[MGSA-L] Princeton Hellenic Studies Lecture: March 8, 2011

[Dimitri H. Gondicas]

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

Program in Hellenic Studies

Lecture


"Do Not Judge by Appearance" (John 7:24):

Investigative Seeking and Legal Reversal

in the Gospel of John and the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles





George Parsenios

Princeton Theological Seminary

The Gospel of John and the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles use the language of investigative seeking (zêtêsis) in surprisingly similar ways, and this basic coincidence invites us to see an even deeper and elaborate set of connections that bind the two works.  While the term "seek" can refer to a variety of technical and non-technical investigative processes, when Sophocles calls Oedipus' pursuit of a murderer "seeking," that term is connected to a cluster of other words and procedures that are reflected in legal investigations in classical Athens, such as the testimony of informants (mênusis), the cross-examination of witnesses (elenchos) and others.  Almost all the same terms punctuate the legal pursuits depicted in the Gospel of John, and E. Bickerman has demonstrated the legal resonance of this language in John by comparison with the papyri from Roman Egypt.  John seems to draw on the legal processes of his day in much the same way that Sophocles relied on the legal procedures of classical Athens.  And yet, the most interesting thing is not the mere fact that a similar cluster of terms is used by both John and Sophocles. Rather, this paper will explore how these terms and processes are employed by each author to define the difference between appearance and reality, sight and blindness and guilt and innocence.  Such a reversal is well known among readers of Oedipus Rex, but absent from the scholarship on the Gospel of John. And so, while no argument will be made that John read Sophocles, it will be assumed that if we read Sophocles, we will read John with different eyes.



George L. Parsenios is Associate Professor of New Testament at the Princeton Theological Seminary, where he has taught since receiving a Ph.D. from the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University.  He has written two books on the Gospel of John, and his essays have appeared in such publications as the Harvard Theological Review and the Greek Orthodox Theological Review.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

6:00 p.m.

Scheide Caldwell House, Room 103
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