First- and Early Second-century Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria Sample Clauses

First- and Early Second-century Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria. Tilborg aptly demonstrates how a social setting different from the text’s own narrative setting has the potential to influence ancient readers’ interpretations of a narrative in a variety of ways that may or not be intended by the author. In doing so he raises the problem of the distance between the narrative setting of the Fourth Gospel and its readers. When constructing the scene for John 2:13–22, the evangelist 137 Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (2 vols.; AB 29–29A; New York: Doubleday, 1966–1970), 1:xlii; Ling, Judaean Poor, 167–70. 138 Brown, John, 1:xlii–xliii. 139 Ibid., 1:xliii. may well have had the Jerusalem temple in its Palestinian setting in mind, but it does not inevitably follow that his audiences envisioned this temple setting when hearing the scene. Though the Fourth Gospel appears to have a deep knowledge of the Jerusalem temple and its sacrificial cult, it is not necessarily the case that John’s ancient readers outside of Palestine were as or at all familiar with the layout and practices of the temple in Jerusalem. Perhaps many members of his audiences had never even been to Jerusalem and seen its temple, certainly not after 70. When picturing Jesus entering the temple in Jerusalem and disrupting its temple commerce, they in all likelihood had in mind their local temple to a specific deity or emperor as the model for how temple commerce functions. Certain aspects of John 2:13–22 that make sense within their narrative context may appear strange or puzzling to John’s readers unfamiliar with the social setting it describes, while others might transfer without difficulty. Asia Minor, Egypt, and Syria are known to be places where the Gospel of John was read at an early stage, at least by the middle of the second century.140 While all three have been proposed as locales where the Gospel was composed (in whole or in part),141 it is John’s first readers and auditors, not its authorial provenance, that concern me here. Reading the Gospel (or, more accurately, hearing it) in these places years after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, readers were