Love, blessing and betrayal

Anna Magdalena Białowąs

Wydział Teologiczny Uniwersytetu Opolskiego
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0367-0571

Abstract

The idea behind this work is to present love, blessing and betrayal as the main themes of the 13th Chapter in the Gospel of St John. The aim, which was to present the theological conclusions obtainable from St John’s recount of the Last Supper, was completed through the analysis of John 13:1-30, by the help of Hebrew biblical rhetoric. This method, which mainly focuses on revealing the relation between smaller units of the text, making up the whole text, helps to develop the understanding of the message, which the author of the last Gospel wished to convey to the reader.

This work has been presented in the form of three chapters, the first of which was dedicated to the overall structure of the text, aswell as the analysis of its smaller units. Delimitation, which is the first stage, made it possible to obtain the sequence from the 13th Chapter of John’s Gospel, contained in verses 1-30. The next division pointed towards seven parts, forming 3 fragments, of which the dependence was described in the second paragraph. In the final paragraph, the entirety of the text was depicted and appropriate titles were assigned to the fragments composed, on the basis of the general topics they mention and describe.

The research conducted, enabled the extraction of essential expressions and ideas, which functioned as a starting point to compare them with the parts of the Bible, in which they appear. The biblical context was an essential stage of the analysis, which lead interpreting the parts described in the first chapter.

The 3rd and final Chapter was dedicated to the theological conclusions present in the three major themes of the sequence, such as love, blessing and betrayal. Individual paragraphs point to the meaning of love and blessing in the context of the Old and New Testaments, and portray Judas, as the one who betrayed Jesus. The conclusion of each paragraph ended with a sub-section showing the impact of these three concepts on the theology of the analyzed unit.

Keywords:

New Testament, St John's Gospel, Last Supper, Love, Blessing, Betrayal, Semitic Rhetoric