Interpreters of 1 John have long observed a fair degree of ambiguity in the use of the personal pronoun (αὐτός) with respect to God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. There are several cases where the referent of the pronoun is difficult to determine in the immediate context and the language of God is … Read more
An intertextual focus with the prologue of 1 John on connections to the prologue of the Fourth Gospel has allowed Isaianic connections to be overlooked. The beginning of the letter in 1 John 1:1–3 echoes Isaiah 40:22. The Johannine reference to ‘what we have heard’ and what ‘we have declared to you’ gives the answer … Read more
In the discourse of John 4, John’s disclosure of the Samaritan woman’s verbalization of five references to the identity of Jesus can be connected to rhetorical parallels utilized throughout the Gospel. First, she refers to him as a “prophet προφήτης εἶ σύ” (John 4:19). Second, she refers to “knowing the Μεσσίας is coming, Οἶδα ὅτι … Read more
While John 14, especially vv.1–3, is often interpreted as Jesus’ teaching on “going to heaven,” a contextual investigation suggests that the message of John 14 is one of exhortation, by which the Lord urges his followers to emulate his pattern of obedience. As Christ walked in obedience to the Father, he modeled a new halakha. … Read more
The accepted understanding of John’s use of πᾶν ὃ in John 6:37 and 6:39 is that, in some way, πᾶν ὃ refers to the subsequent clause, either as depicting individuals (e.g., Schnackenburg) or the totality of believers (e.g., Bruce). This paper is an exploration of an alternative reading, where this combination refers to the antecedent … Read more
This study investigates the claim that the divine violence in Revelation may be metaphorical (Argument is War: Relevance-Theoretic Comprehension of the Conceptual Metaphor of War in the Apocalypse). Since Irenaeus and Dionysius, the apocalyptic war presented there has been taken as God’s judgment or punishment (Beale) of the earth. This is a metonymy (rather than … Read more
Johannine scholars have long belabored over the semantic exchange of the love verbs ἀγαπάω and φιλέω in John 21 as Jesus restored Peter. While such a study is interesting, its narrow focus tends to overlook the Fourth Gospel’s larger theme of suffering-believers which finds its terminus in the same narrative personified in the same disciple. … Read more