(Part 1)
JBTM_13-2_Fall_2016
JBTM_13-2_Fall_2016
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JBTM Book Reviews<br />
165<br />
and Köstenberger 4 in his own proposal—evincing a major break between Jesus’s parting<br />
prayer (17:1–26) and the passion narrative (18:1–19:42).<br />
Numerous strengths mark Harris’s work. First, Harris’s work is affordable, approachable<br />
(benefiting even the non-specialist), as well as concise—thus, ensuring the work’s viability<br />
and readability. Harris is able to synthesize much of the fruit of his detailed analyses in a succinct<br />
manner, which should prove beneficial to the busy pastor or teacher working through<br />
the Greek text. Second, despite his brevity, Harris spends the necessary time and space to<br />
explain key exegetical, syntactical, and text-critical details behind hotly-debated passages<br />
such as John 1:1 (15–20) and the so-called Pericope Adulterae (i.e., John 7:53–8:11; 166–67), as<br />
well as key theological concepts including the importance of “believing” in the Fourth Gospel<br />
and the idiomatic, prepositional phrase pisteuō eis (“believe in”) that John uses to express<br />
this crucial concept—with Christ typically being the “divine object of faith” (31–32). Third,<br />
Harris recognizes the importance of the subject of oidamen (“we know”) in John 21:24 (346),<br />
explains the five possible interpretational options (given the evidence), and adopts a position<br />
contra the consensus view (Johannine community view) regarding the authorship of the<br />
Fourth Gospel (3–4). Moreover, Harris highlights the importance of the term aposynagōgos<br />
(“excommunicated,” or “excluded from the synagogue”) regarding Martyn’s exclusion hypothesis<br />
5 as a primary motivation for the writing of John’s Gospel denoted by the threefold<br />
repetition of aposynagōgos in John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2 (189). Against Martyn, Harris sees both<br />
“missionary and pastoral purposes” (evinced in the purpose statement of John 20:31) as the<br />
primary motivations for the penning of John’s Gospel (5–6).<br />
However, Harris’s work is not without faults. First, Harris’s comments often become esoteric<br />
due to the superfluous amount of abbreviations throughout. Second, since the EGGNT<br />
series is based off the UBS⁵ Greek text (xxii), it would have been helpful for Harris to include<br />
the UBS⁵ Committee ratings for verses containing textual variants. Interestingly, Harris comments<br />
only briefly on thirty-one of the forty-two C-rated textual variants 6 in his work, and<br />
monolithically cites Metzger 7 regarding his text-critical evaluations. Third, Harris’s sources<br />
seem outdated, with the most recent of his “recommended commentaries” being Köstenberger’s<br />
2004 BECNT volume (13).<br />
David N. Freedman; Garden City: Doubleday, 1966–1970), 1:cxxxviii.<br />
⁴Andreas J. Köstenberger, John (BECNT; eds. Robert W. Yarbrough and Robert H. Stein; Grand<br />
Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 10–11.<br />
⁵J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Harper & Row, 1968) 31–41.<br />
Martyn suggests that the exclusion of the Johannine community was an enforcement of the Birkath<br />
ha-Minim (i.e., “the Benediction against the heretics”), which was a means of expulsion by self-exclusion.<br />
Cf. David A. Lamb, Text, Context, and the Johannine Community: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of the<br />
Johannine Writings (LNTS 477; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clarke, 2014), 8, n. 22.<br />
⁶This is according to the count of this reviewer.<br />
⁷Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd. ed.; Stuttgart: Deutsche<br />
Bibelgesellschaft, 1994).