Telling time is more than calculating the meanings of day or hour in the Fourth Gospel. After considering the typical time markers (day, year, hour), we turn to the anthropology of time to learn more subtle ways of “telling time.” Of the many classifications in anthropological literature, we focus on four as the most useful for reading the Fourth Gospel: (1) past, present, forthcoming, and future; (2) eternal and contingent; (3) sequence and duration; and (4) before and after. Of particular significance is the description of forthcoming time as the later completion of a present action. Jesus truly enjoys eternal time: uncreated in the past and imperishable in the future. He is temporally “after” John but in fact he was “before” him in time and precedence. We learn, moreover, that no character can “tell time,” the exclusive preserve of Jesus; misunderstanding his “time” remarks is a unique feature of this narrative.
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