Subversive Narrator/Victimized Reader: a Reader Response Assessment of a Text-Critical Problem,John 18.12-24

Abstract

This article takes the old text-critical and interpretive problem of Jn 18.12-24 (who interrogates Jesus—Annas or Caiaphas?), and evaluates it from the perspective of reader response criticism. In this approach the textual variants and the more recent source-critical solutions become the data for constructing a reception history, a window into a way of reading. This reception history is empirical evidence of reader- felt gaps and confusions, and is examined from the perspective of pragmatics, not semantics. The questions become: 'What does this text do to the reader, and why?'

By viewing this text-critical problem within the larger issue of Johannine narrative rhetoric, there is evidence to suggest that it fits into a victimizing strategy found else where. Once again, like the Socratic είρων, the narrator undermines the reader's grasp of the story in order to lead the reader into a deeper faith experience.