Le prologue du quatrième évangile, clé de voûte de la littérature johannique

Abstract

Like its last verse (Jn 1.18), the Prologue of the Johannine Gospel has a double meaning: christological and soteriological. The christological one is mainly connected with John 1–20, the soteriological with John 21, and both are linked to 1 John. Indeed, while the Prologue interacts with the Gospel narrative and with the Epilogue (Jn 21), it works also as a ‘relecture’ (re-reading) of 1 John. It recapitulates the promise by Jesus to lead the believers ‘where he is’—i.e. ‘in(to) the bosom of the Father’ (Jn 1.18//Jn 12.26; 14.2–3, 6; 17.24)—as well as the assertion of the Letter regarding the children of God (Jn 1.12//1 Jn 3.1–2). In adding a Prologue and an Epilogue, the last redactor of Jn created a huge meta-historical arch evoking the whole Divine design, from the Alpha before the Creation (ἐν ἀρχῇ, Jn 1.1–2) to the Omega of the eschatological coming of the Risen One (ἕως ἔρχομαι, Jn 21.22, 23; cf. the παρουσία of 1 Jn 2.28). The Prologue is then the keystone and the reading key of the Johannine literature.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.