If I could do it all over . . .

I doubt there is anyone nearing the latter phase of their dissertation who has not said "If I could do it all over I would have studied that instead." All you can see, the deeper into the process you go, is how difficult your topic truly is. So, at the risk of being a cliché, I will herein say what I would do if I could do it all over.

At the beginning of the dissertation process I did not yet fully understand what I was asking, and why. I thought I was asking questions about the historicity of the Johannine aposynagogos passages (i.e. 9:22, 12:42, 16:2). I was, of course, and am, but it has only been as I went on that I realized more fully why I was asking these questions. I now realize that I was really asking three questions. First, what was the sociological role of memory in the construction of the Jesus tradition? Second, given that most scholarly efforts at answering the first question have focused upon the Synoptic Gospels and to a lesser extent Paul, how would we answer that question if we focused instead upon the Gospel of John? Third, given what we have to say about the first and second question, what can we say about a particular set of historical claims made in John's Gospel, specifically those found in the aposynagogos passages?

If I could do it all over, I would focus just upon the second of these questions. I would bring more fully into the discussion the Letters of John. I would thus have focused upon what I call in my dissertation "the social history of Johannine knowledge." Certainly, this has emerged as a major theme in my dissertation. In retrospect, I think that I ought to have made it the central theme.

Of course, if I had done so, I would probably be sitting here writing about how I should have made the aposynagogos passages the focus of my dissertation. The grass is always greener. It seems the way of things. That said, I did not yet clear;u recognize that I was so keenly interested in "the social of Johannine knowledge" when I began this dissertation, and perhaps the fact that I would like to focus my attention there speaks to how much I have learned through writing this beast.