316 Jeremy M. Hutton source, yielding oi\ko" kataskeuh'" for Origen), it would have been impossible for Fortna to fully ground his southern localization of the presumed locale Bethabara. But this recognition, combined with Fortna’s detailed look at the likely textual development of the Gospel of John, calls into question Riesner’s hard-fought position. Fortna has, in my opinion, convincingly shown that the Gospel of John’s topographic notices all work towards the gospel writer’s theological schema (36). Topographic notices, while theologically meaningful in the Gospel, remain a product of redaction and therefore potentially unreliable as a historically verisimilitudinous itinerary of Jesus’ movements without further critical study. The case at hand is one such example of a relatively minor textual redaction effected by the author that has led to significant topographical reorganization of Jesus’ movements. This difficulty seems to have gone unrecognized by all those who would construct an itinerary unproblematically on the basis of John 1–2 (37), and particularly on John 11: because the notice just before the Lazarus episode (John 11) places Jesus at that “place where John had been baptizing formerly” (to;n tovpon o{pou h\n ΔIwavnnh" to; prw'ton baptivzwn; John 10,40), most scholars — including Riesner (and even Fortna himself!) (38) — have assumed that Jesus was at Bethany beyond the Jordan when he received word of Lazarus’ illness. But the text provides only the description of the location as “across the Jordan”: Kai; ajph'lqen pavlin pevran tou' ΔIordavnou eij" to;n tovpon o{pou hn 'Iwavnnh" to; prw'ton baptivzwn… (Jn 10,40). ] The phrase pevran tou' ΔIordavnou is used only twice elsewhere in the Gospel of John, respectively, 1,28 and 3,26. Fortna judged the first of these verses (1,28) to be a Johannine addition to a testimonial about Jesus’ nature (1,19-34) taken over wholly from the Signs Source (39). That source, which did not specify the locale in which the Baptist’s testimonial took place, seems to have assumed that this “introduction to the signs was set, like the first four of them, in the north” (40). The (36) FORTNA, “Locale”, 58-95. (37) E.g., M.-É. BOISMARD – A. LAMOUILLE, Synopse des Quartes Évangiles III. L’Évangile de Jean (Paris 21987) 99-100, followed by both PIXNER, Wege, 171-172; and RIESNER, Bethanien, 73-76. (38) FORTNA, “Locale”, 78: “Now…he withdraws from Judea…to the Bapti- st’s original place of activity — presumably the Bethany of 1:28, where Jesus had first appeared” (emphasis added). (39) Ibid., 67; see also FORTNA, Gospel of Signs, 174. (40) FORTNA, “Locale”, 67-68.