Encomium versus Vituperation: Contrasting Portraits of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

I. TOPIC AND HYPOTHESES Some past discussions of Johannine characters considered them either as symbolic or representative figures;1 others examined characters according to literary theory.2 This study contributes to those efforts with insights drawn from ancient rhetoric, in particular from the encomium genre of the progymnasmata. The encomium, to my knowledge, has not been used-although it ought to be, because the "encomium" is the most common form in antiquity for praising a person according to fixed, regular categories (origins, parents, nurture, virtues, and death). This form would most likely have been learned by the author of the Fourth Gospel at the time he learned to write materials for public persuasion. Moreover, this conventional and stereotypical3 view of persons can be found in Judean4 and Greco-Roman literature.5 The encomium, therefore, is the viewpoint of the ancients themselves, the report of a native informant who indicates the conventional topics and content that need to be covered to amplify praise for an honorable ancient person. This study, then, is no mere add-on to Johannine scholarship but a worthy contribution, because it examines the Fourth Gospel in the most likely honorable terms that author and audience would recognize. II. CONTENTS OF THE ENCOMIUM The progymnasmata were the exercises taught in the second level of education to train students for public discourse.7 Recent study of education in antiquity urges us to nuance the conventional, three-stage model found in current scholarship, which Robert Kaster summarized and to which he offered his qualifications. It is generally thought that ancient education consisted of: Kaster offers the following corrections: ancient education was "a socially segmented system" laid out along two essentially separate tracks. The most important formal distinction here is the division between the two tracks or segments: the ludus literrarius, providing common literacy for students of relatively humble origins on the one hand;9 and the scholae liberales, catering to a more privileged part of the population on the other.10 The scholae liberales began with instruction in writing for a public or municipal audience, especially the epideictic rhetoric so necessary for civic life.11 As we know, the collection of exercises for public speech and writing, namely, the progymnasmata, contained the cultural rules and values for the encomium, the literary expression of the rhetoric of praise and blame. Extant progymnasmata typically contain the following exercises:12 (1) myths, (2) chreia,13 (3) refutation and confirmation, (4) commonplaces on virtues and vices, (5) encomium and vituperation, (6) comparison,14 (7) prosopopoieia,15 (8) description, (9) thesis for or against something, and (10) legislation for or against a law. Although "praise and blame" runs through most of them, it is formally and explicitly taught in the "encomium." The conventional encomium instructs students where to find reasons and data for praise (or blame), which genre is widespread in Greco-Roman and Israelite literature. With great consistency, the encomium instructed authors how to praise someone in terms of the following five categories: I. Origin A. Geography and Generation: country, race, ancestors, parents B. Birth: phenomena at birth (stars, visions, etc.), oracles II. Nurture and Training A. Education: teachers, arts, skills, laws, mode of life III. Accomplishments A. Deeds of the Body: beauty, strength, agility, might, health B. Deeds of the Soul: justice, wisdom, temperance, courage, piety C. Deeds of Fortune: power, wealth, friends, fame, fortune IV. Comparison V. Noble Death and Posthumous Honors Geography and Generation Each category of the encomium was itself a commonplace understood by all the ancients. All knew the basic, invariable content of "origins," that is, origin in a noble land (geography) and from noble stock (generation). …