A Metanarrative of Disability in John 5

Abstract

Within Johannine texts, impairment carries associated meanings to the point that the narrative figure is reduced to the impairment rather than having an independent and/or complex identity. A metanarrative of disability exists within these texts, regarding assuming that attitudes, capabilities or attributes relate to particular impairments. This article will apply the concept of metanarrative of disability to John 5:1–15 and use David Bolt’s methodology, that of focusing on a particular impairment to explore the presence and function of a related metanarrative of disability, as an interdisciplinary starting point from which to examine how the assumption of passivity and lethargy operates through references to impaired mobility. A person with impaired mobility may well function as narrative prosthesis, but their response to Jesus should not then be attributed with iniquity or even malice, as occurs when exegetes use a metanarrative of paralysis to interpret the text. By examining how the John 5:1–15 narrative overrides the individual’s identity, it will be shown that agency is not necessarily completely erased by the author of the text, but more by interpretations invoking assumptions associated with a metanarrative constituted of lethargy and passivity. John 5:1–15 is, whether by design or inadvertently, a social commentary as well as a narrative about Jesus: impaired mobility, as a narrative tool, promotes Jesus’s authority and identity, but it concurrently challenges the assumptions made by a metanarrative of impaired mobility, a fact sometimes overlooked by interpretations of the text which are solely focused on the identity of Jesus.

Keywords

• metanarrative of disability
• impaired mobility
• john 5:1–15
• recovering agency