Customer Reviews

Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community

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Koester thoroughly presents the symbolism in John. He discusses some of the different symbols in John, such as light, darkness, and water, as well as the representative figures and symbolic actions (i.e. the "miracles") in the Fourth Gospel. His work is near exhaustive and applicable to the work of the preacher, teacher, or scholar.

While at times Koester's Lutheran heritage wins the day (for instance, in finding countless examples of Eucharistic language all throughout John, even where common sense says there is none), for the most part this book stays the course of scholastic neutrality.

Only one serious complaint about the book (and this has more to do with Fortress Press than Koester): The binding of the book came completely apart the third time I opened it. Hoping this was not my fault, I contacted several others fellow-students who have the book and they complained of the same problem. Other than this one small downfall, Koester's book is quite good!

Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel is an examination of the way the Gospel of John works with symbols and real people. Koester takes the stance that just about everything in the Gospel of John functions not only as a real event, but also as a symbol. For example, when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well and they talk about her having five husbands and the man she is with now is not her husband, this is also a discussion of how the people of Samaria have been unfaithful to the people of Israel.

Theologically, Koester is somewhere between mainline and evangelical. He does a very nice job of keeping these events as both real factual events (water was turned to win) and at the same time examining the symbolism in that event (renewal).

The book reads well and is not written so densely to be incomprehensible. I would recommend this book if you are looking for a commentary on John and want to look deeper into the background and the symbolism. I would not recommend it if you are just starting to read the Bible. Overall, I would give it a week four star rating.

Approaches to the symbolism in the biblical texts is a thorny issue for many readers. That is why this book is so wonderful. Koester stands more-or-less in the evangelical camp, so gives an honest historical reading of John. On his reading, there really was a Samaritan woman, there was a wedding in Cana, there was a Lazarus, etc. This is good, of course: to strip away the historical underpinnings (however tenuous, especially in John) of the pericopes is to eviscerate them. On the other hand, a coldly historical approach to John misses the point(s) of the text completely. The most symbolic of the gospels deserves a thorough symbolic reading in its historical setting. That is what Koester gives. "Balanced" is an overused word, but this book is balanced in its presentation of the Johannine material and the debates surrounding its interpretation.

This is the second work I have had an opportunity to peruse by this author and I am getting a great sense on his style and content. "The Word of Life" was a great book but I think that as valuable as it was this one was perhaps an even more profound and intriguing read.

As with the first book I read I can say that he reads easy and while it is deep it is not technical. This book on symbolism is so rich and vibrant. There were so many associations that he was able to make with the Old Testament that many commentators I have read basically panned over. He analyzes various motifs and connects them with Jewish thought such as light and ethics, water and the law, bread and the torah, etc...What I really like about what he does here is that also thinks about the possible ways that non-Jewish readers associated the symbols to their own cultures. He talks about Dionysius bringing wine out of the earth or the water coming from Jesus side might remind Greek readers that immortals bleed a clear substance, or the idea that water was associated with prophesy in the hellenistic world. Even though he suggests these he is careful to remain open about issues which are hard to examine.

Again I love the associations with the Old Testament. He compares the baptism of John with the anointing of Joshua by Moses and Elisha by Elijah. He draws parallels with John baptizing in Aenon near Samaria and Jesus'coming to Samaria. In the discourse John the Baptist made in chapter 3 Jesus is called a bridegroom while in chapter 4 he meets the woman by the well in the fashion that Jacob met Rachel. She leaves and brings the Samaritans back to "meet the bridegroom." He shows the significance of the pool of Siloam and the tradition about Isaiah going to the pool of Siloam under the directive of God to have thirst quenched. I love the way he matched and dovetailed ideas together throughout the whole narrative and for any study of extended nature this book is highly valuable.

Now the problem with the book is the same as with the last one. Koester is a big proponent of the Johannine Community model espoused by Raymond Brown. This is my 28th work on John (although I did not review all on here) and I can say that I have really remained unconvinced that this a tenable idea. I think that it is full of anachronisms, guess work, conjecture, and pure speculation. I don't see anything that seems to suggest that it is a very powerful idea and I think that it comes from a marriage to the establishment more than solid evidence. The last chapter was interesting but these ideas were not provable at all. There were also areas were he may have allowed his imagination to read more into the symbol than was needed. For example: he conjectures that Jesus calling his disciples friends meant that this is the way that the Johannine Community greeted each other. Well this may be one way John greeted others or the way George Fox and the Quakers greeted one another we cannot say that this was the way that any sect of Christians in the Ancient world did.

Overall, this is a fine work and I recommend it but I would warn you not to get caught up in the Johannine community model. It is really not a great model and more and more scholars are coming to reject it. Otherwise the book is fantastic.

A work of impressive scholarship by Craig R. Koester (Professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota), and now in its second edition, Symbolism In The Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community is a seminal study of the Christian Gospel's "literary dimensions, social and historical context, and theological import". From exploring representative figures; to symbolic actions; to views of light and darkness, water, and crucifixion, and more, Symbolism In The Fourth Gospel is an extensively detailed, thoughtful, insightful, and strongly recommended contribution to Biblical Studies reference collections and supplemental reading lists.