Distinguished Professor, Sydney College of Divinity
“Glory” in the Gospel of John and Its Intersection with Graeco-Roman Conceptions of Civic Honour and Dishonour: An Epigraphic Narrative Perspective
After Chibici-Revneanu’s ground-breaking monograph on the Gospel of John (2010), there has been an explosion of interest in the inter-textual echoes of Exodus and Ezekiel in the Johannine rendering of glory (doxa). Scholars have explored LXX Exodus 33:12—34:10 in relation to John 1:14–18, while others have studied Johannine motifs, including glory, against the backdrop of Ezekiel. Scholars, however, have inadvertently overlooked the eastern urban context of the first Christians, in which a relentless quest for civic honour and the replication of ancestral glory was de rigueur among the elites and the upwardly mobile. Moreover, the honorific rituals associated with doxa extended beyond the elite echelons of the social pyramid, including the celebrity circuits of travelling athletes, the winners of music competitions and racecourses, and the gladiators in the arena. This paper will assess the significance of John’s glory terminology within the grid of the honorific inscriptions of Asia Minor and Ionian Ephesus. This precious data bank of the protocols of honour, performed in a wide variety of civic contexts and often registered epigraphically in a honorific narrative of achievements, provides insight into the conceptual and cultural horizons of John’s auditors regarding doxa language, as well as illuminating John’s radical response to their honorific worldview.