75 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN as simple arrangement may contribute to such usage). Thus, we have posited, both Deuteronomy and John are qualitatively different from the preceding books in a way that sets them explicitly in a distinctive role. What therefore seems worth investigating next is whether there are internal commonalities between Deuteronomy and John that might contribute to such a role for both books, and particularly to honing our understanding of that role 19. Since “canon” by definition entails the existence and effort of one or more communities of faith, we begin by looking into the role played by such a community in each of the two books 20. In both cases the role of a mediator between God and people is crucial to the formation of the community in the first place: Moses stood between God and Israel as the terms of the covenant were revealed at Horeb (Sinai) (Deut 5,5), while much of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse” in John (13,31–16,33), together with the immediately following “High Priestly Prayer” (John 17), places Jesus explicitly in the role of intermediary between God and 19 Nothing in the discussion that follows should be construed to suggest that John draws solely or even particularly upon Deuteronomy among the books of the Torah, or that John is distinctive among the Gospels in its use of Deuteronomy. Indeed, John’s very first verse is taken from Genesis, and we concede readily that John is heavily dependent especially upon Exodus for the Gospel’s pervasive Name theology (cf. Exod 3,14-15; 34,6-7 vis-à-vis John’s evγω. ειμί sayings) and for its stress upon the “tabernacling” of God with hu- v manity in the Logos (cf. Exod 25–31, 35–40 vis-à-vis John 1,14). Rather, we are interested in seeing what internal commonalities, if any, specifically con- tribute to a parallel canonical role between the two books. 20 In the case of John, of course, much has been written about a “com- munity of the Beloved Disciple” or the like that produced the book ― e.g., R. BROWN, The Community of the Beloved Disciple. The Lives, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Community in New Testament Times (New York 1978). Whatever the merits of this hypothesis (and they are many), the focus of our attention is on the larger, more enduring “community of faith” that took individual works like John and incorporated them into something larger, the canon. However, the “Johannine community” hypothesis in particular re- mains significant for us, insofar as such a community’s sense of self may have contributed some of the features internal to the Gospel to be detailed in this section that, in turn, arguably contributed to the book’s larger, canonical role. On the other hand, there has been vast speculation (and a literature to match) about the “Deuteronomists”, especially in view of their theorized im- pact on the Former Prophets, Jeremiah, and other OT books. However, they are not usually described in terms of a “community” along the lines of those whose “lives, loves, and hates” underlie the Fourth Gospel.