Directly or indirectly, race makes many appearances in the Fourth Gospel. Sometimes, this is simply a matter of identifying a character as a member of a particular race, such as a Samaritan (4:7), a Judean (4:9), or some "Greeks" (12:20). Other times, ethnicity features in the gospel's rhetoric of challenge and riposte. At its most blunt, this amounts to name-calling--as when Jesus is called a "Samaritan," (8:48). What is the meaning of all of this attention to ethnic labels? Race in John's Gospel: Toward an Ethnos-Conscious Approach investigates how John reflects the racialized ideas current in its milieu, challenging some and adapting others. What is the gospel saying about race, racialization, and the significance of peoplehood? Does it adopt or reject the category, as popularly understood in antiquity? Ultimately, John dismisses race as valid grounds for prejudice or discrimination, devaluing the very criteria on which earthly race is based. The cumulative effect of this rhetoric is to render earthly race invisible, exposing race as irrelevant and illusory. However, John's anthropology is layered, and looks beyond this unimportant earthly level.

Above it, John constructs a heavenly level of racial identity, based on one's descent from either God or the devil.