Her Testimony is True: Women as Witnesses according to John

Her Testimony is True: Women as Witnesses according to John. By Robert Gordon Maccini. JSNTSup 125. Sheffield Academic, 1996, 278 pp., $60.00.

Her Testimony is True represents an attempt to validate an egalitarian commitment through the author's demonstration that women function as witnesses in John's gospel on equal footing with men. In order to substantiate his thesis, Maccini examines the following passages in the gospel of John that feature women as potential witnesses to Jesus: 2:1-11 (Mary at the wedding in Cana); 4:4-42 (the Samaritan woman); 11:1-46 (Mary and Martha at Jesus' raising of Lazarus); 12:1-8 (Mary and Martha at the anointing of Jesus); 19:25-27 (the women at the cross, including Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene); and 20:1-18 (Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb). Chapters on John's gospel as a trial and women as witnesses in Biblical culture are designed to provide a framework for the author's investigation.

Apart from Mary at the wedding in Cana, Maccini finds that John presents all the other women featured above as witnesses to Jesus. The Samaritan woman's witness leads her fellow villagers to Jesus. Mary and Martha confirm the factuality of their brother Lazarus' death. By rendering service to Jesus and by anointing him for burial, the sisters also provide examples of what it means to serve and love Jesus. Mary the mother of Jesus and the other women at the cross witness to Jesus' humanity and death. And Mary Magdalene, similar to the "beloved disciple," testifies to both Jesus' death and resurrection. Maccini concludes that women's testimony in John's gospel is generally considered valid and true and that women function as witnesses to Jesus on par with men.

Overall, Her Testimony is True is well-researched and written. Although the author "confesses" to his egalitarian bias at the outset of his study, he largely manages to refrain from imposing an egalitarian agenda on John's gospel. His skepticism regarding the "Johannine community" hypothesis, his concern to keep the gospel's historical and literary dimensions in proper balance, and his rejection of treatments that view John's characters merely in terms of literary symbolism, must also be lauded. Moreover, Maccini's exegesis of passages featuring women as witnesses in the fourth gospel is conducted with appropriate restraint. A case in point is the author's conclusion that Mary in 2:1-11 does not function as a witness to Jesus, much less as a mediatrix to Jesus, as has often been claimed. Hence a realistic portrait emerges that generally avoids ideological overrepresentations plaguing several earlier studies.

Still, Maccini's work is beset by several weaknesses. (1) There is virtually no integration between the introductory and the exegetical chapters. In his discussion of the various women witnesses in John the author does not reinforce the notion that John's gospel is presented as a trial. As is the case with many published dissertations (the present study represents the substance of a dissertation completed at the University of Aberdeen under the supervision of Ruth Edwards), this work is strong on exegetical detail yet weak in theological integration. (2) Maccini's idiosyncratic method of selecting one, and only one, section of John's gospel as an interpretive frame for his exegesis of a given passage unduly excludes relevant information elsewhere in John. This procedure also occasionally renders the author's comparisons rather strained. How significant is it that both the wedding at Cana and the encounter at Sychar "happen in small towns beyond Judea, at specified times, and feature Jesus, his disciples, a woman, and others" (p. 119) and that both the supper at the anointing and the last supper feature "the meal itself" and "the moistening and drying of feet" (pp. 172-173)?

Another weakness is Maccini's neglect of John's salvation-historical framework, recently demonstrated by J. Pryor in John: Evangelist of the Covenant People. For instance, Maccini insists that Mary Magdalene's absence at the commissioning in 20:2123 must not be construed as her exclusion from Jesus' inner apostolic circle, since Thomas was absent at this occasion as well. What Maccini fails to note, however, is the fact that Thomas was one of the Twelve, a category upheld in John's gospel (cf. esp. 20:24), while Mary Magdalene was not. As a result, the author's analogy between Thomas and Mary Magdalene breaks down, for Thomas, as one of the Twelve, may well have been included in Jesus' commission while Mary, at least in a primary sense, was not. This does not mean that Mary is beyond the pale of Jesus' commission; since the Twelve also function as representatives of believers in general in John, Mary, like other believers, is surely included in the commission in a derivative sense. Still, the fourth evangelist demonstrably maintains a salvation-historical distinction between the Twelve and other disciples of Jesus, and this distinction must not be obliterated.