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The Oxford Handbook of Johannine Studies

2019; Eisenbrauns; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/bullbiblrese.29.2.0264

2576-0998

Andreas Köstenberger,

Pentecostalism and Christianity Studies

This latest addition to the Oxford Handbook series was edited by Judith Lieu, Lady Margaret Professor at Cambridge University, and Martinus de Boer, Emeritus Professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The volume covers John’s Gospel and letters (but not Revelation) in 25 chapters by 24 contributors: 1. “Introduction” (editors); 2. “The Text of the Gospel and Letters of John” (H. Houghton); 3. “Literary Sources of the Gospel and Letters of John” (Michael Labahn); 4. “John and Other Gospels” (Harold Attridge); 5. “The Story of the Johannine Community and Its Literature” (Martinus de Boer); 6. “The Beloved Disciple, the Fourth Evangelist, and the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel” (Tom Thatcher); 7. “The Gospel of John and Archaeology” (Urban C. von Wahlde); 8. “The Jews of the Fourth Gospel” (Adele Reinhartz); 9. “The Johannine Literature in a Greek Context” (Gitte Buch-Hansen); 10. “The Johannine Literature and Contemporary Jewish Literature” (Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer); 11. “The Johannine Literature and the Gnostics” (Alastair Logan); 12. “The Fourth Gospel as Narrative and Drama”; 13. “Ideological Readings of the Fourth Gospel”; 14. “Gender and the Fourth Gospel” (Colleen Conway); 15. “Social-Scientific Readings of the Gospel and Letters of John”; 16. “Symbolism and ‘Signs’ in the Fourth Gospel” (Dorothy Lee); 17. “Dualism and the World in the Gospel and Letters of John” (Jörg Frey); 18. “Eschatology and Time in the Gospel of John” (Ruben Zimmermann); 19. “The Person of Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John” (Udo Schnelle); 20. “The Purpose of the Ministry and Death of Jesus in the Gospel of John” (Jean Zumstein); 21. “Faith, Eternal Life, and the Spirit in the Gospel of John” (Catrin Williams); 22. “Ethics in Community in the Gospel and Letters of John” (Jan Van Der Watt); 23. “Temple, Festivals, and Scripture in the Gospel of John” (Bruce Schuchard); 24. “The Johannine Literature and the Canon” (Judith Lieu); 25. “Johannine Commentaries in the Early Church” (William Lamb).Certainly this volume will be helpful to convey to those interested a general sense of the field of Johannine studies. It is broadly representative of critical scholarship of the past several decades. The cast is international: seven contributors teach in the US, one in Canada, eight in continental Europe, seven in the UK, and one in Australia. Most contributors are seasoned Johannine scholars, though I was not familiar with a few of the contributors. The choice of topics is for the most part sound and predictable, though there is less focus on Johannine theology. As a result, many of the major theological themes as highlighted in works such as my Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters are not covered, for example, creation and new creation, mission, and others. The omission of mission is especially unfortunate, as this is a vital (though often neglected) Johannine theme. Several of the contributors still adhere to the “Johannine community hypothesis,” which has been severely challenged in recent years. Overall, the volume exhibits a large variety of (often contradictory) approaches to John’s Gospel that include literary studies, reader-response and ideological readings, social-scientific models, and treatments of theological motifs. Sociologically, one suspects that the lineup of contributors is to some extent a function of joint membership in elite scholarly societies and other forms of networking among a guild of scholars that shares a broad affinity in their (critical) approach to scholarship.Space requires that I limit myself to brief summaries and interactions with a representative cross-section of entries. The first chapter on the text of the Gospel and Letters provides a mere summary of options for the different readings in John 1:18 and 34. Regarding 7:53–8:12, on the other hand, the author declares categorically, “The story of the Woman Taken in Adultery. . . was not part of the earliest text of John” (p. 14). Regarding John 21, the author notes that “there is no secure evidence in the textual tradition for copies of the Gospel which omit the final chapter” (p. 16). The chapter on literary sources emphatically asserts at the outset that “Johannine scholarship has to take the extant text and its design as its starting point” (p. 23). At the same time, the author (Labahn) claims that “the assumption. . . of a community or of a school, that preserved the memory of Jesus. . . is an essential starting point” for the reconstruction of the “pre-history of the Johannine writings” (p. 26). However, it seems potentially conflicted to assert both the finality of the extant text and the essential nature of the Johannine community hypothesis. Attridge, in the chapter “John and Other Gospels,” contributes an interesting survey of the data. He concludes that John’s Gospel “creatively drew on other efforts, including the Synoptics, but did so with its own distinctive style and theological emphasis” (p. 56, emphasis added). However, he does not consider the possibility that the author may have been an eyewitness. De Boer’s chapter on the communal and composition history behind John’s Gospel helpfully chronicles much of the last few decades of Johannine scholarship but is almost entirely speculative. He does not consider the destruction of the temple as a possible significant background for the composition of John’s Gospel. In the chapter on authorship, Thatcher argues that the Beloved Disciple “was not likely the author of the Fourth Gospel in its present form” (p. 84), apparently contradicting the author’s own claims in John 21:24. Apostolic authorship is never seriously considered. Urban von Wahlde’s chapter on John’s Gospel and archaeology helpfully summarizes his previous contributions on this topic.By way of concluding assessment, in my judgment the claim by the editors that this volume has “sought to give a balanced introduction to the relevant scholarship and debate” (p. 4) is inaccurate, unless one disqualifies much of evangelical Johannine scholarship as irrelevant because it does not subscribe to the critical orthodoxy of the mainstream scholarly establishment (most notably the wholesale rejection of the possibility that the apostle John wrote the Gospel and the implications of such a view). For this reason, I can recommend this volume as a representative survey of the critical Johannine scholarship of the past few decades but feel compelled to note that those looking for a truly balanced introduction to Johannine studies will need to look elsewhere in order to supplement the material with evangelical perspectives that are either underrepresented or not represented at all in this volume. In this regard, my above-mentioned Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters may be a starting point, as well as Craig Keener’s extensive commentary on John’s Gospel and Craig Blomberg’s The Reliability of John’s Gospel.