Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The Witnesses in John

The theme of witness pervades the whole of John's gospel. There is :

The witness of John the Baptist (1:6-8)
The witness of the Father (5:32, 37; 8:18)
The witness of the Son (8:14, 18)
The witness of the Spirit (John 15:26)
The witness of the works of Christ (5:36, 10:25)
The witness of the scriptures (5:39)
The witness of the disciples (15:27) including the witness of the disciple that Jesus loved (19:35, 21:24)
The purpose of the witness was that all should believe (20:31)

1:6

1:6-8 There came a man , sent from God, whose name was John. He came for the purpose of witness, to bear witness concerning the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but (came) to bear witness concerning the light.

Verse 6 begins the many witnesses in the gospel of John to the true light (Jesus).

Monday, February 25, 2008

1:51

1:51 Indeed and in truth I tell you', he went on to say to him, 'you will all see heaven opened and the angles of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.'

The open heaven is a concept found in Genesis. In Genesis 28 Jacob had a vision of a ladder that came down from heaven and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it and when he awoke he called that place Bethel (the House of God) .

2:3 sight


2:3 When wine had run short, Jesus' mother said to him 'They have no wine'.

You see this throughout the gospel of John. Man gets to zero and then the Lord gave life. T. Austin Sparks calls it the zero point. They had no capacity. It is the place we need to come to. We need to recognize that in ourselves we have no capacity. We can not make the old man better. We have to be born again. We need the life of the Lord to become a new creation.

They had run out of wine and had no where to go to get wine.

1:1 a

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

It is not by accident that the Gospel begins with the same phrase as the book of Genesis. Gen 1:1 introduces the story of the old creation while John introduces the story of the new creation.

According to Bruce the English term Word is an inadequate rendering of the Greek logos, but it would be hard to find anything in English that better represented logos.

Moffat translation says 'The logos existed in the very beginning'.

Phillips renders the clause 'At the beginning God expressed himself' and then follows 'That personal expression, that word, was with God. . .'

Bruce says we can better understand logos by the phrase 'word in action'. The true background of logos comes from the Hebrew revelation of 'the word of God' which in the O.T. denotes God in action especially in creation, revelation and deliverance. Over and over in the creation narrative we read 'God said . . . and it was so'. Ps 33:6 states 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were made'.

The Gospel of John, F.F. Bruce

Prologue (John 1:1-18)

The narrative as a whole spells out the message of the prologue: that in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth the glory of God was uniquely and perfectly disclosed.

Key words of the gospel that appear in the prologue are: life, light, witness, and glory.

Source: The Gospel of John, F.F. Bruce

Sunday, February 24, 2008

1:4

1:4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

This life is the light of human beings (ton anthropon). This life gives natural illumination to reason and spiritual illumination to the human heart. It is this supernatural illumination (light) that dispels the darkness of sin and unbelief.

Sources: The Gospel of John, F.F. Bruce

1:5

1:5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

In the first creation, darkness was upon the face of the deep (Gen. 1:2) until God called light into being, so with the new creation there is spiritual darkness on the face of the human heart until the the light of men which is the life in Jesus shines upon it.

Apart from the light in Christ the world is encompassed by darkness. The Greek word katelaben is translated overcome in the RSV. According to Bruce mastered would be another good translation for katelaben. We know that light and darkness are opposites, but they are not opposites of equal power. Light is always stronger than darkness and darkness can not overcome light or master it. One small candle can illuminate a dark room and not be dimmed by the darkness there.

We often here darkness and light taught in an equal type of dualism. The Bible dispels this by showing us that the true light Jesus has come into the world and darkness is being overtaken.

Sources: The Gospel of John, F.F. Bruce

Some Johannine Literature

I found this link for references to writings about the Gospel of John.
link

Here are some important works on the Gospel of John

Important Works on the Fourth Gospel

Background
•John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel.
•Richard Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences
•James Charlesworth, John and the Dead Sea Scrolls
•R. Alan Culpepper and C. Clifton Black.eds., Exploring the Gospel of John
•C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth *
•James Dunn’s article, “Let John be John: A Gospel for its Time”,
•R. Kysar’s The Fourth Evangelist and His Gospel.
•Stephen Motyer, Your Father the Devil? A New Approach to John and the Jews
•John Painter’, John: Witness and Theologian
•John W. Pryor, John: Evangelist of the Covenant People.
•Stephen Smalley’s book, John: Evangelist and Interpreter,
•D. Moody Smith, The Theology of the Gospel of John,

Commentaries
•C. K. Barrett’s, The Gospel According to John *
•G. R. Beasley-Murray, John, *
•Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (Two volumes)
•F.F. Bruce, The Gospel of John *
•D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John
•Frank Cox, According to John *
•Culpepper’s, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel.
•C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth *
•Jonathan D. Huntzinger, John
•Craig, S. Keener , John (Two volumes)
•Craig A. Evans, Word and Glory. On The Exegetical and Theological Background of John’s Prologue.
•Kostenberger, Andreas J. John (BECT) *
•Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John,
•David Lipscomb, A commentary on The Gospel of John, *
•Francis J. Moloney, Belief in the Word (Two volumes- John 1-4 & Signs and Shadows: 5-12).
•Morris, Leon Morris, The Gospel According to John *
•H. Odeberg’s The Fourth Gospel
•Mark W. G. Stibbe, John’s Gospel
•C. H. Talbert’s, Reading John
•Merrill C. Tenney, John The Gospel of Belief *
•Elmer Towns, The Gospel of John Believe and Live *
•Ben Witherington’s John’s Wisdom.

History and Historicity
•Craig Blomberg, The Reliability of the Gospel of John
•C. H. Dodd’s book, Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel
•John A. T. Robinson, The Priority of John.
•The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple: Narrative, History, and Theology in the Gospel of John (Baker Academic, 2007)

Authorship
•Thomas L. Brodie, The Quest for the Origin of John’s Gospel: A Source-Oriented Approach.
•D.A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo, and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament
•James Charlesworth, The Beloved Disciple: Whose Witness Validates the Gospel of John? Sources
•Denaux, ed., John and the Synoptics,
•R. T. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel,
•Martin Hengel’s, The Johannine Question,
•Barnabas Lindars, Behind the Fourth Gospel,
•D. Moody Smith, John Among the Gospels: The Relationship in Twentieth-Century Research.
•D. Moody Smith, The Composition and Order of the Fourth Gospel & Johannine Christianity: Essays on its Setting, Sources, and Theology
•Urban C. von Wahlde, The Fourth Gospel and its Predecessor and Earliest Version of John’s Gospel: Recovering the Gospel of Signs.

The Johannine Community
•Raymond Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple
•Oscar Cullmann, The Johannine Circle
•Bill Domeris, “Christology and Community"
•J. Louis Martyn’s History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel
•David Rensberger, Johannine Faith and Liberating Community
•Fernando F. Segovia, “The Significance of Social Location in Reading John’s Story”
•Urban C. von Wahlde, “Community in Conflict: The History and Social Context of the Johannine Community”

Theology
•The Gospel of John and Christian Theology Richard Bauckham (editor), Carl Mosser (editor) *
•Peder Borgen, “God’s Agent in the Fourth Gospel”
•Delbert Burkett, The Son of the Man in the Gospel of John.
•Maurice Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God.
•James Dunn, Christology in the Making
•J. Harris, Jesus as ‘God’
•Lars Hartman, “Johannine Jesus-Belief and Monotheism”,
•E. Harvey, “Christ as Agent”
•William Loader, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: Structure and Issues,
•Wayne Meeks, “Equal to God”
•Wayne A. Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism”.
•Maarten Menken, “The Christology of the Fourth Gospel: A Survey of Recent Research”
•Francis J. Moloney, The Johannine Son of Man
•Jerome Neyrey, An Ideology of Revolt: John’s Christology in Social-Science Perspective.
•Robert Rhea, The Johannine Son of Man
•Marianne M. Thompson, The Humanity of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel

Other Related Books with insight into the Gospel of John
•Andrew Murray, The True Vine *
•T Austin Sparks, Discipleship in the School of Christ *
•T Austin Sparks, The School of Christ *
•Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, Volume II (The writings of John) *
•Bruce Wilkinson, Secrets of the Vine *


I found many these on the "Christ my righteousness" blog written by Celucien L. Joseph and have added or subtracted some of my own.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

A Space to post Bible study thoughts

I created the study of John's gospel to have a place to store thoughts on this book of the Bible. John has been one of my favorite books of the Bible and in 2008 I am reading through the gospel of John many times.