Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Jesus' use of Illeism in John 6:46 and 17:3


Commenting on Jesus’ use of illeism (wherein a person refers to themselves in the third-person), including his “Son of Man” sayings, Roderick Elledge noted the following:

Jesus’s words affirm and characterize his relationship with the Father. The distance between speaker and the self-referent created by the illeism offers a subtle contribution to Jesus’s presentation of his transcendent nature that he shares with the Father. While at times Jesus speaks of himself in the first person in relation to the Father, the choice of illeism emphasizes “the Son,” “the Son of Man,” and “the Son of God” in parallel (third-person) presentation with the Father. This dissociative third-person self-presentation in conjunction with another third-person referent does not inherently imply equality of status between the two. Yet, in this context, the choice to present both his own identity in the third person and the Father in the third person alludes to their shared transcendent nature. Apart from the illeism relating a parallel presentation of the Father and Son, the illeism in itself functions to highlight the authority and status of the speaker. The context of the illeism highlights this authority. Jesus states: “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God.” The presentation of himself from this external perspective offers an emphasis of this associated authority in a manner which the first-person pronoun would not.

John 6:46 and 17:3 are two additional representative texts that reflect illeism in a similar context in John’s Gospel. In 6:46 Jesus (presenting himself as the bread of God that comes down from heaven) states that “no one has seen the Father, except the one who is from God” (ο ων παρα του θεου). This reference reflects a more descriptive aspect in comparison to “the Son,” “the Son of Man,” etc. Yet, the rhetorical effect of the self-reference is consistent with Jesus’s other self-references. The distance created between the speaker and the reference functions to emphasize the associated status and authority of the speaker. In John 17:1-3, Jesus refers to himself illeistically as he prayers to the Father. “And this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (ον απεστειλας ‘Ισουν Χριστον). This is the only occurrence of the use of this reference by Jesus. The context is unique in that Jesus’s audience is the Father. Yet, Jesus also speaks to another audience indirectly. Ridderbos underscores how Jesus involves the “overhearing disciples” in his prayer, “depicting before their eyes the power given him by the Father in its full salvific meaning, as it concerned them” (The Gospel According to John: A Theological Commentary [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1997], 549). Though the prayer is directed to the Father, the illeism contributes to Jesus’s self-presentation to his disciples. Consistent with his other uses of illeism, the dissociative self-reference presents himself from an external perspective, affirming his status and authority in a way the first-person reference could not. Yet, within the context of this emphasis of identity, the choice of illeism on the part of Jesus seems to reflect an instructional component, his words serving to teach and illuminate the disciples developing understanding of who he is. (Roderick Elledge, Use of Third Person for Self-Reference by Jesus and Yahweh: A Study of Illeism in the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Its Implications for Christology [Library of New Testament Studies 575; London: T&T Clark, 2018], 128-30)