d no displacements; that it has a clear and easily demonstrable chiasticstructure from beginning to end; and that it exists now in our New Testament (withthe exception of the adulteress account) exactly as it came from the author. I agreewholeheartedly with Strauss who concluded many years ago when he declared thatthe Gospel "was like the seamless robe of which it spoke (John 19:23-24), which onemay cast lots for, but cannot divide."The heart of my argument resides in this fundamental presupposition--a presup-positiondiametrically opposed to the fundamental presupposition of all previousauthors: John wrote his Gospel according to the laws of chiastic parallelism and notaccording to the laws of narrative. If the Gospel had been written according to theprinciples of narrative, one would rightly expect a logical and chronologicalsuccession of events without violent changes of geography, situation, time, andcontent. If this narrative presupposition is true, scholars would be correct indeducing that John's Gospel has suffered displacements, rearrangements, supple-mentaryinterpolations, and even several redactions.The following would be the most obvious of these displacements and rearrange-ments:(1) the cleansing of the Temple (2:13-25), which is out of place and shouldbe transposed to some point closer to the Passion account; (2) 3:27-36, which ismisplaced and should be rearranged to follow either 1:19-34 or perhaps 3:19; (3)chapters 5--7, which are not in correct order and should be rearranged so that chapter5 and chapter 7 go together, with chapter 6 preceding them; (4) parts of 10:22-39 (theshepherd and sheep parts), which are misplaced and should go somewhere in 10:1-21; (5) 12:44-50, which floats and can find no good resting place anywhere in the.Introduction Page 23Gospel; (6) chapters 15--17, which should be treated as supplementary materialadded to the Last Supper discourse by one or more editors; and (7) chapter 21, whichgives the a...
