John: A Commentary by Marianne Meye Thompson

Abstract

Reviewed by: John: A Commentary by Marianne Meye Thompson Toan Do marianne meye thompson, John: A Commentary (NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015). Pp. xliv + 532. $60. In the 1990s the series Sacra Pagina appeared (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press), comprising eighteen one-volume commentaries on the NT books. As editor Daniel J. Harrington noted in the preface: “the volumes present basic introductory information and close exposition” (italics added). Sacra Pagina did well in presenting basic, informative, yet critical and scholarly commentaries. In his volume on the Johannine letters, referring to the commentaries on the Johannine writings in an earlier series (the Anchor Bible), John Painter praises Raymond E. Brown who “left no stone unturned in his review of scholarship. His own interpretation was also developed exhaustively” (SacPag 18, p. 14). Brown’s three-volume Anchor Bible work contains 1,208 pages of commentary on John and 812 pages on 1–3 John in addition to 146 pages of introductory information on the Gospel and 1–3 John. In a similar series, Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, Rudolf Schnackenburg’s five-volume work consists of 1,778 pages of commentary on John and 336 pages on 1–3 John, in which he devotes 196 pages of introductory information to the Gospel and 48 pages to 1–3 John. In the recent Eerdmans Critical Commentary series, Urban C. von Wahlde’s three-volume work uses 705 pages in the first volume to lay out his intricate theory on the Johannine community/ies. The fact that not all particles of each stone have been turned and that not every argument has been argued conclusively invites a more succinct, well-informed, and up-to-date scholarly discussion of the Gospel of John. In a word-count-oriented series, less broad and more focused commentary means more and matters most. In her twenty-four-page (of a total 532 pages) introduction to the Gospel of John, Marianne Meye Thompson does not propose to “offer a full-scale critical introduction to the Gospel—such discussions can be found elsewhere—but discussion of some important questions pertaining to John’s distinctive presentation of Jesus” (p. 2). Similar to the volumes in Sacra Pagina, T.’s volume in this New Testament Library has likewise done well. In what follows I limit myself to T.’s introduction and thus review only a few of her critical points in the commentary. The overall body of T.’s commentary on the text of the Gospel is favorably recommended to her readership. Reading T.’s discussions of John’s distinctive presentation of Jesus in its final form as we have it, one is in turn reminded of what John A. T. Robinson observed a half-century ago: “[T]he effect of reading too much on the Fourth Gospel is to make one feel either that everything has been said about it that could conceivably be said or that it really does not matter what one says, for one is just as likely to be right as anyone else” (“The Relation of the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John,” NTS 9 [1962–63] 120). Every hypothesis that attempts to disintegrate or dissect the final products of the Johannine writings into various phases of the community/ies or editions of the texts runs the risk of missing the so-called totality of each writing. “John,” says T., “like each of the other Gospels, is greater than the sum of its parts: the narrative is not merely stitched-together bits of tradition; it is a carefully crafted account of a selected number of words and deeds of Jesus’ life that presents a particular understanding of Jesus, who he was, and what his ministry accomplished” (p. 8). This sentiment flows throughout T.’s commentary, especially when she comments: “I should clarify that I do not take the Gospel to be a cryptic account of a church at the end of [End Page 155] the first century, or of the ‘Johannine community’” (p. 22). T. argues that the author must have been aware of and informed by the contemporary development of various faith communities. Examples of this “totality” view are found in T.’s discussions...