Tagged: Bible Study

Reading with a Pencil

While, of course, we read with our eyes and think with our brains, I’ve come to learn that reading with a pencil is of great help to me.

I had never spent a lot of time with 1 Corinthians and had really wanted to get to know it better. So, I took out my English Bible and a pencil and began to underline and box conjunctions that signalled the flow of the text. It engaged my brain in a way that I don’t always engage when I’m reading and it kept me from zoning out. Days later I found that I remembered more about my study through 1 Corinthians than a lot of other reading I had done elsewhere. The same trend has continued in other sections of the Bible, not to mention my academic reading as well.

If you’re not in the habit of it, give it a try! There are no rules to this but you will probably develop your own approach as you go.

Authorship and Date

Authorship

The 4th Gospel is, formally speaking, anonymous. That is, the author never explicitly states his name. Even though we call the book “According to John” or the “The Gospel According to John,” it is not certain that these titles were original to the work itself (more on this below).

For this reason and others, many have tried to posit a different author than the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. Suggestions have ranged from an “elder” named John who lived after the time of the apostles to a Johannine community, established by John but operating past John’s lifetime. While not 100% provable, I do believe there is good reason to accept that John the apostle wrote the 4th Gospel himself.

Consider 21:24 where the author says: “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.” “This” refers back to “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in verse 20. We know from this text and others that the author uses this phrase for the apostle John, one of the three apostles in Jesus’ inner circle (the others being Peter and James). It would seem that it is reasonable to accept what the text says (especially if one holds to the inspiration of the Bible): “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” a common phrase for the apostle John, is the one who wrote the book. For whatever reason (modesty?) he simply chose not to explicitly centre himself out.

In addition to this internal evidence, there is strong external evidence to support the authorship of John. I mentioned above the titles often given to this book. These titles are present in our earliest manuscripts. They may have been placed there once the four Gospels started circulating together (some hold that they are indeed original to the autographs) but this at the very least shows that early on Christians believed this book was written by John. The Early Church Fathers (with the exception of Papias, as recorded by Eusebius) are fairly unanimous in their testimony that John wrote the book.

For these reasons it appears quite reasonable to accept that John wrote the 4th Gospel.

Date

As far as the date of the Gospel is concerned, if the apostle John is the author, then we must place the date of writing within the 1st century, given that he died before the century elapsed. Indeed this is likely based on another piece of external evidence: we actually have surviving today a fragment of a manuscript of John’s Gospel that is dated to 125 A.D. Therefore the Gospel has to be earlier than this, and likely much earlier since this manuscript is probably not the original handwriting (known as the autograph).

From here, it becomes harder to be much more specific. Scholars vary on their dating of this Gospel, ranging from 55-95 A.D. (Carson, 82), if we ignore those who would disagree with the previous paragraph. Since I have not yet pinned down my opinion on the date, I am going to leave further speculation until after I have finished these studies (noting anything significant to the issue along the way if possible) and it will be interesting to hear from a scholar I am currently interviewing as to his opinion. Expect that interview early next week.

How I Study (in pictures and text)

I am currently doing exegetical work on the text of John’s Gospel and I thought I would share a bit of what it looks like.

I have taken two Greek exegesis courses at school with Stanley Porter and have benefited greatly from the method I developed for submitting my exegesis. We were required to translate and make notes on the Greek text (language and textual variants), theological issues, translational issues, etc. and any method that would show that interaction with the text was acceptable. I have found my approach to that so helpful that I continue to use it. Here is what the first page of hundreds looks like, this one being from my exegesis course on the Gospel of Matthew.

In order to get to this point I use several resources. The first, of course, is the Greek text. I consult two modern editions (NA27 and UBS3/4) and will consult the ancient manuscripts as needed. The modern editions alert me to where there are variants in the text and I have to make decisions about what text I think is original.

In addition, I have the OpenText.org analysis open on my Logos Bible Software which also houses more Greek texts, English translations, and Greek grammars. The OpenText.org analysis (www.opentext.org) is immensely beneficial for understanding the syntax of the Greek text, among other things.

Logos Bible Software (www.logos.com) is a wonderful piece of software that allows me access to thousands of resources at the click of a button. As an example, it allows me to select the verse I’m working on (e.g., John 1:1) and immediately pull up all the Greek grammars that refer to that verse. Or, I can select a word from the text (e.g., λόγος) and immediately pull up all the Greek lexicons I own that have an entry for that lexeme. That’s a small snapshot of what it provides me with.

One other thing I do, is try to track the aspect of the verbs and other linguistic devices (genitive absolutes, temporal markers, etc.) to see how the author is structuring their text. This gets me creative with making notes in colours and boxes and helps me note the structure and flow of the text.

Finally I also consult commentaries, books, and articles on the text to see what others have said. This step is important since I can’t claim that I will see everything there is to see in a text or ask all the right questions. I use print commentaries and ones on the Logos software as well.

After these steps I will be writing the studies you find here on this blog. All of this is, of course, bathed in prayer, seeking out God for understanding (2 Tim. 2:7).

So there you have it. My study in a nutshell.

John’s Use of the Old Testament

In light of the stated historical purpose of the book from the last study, it behooves us to consider briefly John’s use of the Old Testament. Any detailed remarks and analysis of texts will be saved for the studies themselves as we come across different texts.

Last study I asserted my belief that the Gospel was initially written as an evangelistic book for Jews and proselytes. Something that Jews and converts to Judaism would have had in the first century is an expectation of the Messiah and that being, to varying degrees, based on a reading of their Bible, the Old Testament. For this reason (as well as others), it makes sense that John would quote and allude to the Old Testament significantly and Jesus, as the Messiah, would quote and allude to it as well.

There are a few ways the book uses the Old Testament that I’ll briefly highlight so that we can watch for them as we progress through the book.

In the first place, there are direct quotations of the Old Testament. These are generally easy enough to spot. Many of the quotations are introduced by “as it is written” (6:31), or “as Scripture says” (7:38), or “in order that Scripture might be fulfilled” (19:24), etc. Sometimes these quotations can be rather loose and so discerning what fits in this category and what fits in the next can be difficult.

Somewhat harder to spot, and requiring some familiarity with the Old Testament, are allusions. An allusion makes reference to something less directly and calls our attention to it as background for the point currently being made. Very early on in the book we will encounter allusions to the Old Testament, especially from the book of Exodus, although John will show familiarity with much of the Old Testament throughout.

The categories of echo and typology I’ll save for the text analyses.

Not directly related to the use of the Old Testament but worth mentioning here, is how John is also culturally located in 1st century Palestine and the setting of Jesus’ life occurs here, especially including a Jewish culture, though not exclusively Jewish (e.g., Greco-Roman culture). Therefore there are references to Jewish festivals and Jewish life that will be taken for granted by John, but we might like to do a little more research to fill in the gaps given that Jesus and John’s culture is not our culture today.

To close, it is helpful to quote Andreas Kostenberger (relying on Porter and Evans): “The overall purpose of the use of the OT in John’s Gospel, as evidenced by the formal quotations, is to show that both Jesus’ public ministry and his cross-death fulfilled scriptural patterns and prophecies” (Kostenberger, “John” in the Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, 415-16).

The next study will look at the authorship and date of John’s Gospel.

John’s Purpose

Before jumping into the text of John’s Gospel itself, there are a few items helpful to consider. In this post I will consider the purpose of John’s Gospel.

Many books in the Bible do not provide an explicit purpose for their being written. In those cases one has to infer from the content what the writer was trying to do. In our case here, John has explicitly laid out his purpose:

“Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that the Messiah, the Son of God, is Jesus, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30-31).

In the first place I believe that John was writing the book evangelistically to those expecting the Messiah, that is, to Jews and proselytes. But though this may have been the historical intention of the author, there is more to say for us today.

John makes clear his purpose in writing: to believe that the Messiah, the Son of God, is Jesus, and that the one who believes may have life in him. It is evangelistic to us today as well since it is clear from the Gospel that belief in Jesus is not limited to the first audience that John wrote for. The book seeks to convince any reader that Jesus is the Son of God and the result of this belief is to have life, a metaphorical expression for being transformed by God from a life of rebellion against God (sin) to a life of love toward and from God. How this is achieved is made clear through the book (hint: believing in Jesus and his work on the cross).

But if the book is evangelistic, does this then mean that it is not for Christians? Well, in the first place, we must consider that a familiarity with the book will aid a Christian in sharing it with those who do not as of yet believe in Jesus. Knowing the parts of the book that speak of Jesus’ divinity, for example, can be helpful in discussions with those who deny his divinity. But this is simply a practical result of the book’s purpose.

More than this, it is helpful to remember that the gospel is not just for non-Christians, but for all people. Christians never stop needing to hear and believe the good news of the cross. Once a person has read the book and believed in Jesus, ongoing faith and growth in maturity are still required. We are told to remain in that teaching (cf. John 8:31; 1 John 2:27-28). We will always need to keep the centre the centre: Jesus Christ and his atoning work on the cross (cf. 1 Cor. 15:1-3ff.). So, the Christian can profitably read John’s Gospel and get to know Jesus more intimately as our God, King, Saviour, and Lord.

This purpose will therefore help control how we read the book as we progress. It will be a strong and common theme throughout. And in the process I pray that we all will grow in our trust in Jesus and many will gain life in his name.

In the next study we will look briefly at the use of the Old Testament in John’s Gospel. The reason for looking at it so early is because of the stated historical purpose above that the book was originally written as an evangelistic work for Jews and proselytes.