The Kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John

This book studies kingship with reference to the Johannine Jesus. Postcolonialism leads us to an avenue from which to read this Gospel in the more complex and wider context of the hybridized Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. This provides a new perspective on the kingship of the Johannine Jesus, whose kingly identity is characterized by hybridized christological titles. For the Johannine readers in the first century, who were exploited, oppressed, yet at odds with both the colonizer and the colonized in the Roman Empire, this Gospel was deemed to reveal his identity. Using many christological titles, it presented Jesus as the universal king going beyond the Jewish Messiah(s) and the Roman emperors and also as the decolonizer who came to ''his own'' world to liberate his people from the darkness. In this respect, the ideology of the Johannine emphasizes that love, peace, freedom, service of the center for the margins, and forgiveness are the ruling forces in the new world where Jesus reigns as king. Raising an awareness of these ideologies, John’s gospel asks readers to overcome the conflicting world shrouded in darkness, thenceforth entering the new Johannine world.''Sehyun Kim has produced an impressively argued study of Jesus’ kingship in John’s gospel. Adopting post-colonial theory as his methodology, Kim examines how John’s Christology and Kingdom theology challenged the Roman colonisers, their Palestinian clients, and oppressive social structures. Kim has meticulously analysed the evidence of Second Temple Judaism and Graeco-Roman epigraphy and papyri, demonstrating keen theological insight throughout. Kim’s experience of living under the various colonisations of the Korean peninsula gives his book special urgency.''--Professor James R. Harrison, Research Director, Sydney College of DivinitySehyun Kim is Lecturer of New Testament at Sydney College of Divinity Korean School of Theology at Sydney and the senior pastor of In Christ Presbyterian Church of Sydney. He has worked in pastoral ministry and theological education for several years in Korea as well as in Australia. This is his first book. Sehyun attained a PhD in Biblical Studies at the University of Sheffield.