This volume is a product of the classroom. As I taught John’s Gospel year after year, I found that my method gradually changed from a topical or thematic approach to a sequential one. I allowed myself to be guided more and more by the Gospel writer’s order of narration, and the course took on the shape of a commentary coming to realization in dialogue.
The invitation in 1977 to contribute to this series therefore came as a welcome opportunity. It seemed that the volume would practically write itself. In reality, the task was not that simple. A real commentary, even a nontechnical one, necessitates attention to every verse and to particular details of language and translation to an extent that classroom work seldom requires. Though some earlier translation work I had done on John stood me in good stead, I found myself asking questions I had not asked before and noticing particulars that had previously escaped my attention. The undertaking proved to be more than I had bargained for at the beginning, and I profited immensely from it.
I would like to thank Ward Gasque for involving me in this worthwhile project, and many of my students over the years, for asking good questions, writing some good papers, and in general sharing my delight in this Gospel. I am grateful as well to the translators and publisher of the New International Version, for providing a good text from which to work, and to scholars past and present who have enriched my understanding—B. F. Westcott, C. K. Barrett, and C. H. Dodd in my early years of teaching, and Raymond Brown more recently.
My personal thanks go to Bill Jackson and former colleague Rod Whitacre, for their helpful comments on the first draft of chapters 1–5, to Corinne Languedoc, for her good typing and good cheer, and to my friends at Hendrickson Publishers—especially Phil Frank—for their careful work on the second edition. Above all, I am grateful to my wife Betty and our four children. The years in which I worked on this project were eventful ones for us all, full of unexpected changes, but I would not have traded them for anything in the world. Without the bonds of family, I would not have produced this book or much else. Many thanks to them all for the moral support necessary to bring this modest volume to birth.