John as Divine Romance: Reading the Fourth Gospel with the Ancient Novel

Why does the Gospel of John tell its story of Jesus the way that it does? Informed by semiotic theory, Eric Foster-Whiddon reads the Fourth Gospel in comparison with the Greek novel Callirhoe, observing how recognition, beauty, travel, and love function in both narratives as intertextual frames that pressure the reader to infer meaning. Analysis of these intertextual frames informs a hypothetical recovery of the cultural encyclopedia from which authors and (more importantly for this study) readers in first-century western Asia Minor would draw when composing or interpreting a story like the Gospel of John or Callirhoe.