The Crucified and Exalted King of lsrael: The Metaphor of Kingship in John's Gospel

Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to provide a framework for examining the metaphor of Jesus as king throughout the Fourth Gospel. This dissertation argues that the theme of Jesus as king provides one of the unifying themes of John's overall message, blending familial, pastoral, sensory, and judicial metaphors with the metaphor of Jesus as king. This allows for a cohesive depiction of Jesus' kingship that begins in John 1 as Jesus is introduced as king and leads to the climactic vision of Jesus' "exaltation" as king on the cross. This dissertation uses an interdisciplinary theory of metaphor that incorporates elements of cognitive and systemic functional linguistic approaches with literary approaches. This examination assesses the place of the Old Testament metaphors of Messiah, "eternal life/life of the age," shepherd, and exaltation in the conceptual metaphorical network of the kingship metaphor and addresses how these metaphors function in John's Gospel to provide a cohesive and dynamic depiction of Jesus' identity as king, the just character of his kingship, the subversion of power implicit in his crucified form of kingship, and the necessity of response to Jesus as king and his reign.