Customer Reviews

John Among the Gospels (Second Edition)

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D. Moody Smith presents for us here a report and review of the state of Johannine studies in the 20th century. Who better than D. Moody Smith himself, who is no slouch when it comes to John studies. As a guided tour of what is important, what is in vogue, what was once in vogue, what is now dated, etc. D. Moody Smith excels here. This is not so much a book about the gospel of John as it is a book about books on the gospel of John, and as such has no rivals. My copy has been well used and underlined.

One of the leading Johannine scholars updates his book which is a forschungsbericht (a progress report) on the Gospel of John and its relationship to the others gospels. The work focuses solely on the twentieth century (only briefly is mentioned the church fathers who call this gospel "spiritual"--cf. Clement of Alexandria--and generally view John as the gospel attempt to supplement or add to the others). The dicussion of the book centers on the problem of John and its relationship with the synoptics gospels. Because John contains material that both agrees and disagrees with the synoptics, it begs the question, "Did John know the other gospels and if so why did he deviate from them?" In the history of the discussion some have interpreted John one of four ways: (1) supplemental to synoptics, (2) interpretative of them, (3) independent from them (the major view of the twentieth century which was advocated by P. Gardner-Smith), (4) or written to displace them (Windisch is the leading proponent of this view)