'Belief' and 'Logos' in the prologue of the Gospel of John : an analysis of complex parallelism

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This research aims to give an answer to the correlation between 'Belief' and the 'Logos',which are the fundamental themes of the Prologue, by using a 'complex parallelism' and tounderstand the literary style that is found in the Prologue and to combine previous literarymethods thereby making them useful for the interpretation of the Prologue to the Gospel ofJohn. Our hypothesis is that the Prologue should be read in line with the broader theologicalviewpoint of the Gospel of John, viz. the Prologue aims that all readers should believe in the'Logos'.Chapter 2 describes how various previous approaches presented and detected the theme andstructure of the Prologue, viz. sequence reading (or a thematic approach) and literary reading(or a structural approach). The former reading presents the 'Logos' as the fundamental themeof the Prologue; the latter reading describes various literary figures, viz. parallelism, chiasm,and alternative/complementary literary models, and various pivotal themes of the Prologue.Their research illustrates the possibility of identifying varied and deep structures within thePrologue and suggests that the Prologue could be read from multiple angles.Chapter 3 discusses various types of parallelism and patterns of chiastic structure whichconstitute the basic elements of complex parallelism and the criteria for identifying thechiastic structure as an adequate methodology for the analysis of the Prologue. Among thevarious types of parallelism which were proposed and advanced by the previous scholars,synonymous parallelism, antithetic parallelism, synthetic parallelism, staircase parallelism,and inverted parallelism are employed and the chiastic structure, including various extendedfigures of chiasm, is classified into three patterns: the A-B-A' pattern, the A-B-B'-A' patternand the A-B-C-B'-A' pattern. In addition, four criteria for identifying the chiastic structure areselected and modified for this research, among the criteria applied by the previous scholars.We discuss some textual-critical issues in Chapter 4, before embarking on analysis of thestructure of the Prologue. Among them, we argue that only in the case of three verses textualvariants raise debatable issues: e.g., the textual variants of punctuation of verse 3, the textualvariants of the number of the relative pronoun and of the verb in verse 13, and the textualvariants with regard to monogenh.j qeo,j in verse 18.Chapter 5 explores the structure of the Prologue with complex parallelism in order to revealboth 'Belief' and 'Logos' as the fundamental themes of the Prologue. In complex parallelism,complex chiastic structure and complex inverted parallelism combine structurally andsemantically. Both complex structures have surface and deep structures: In complex chiasticstructure, the surface structure is formulated with macro chiastic structure and each parallelsection is described as various types of parallelism and chiastic patterns. This complexchiastic structure focuses on the theme of 'Belief'. On the other hand, in complex invertedparallelism, the surface structure is formulated with macro inverted parallelism and eachparallel section is illustrated as various chiastic patterns. All concepts and themes regardingthe 'Logos' are described in the complex inverted parallelism.The final chapter sets out to reveal the correlation between 'Belief' and the 'Logos' in theconcluding summary of our research. In complex parallelism, the complex chiastic structurereveals that 'Belief' is the pivotal theme of the Prologue, whereas, the complex invertedparallelism presents the 'Logos' as the only object of 'Belief'. In other words, the formerdescribes that the readers should believe; the latter describes what/whom they should believein. Therefore, the Prologue focuses on both the theme of 'Belief' and the 'Logos'.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University