Past scholarly literature has interpreted the orientation of the teaching of the Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel as either retrospective or prospective. First, I will argue that it is prospective, but that this does not imply that the Paraclete teaches things that have not yet been taught by Jesus. The Gospel text challenges us to conceive the teaching of the Paraclete as prospective, but also as repeating Jesus’ teaching. A synthesis of the retrospective and prospective interpretation is thus required. Second, I will argue that this paradoxical synthesis can be obtained on the basis of Kierkegaard's category of repetition.

Within the narrative of John 4.4–42 (the Samaritan woman at the well) the fact is mentioned that ‘Jacob's well’ had been given to his son Joseph (John 4.5). By calling Jacob ‘our father’ (John 4.12), the woman claims for the Samaritans a direct lineage from Jacob via Joseph. The Samaritans are designated as ‘children of Israel’ and members of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (i.e. the ‘house of Joseph’). The genealogy is embedded in a motif occurring in Scripture (the encounter at the well). Thus, it is questionable whether the passage of the woman at the well can primarily be seen as ‘mission among gentiles’. The narrative focus of the passage seems to point to a mission among the ‘children of Israel’.

Nicodemus is an enigmatic literary character who is wavering in no man's land in John's narrative between Jesus' opponents and his true disciples. Some scholars have taken Nicodemus as an example of someone of inadequate faith who remains an outsider throughout the narrative, while others have traced his development from initial and tentative faith to open and public commitment to Jesus. The present article, however, agrees with those who have acknowledged that no single trait determines Nicodemus's portrait, but, in the end, this portrait remains ambiguous. In the article, a text-centered approach to Nicodemus is complemented by asking how this ambiguous literary character may have functioned as a symbol for those who shared John's dualistic tendencies. The article draws upon the social identity approach in order to explain how Nicodemus's ambiguity may have helped the Johannine Christians to accept the uncertainties in their social environment without abandoning the stereotyped and fixed thrust in their symbolic world.