Seeing the King of the Judaeans: Reading the Gospel of John in the Shadow of the Flavian Roman Imperial Dynasty

Abstract

Why does the Judaean ethnonym (Ἰουδαῖος, ioudaios, Jew/Judaean) appear so frequently within the Gospel of John? More specifically, how does the Judaean ethnonym function within the Gospel’s stated aim to persuade readers, or deepen the commitment of those already persuaded, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and Son of God? This dissertation proposes a visual intervention into these well-known and consequential questions. The visual approach is twofold. Interpretation of the Gospel of John’s use of the Judaean ethnonym is enriched and clarified by a largely untapped reservoir of meaning in the Flavian Roman imperial dynasty’s visual rhetoric about the Judaean ethnos ca. 70–100 CE. Vespasian and his son Titus, both of whom held military commands in Judaea during the revolt of 66–70 CE, later leveraged their “foreign” victories to consolidate imperial legitimacy in the aftermath of the Roman civil wars of 68–69 CE, the year of four emperors. This imperial “brand campaign” included Judaean-associated events and monuments such as the double triumphal procession over Judaea by the father and son Flavian duo, the construction of the Flavian Amphitheater (Colosseum), triumphal victory arches, a new Temple of Peace that also housed the Jerusalem temple sacred objects/furnishings, along with Judaea Capta and numerous other coin series that spread these visuals far and wide across the well-traveled Roman roads and protected seas. Flavian and Josephan studies have produced several invaluable monographs and edited volumes bringing the Flavian era and the writings of Josephus to life in new ways and drawing fresh awareness to the centrality of the Judaeans within the Flavian dynasty’s imperial identity construction. Ancient art historians have also creatively mapped ancient rhetoric-related discussions about ancient sight onto some of the visual material still available to us from Graeco-Roman antiquity. Not only do these works provide fresh resources for what to look at, but also new, rhetorically rooted, analytical frameworks for trying to “see” as the ancients saw.Second, this study reads the Gospel of John itself as a visually oriented ancient Greek narrative with persuasive rhetorical intent. Given the close relationship between visuality and rhetoric, reading may be understood as a form of seeing, and seeing as a form of reading. This project argues that the Gospel of John is a carefully arranged sequence of images guiding the reader’s eye to a concluding theophanic diptych of the crucified and risen Jesus. It is here that we find the Judaean ethnonym in one of the Gospel’s climactic images. Jesus is crucified as “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Judaeans” (Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, John 19:19). Prevailing readings of John’s Ἰουδαῖος language prior to this moment in the Gospel, however, do not provide compelling readings of this leitwort when it appears in one of the Gospel’s defining images. This dissertation argues that the Gospel of John’s Judaean rhetoric, or the way that the Gospel utilizes the Judaean ethnonym, is best understood as a dialectic of accusation and apology, ultimately functioning as a rhetoric of Judaean solidarity.