The Good Shepherd παροιμία (John 10:1-21) and John’s Implied Audience: A Thought Experiment in Reading the Fourth Gospel

It is often said that the Johannine Jesus never utters a narrative parable like those that are so ubiquitous throughout  the  Synoptics. However,  in  John  10,  we  have  the  closest  parallel  in  the  so-called  “Good  Shepherd”  discourse,  where  Jesus  uses  a  “figure  of  speech” (παροιμία) to compare himself to a benevolent or noble shepherd. The present article will explore this παροιμία in light of the unfolding narrative Christology over the first nine chapters. Against that backdrop, we will examine the questions: “What historical information can reasonably be inferred as part of the literary construct known as the implied audience?”, and “How has the implied audience been prepared by the narrator to receive this metaphorical speech?”