John

Gerard Sloyan

Westminster John Knox Press, 2009-07-15 - 239 pages

In this volume, Gerard Sloyan utilizes the lectionary approach to offer new insights into understanding the book of John. In so doing, he puts the Fourth Gospel in the Old Testament context within which the early church received the public readings of this Gospel. His emphasis on the use of John within first-century Christianity enables modern readers to grasp the meaning of the Gospel message. Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching is a distinctive resource for those who interpret the Bible in the church. Planned and written specifically for teaching and preaching needs, this critically acclaimed biblical commentary is a major contribution to scholarship and ministry.

 

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The Gospel and Epistles of John: A Concise Commentary

 

 

Raymond Edward Brown

Liturgical Press, 1988 - 136 pages

Revised to the 1986 NAB translation of the Bible.

 

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A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on John 1-4

 

John F. McHugh

T & T Clark, 2009 - 323 pages

For over one hundred years the International Critical Commentary has had a special place amongst works on the Bible. This new volume on John brings together all the relevant aids to exegesis - linguistic, textual, archaeological, historical, literary and

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John, Jesus, and History, Volume I: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views

 

Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, Tom Thatcher

Brill Academic Publishers, 2007 - 346 pages

 

Over the last two centuries, many scholars have considered the Gospel of John off-limits for all quests for the historical Jesus. That stance, however, creates a new set of problems that need to be addressed thoughtfully. The essays in this book, reflecting the ongoing deliberations of an international group of Johannine and Jesus scholars, critically assess two primary assumptions of the prevalent view: the dehistoricization of John and the de-Johannification of Jesus. The approaches taken here are diverse, including cognitive-critical developments of Johannine memory, distinctive characteristics of the Johannine witness, new historicism, Johannine-Synoptic relations, and fresh analyses of Johannine traditional development. In addition to offering state-of-the-art reviews of Johannine studies and Jesus studies, this volume draws together an emerging consensus that sees the Gospel of John as an autonomous tradition with its own perspective, in dialogue with other traditions. Through this challenging of critical and traditional assumptions alike, new approaches to John's age-old riddles emerge, and the ground is cleared for new and creative ways forward. The contributors are Paul Anderson; D. A. Carson; Colleen M. Conway; Paula Fredriksen; Felix Just, S.J.; Robert Kysar; Andrew Lincoln; John Painter; Sidney Palmer; Mark Allan Powell; D. Moody Smith; Tom Thatcher; Marianne Meye Thompson; Gilbert Van Belle; and Jack Verheyden.

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Departure and Consolation: The Johannine Farewell Discourses in Light of Greco-Roman Literature

 

George L. Parsenios

Brill, 2005 - 174 pages

In contrast to the common opinion that the Johannine Farewell Discourses represent solely the Jewish genre of the Testament, George Parsenios argues that features of the discourses are misread or missed completely apart from Greco-Roman literature.Evidence from classical drama, for instance, assists in reading Jesus' return to the Father as a dramatic exit and, further, accounts for the puzzling delay of Jesus at 14:31 without recourse to redaction theories.Consolation literature and the literary symposium emphasize Jesus' continuing and consoling presence, with particular attention to the Paraclete's role as doppelgdnger.The thread that binds the various chapters into a coherent whole, therefore, is the utility of classical literature in clarifying Jesus' consoling presence even after his departure to the Father.

 

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Anatomies of Narrative Criticism: The Past, Present, and Futures of the Fourth Gospel as Literature

 

Tom Thatcher, Stephen D. Moore

Society of Biblical Lit, 2008-10-01 - 304 pages

 

Reflecting on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Alan Culpeppers milestone Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel (1983), Anatomies of Narrative Criticism explores current trends in the study of the Gospel of John as literature. The contributors to the volume represent a wide range of methodological approaches that all explore ways that contemporary readers generate meaning from Johns story of Jesus. The book includes an introduction to narrative-critical studies of John; essays on specific themes and passages that focus on interpretation of the text, history of research, hermeneutical approaches, and future trends in research; and a reflective response from Alan Culpepper. Overall, the book seeks to trace the history and project the future of the study of the Bible as narrative. The contributors are Paul N. Anderson, Colleen M. Conway, R. Alan Culpepper, Robert Kysar, Tat-siong Benny Liew, Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., Stephen D. Moore, Adele Reinhartz, Jeffrey L. Staley, Mark Stibbe, Tom Thatcher, Ruben Zimmermann, and Jean Zumstein.

 

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John and Empire: Initial Explorations

 

Warren Carter

T & T Clark, 2008-04-15 - 423 pages

 

In this significant and innovative contribution, Warren Carter explores John's Gospel as a work of imperial negotiation in the context of Ephesus, capital of the Roman province of Asia. Carter employs multiple methods, rejects sectarian scenarios, and builds on other Christian writings and recent studies of diaspora synagogues that combined participationist lifestyles with observance of distinctive practices to argue that imperial negotiation was a contested issue for late first-century Jesus-believers. While a number of Jesus-believers probably lived societally-accommodated lives, John's Gospel employs a "rhetoric of distance" to urge much less accommodation and to create an alternative "anti-society" for followers of Jesus crucified by the empire but vindicated by God. In addition to establishing this tense historical setting, chapters identify various arenas and strategies of imperial negotiation in wide-ranging discussions of the gospel's genre, plot, Christological titles, developing traditions, eternal life, the image of God as father, ecclesiology, Jesus' conflict with Pilate, and resurrection and ascension.

 

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Roman Imperial Ideology and the Gospel of John

 

Lance Byron Richey

Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2007 - 228 pages

 

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Augustine's Text of John: Patristic Citations and Latin Gospel Manuscripts

 

H. A. G. Houghton

Oxford University Press, 2008-11-15 - 407 pages

What sort of Bible did Augustine have? How did he quote from it -- and was he accurate? Do Augustine's biblical citations transmit readings not found in any surviving manuscripts? This book is part of a major project on the Old Latin versions of the Gospel according to John, and uses Augustine as a test-case to examine the importance of the evidence provided by the Church Fathers for the text of the Gospels. The early history of the Latin Bible is reconstructed from Augustine's comments in his treatise De doctrina christiana (On Christian teaching). Details are assembled from sermons, letters, and other writings to show how Augustine and his contemporaries used the Bible in the liturgy of the Church, public debates, and in composing their own works. Augustine's own methods of citing the Bible are analysed, and features are identified which are characteristic of citations produced from memory rather than read from a gospel codex. The second part of the book is a chronological survey of the biblical text in Augustine's works, showing how he switched from using the older versions of the Gospel to the revised text of Jerome, which later became known as the Vulgate. Finally, a verse-by-verse commentary is provided on all the significant readings in Augustine's text of John, assessing their significance for the history of the Latin Bible, and in some cases the Greek tradition as well. Details are also given of Augustine's exegesis of particular verses of the Gospel, making this an indispensable handbook for biblical scholars and church historians alike.

 

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Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ

 

Judith L. Kovacs, Christopher Rowland, Rebekah Callow

John Wiley & Sons, 2004-01-05 - 315 pages

This ground-breaking commentary reveals the far-reaching influence of the Apocalypse on society and culture, and the impact it has had on the Christian Church through the ages.Approaching the Apocalypse chapter by chapter, the authors consider its effects, not only on theologians from Origen and Augustine to late twentieth-century theologians of liberation, but also on writers, artists, musicians, political figures, visionaries and others, including Dante, Hildegard of Bingen, Milton, Newton, the English Civil War radicals, Dürer, Turner, Blake, Handel and Franz Schmidt. They show that, despite the enormous range of interpretations, those who use the Apocalypse tend either to see it as a kind of sophisticated code to interpret history, or as a parable about the appropriate response to God in political, ecclesiastical, or personal life. This ground-breaking commentary reveals the far-reaching influence of the Apocalypse on society and culture, and the impact it has had on the Christian Church through the ages.Approaching the Apocalypse chapter by chapter, the authors consider its effects, not only on theologians from Origen and Augustine to late twentieth-century theologians of liberation, but also on writers, artists, musicians, political figures, visionaries and others, including Dante, Hildegard of Bingen, Milton, Newton, the English Civil War radicals, Dürer, Turner, Blake, Handel and Franz Schmidt. They show that, despite the enormous range of interpretations, those who use the Apocalypse tend either to see it as a kind of sophisticated code to interpret history, or as a parable about the appropriate response to God in political, ecclesiastical, or personal life.

 

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Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins

Steven J. Friesen

Oxford University Press, 2001-10-25 - 285 pages

After more than a century of debate about the significance of imperial cults for the interpretation of Revelation, this is the first study to examine both the archaeological evidence and the Biblical text in depth. Friesen argues that a detailed analysis of imperial cults as they were practiced in the first century CE in the region where John was active allows us to understand John's criticism of his society's dominant values. He demonstrates the importance of imperial cults for society at the time when Revelation was written, and shows the ways in which John refuted imperial cosmology through his use of vision, myth, and eschatological expectation.

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The Gospel According to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary

 Thomas L. Brodie

Oxford University Press, 1997-11-27 - 640 pages

This commentary expands Johannine studies in two directions. First, drawing on the methods of literary criticism, it gives new force to a view which is both ancient and modern--that John's gospel, far from being a poorly-edited mixture of sometimes-conflicting traditions, is in fact a coherent unity, an account of Jesus which, however diverse its sources, is a finely-chiselled work of art. Second, it indicates that the unity of John's gospel is founded ultimately not on history or theology but on spirituality. This too corresponds to a view which is both very old--John was always known as the spiritual gospel--and very recent. The present study spells out that idea in new detail. It indicates that the account of Jesus is so written that the tensions and complexities of the text reflect the tensions and complexities of human life, providing the reader not only with an account of Jesus but also with an anthropology--a map of the development of the human spirit.

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