Reading the Gospel of John’s Christology as Jewish Messianism: Royal, Prophetic, and Divine Messiahs. Edited by Benjamin Reynolds and Gabriele Boccaccini

Abstract

Unlike essay collections united around a theme, this volume is united around a thesis, shared by most of its contributors, that the Jesus of John’s Gospel is a Jewish messiah. Over against previous assumptions that John’s high Christology marks a decisive break with Judaism, this provocative collection suggests that John’s Gospel should be located firmly within its wider Jewish milieu. The essays are grouped topically into five parts. In Part I, Benjamin Reynolds and James McGrath each contribute essays that survey previous scholarship and set the agenda for the current volume. Although older scholarship had held that John’s Jesus is so much more than merely messiah (e.g. Logos, unique ‘son of God’, etc.), more recently, the pillars on which this view depends have been undermined: in John’s day, there was no Jewish ‘orthodoxy’ and no single ‘Messiah’ concept; moreover, the picture of Jewish monotheism has been complicated by attention to other quasi-divine figures, such as the son of man, who is featured in several of the volume’s essays (as might be expected from the Enoch seminar). Both agree that John’s Gospel is distinctive primarily in its creative adaptation of Jewish messiah traditions, and in its claim that Jesus is that messiah (John 20:31).