J

ohn A. T. R o b in so n , The Parabie

John 10

1-5

words of his servants the prophets79 . The end of ail understanding

is the knowledge of God in which alone salvation is to he found.
It is the contention of this paper th a t the development of this
m ystical strand of theology Judaism the book of Isaiah played
a unique role. Furtherm ore, it is suggested th a t the Fourth Gospel
itself was under the influence of such a tendency and also reflects
the importance of the book of Isaiah for the movement. The importance of Isaiah m ay be further substantiated by Dinklers recent
suggestion th a t the much debated figure in the D ura Europos synagogue painting is none other th an Isaiah 9. If so, the strange n im b u s
hovering over the figure m ay further symbolize Isaiah's role as the
prophet of the mysteries of the knowledge of God.
(Completed July 1 4

The P a r a d e )ohn 101*

by John A. T. Robinson
(Cambridge, Clue College)

In his notable work on T h e F a r a b l e s of J e s u s Frofessor Joachim Jerem ias has applied a technique of scientific investigation which
he believes affords solid grounds for hope th a t we can still get behind
the early Ghurch to the teaching of Jesus himself and are not compelled to rest content with the form ulation of G e m e in d e th e o lo g ie .
In the second half of his book he draws from tim e to tim e on Johannine
m aterial, with the implication th a t it can legitim ately be used in the
to ta l reconstruction of the message of Jesus. The am ount of parabolic
m aterial in the Fourth Gospel, even in the very wide sense in which
he rightly uses th a t terrti1, is of course very scanty. I t is the more
rem arkable therefore th a t he does not apply his critical analysis to
the only piece of Johannine teaching which is specifically called a
2, namely, John 10 1-5.
Habakkuk (Commentary, ? 5 .
* Ericb Dinkier, Literaturberieht zur christlieben Arcbologie, 3 8 9 ,
1. Teil, Theologische Rundschau, N. F . 21 (1954), p. 328. The figure identified
as Isaiah is the one on the left.
* . cit., 171 The references throughout are to the English translation by
s. H. Hooke (S. c. M. Press, 1954).
2 It is generally a^eed among modern commentators that and
are simply variant translations of m a sh a l and that there is no difference in their meaning (Jtilicher, Lagrange, Bernard, Hoskyns and Davey, Bultmann,
etc.). There is exactly the same equivocal relationship between and
25 18) )as Jeremias detects between and in Me 4
(op. cit., 1 1 6 ) . Cf. L. Cerfaux, Le thme littraire parabolique dans l'vangile
de saint Jean, C o n iecta n ea N e o te s ta m e n tic a XI, 15-25 .

234

Joh n A .T. R o b in so n , The Parable John 01-

Now, the supposition th a t it is even w orth while attem pting to

get beneath the Johannine narrative to an original core in the
teaching of Jesus is one th a t until recently would hardly have been
accepted^. B ut the only way to test the w orth of such a presupposition
is to try. I t m ay be th a t we shall not get very far. B ut the criteria
advanced by Professor Jerem ias a t least provide some tests which
it is possible to apply, even when one grants th a t the transposition
in key which the whole Johannine m aterial has undergone m akes the
operation very much more hazardous and the quest for ip s is s im a
v e r b a probably hopeless.
If we consider the whole section, John 10 1-2 1 , we m ay note first
th a t there is a clear break between the parable and its reception on
the one hand (vv. 1-6) and its allegorization on the other*. This corresponds exactly to the structure of parable plus allegorical interpretation which we find in the cases of the Sower (Me 4 2 -20 ) and the
Tares (Mt 13 24-43), except th a t in Jo h n the audience rem ains the
sam e5. The break is rem arkably clear, and exam ination shows th a t
the allegorization has been kept separate and has not affected the
parable itself5, as it has affected m any of the Synoptic parables.
This affords good confidenee th a t we may, as it were, remove the
first skin clean and confine o u r se lv e s to w . 1-6.
Turning to V. 6, we note th a t the parable is addressed to Jesu s
opponents: , both from 1010 and the previous chapter, are
3 It is noteworthy that not one the eommenraries I have been able to
consult even asks the question of the relation of this p e r ic o p e to the teaching of
the historical Jesus.
This is obscured by the interlarding of parable and allegory which Bultmanns intricate rearrangement of the verses in this chapter produces (Contrast
j. Schneider, Zur Komposition von Joh 10, C o n ie c ta n e a N e o t e s t a m e n t ic a
XI, 220-6). The separation of the two is as clear as the separation of miracle
and allegory in chapter 6.
5 In the Synoptists the parables are given to those without, while the interpretation is esoteric. In John Jesus speaks both to the Jews and to the disciples
in ! (John 10 6 16 25) and the interpretation does not require a change of
audience. For it remains equally hidden to all until *that day', when Jesus is glorified
and the spirit declares it. Up till then everything can therefore be spoken *openly
(18 (without fear of the mystery being disclosed. In the last discourses, where
the glorified Lord is to some extent already speaking, the disciples sense an anticipation of the day when the need for is past (16 2 ;) but it is at once made
clear that it is only an anticipation (16 32).
Lagrange, strachan and Bultmann agree in insisting that 1-5 is a genuine
parable and not allegory. It is remarkable that Jeremias does not distinguish and
writes generally: **The two great parables of the Fourth Gospel (John 16 Iff. and
16 Iff.) have more of an allegorical character than any of the Synoptic parables
(op. cit., 69).

John A. T. R o b in so n , The Parable of John 10 1-5

clearly th e Jews, and particular the Pharisees (9 40). This is not

w hat we should expect (we think of the Good Shepherd like the True
Vine being addressed to the disciples)7, and it is for Jerem ias one of
the clear m arks of authenticity (op. c it., 23-3) . It is also, I believe,
an im portant due to its elucidation.
Confining ourselves now to vv. 1-5, we m ay detect signs of a suture
in V. 3 after the words voiyei. In 1-3a the parable
is concerned with two figures who seek to enter a sheep-fold, a bandit
and the shepherd himself, and it is to the latte r th a t the porter opens.
In 3b-5 we have a different point, concerning the difference in relationship of the sheep to a stranger and to their own shepherd; and
here the picture is of the shepherd driving and leading his sheep o u t,
presum ably to p a rtu re .'It looks as if we have here an instance of the
fusion of two parables, such as Jerem ias finds in the Synoptists
(op. c it., 73f.). The two are skilfully woven together and run on
w ithout even a break in the sentence, and until we analyse them we
are scarcely aware of the contrasting situations.
Can we now go further and seek to discover the original setting
and point of each half? Continuing to work back, let us examine
first vv. 3b-5.
There is nothing in the phraseology of these verses to suggest
th a t we have not here a genuine parable draw n from life in Palestine^,
and the language is not coloured b y the Gld Testam ent In the way it
is the allegorical sequel. In content, the parable has affinities,
though not especially close ones, w ith the other parabolic or m etaphorical sayings of Jesus about the relation between the shepherd
and his flock, e.g., Mt 1812-14 ==Lc 15 4-7 Lc 12 32 Mt 15 24 and particularly perhaps Me 14 27..* "Y ou will all fall away; for it is wiirten,
T will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered*. B ut after
I am raised up, I will go before () you into Galilee".
As regards its original setting, it is impossible to be dogmatic.
A reasonable supposition might be th a t it arises out of the claims
of Jesus for his own teaching, when his authority is challenged by
the Scribes and Pharisees. His au th o rity cannot be proved by signs:
it is self-authenticating. The true people of God hear his voice, because they recognize in it the authentic note of the shepherd of God's
flock; by implication the Jevdsh leaders, who wem m eant to be the
shepherds of Israel (Ez 34 Zech 11; etc.), are condemned as ,
fo re i^ e rs to God's people (cf. Mt 7 $ H br 11 34). This is in fact
very much the setting which it actually occupies in the Fourth Gospel;
7 Jeremias himself describes John 10 1-30 as esoteric self-revelation, after
the period of public proclamation (op. cit., 162).
8 So Jeremias op. cit., 14

John A T. R o b in so n , The Parable John 10 1-5

for the whole of chapter 10 is concerned with the a u th o rity of Jesus

teach in g and the connection is m ade explicit in w . 24-7: The Jews
gathered round him and said to him, How long will you keep us in
suspense ? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly*. Jesus answered them ,
'1 told you, and you do not believe . You do not beheve, because
you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear m y voice, and I know
them , and they foJlow me*
We m ay conclude, then, th a t in this case both th e parable and
its setting are preserved in a form th a t we have no reason to believe
m ay not be original, though the shape* of the parable has suffered
by the loss of its opening through fusion.
Going back now finally to the first half of the double parable,
we are presented with a more complicated situation. Acting on the
principle th a t the point of the parable likely to be found a t the end,
we begin by examining the closing words: TO U T CO voyei.
W hy is the there all? Perhaps it is a detail introduced
in order to be given allegorical significance later. B u t in fact this
is virtually the only detail in either parable which receives no place
in the allegory. There is no further m ention either of th e porter or of
opening. The fact then th a t it is extraneous to the Johannine purpose suggests strongly th a t the author of the Gospel found it in the
tradition and did not himself introduce it. Indeed, his narrative
would run on more smoothly w ithout this clause altogether, and any
m om entary confusion as to w hether 'his voice* of 3b refers to the
shepherd or to the porter would be eliminated.
If then we m ay see in the words TOUTCO a b it
of the bed-rock of the original tradition, we m ay have stra c k the clue
to the prim ary meaning of the parable. The parable built round
the contrast between and , the two figures who seek to
gain access to the court-yard. If the closing words are original and,
as we should independently expect, make the real point of th e parable,
then the central figure is not the shepherd b u t th e gate-keeper, faced
with two aspirants to entry: and
. The form er he has to keep out, the la tte r
he m ust be ready to let in.
If this is so, then certain connections a t once become apparent
with the Synoptic tradition. The figure of the appears as
the central figure in the parable of watching in Me 13 34 th a t of
To us a door-keeper seems out of place at a sheep-fold. The eommentators
seem generally agreed however that the represents either a walled enelosure
where a number of shepherds left their floeks for the night under a common guard,
or, more probably, the court-yard of the house, which in the country was used as
a sheep pen at night, and whose gate would be controlled by the house porter (as
o f a town house, in John 18 15-17).

Joh n A. T. R o b in so n , The Rarabie o John 10

1-5

237

opening to the m aster coming to his house in Lc 12 36; th a t of the

thief coming and breaking through in the parable which imm ediately
follows in Lc 12 39; while in Me 13 29, we have a possible echo in the
words th a t he who is expected is near, even a t the gates".
Now it is significant th a t all these parallels are to be found in
the same p a rt of the Synoptic m aterial. They occur in teaching, whose
setting can, I believe, be shown to be the closing stages of Jesus'
m inistry, when he is concerned to w arn the Jews, and particularly
their leaders, of the urgency of the eschatological situation in which
th ey are living and of the short tim e left before the final crisis comes
upon them . W hile he is still w ith them the authorities have a last
chance to fulfil their role as the watchm en of God's people (cf. J r
6 1 ? Ez 3 7 33 ? Jes 56 10 62 6), to recognize and adm it the m aster of
the house of Israel and not to allow it to be broken into. Finally,
when the day of their visitation arrives10 and they refuse to open to
him th a t comes to them through the gates, their house is declared
left to the assaults and ravages of others11.
I suggest th a t the parable of John 10 1-3a originally belonged to
the same context and posed the same challenge to the of
Israel. W ould th ey be prepared to recognize and open to him who
came to them by the door of the sheep-fold and had the right to entry ?
T h at Israel was intended by the sheep-fold needed no more explanation
th a n the sim ilar language of the house' or the vineyard'. I t is not
allegory b u t sim ply allusion, which m akes it clear, or should make it
clear, to Jesus' opponents th a t the parable is told against them (Me
1 2 1 2 ; ; contrast John 10 6 ).
This setting requires the as the central figure of the
parable. As a result of the fusion with the parable of 3b~5, this is no
longer the case in the F ourth Gospel; the >^ dominates, and the
gate-keeper, as we have seen, drops out in the later narrative. There
is however a possible indication th a t the original setting is not so far
beneath th e surface and indeed th a t th e paTable suggested itself to
the evangelist a t this point precisely because its original application
to the of Israel still clung to it in the tradition as he received
it. In Jes 56 9-12 we have the only instance in the 1 Testam ent of
the ideas of w atchm en' and shepherds' applied t o g e t h e r to the
ieaders of God's people, and there alone the watchmen are thought
of as posted not on a city wall, but, like watchdogs, to guard the
flock against devouring beasts. I t is therefore the more significant
to find th a t th ey are described as blind' and without knowledge',
10 C. Mic 7 i: the day o thy watchmen, even thy visitation, is come.
11 C. Lc 12 39: &v with Le 13 35:
.

238

John A.T. R ob n so n , The Parable 01 John 101-5

which is preciseiy the condemnation of the Pharisees in the Johannine

context (9 40f. 10 6)12 .Thus, though the 'w atchm an' them e is entirely
subordinated in the evangelist's treatm ent, it m ay still have been
strong enough to suggest the link, perhaps by unconscious association,
between 9 40f. and 101-6.
I t is notew orthy th a t this parable contains another m ark which
Professor Jerem ias (op. c it., 40) claims to recognize as prim itive,
namely, the identification of the figure of the not with the
Lord (as a t the end of the tradition in R ev 3 a 16 15), but with an
enemy one m ust guard against. In Lc 12 aa men are told to have
their treasure , and a few verses later in
12 39 the thief is pictured as coming to 'break through', ,
the same word th a t is used in the M atthean parallel of Lc 12 aa (Mt
6 19f.). In John 10 the contrast between the coming of the legitim ate
one and the coming of the thief is quite explicit and is m ade still more
pointed in the allegory: "The thief comes only to steal and kill and
destroy; I came th a t they m ight have life, and have it abundantly
(v. 10 ). Thus the Johannine use of the thief' m otif m ay be a further
indication th a t we are dealing with an early stage of the tradition.
It is w orth noticing, in passing, how the equivalent in the Fourth
Gospel of the Q parable of the Thief compares favourably with the
version of it both in the Synoptists and in I Thessalonians. In
I Thessalonians 5 2-5 Paul applies to the D ay of the Lord' the
words . The thief is here still an image of
destruction, which should n o t overtake those who are sons of light.
B ut as a result of his allegorization the m etaphor breaks in his hands,
and w hat begins as a symbol of darkness ends inconsequentially as
a figure for the D ay': You are not in darkness Iva
. In John 12 35h we have the same contrast
as in Thessalonians between the sons of light' and those who walk
in darkness', but with the injunction: W alk while you have the
light, . This is precisely w hat Paul
should have said, and w hat has every probability of representing
the tradition before it suffered allegorizatiom And not only is the
Fourth Gospel more likely to have preserved the original form of the
saying; it m ay well give us its original setting. B oth in the Synoptists
and in Paul the parable is applied to the Parousia. In the form er case,
there are good grounds (cf. Jerem ias, op. c it., 3941) for thinking
this application to be secondary, and in the la tte r we have already
seen th a t precisely this is the source of the dislocation. In Jo h n the
reference of the saying is not to the Parousia bu t to the im m inent
12 It is remarkable that this passage does nor appear to
by the commentators, even by Hoskyns and Davey.

have

been noticed

John A .''. R o b in so n , The Parabie of John 10 1

239

climax of the m inistry in the lifting up of the Son of m an and the

judgm ent which th a t will bring ( 31-4). And it is view of this
th a t Jesus says, The light is with you (only) for a little longer. W alk
while you have the light, lest the darkness overtake you . This 1 believe is exactly the situation to which the parable of the Thief in Lc
12, like th a t of the W atchm an in Me 13, is likely to have been spoken; and it again confirms the historical value of the Johannine tradition at this point, which here appears to preserve elements more
prim itive even th an our earliest Epistle and our earliest Synoptic
source.
F urther, the emphasis th a t the parable of John 10 lays on the
fact th a t the owner is to be recognised by his coming in Opa
(on which it is implied th a t he knocks^) m ay well provide the background in the teaching of Jesus, absent from the Synoptists, for the
idea which enters strangely in Me 13 29 th a t Jesus himself comes
upai, or, as in Jam es 9 , stands . I t also strengthens
the possibility th a t in Rev 3 20 we have a genuine of Jesus.
The language bears striking resemblance to our passage:
xa
, . The sim ilarity m ay be due, not
to an interrelationship between the F ourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, but to a tradition of a parabolic saying of Jesus lying behind
them both**
In this first half-parable, then, we again have good indication
th a t we are dealing with authentic and early tradition of the teaching
of Jesus. In this case, the setting and emphasis have undergone
modification. B ut the form and shape of the parable are rem arkably
unaffected; and again there are no signs of allegorization. One may
say th a t the parable has been em ptied of its eschatological urgency,
though it is still set under the imm inent shadow of the Fassion, which
the Fourth Gospel is concerned to depict as the eschatological event
in very much the m anner in which I believe Jesus himself saw it.
Moreover, there is no doubt th a t for John the advent of the Good
$heph(rd is the fulfilment of the eschatological prophecy of Ez 34 and
Zech 11, concerning the supersession of the false shepherds of Israel
by a true Shepherd, who shall act for God himself. At any rate, w hat is
much more significant is th a t in this parable, in m arked contrast
with the comparable ones in the Synoptic tradition, there is no trace
a t all of the tendency to fransfer the application of the eschatological
teaching from the contem porariesof Jesus to t e C h u r c h , to prepare
1 3 Cf. Lc 12 36.
Rev 32b-2i also has interesting affinities with the tradition behind
L c 22 S9f.

John A.T. R o b in so n , The Parable 01 John 101-5

240

it for second coming. The absence of this m ay be p u t down to a

defiberate 'correction by the F ourth Evangelist in favour of a 'realized
eschatology. I confess to finding rem arkably few signs th a t this is
in fact the process a t work in the Gospel. I hold it much more con-
vincing to believe th a t the Fourth Gospel we have preserved a
stream of tradition of the life and teaching of Jesus which never
seriously underw ent15 w hat Frofessor Jerem ias and others have
recognized as a potent factor of distortion, nam ely the tendency
towards apocalyptic and the reference of Jesus eschatological teaching
to a second moment of glorification beyond his own death. The fact
th a t this parable shows so few m arks of Johannine re-casting confirms the impression th a t we have here m aterial in a state which the
most searching tests suggest is early and authentic.
One could, indeed, sum up by listing the various ^ d u en ces
which Professor Jeremias sees a t work upon the parabolic teaching
of Jesus, and noting how the parable of John 101-5 survives them.
These are:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)

Embellishment
Change of au<lience
Hortatory use by the Church
The influence of the Churchs situation
(a) in the Hellenistic world
in its world mission
(c) in the delay of the P a r o u sia
( Allegorization
(6) Collection and conflation of parables
'(7) Change of setting.

In respect of (1), (2), (3), and, most im ^ r ta n tly , of all three

sections of (4), the parable is 'clean. Allegorization (5) occurs indeed
round the parable, b u t n o t in it. There is, I believe, (6) a fusion
of two parables; and (?) the emphasis and setting of the former has
been affected by this fusion.
This is a record which compares favourably with th a t of any
of the Synoptic material. Its significance for the historical value
of the Fourth Gospel as a whole lies in the fact th a t this should be
true of a section which p a r e x c e lle n c e is typically Johannine and
which cannot possibly be attrib u ted to any kind of dependence on
the Synoptists.
[Completed 5. 6. 6

1 Cf. C. H. Dodd, The luterpretatiou of the Fourth Gospel, 447.


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