Reuse in John’s Gospel in Light of Rewritten Scripture

To say that John reuses the Synoptics is to say that he not only knows earlier Gospel texts or that he was influenced by earlier Gospel tradition, but it is to argue that he is dependent on them and rewrites them. Given the myriad types of textual relationships possible in ancient Jewish writings, the study of early Christian compositional practice can be clarified using comparative examples from a similar literary and cultural context. Focusing here on John’s reuse of Mark in particular, I show how the corpus of texts called “Rewritten Scripture” provides analogues for the spectrum of similarity and difference we find between these Gospels. Specific comparisons will be drawn with Jubilees and Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, highlighting two examples of John’s reuse of Mark in his prologue and his paralytic narrative. Through this, I propose how John’s aim and purpose vis-a-vis Synoptic source material are illuminated through his compositional practices.