Customer Reviews

The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel

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Ellis focuses on the parallelism in the Gospel of John. In doing so, P.F. Ellis has shown that the entire Gospel of John is structured according to an A:B:C:B':A' chiasm or pattern of concentric parallelism. The conceptual center or focus of the Gospel is chapter 6, which is again a tri-fold parallel account around the central panel of the miraculous crossing of the sea and Jesus decaling, "I am he." Whether the "New Exodus" motif is everything Ellis envisions, I can't quite see. But that the other parallelism is there, it is plain. Undestand the whole of the book is enhanced significantly... something that I don't often say about commentaries.

Chiastic analysis of biblical texts serves multiple purposes. In the case of the Fourth Gospel, it demonstrates the integrity and the unity of the text. The structure alone explains several "problem" areas which have often been discussed in various commentaries. The structural outline provided will enable the reader to discern the "literal sense" (or better, the LITERARY sense) of the Gospel, the meaning intended by the biblical author, since such a commentary is built around the very words and and linguistic structure of the Gospel itself.

Best is the focus on Jesus as the Bread of Life. While the reader might sift through a few catholic terms and view points on occasion. On the whole, you will never sense Ellis Catholic heritage... just good solid Biblical insights (much like another great Catholic theologian: Raymond Brown.

Five stars and then some.

There is so much information contained in this volume, but the careful writing and explanations make it a solid read.