John’s Gospel has been loved, interpreted and reinterpreted by Christian believers since it was first composed. It has also been the subject of intense academic study by scholars from within and outside the Church. This book seeks to make available to academics, students, clergy, teachers and a wider public insights from this scholarship and my own reflections, resulting from some 25 years of New Testament teaching and research. It is written as far as possible in simple language, with technical terms explained and Greek and Hebrew transliterated; at the same time, it regularly interacts with professional scholarship and the unending stream of new publications in danger of engulfing the would-be writer on John.
A. T. Hanson once suggested that older scholars who attempt to write anything substantial on John take their lives into their hands. From Origen in the fourth century to Ernst Haenchen in the twentieth, Johannine experts have died before completing their books. The commentaries of Bernard, Hoskyns, Sanders and Haenchen were all published posthumously, as was Robinson’s The Priority of John. Raymond Brown died while revising his great commentary. This untoward ‘mortality’ may perhaps be caused by a tendency among scholars to wait until their later years before writing on John – a task often seen as the crown of their endeavours. But a further factor must surely be the complexity and range of Johannine scholarship and the sheer depth of John’s theology.
My own interest in John goes back to school days and early years as a professional Greek scholar. I am immensely grateful to Robin Barbour, then Professor of New Testament Exegesis at Aberdeen University, for first inviting me, in the late 1970s, to lecture to second-year theological students on John, and for the impetus this gave me to pursue Johannine studies in greater depth. Under Howard Marshall, his successor in the Aberdeen chair, further courses followed at honours level and beyond. Later, when I was working at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Professor Christopher Rowland invited me to give lectures on John’s Gospel at the University of Oxford. To these colleagues, to my former doctoral and master’s students, and to all whom I taught at undergraduate level and in summer schools, I extend my sincere thanks for their enthusiasm for John, and their indirect contribution to this book through shared thoughts and questions. The book is dedicated to them.
I should also like to express appreciation for all the scholars whose works are discussed in this volume, and the many others too numerous to cite who have helped form its thought. Although I may differ from them in places, this book is the richer for the stimulus of their contributions. Special thanks go to those colleagues who have discussed John with me at the Johannine Seminar of the British New Testament Society and other scholarly gatherings.
In these days of reader-response criticism we are particularly conscious of ways in which personal and social background influences interpretation of texts. I have written this book as a critical scholar who is also a committed Christian and a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church. The Bible and the life of the Church have shaped my faith, as has the process of intellectual enquiry, including the study of other cultures and faiths. From my first study of John’s Gospel I have admired it and been inspired by it; but over the years I have become increasingly aware of the problems it poses for Jewish readers and others who see the New Testament as responsible for fostering anti-Semitism, intolerance and bigotry. I have tried to face these difficulties honestly while continuing to recognize the immense potential for good within the Bible and this Gospel in particular.
In interpreting John I have striven to be as conciliatory as possible towards those of other faiths, while remaining faithful to the text. To this end, the expressions ‘Hebrew Bible’ and ‘Jewish Scriptures’ have been used in preference to ‘Old Testament’, and ‘BCE’ (before the Common Era) and ‘CE’ (of the Common Era) instead of ‘BC’ (before Christ) and ‘AD’ (anno Domini). I am well aware that a fully objective analysis is impossible; but truth has been the first priority, even if this means challenging some traditional understandings. I have worked primarily from the Greek and Hebrew texts, although I have regularly consulted the standard translations. Unless otherwise stated, all biblical renderings are my own; they make no attempt at elegance or ‘dynamic equivalence’, but are designed to bring out the text’s structure and basic meaning.
I should like to thank the staff of SPCK for their patience and courtesy, and Ruth McCurry, the commissioning editor, for her enthusiasm for the project. Most of all I want to thank my husband, Patrick Edwards – vir optimus et eruditus – for his unfailing support and help from the book’s first inception to the final stages. He has read every chapter, in more than one draft, and devoted untold hours to checking and indexing biblical references. I am deeply grateful to him for his comments, constructive criticisms and encouragement.
Ruth B. Edwards
Aberdeen