The Fourth Gospel, attributed to the apostle John, focuses more than the other three on Christ’s divinity and the three divine persons. For this reason, the Greek tradition calls St. John the Theologian. It differs significantly in style and structure from the other Gospels and has always been one of the most closely read and studied books of the Bible.
In this interview, Dr. William M. Wright IV explains his pick of five books that can help us unlock the riches of the Gospel of St. John.
Dr. William Wright is Professor at the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquense University. He is a specialist in New Testament studies with special focus on the Johannine writings. He is the author of numerous articles and several books: Rhetoric and Theology: Figural Reading of John 9 (Walter de Gruyter, 2009); The Bible and Catholic Ressourcement: Essays in Scripture and Theology (Emmaus Academic, 2019); and, with Francis Martin, The Gospel of John (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) (Baker Academic, 2015) and Encountering the Living God in Scripture: Theological and Philosophical Principles for Interpretation (Baker Academic, 2019). He has been elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas and serves on the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Ecumenical Dialogue. He is also a Lay Dominican.
- The Gospel According to John (vol. 1) (vol 2)
by Raymond E. Brown SS - The Hour of Jesus: The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus According to John
by Ignace de la Potterie SJ - The Theology of the Gospel of John
by D. Moody Smith - The New Interpreter's® Bible Commentary Volume VIII: Luke and John
by R. Alan Culpepper and Gail R. O'Day - John: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators.
edited by Bryan A. Stewart and Michael A. Thomas
...and as a supplementary recommendation... - Saint Jean : Maître spirituel
by Donatien Mollat SJ
From the Fathers on, the Church has attributed the Fourth Gospel to the apostle John. Of course, it would still be the Word of God even if it were written by someone else. What matters is that the Church recognises that it has been written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, could you share your own view on its human authorship and whether it is rooted in the teaching of St. John. Did its author also write the Letters of St. John and Revelation?
There are a couple of related questions here.
In the New Testament canon, five writings are associated with a figure named John: the Gospel of John, the three Letters of John, and the Book of Revelation. Of those five writings, the three Letters of John and the Gospel of John are very closely related in their theology, literary style, and in some of their idiom. Ironically, the Book of Revelation is the only of those five writings to name its author as John. It has some striking convergences with the other Johannine writings. For example, the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation are the only writings in the New Testament to call Jesus the Word of God. In Chapter One of the Gospel of John, and in the Canon of the Mass, Jesus is called the Lamb of God. The lamb that was slain yet is alive is also a primary image for Jesus in the Book of Revelation. So, the Gospel and the Apocalypse are the only writings to really foreground the image of Jesus as the lamb.
At the same time, there are enough literary, stylistic, and theological differences to register between the Gospel and the Letters, on the one hand, and the Apocalypse, on the other. We might think of the Gospel and the Letters as siblings of the same household, while the Apocalypse might be a cousin. There is a family resemblance between them. They are all, you might say, in the same orbit of New Testament Christianity, but they may not be from the exact same household.
For my part, I like to think that the beloved disciple is the son of Zebedee, whose traditions were preserved in the Gospel by one of his students or by a group of students, among whom may have been this John the Elder.
Discussions of the human authorship of John are related to a figure in the Gospel narrative who is called “the beloved disciple” or “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. He appears on about a half dozen occasions, starting explicitly in Chapter 13 at the Last Supper. The Gospel claims to preserve his eyewitness testimony. However, there is an indication at the very end of the Gospel that the beloved disciple has died. So, the Gospel—or at least the very end of it—was written after his death. You have this authoritative teacher, an eyewitness to Jesus, called the beloved disciple, whose testimony is preserved in the text we call the Gospel of John, perhaps by one of his students. It was not unusual for writers in antiquity to use secretaries and scribes in the composition of their texts. The great example of this is Paul, at the end of the Letter to the Romans, and perhaps Peter, in the First Letter of Peter, where the secretary who is penning the composition is named.
Seemingly, everyone in antiquity knew who this anonymous figure, the beloved disciple, was: so much so, that they did not bother to write it down for the rest of us. There is evidence from the second century that names him as John. John was a very common name in antiquity. In the New Testament there is John the Baptist, John the son of Zebedee, and John Mark. The visionary of Revelation is also named John. So, when it comes to the beloved disciple, two principal candidates emerge in antiquity: John, the son of Zebedee, and John the Elder or Presbyter, an enigmatic figure who is mentioned in a couple of early Christian sources. Some scholars associate the Fourth Gospel with him; others with the son of Zebedee. On the basis of the evidence, it is not clear that an airtight case is ever going to be made. For my part, I like to think that the beloved disciple is the son of Zebedee, whose traditions were preserved in the Gospel by one of his students or by a group of students, among whom may have been this John the Elder. I cannot prove that exegetically, but it is not totally unfounded either.
John makes explicit what is implicit in the synoptic Gospels.
When was the Fourth Gospel written?
Well, the conventional wisdom is that the Fourth Gospel was the last to have been written. There are also early Christian sources that say John lived to the time of the emperor Trajan, which is roughly the mid-nineties on our calendar. The hints that are obliquely mentioned in the Gospel of John, the conventional wisdom, and the testimony of the early Christian sources converge. It was probably written somewhere in the decade of the nineties of the first century.
The fourth Gospel is very different is style and structure from the other three and often more difficult to understand. Could you give some keys to reading it?
One of the helpful principles was mentioned by the British Johannine scholar, C.K. Barrett, and repeated by one of my teachers, Luke Timothy Johnson: John makes explicit what is implicit in the synoptic Gospels.
For example, in the synoptic Gospels, Jesus will very often talk about God as “the Father” or “my Father”. Less frequently, he will talk about himself as “the Son”. What John will do is emphasise and amplify Jesus's identity as the Son of the Father. He will draw out and emphasise what is present to a lower degree in the synoptic tradition. That is one principle to keep in mind.
Secondly, and on a more spiritual note—here I want to give credit for this principle to my mentor and cowriter Fr. Francis Martin—whenever you are going to read Scripture, the first thing to do is repent of your sins, make an act of contrition, and ask the Holy Spirit, who inspired this text, to also illumine it and show us what he wants us to see. That would be point number two: pray before reading the text.
Thirdly, read it slowly. This Gospel has so many layers to it. There are so many things going on. As you mentioned, it can be confusing and hard to understand. That is why commentaries can be helpful. Whenever we come across something that is puzzling and we suspect that there is something deeper going on, there probably is something deeper going on. Therefore, we need to really take our time with it.
1.
For your first book, you have picked what is arguably the most authoritative modern commentary on John in English: Fr Raymond E. Brown’s. He also published a separate, concise commentary. Why have you chosen this more thorough and technically advanced one?
Brown does have a smaller commentary. In that respect, it is a point of entry into his study of John and definitely a good place to start.
As you mentioned, Fr Raymond Brown's commentary on John is the landmark commentary by an American New Testament scholar. It is very thorough. It is very insightful. It is filled with linguistic, historical, and theological sensitivity. The two volumes came out respectively in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is over fifty years old. Still, it has stood the test of time, not only because of its influence, but also because of its wealth of information. It is definitely worth our time, especially at a higher level of study of the Gospel of John.
2.
Your second pick is The Hour of Jesus, Fr Ignace de la Potterie’s study on John’s account of the Passion. He draws not only on modern exegesis, but also on the Church Fathers and the main monastic traditions. What are his main insights into John’s account of the Passion?
There are a couple of things I want to signal about de la Potteries's reading of John.
First, of all the books on this list, if there is one that I am going to single out, it would be The Hour of Jesus. This is not simply for what he does, but how he does it. As you mentioned, de la Potterie integrates modern critical exegesis with the interpretation of premodern Christians. He does it with both historical and literary sensitivity. It is a relatively short book, but it is a masterful project.
In terms of the substance, two things in particular are worth noting. De la Potterie calls attention to how John structures his Passion narrative literarily in a concentric structure. It looks like a letter V, where you have the beginning and the end elements. The Passion narrative begins in a garden, with Jesus's arrest; it ends in a garden, with Jesus's burial. Then, you have the hearing before Annas and, the centrepiece of the Passion narrative, the very dramatic trial before Pontius Pilate, which itself is structured in one of these little concentric patterns. De la Potterie draws out the theological significance of how John unfolds his account of the Passion.
First, of all the books on this list, if there is one that I am going to single out, it would be The Hour of Jesus. This is not simply for what he does, but how he does it.
The last chapter of the book is a lengthy essay on the Resurrection stories in John 20. One of the things I found especially insightful is the different way in which John uses verbs of seeing in this story. There are various episodes in John 20: Peter and the beloved disciple go to the tomb, the appearance to Mary Magdalene outside of the tomb, the appearance to the disciples without Thomas, the appearance to the disciples with Thomas present. These stories depict in different ways what it means to believe in Jesus as the Risen Lord. Every time someone has arrived at this Easter faith, or robust theological faith, that Jesus is the risen Lord and Son of God., it is always articulated with a verb of seeing in the perfect tense: “I have seen the Lord”, or “We have seen the Lord”, or “You have seen me”. So, the way that John's literary and theological sensibilities work together are put on masterful display in this book by de la Potterie.
Most of de la Potterie’s writings on John have not been translated into English. Most of them are in French. This is one book of his that has been translated into English and it is wonderful.
3.
4.
What makes your third and fourth picks, D. Moody Smith’s The Theology of the Gospel of John and Gail R. O’Day’s commentary in The New Interpreter's Bible series, good guides to the Fourth Gospel?
These two books are written by Protestant scholars.
Moody Smith’s The Theology of the Gospel of John is in a series published by Cambridge University Press called New Testament Theology. It is a very short and very accessible summary of contemporary thinking about the theology of the Gospel of John. If readers would like to get a good primer on contemporary analysis of the theological dynamics and issues in the Gospel of John, Moody Smith's short guide is a good place to start.
“If we want to understand what John is teaching about God and Jesus., we have to attend not only to what he says but also to how he says it.”
The other book is the commentary by Gail O’Day. I should mention that Gail O’Day was my doctoral advisor. So, I have not only a professional, but also a personal fondness for this commentary.
Some of what I said about de la Potterie applies to this commentary. Echoing some other scholars, O’Day puts one of her great insights into the Gospel of John this way in one of her essays. I'll paraphrase it here. “If we want to understand what John is teaching about God and Jesus., we have to attend not only to what he says but also to how he says it.” O’Day’s central claim is that the theology of the of the Fourth Gospel and its literary mode go together. How John says what he says is ingredient to how this writing works theologically. This commentary is attentive to the interplay between the literary and the theological. To my mind, it is a fantastic display. Brown's commentary does not have the same literary sensitivity, partly because that way of reading and analysing the Scriptures was not really in place at the time. O’Day's commentary, which appeared in the mid 1990s, really does draw out the literary dynamics of this Gospel and shows how they are ingredient to what John does.
5.
Fifth, John: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators. This volume, edited by Bryan A. Stewart and Michael A. Thomas, puts together a commentary from the writings of the Church Fathers. Presumably, you have recommended it because it can teach us how to read John as the Fathers did. Some, however, might object that we should give priority to modern forms of exegesis and textual criticism. How would you respond to this objection?
It is short-sighted to think that the wealth of wisdom and textual insight that centuries of readers can give us should not be accounted for or is wanting. I recommend this volume because it is an anthology of interpretations and readings of the Gospel of John offered by the Church Fathers and some early medieval writers.
The Fathers of the Church...are in touch intellectually and spiritually with the realities of which the Gospel of John and the Scriptures speak
The world of patristic exegesis can be strange. It is different from how people are accustomed to reading the Bible today. The questions they ask, the issues they deal with, and the ways in which they read the text are different. However, just because the premodern Christians are not operating with the insights of modern history and critical study, does not mean that their reading is not learned. Very often, they pick up on details of the text, intertextual connections, ways of negotiating certain challenging issues, that are very illuminating. They are valuable for what they see and how they read.
More importantly, as Fr Francis Martin states, one of the reasons that the Fathers of the Church are so called is that through them the life of Christ comes into the Church. They are in touch intellectually and spiritually with the realities of which the Gospel of John and the Scriptures speak. We can learn from their insight into the divine mystery that comes to us through the Scriptures.
Do the readings of the Fathers have their limits? Absolutely! Some are fanciful. There is another thing in patristic readings of John with which we should not keep company: the anti-Jewish sentiment that sometimes appears in their texts. But there is a lot of spiritual and literary insight. The goal is to integrate the best of the pre-modern tradition and the best of modern critical study. This was very famously advocated by the then Card. Joseph Ratzinger in his famous 1988 Erasmus lecture. It was reiterated in Verbum Domini. It is the kind of thing that we see in de la Potterie’s The Hour of Jesus. He was doing this before it became a more prominent endeavour.
And staying with Stuart and Thomas's John Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, is there one patristic or mediaeval commentary in John that you would recommend?
Augustine’s.
A number of Church Fathers comment on the Gospel of John. There are complete treatments by St John Chrysostom, St Cyril of Alexandria, and St Augustine. St Augustine is the only complete patristic commentary on John that is written in Latin. It is dear to my heart. I have written a bit on Augustine's exegesis of John.
These are sermons that Augustine gives. In them, there is an interplay between the intellectual and the pastoral. This volume will give you an exposure to a variety of early Christian commentators on the Gospel of John, but if there is one that I would single out, it is Augustine’s.
Is there a complete modern translation of it?
Yes, there are two that come to mind. The translation in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series was done in the late 1800s and is available online from different sources. More recently, a translation of Augustine's tractates or sermons on John was published by New City Press.
On a more personal note, what led you to become a biblical scholar and specialist in John?
I had a teacher in high-school who asked if I had thought of studying theology as an academic discipline. Until then I had not, but that set me on this track. I started getting more interested, in biblical studies in particular. Things took off from there. I owe the start of this quest to one of my teachers in high school.
As for working on the Gospel of John, that came out of my work in Graduate School. I had been thinking about different directions into which to take my scholarship at the doctoral level. It was really due to working with Gail O’Day, her encouragement and her teaching. I owe a great debt to her.
6.
A book that you wanted to include in your top five on account of its spiritual depth but which did not make it because it has not been translated into English, is Fr. Donatien Mollat SJ’s Saint Jean: Maître Spirituel (St John: Spiritual Master). What do you appreciate about it?
It is similar to D. Moody Smith's The Theology of the Gospel of John. It gives an overview of a number of the theological topics and issues involved in the reading of John. It does so with spiritual and theological depth and richness. It is very much an integration of the academic and the spiritual. As you mentioned, it has not been translated into English. Also, it is not an easy book to find. However, if readers can study this book in French and find a copy of it, it is highly recommended.
Of course, the commentaries you have recommended are aids to reading the Gospel itself. Which translation of John do you recommend?
Every translation is going to have its advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, with everything, there can be quibbles on this or that. For personal reading, I mostly use the New American Bible. In more academic work, I will use the New Revised Standard Version, in part because that is the industry standard English translation. But the RSV translation of John also has much to commend it.
