What modern commentaries (and perhaps collection of essays) would you recommend on the Gospels of John? Any comments on Andreas J. Köstenberger's Baker exegetical commentary on John? Or Craig Keener's?
posted by Chris Tilling @ 12:36 PM
19 comments
I am New Testament Tutor for St Mellitus College and St Paul's Theological Centre, London. In my postgraduate research (under the supervision of Max Turner) I’m working on a thesis that concerns the christological significance of the language Paul used to describe the relationship between risen Lord and believer. My blog, Chrisendom, is primarily occupied with biblical and theological themes – especially those Apostle Paul shaped, but I try as best as I can to squeeze in a decent amount of inappropriate baloney on the way. For more about me, click here for my interview with biblioblogs' Jim West.
19 Comments:
I like Keener's commentary a lot - especially his command of other Jewish sources.
Keener suffers seriously from parallelomannia; Kostenberger had his moments, but defaults to safe territory whenever dealing with history. The best two commentaries of the last 10 years are Lincoln (Blacks) and Moloney (Sacra Pagina)
I have used D.A. Carson's John (Pillar) with much reward. Also, I consult A.T. Lincoln (Black's) and Barrett (WJK?). It might encourage you to know what Bauckham is writing the NIGTC commentary for the Gospel of John.
I like Bauckham's work quite a bit. The Gospel of John and Christian theology is good. Schnackenburg's chapter on John in Jesus in the Gospels is fantastic. Certainly I find it hard to approach John without reference to Brown's work in the Anchor series. Westermann's work is also intriguing stuff.
Hi there,
I really like Köstenberger's commentary (even though I wouldn't follow him at every point, neither historically nor theologically). It gives you sound exegesis, it is well written, with a strong emphasis on the theological content of John’s Gospel, and it gives you a good overview over scholarly positions. And it is of reasonable size. ;-) I do like reading it in comparison with the commentary by Udo Schnelle (ThHK, Leipzig 2004). The latter is a amazing theological commentary, even though too loose on matters of historicity (IMHO). Unfortunately, it’s in German, but if some of your students do read German, please recommend it to them together with Ulrich Wilckens (NTD, Göttingen 2000) and Benedikt Schwank (St. Ottilien 32007). Well, I have to admit, I was just looking for an excuse to mention the last one…What about Andrew Lincoln (BNTC)? If I’m not wrong, it is similar to the one by Schnelle, great on theology, less so when it comes to history. And for historical questions the best conservative resource I know is Craig Blomberg’s historical reliability book on John. It’s a good book and I like it, even though he doesn’t always convince me.
All the other commentaries I could mention you probably know better than I do (Evangelical: Carson, Morris, Ridderbos. Mainstream: Barrett, Schnackenburg, Brown).
I’m really looking forward to Richard Bauckham’s commentary (NIGTC)!
So what about Köstenberger and Lincoln for the top of the shelf? And maybe Carson/Morris and Barrett as additions?
Cheers,
Gerschi
the best is george beasley-murray's. i promise you, it far excels any so far mentioned. he is erudite, precise, and knows john better than anyone you'll encounter.
How has anyone not said anything about J. Louis Martyn's works on John?? Let's leave the anti-apocalyptic bias aside =) Martyn's _History and Theology of the Fourth Gospel_ is gripping.
Marianne Meye Thompson's work is pretty fantastic, too.
--tg
Keener's introduction is worth the price of the set alone! For background info there is no better commentary on John. You'll also want to check out Bauckham's Testimony of the Beloved Disciple if you haven't already. But for a helpful list of Johannine resources look no further than Celcuien Joseph's recent post Studying John and Reading Through the Fourth Gospel.
Well, I reckon you won't use it as your primary source, but any reading of John needs to be balanced with Warren Carter's John and Empire (which I've just started into, and which promises to be exceptional).
I've enjoyed Beasley-Murray's WBC comm, and Kysar's from the Augsburg commenary on the NT series.
oh and Keener
D.L. Moody Smith has a less detailed one, but still has some great insights. It's with the Abingdon series.
I am in shock why has no one mentioned R E Brown both his Anchor Bible Commentaries and his posthumously published work but he was a Catholic priest enough said!
Superb! Thanks so much, people. It really is useful having chaps like you lot reading this blog!
Seriously, Brown was mentioned way too late in the comments. His commentary is definitely worth reading. Keener's is often helpful. I'm still amazed that he has over 150 pgs of bibliography and then his index is also over 200 pgs (still nice when looking for whatever)
I'm a big fan of Brown as well. Brown is a writing machine!
In a recent comment I mentioned several of my favourite default Johannine scholars. Not mentioned yet is Gail O'Day's NIB commentary - which a number of our students found exciting (their word!.
Running a little late. Aside from seconding and thirding many of the authors already mentioned, I can give a qualified recommendation for Anderson's survey of scholarly approaches to historicity in GosJohn: The Fourth Gospel And the Quest for Jesus: Modern Foundations Reconsidered. The topical spread goes rather further beyond the title, although it isn't set up very handily for a pericope to pericope consideration. (Blomberg's historical commentary/survey is far more useful in that regard.)
Also, Anderson stumbles badly (in my estimation) in dealing with the authority claims of Christ in the Johannine text; his ideological stance apparently restricts him from considering implications of meaning, further than a certain point. Which in turn leads to a Kloppenborgian multi-generational multi-layered composition strategy for the text, which despite some surface plausibility starts to break down on analysis.
Still, as far as he goes, he's helpful in several regards; and I especially admire his serious and critical pro-con estimation analysis of various schools of thought (including in regard to each other) on analysis of GosJohn.
JRP
This is late but too important not to post. Read "Martyn's History and Theology of the Fourth Gospel". It is indeed gripping and brief. Not a verse by verse account just a short revolution.
Moody-Smith's Theology of the Gospel of John is a concise summary for intro or refresher overview.
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