“Dematerializing” Religion: Reading John 2–4 as a Chiasm The structural arrangement of John 2–4 has been variously understood from a simple geographical movement to more complex parallelisms of different kinds. While it might be safe to say that the majority of current Johannine scholars ascribes to the literary unity of these three chapters, no proposal for their particular structure has received the honor of holding the consensus. This lack of agreement goes hand in hand with a gap in thorough discussions of existing proposals. The prologue, the farewell discourse, the signs and various literary devices and symbols have preoccupied students of the Gospel at length. But a monograph about the literary coherence and structure of the Gospel’s opening chapters after the prologue has yet to appear. This article probes into the area first by a critical investigation of Moloney’s sequential reading of the text, followed by a suggested chiastic structure that incorporates many strengths of common, scattered, and possibly new observations alike (1). I. Synthetic Parallelism: Moloney’s proposal for John 2–4 1. Moloney’s Structure of John 2–4 In his essay from 1978 as well as in his commentary on the Gospel of John twenty years later Francis Moloney argued for a Cana-to-Cana cycle in John 2–4. He further identifies the uniting thread of the texts as “radical openness to the word of Jesus as a criterion of true faith” (2) as the author leads “the reader through a (1) English quotations from the Gospel of John have been taken from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise noted. (2) F.J. MOLONEY, “From Cana to Cana (John 2,1-4,54)”, Studia Biblica 2 (ed. E.A. LIVINGSTONE) (JSNTSupp. 2; Sheffield 1979) 192; Women First Among the Faithful (Notre Dame, IN 1986) 97-100; The Gospel of John (Sacra Pagina 4; Collegeville, MN 1998) 148, 156-157 (sum); also 68-69 (Mary and complete faith), 79-80 (Jews and unbelief); 97 (Nicodemus and partial belief, also pp. 91.93), 107 (John the Baptist and authentic belief), 118-119 (Samaritan woman and unbelief), 127 (Samaritan woman and partial belief), 148 (Samaritans and authentic belief).