. Although it is impossible to explore here,
additional continua could include ‘status (in the Johannine group)’ or ‘degree of testimony’. See further Jerome H.
Neyrey, The Gospel of John (NCBC; Cambridge: CUP, 2007), pp. 7-9, 313-15, 321-24.
67
For the actual results of my analysis of most Johannine characters, see Bennema, Encountering Jesus, pp.
203-204. At present, I position a character on each continuum in comparison to other characters, but such an
intuitive approach may need refinement towards more precise criteria for what constitutes ‘little’ or ‘much’.

Bennema—Approach to Character in GJohn 13/19

Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

may have (eternal) life in his name.’68 Driven by this salvific purpose, the author tells his story
from a particular perspective called ‘point of view’.69 Stephen Moore defines point of view as
‘the rhetorical activity of an author as he or she attempts, from a position within some socially
shared system of assumptions and convictions, to impose a story-world upon an audience by the
manipulation of narrative perspective’.70 James Resseguie states that point of view is ‘the mode
or angle of vision from which characters, dialogue, actions, setting and events are considered or
observed. But also point of view is the narrator’s attitude towards or evaluation of characters,
dialogue, actions, setting and events.’71 Consequently, a narrative is not neutral because it has an
inbuilt perspective that is communicated to the reader, and in the case of John’s gospel we must
evaluate the characters in the light of the author’s evaluative point of view.72
In evaluating a character, we must know what we are evaluating and how—we require
guidelines or criteria for evaluation. For instance, what is the central theme against which we
might evaluate characters? In the case of John’s gospel, I recommend that we must evaluate the
characters primarily in terms of their response to Jesus.73 The author’s purpose in writing his
gospel—to evoke and strengthen belief in Jesus among his readers—indicates that what counts is
the reader’s response to Jesus. The author’s strategy for achieving his purpose is to put various
characters on the stage and show their interaction with Jesus. He wants his readers to evaluate
the characters’ responses to Jesus, join his point of view and make an adequate belief-response
themselves. It also follows that in order to evaluate the character’s (belief-)response to Jesus
according to the author’s point of view, the reader must understand the author’s concept of what
constitutes adequate belief. I have defined the author’s concept of an adequate belief-response to
Jesus as a sufficiently true, Spirit-provided understanding of Jesus in terms of his identity,
mission and relationship with his Father, resulting in a personal allegiance to Jesus.74 It is
impossible, however, to quantify such a belief-response, i.e., I cannot determine how much
authentic understanding is adequate. Instead, I seek to determine whether or not a character’s
response is adequate by discerning the author’s (implicit or explicit) evaluation of this response,
which relates to his evaluative point of view. Once we know what, for the author, constitutes an
adequate belief-response, we can evaluate the character’s response to Jesus. For this we must
also take into account the author’s worldview. The author of John’s gospel operates with a

68
For a discussion of the textual variant πιστεύ[σ]ητε in 20.31, see any major commentary.
69
Others use the term ‘focalization’ (Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction, p. 72; Tolmie, Jesus’ Farewell, p.
170).
70
Stephen D. Moore, Literary Criticism and the Gospels: The Theoretical Challenge (New Have: Yale
University Press, 1989), p. 181.
71
James L. Resseguie, The Strange Gospel: Narrative Design and Point of View in John (BIS, 56; Leiden:
Brill, 2001), p. 1 (original emphasis).
72
I observe that many scholars who have studied the Johannine characters have not discussed the
ideological or evaluative point of view of John’s gospel, with the result that the characters’ responses to Jesus have
not been evaluated. For a critique of the few who do connect the Johannine characters with the gospel’s worldview
and evaluative point of view (Alan Culpepper, James Resseguie, Colleen Conway, Jo-Ann Brant), see Bennema,
‘Theory of Character’, pp. 412-14.
73
With regard to Mark’s gospel, for example, I suggest that we evaluate the characters in the light of
discipleship—one of the gospel’s central themes. So, the reader must discern the extent to which the various
characters exemplify true discipleship, as the author defines it in his gospel.
74
Cornelis Bennema, The Power of Saving Wisdom: An Investigation of Spirit and Wisdom in Relation to
the Soteriology of the Fourth Gospel (WUNT, II/148; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), pp. 124-33; idem, ‘Christ,
the Spirit and the Knowledge of God: A Study in Johannine Epistemology’, in M. Healy and R. Parry (eds.), The
Bible and Epistemology: Biblical Soundings on the Knowledge of God (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), pp. 119-
20.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

dualistic worldview where, ultimately, people either accept or reject Jesus. This implies that for
the author the characters’ responses are either adequate or inadequate. In short, we must evaluate
the Johannine characters in terms of their response to Jesus, in keeping with the author’s
evaluative point of view, purpose, concept of belief and dualistic worldview. Let me explain this
further.
As we analyse the Johannine characters, we must be conscious of the author’s evaluative
point of view, which is his appraisive commentary on the story that operates at the level of
narrative. As the Johannine characters interact with Jesus, the author evaluates their responses
according to his ideology and point of view, and communicates this to the reader with the
intention that the reader should embrace it.75 Since the author has written his gospel with a
specific purpose in mind (20.31), his evaluative point of view is directly related to the purpose
and worldview of the gospel. Stephen Moore succinctly captures the dynamic between purpose
and point of view in John’s gospel:
Johannine characterization . . . is entirely christocentric. Jesus is a static character in the Fourth
Gospel . . . The functions of the other characters are to draw out various aspects of Jesus’ character
by supplying personalities and situations with which he can interact, and to illustrate a spectrum of
alternative responses to him . . . Such characterizations are strategically oriented toward the reader,
pushing him or her also toward a decisive response to Jesus. 76

Similarly, Mark Stibbe asserts that

The narrator works obviously . . . to coax the reader round to the point of view or ideological
stance which he embraces. That point of view is the enlightened post-resurrectional understanding
of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, and it is this understanding which undergirds the
narrator’s rhetorical strategy expressed in John 20.31.77

The author tries to persuade his readers by communicating and recommending his values
and norms to the reader, particularly in the way he portrays his characters and evaluates them.
Through his portrayal of various characters, the author encourages the reader to identify with
those characters or responses that are worthy of imitation and to dissociate from characters or
responses that are not. The reader, therefore, must evaluate both the characters and the extent to
which each character’s response to Jesus is adequate. As the reader identifies with the characters,
he or she must also evaluate his or her own belief-response. The author reveals his point of view
in the narrative rhetoric and demands from the reader a self-evaluation and response,
recommending one that corresponds to the purpose of his gospel stated in 20.30-31.78 As
Culpepper aptly concludes:
The affective power of the plot pushes the reader toward a response to Jesus. The characters, who
illustrate a variety of responses, allow the reader to examine the alternatives. The shape of the
narrative and the voice of the narrator lead the reader to identify or interact variously with each
character . . . readers may place themselves in the role of each character successively while
searching for the response they will choose. Through the construction of the gospel as narrative,

75
Cf. Culpepper, Anatomy, pp. 32-33, 89, 97-98.
76
Moore, Literary Criticism, p. 49.
77
Stibbe, John as Storyteller, p. 28.
78
For this paragraph I depended on Tannehill, ‘Disciples’, pp. 387-96. Conway also notes that John’s
gospel ‘pushes the reader toward a decision’ (‘Ambiguity’, p. 324).

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

therefore, the evangelist leads the reader toward his own ideological point of view, the response he
deems preferable.79

The author’s evaluative point of view thus corresponds to the soteriological purpose of the
gospel—to elicit faith in Jesus as the Messiah in order to have eternal life—and to his dualistic
worldview in which there is scope for only two responses—acceptance or rejection. The author’s
evaluative point of view thus has two options—adequate and inadequate. In other words, the
characters’ responses to Jesus are part of a larger soteriological framework that is informed by
the purpose and worldview of John’s gospel. But there is a tension. On the one hand, the author’s
dualistic worldview only allows for acceptance or rejection of Jesus, and hence all responses to
be either adequate or inadequate. On the other hand, the characters’ responses to Jesus in John’s
gospel are varied and form a broad spectrum. So how do they correspond with the dualistic
scheme that John’s gospel presents? Can such diverse responses fit into the binary categories of
belief and unbelief, adequate and inadequate?80 I suggest that the characters’ responses can (and
should) fit into the dualistic worldview of John’s gospel as follows: the Johannine characters
reflect the human perspective, representing the whole gamut of responses that people make in
life, while from a divine perspective these responses are ultimately evaluated as acceptance or
rejection. The divine reality is that the world and its people are enveloped in darkness and do not
know God—they are ‘from below’ (cf. 1.5; 8.23). In order to dispel people’s darkness or lack of
divine knowledge, Jesus came to the world to reveal God and to bring people into an everlasting,
life-giving relationship with himself and God. People who encounter Jesus may either reject or
accept him, and consequently remain part of the world below or enter the world above through a
spiritual birth. The reality is that human responses to Jesus vary—they may be instant or gradual,
positive or negative, consistent or haphazard, ambiguous or evident. Faced with this reality we
must attempt to evaluate what John thinks would qualify someone for the new birth that brings a
person into the realm of God, what kind of responses would bring and keep someone in a life-
giving relationship with Jesus.81 While evaluating the various responses as either ‘adequate’ or
‘inadequate’, I refrain from plotting the characters’ responses along a continuum of faith because
that would assume some sort of rating. Who can decide whether testifying about Jesus, following
him or remaining with him is closer to the ideal, or whether antipathy is worse than apathy? 82

79
Culpepper, Anatomy, p. 148.
80
While Conway does not believe that John’s gospel’s dualism can contain such a range of responses
(‘Ambiguity’, pp. 328-41), Jo-Ann Brant contends that we should not even try to fit this spectrum of responses into
it (Dialogue and Drama: Elements of Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Gospel [Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004], pp. 225-
26, 259-60). For my reply to Brant, see Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, p. 414.
81
For an overview of my evaluation of the responses of the Johannine characters to Jesus, see Bennema,
Encountering Jesus, pp. 204-206. In a recent review, David Ball criticizes my theory, saying it is ‘weakened by
categorizing all belief responses as “adequate” or “inadequate”. This does not effectively account for the complexity
of characters such as Nicodemus’ (JSNT 33.5 [2011], p. 70). Unfortunately, Ball has misunderstood me on this
point. We must distinguish between what happens at the story level and the narrative level. At the story level, the
author does not resolve whether Nicodemus makes an adequate belief-response—while he is clearly attracted to
Jesus, Nicodemus neither accepts nor rejects him, remaining ambiguous throughout. At the narrative level, however,
the author informs his reader that as a belief-response such an attitude is not an option. The author is not negative
about Nicodemus per se but about his response; he wants his readers to evaluate the character’s response to Jesus
rather than the character. Hence, the categories adequate/inadequate have nothing to do with the character’s
complexity (or lack of it) but with the representative value of his response for the reader. For an analysis of
Nicodemus, see Bennema, Encountering Jesus, pp. 83-84.
82
This is the difficulty we have with Culpepper’s taxonomy, ranking the various belief-responses of the
characters (Anatomy, pp. 146-48).

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

After this rather elaborate explanation for why a character’s response to Jesus is the first
criterion for character evaluation, I briefly introduce a second criterion for evaluating the
Johannine characters, namely their relation to the plot.83 If ‘plot’ is the logical and causal order
of events in a narrative, the plot of John’s gospel evolves around the revelation of the Father and
Son in terms of their identity, character, mission and relationship, and people’s response to this
revelation.84 The gospel’s plot is shaped by the author’s aim of persuading the reader to believe
that Jesus is the Christ and the source of everlasting life or salvation (20.31).85 Hence, the extent
to which the Johannine characters for instance reveal Jesus’ identity and respond to him also
indicates the extent to which they advance the plot.
Once we have evaluated the Johannine characters in terms of their response to Jesus and
their role in the plot, we must determine each character’s significance for today. Since the author
of John’s gospel seeks to win his readers over to his point of view using a broad array of
characters that interact with Jesus, we must reflect on how these characters and their responses
have representative value for readers in other contexts and eras. It was Raymond Collins who, in
1976, dubbed the characters in John’s gospel as ‘representative figures’. He argued that John has
definitely typecast the various characters (they have characteristic traits) in order to represent a
particular type of belief-response to Jesus.86 Culpepper significantly advanced the paradigmatic
function of Johannine characters, producing an extensive continuum of belief-responses.87
Although Collins and Culpepper have rightly noticed the representative value of the Johannine
characters, they have wrongly concluded that the author reduces his characters to their belief-
responses and hence to types.88 I propose that a character’s typical belief-response need not
reduce the character to a type. I believe I have amply demonstrated in my book that many
Johannine characters are complex, able to change and show personality or even individuality.
Yet, while many Johannine characters cannot be reduced to ‘types’, their belief-responses can—
it is the character’s response to Jesus that is ‘typical’.89 I contend that the author has presented an
array of responses to Jesus that can be found in any time and context—they are human
responses. Even so, I contend that the representative value across cultures and time lies in the
totality of each character—traits, development and response.
Hence, we must carefully distinguish between evaluating the character’s response and
gauging the representative value of the total character. On the one hand, the author urges the
reader to evaluate the character’s typical response to Jesus as either adequate or inadequate rather

83
I am grateful to David Ball for drawing my attention to this in his review of my book (JSNT 33.5 [2011],
p. 70). For brief discussions on the relation between character and plot, see Bennema, ‘Theory of Character’, pp.
389-90; Nicolas Farelly, The Disciples in the Fourth Gospel: A Narrative Analysis of their Faith and Understanding
(WUNT, II/290; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 164-67.
84
Cf. Culpepper, Anatomy, pp. 79-98; Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John (BNTC, 4;
London: Continuum/Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005), pp. 11-12; Farelly, Disciples, pp. 168-76.
85
Cf. Culpepper, Anatomy, p. 98.
86
R.F. Collins, ‘Representative Figures’, in idem, These Things Have Been Written: Studies on the Fourth
Gospel (Louvain: Peeters/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 1-45 (8).
87
Culpepper, Anatomy, pp. 101-48.
88
Many still subscribe to the views of Collins and Culpepper. Neyrey, for example, writes that ‘[i]t is now
accepted wisdom to examine the Johannine characters as representative of some trait important to the group or along
some continuum of responses to Jesus or according to the choices made concerning Jesus’ (Gospel, p. 6).
89
We must note that a typical response is not necessarily restricted to one character—characters displaying
completely different traits may have the same response: e.g., defection is seen in some disciples in 6.60-66 but also
in Peter and Judas; and misunderstanding occurs with both the Twelve and the crowd. Conversely, a character is not
limited to one response: e.g., Peter responds both adequately and inadequately.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

than the character itself. The author is not warning us to dissociate from Nicodemus as a
character as much as his response to Jesus. Nor are we to judge Peter harshly. Peter is far from
perfect, shifting between adequate responses (his confessions in 6.68-69 and 21.15-17) and
inadequate ones (his misunderstandings in 13.6-10 and 18.10-11; his denial; his petulant query
about the Beloved Disciple in 21.20-22), but he is (and remains) firmly at Jesus’ side (cf. his
restoration in 21.15-19 after his temporary defection). Admittedly, in the cases of Judas and ‘the
Jews’ it would be difficult to differentiate between character and response since both are
negative or inadequate throughout the gospel with little hope of change. Thus, we cannot always
clinically separate characters from their responses—a character’s response corresponds with who
that character is.90 On the other hand, the Johannine characters are representative figures in that
they have a symbolic or illustrative value beyond the narrative but not in a reductionist, ‘typical’
sense. The reader is invited to identify with (aspects of) one or more of the characters, learn from
them and then make his or her own response to Jesus—preferably one that the author approves
of. Conversely, the reader may already have made a response to Jesus and can now evaluate that
response against those of the characters.91

4. Conclusion
The lack of scholarly consensus on how to study characters has led me to develop a
comprehensive, non-reductionist theory of character. Underlying my theory of character is the
belief that character in ancient and modern literature is more alike than different and hence, with
proper caution, we can use modern literary methods to analyse character in ancient narratives. I
have suggested a three-dimensional approach to understanding the Johannine characters. First, I
study character in text and context, using information in the text and other sources. Second, I
analyse and classify the Johannine characters along three continua (complexity, development,
inner life), and plot the resulting character on a continuum of degree of characterization (from
agent to type to personality to individuality). Third, I use two criteria for character evaluation. I
evaluate the characters in terms of their response to Jesus, in keeping with the author’s point of
view, purpose, concept of belief and dualistic worldview. I also evaluate the characters regarding
their role in the gospel’s plot. After having arrived at a comprehensive understanding of the
Johannine characters, I seek to determine their representative value for today. Although I have
related this theory to John’s gospel thus far, I contend it can be extended to the Synoptic Gospels
and Acts.
The study of Johannine characters is not merely a cognitive task but also involves the
volitional and affective aspects of the reader’s personality because these characters resemble
people. Using their choices, the author urges the reader also to choose. Besides, the
representative value of the Johannine characters for today challenges and affects the
contemporary reader at various levels. Like the Johannine characters, people present a broad
spectrum of responses to Jesus, but in keeping with the Johannine author’s dualism, their
90
In a recent work, Ruth Sheridan wonders whether I might have ‘cordoned off’ too neatly the characters’
responses from the characters themselves (Retelling Scripture: ‘The Jews’ and the Scriptural Citations in John
1:19–12:15 [BIS, 110; Leiden: Brill, 2012], p. 82). This is not my intention. What I suggest is that we approach
characters wholistically, and if there is anything ‘typical’ it is their response rather than their totality—the latter is in
most cases too complex to typify.
91
For an attempt to indicate the contemporary representative value of the various Johannine characters, see
Bennema, Encountering Jesus, pp. 209-10.

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Cornelis Bennema, ‘A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding Character in the Gospel of John’, in C.W. Skinner (ed.), Characters and
Characterization in the Gospel of John (LNTS 461; New York: T&T Clark, 2013), 36-58.

responses will eventually (probably only at the Parousia) be distilled or crystallize to two basic
categories—acceptance and rejection. For the Johannine author, people have either accepted or
rejected Jesus, they are either ‘from below’ or ‘from above’, they belong either to God’s family
or to the devil’s. At the same time, life is complex, unstable and ambiguous, and so are people.
Even those who have an adequate belief-response to Jesus and enter into a saving relationship
with him and God rarely have consistent or stable belief-responses throughout their lives. People
have doubts, struggles, fluctuations or lapses in faith, and may even defect. In real life, a
believer’s relationship with Jesus rarely shows neat, linear development. The complexity (and
sometimes apparent absurdity) of life causes people to shift or change, perhaps by acquiring new
traits, adding to or replacing existing ones. A person’s faith is often not consistent or progressive;
circumstances may generate critical questions, create doubt and cause a shift in faith. Yet, I
contend that ambiguity, polyvalence and shifting in a person’s character and faith can take place
within a world of absolutes that allows only light or darkness, acceptance or rejection, belief or
unbelief. The Twelve, for example, are firmly on Jesus’ side from the beginning, but they often
misunderstand him and fail to grasp important aspects of discipleship. While Peter also remains
on Jesus’ side, he is unstable, shifting between adequate and inadequate responses. Since
characters resemble people, the array of Johannine characters and their responses to Jesus
correspond to people and their choices in real life in any generation and culture. The Johannine
author thus seeks to challenge its readers, past and present, about where they stand in relation to
Jesus. So, even today, the reader of John’s gospel, like the characters in the story, will encounter
this Jesus—and must respond.

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