The Ethnic Groups in the Fourth Gospel: A Historical-Literary and Social-Scientific Reading of the Dynamics of Identification and Representation Within a Contested Ethnicity

This project seeks to understand who the ᾽Ιουδαῖοι are and how they relate and negotiate their ethnic borders with the Ἕλληνες, Σαμαρῖται, ῾Ρωμαῖοι, and Γαλιλαῖοι as found in the Gospel of John. Applying a historical-critical approach on selected Johannine texts, it attempts to explain the dynamics of self-designation and border-crossing vis-à-vis some related literature (both biblical and extra-biblical) and studies of ethnic groups in the New Testament. This project vows to be relevant to the contemporary situation with its interdisciplinary use of ethnic, postcolonial and diasporic studies in rereading the dynamics of the ethnic groups in the Fourth Gospel. Using the synthetic model of theologizing that dialogues the Bible with a local culture and context, this project aims to produce a new theological reading that will be normative to the Filipino migrants as a way of pastorally addressing their ethnicity-related problems.