The Riddles of the Fourth Gospel: An Introduction to John

by Paul N. Anderson

Paul Anderson, a leading scholar of the Fourth Gospel, provides an introductory textbook, crafted for a semester course, which leads students through literary, historical, and theological aspects of the Fourth Gospel's most vexing puzzles. Traditional, historical-critical, and literary-critical approaches are deftly introduced and their limitations evaluated; questions of the Gospel's authorship, composition, relationship to the Synoptics, and origins in particular historical experiences are succinctly addressed; and distinctive Johannine perspectives on Jesus, the church, and the world are discussed.

Genres: Christianity

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Brendyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great to use when studying the book of John.

[John Hornyak · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview of John for the non-theologian

[Kevin Wolz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anderson is a prolific John scholar, and is therefore qualified to write an introduction to John’s Gospel. He does a fine job of explaining critical issues without showing his hand (at first). I like how he begins be introducing the theological, historical, and literary riddles of the Gospel before going into scholarly approaches to John. Most introduction go the other way around. With this book, however one can get a handle on scholarly approaches of John while already knowing the landscape of the issues at hand.

My only main issue is that several claims rely on Anderson’s “Bi-Optic” theory for the fourth Gospel, which is plausible, but he overstates his case to give it so much weight in an introductory textbook on John.

[Lee Harmon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Anderson has done it again. John’s Gospel holds a special fascination for me, and this is simply good scholarship. The book is laid out like a college text, with chapter endings presenting “questions to consider” and “terms to understand.” It’s clearly meant for the classroom. It’s divided into three parts:

1. Outlining the Johannine Riddles. Anderson presents, in tabular form, the theological, historical, and literary riddles that are spread throughout the Gospel.
2. Addressing the Johannine Riddles. Who wrote the Fourth Gospel, when, how, and why? Multiple theories are presented, emphasizing origin and character.
3. Interpreting the Johannine Riddles. Anderson takes a stab at answering John’s conundrums, and calls for a “fourth quest for Jesus” with special consideration for the historical realism of John’s Gospel.

If you’re familiar with Anderson’s work, you may be tempted to skip certain sections, as much has been covered before, but the emphasis on tension and prepared contradictions—what Paul labels John’s “riddles”—forces you to reexamine familiar texts within a directed theme. Anderson drills into us the dialectical thinking of John. The Fourth Gospel appears to make a point of presenting both sides of every theology. Jesus is both the most human and the most divine in this gospel. He is judge, but he judges not. He is equal to the Father but subjective to the Father. He fulfills all prophesies yet promises a future eschatology. Perhaps most frustrating of all to me as a scholar of Johannine writings, John’s esoteric, spiritual passages encourage non-literal interpretation, but are liberally peppered with verifiable historical accuracies. These tensions are frustrating but intentional, purposefully forcing us to examine all sides.

My conclusion: This is an important, well-organized book whose careful research demands consideration.