John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice
Overview
In this volume, Stanley Porter tackles a variety of important and often highly contentious topics within the Gospel of John as a means of defining and capturing the distinctive Johannine voice. Subjects discussed include John in relation to competing Gospels, the public proclamation of Jesus in John, the sources of John’s Gospel, John’s prologue, the “I Am” sayings, the notion of truth, the Passover theme, and the ending of the book.
Each chapter puts forward new and insightful proposals regarding the topics concerned. Porter does not shy away from matters that have often perplexed Johannine scholars, and he confronts some of the viewpoints that have led to confusion in the field. In exploring John’s unique perspective and voice, Porter makes a significant contribution to the wider fields of Jesus studies and New Testament investigation.
Key Features
- Highlights John’s unique contribution to the portrayal of Jesus
- Explores topics that are complex and difficult in Johannine studies
Contents
- John’s Gospel, Competing Gospels, and Jesus
- Public Proclamation of Jesus in John’s Gospel
- The Sources of John’s Gospel and Jesus
- John’s Gospel Prologue and Jesus
- Jesus and the “I Am” Sayings in John’s Gospel
- Jesus, “the Jews,” and John’s Gospel
- John’s Gospel, Truth, and Jesus
- Jesus, the Passover Theme, and John’s Gospel
- Jesus and the Ending of John’s Gospel
Top Highlights
“This distinctly German type of criticism,7 at least at its outset, had widespread effects on Johannine scholarship and severely eroded any confidence in apostolic authorship, as well as in an early date of composition. These results were due to form-critics placing the composition of the Gospel at a time far removed from both apostolic origins and an early date.” (Pages 38–39)
“The Jews’ here must be those Jews who heard this discourse. To argue otherwise, I believe, is needlessly tendentious. The division arises on account of the words and thus is restricted to those who heard the words, as is indicated in the result: many of them (πολλοὶ ἐξ αὐτῶν) were saying that he had a demon, and others (ἄλλοι) that his words were not those of someone demon possessed. The composite of those with differing opinions represents ‘the Jews’ in this context (i.e., the Jews who were divided, certainly not all Jews everywhere).” (Page 164)
“One of these functions is what might be termed a singularizing use (related perhaps to so-called demonstrative use, though without appealing to an original function of the article). In this case, οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι is identified as a structural (and, hence, meaning) unit as opposed to another group or other or wider groups (contrastive meaning units). A rendering might be ‘these Jews,’ or ‘the particular Jews here or involved in this situation,’ identifying them as the participants in a particular episode.” (Page 161)
“One can see that a common pattern is for the word group ‘the Jews’ to have various modulations, or limitations, of its sense on the basis of context (sometimes including structural indicators) so as to restrict its meaning to a variety of subgroups within Judaism, such as the Pharisees, chief priests, or other leaders. These groups are often invoked earlier in the discourse (in this sense the two constructions with different senses, ‘the Jews’ and another group, have the same referent).” (Page 169)
Praise for the Print Edition
In this bold and insightful book on John, Stanley Porter plies the same rigorous scholarship he has demonstrated in Synoptic studies toward discerning the authentic voice of the Fourth Gospel. . . . Refusing to relegate the Johannine Gospel to the product of a backwater, sectarian community, Porter restores it to its rightful place at the table—at the center of Gospel and Jesus studies alike.
—Paul N. Anderson, professor of biblical and Quaker studies, George Fox University
Stanley Porter’s studies on the Gospel of John are rich with grammatical, textual, and exegetical insights. Readers will especially appreciate how he integrates John’s prologue, the ‘I am’ statements, and chapter 21 into the Gospel as a whole, in welcome contrast to scholarship that historically has tended to interpret these elements as in various ways alien or supplemental.
—Craig A. Evans, professor of New Testament, Acadia Divinity College
Product Details
- Title: John, His Gospel, and Jesus: In Pursuit of the Johannine Voice
- Author: Stanley E. Porter
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Publication Date: 2015
- Pages: 309
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Topic: Biblical Studies
Stanley E. Porter, PhD, University of Sheffield, has taught for more than 30 years in post-secondary institutions in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He is a Greek and New Testament expert, and, since 2001, has been the president, dean, and professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College. He's best known for his works on verbal aspects in New Testament Greek, is actively involved in OpenText.org and the Linguistics Institute of Ancient and Biblical Greek, and is a regular columnist for Christian Week.
Porter is the author or editor of numerous New Testament and Greek studies, including Idioms of the Greek New Testament, Discourse Analysis and the New Testament: Approaches and Results, and Dictionary of New Testament Background. He has edited over 80 volumes and authored 28 books on various New Testament and related topics, including How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation, and The Gospel of John in Modern Interpretation. Plus, he's published more than 450 journal articles, chapters in books, and dictionary entries and regularly speaks at major conferences and other venues around the world.
His interests include Greek language and linguistics, hermeneutics and various methods of interpretation, and a range of New Testament studies from the Gospels to John to Acts to Paul. He is also a papyrological and text-oriented research specialist and is interested in the wider Greco-Roman world. Outside of academia, Stanley has served in young adult ministry and has assisted in developing a lay training institute for the local church.