John: Interpretation PDF
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John GERARD S. SLOVAN John ~ com~enta?M Bible for Teaching and Preaching I~ ~ John Knox Press ATLANTA John INTERPRETATION A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching INTERPRETATION A BIBLE COMMENTARY FOR TEACHING AND PREACHING James Luther Mays, Editor Patrick D. Miller, Jr., Old Testament Editor Paul J. Achtemeier, New Testament Editor Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible, copyright, 1946, 1952, and @ 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and used by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sloyan, Gerard Stephen. John. (Interpretation, a Bible commentary for teaching and preaching) Bibliography: p. 1. Bible. N.T. John-Commentaries. I. Title. II. Series. BS2615.3.S56 1988 226'.507 87-45549 ISBN 0-8042-3125-7 @ copyright John Knox Press 1988 109876543 Printed in the United States of America John Knox Press Atlanta, Georgia 30365 SERIES PREFACE This series of commentaries offers an interpretation of the books of the Bible. It is designed to meet the need of students, teachers, ministers, and priests for a contemporary expository commentary. These volumes will not replace the historical criti cal commentary or homiletical aids to preaching. The purpose of this series is rather to provide a third kind of resource, a commentary which presents the integrated result of historical and theological work with the biblical text. An interpretation in the full sense of the term involves a text, an interpreter, and someone for whom the interpretation is made. Here, the text is what stands written in the Bible in its full identity as literature from the time of "the prophets and apostles," the literature which is read to inform, inspire, and guide the life of faith. The interpreters are scholars who seek to create an interpretation which is both faithful to the text and useful to the church. The series is written for those who teach, preach, and study the Bible in the community of faith. The comment generally takes the form of expository es says. It is planned and written in the light of the needs and questions which arise in the use of the Bible as Holy Scripture. The insights and results of contemporary scholarly research are used for the sake of the exposition. The commentators write as exegetes and theologians. The task which they undertake is both to deal with what the texts say and to discern their mean ing for faith and life. The exposition is the unified work of one interpreter. The text on which the comment is based is the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The general availability of this translation makes the printing of a translation unnecessary and saves the space for comment. The text is divided into sections appropriate to the particular book; comment deals with pas sages as a whole, rather than proceeding word by word, or verse by verse. Writers have planned their volumes in light of the require- ments set by the exposition of the book assigned to them. Bibli- v cal books differ in character, content, and arrangement. They also differ in the way they have been and are used in the liturgy, INTERPRETATION thought, and devotion of the church. The distinctiveness and use of particular books have been taken into account in deci sions about the approach, emphasis, and use of space in the commentaries. The goal has been to allow writers to develop the format which provides for the best presentation of their interpretation. The result, writers and editors hope, is a commentary which both explains and applies, an interpretation which deals with both the meaning and the significance of biblical texts. Each commentary reflects, of course, the writer's own approach and perception of the church and world. It could and should not be otherwise. Every interpretation of any kind is individual in that sense; it is one reading of the text. But all who work at the interpretation of Scripture in the church need the help and stimulation of a colleague's reading and understanding of the text. If these volumes serve and encourage interpretation in that way, their preparation and publication will realize their purpose. The Editors vi PREFACE The commentary on the Fourth Gospel that follows in these pages lays no claim to novelty or exhaustive treatment. It is not exegetical except in a general expository sense. That is to say, it does not presume (or attempt to supply) the knowledge of Hellenistic or "common" (koine) Greek vocabulary and syn tax required to follow a philological or grammatical argument although at times one or another such argument may be alluded to. Some users of this book may know the Greek text of John well; others may once have been familiar with it as a student's exercise. Sufficient numbers, however, will be unfamiliar with the original language in its nuances or indeed at all that the insertion of words and phrases in Greek may be an intrusion or frustration. Neither will this commentary contain textual study of the sort in which the case is made for the author's preferred read ing. Here, again, a layperson's knowledge of the problems of text transmission will suffice. The settlements opted for in the twenty-sixth, most recent edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (1979) are considered satisfactory. Any departure from those readings will be noted when it seems important to do so. The commentary's chief attempt will be to provide or to invite certain religious insights into matters with which preach ers and teachers have long been familiar. These will depend chiefly on the rich scholarship of the Gospel of John which has become available since the nineteen twenties. To it will be added certain of the writer's own insights. The body of available J ohannine scholarship is daunting in its very bulk. Conflicting positions are taken by those expert in text, word-meaning and grammar, in the life world and thought world of Hellenist Juda ism, in the attempted reconstruction of the history of early Christianity. The last is especially the case as this history reveals a development into Gnosticism on the one hand and the more catholic interpretations found in First John, Ignatius, and Irena- eus on the other. vii No attempt will be made at a consensus position from among the modern giants like Bultmann and Barrett, Braun INTERPRETATION and Dodd, Brown and Schnackenburg, and Lindars and Morris. This commentary will not be a homogenized interpretation in which sharp differences among those authors are eliminated and major agreements are featured. One must turn to them, author by author, to see how they interpret various passages in John, especially the stoppers (cruces interpretum). The task essayed here will be simpler than any such survey of what is called "the literature." It will be to hew to a single line on the meaning of the whole Gospel and various aspects of it which seem defensible to the writer. Overall, this book will consider major themes or facets of the Gospel in preference to chapters or verses (which are re spectively thirteenth and sixteenth-century divisions in any case). John is made up of vignettes, discourses, and narrative pericopes which are both shorter and longer than the tradi tional chapter divisions. Any analyses of the Gospel which were to assume the absolute rightness of these divisions would betray it. At the same time, chapter and verse divisions are those most familiar to any who know John well. Second in order, surely, comes the paragraphing courageously attempted by modern teams (like the editor-translators of RSV, NAB or NIV). A more recent element still in sense-division is the attempt of the fram ers of the four lectionaries currently in use--the Catholic, Epis copal, Lutheran and Common (produced by the Consultation on Common Texts)-to determine where portions of John cho sen for public proclamation should begin and end. The four sets of choices in the three-year cycle will be indicated, normally at the beginning of a passage's treatment for commentary. In that scheme, readings from John are inserted into year-long continu ous readings from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Lectionary prac tices of this sort are the oldest way in which the Scriptures were shared with believers at the weekly assembly. The invention of printing, coupled with the theological principle that the Holy Spirit's prompting of the preacher should determine the por tions to be read and preached on, did much to bring the prac tice into disuse. But some Christians never abandoned it and many churches in our day are returning to it. Attention is paid to the practice in the following pages not to promote it but as a convenience to readers. It should be interesting to all to see viii which portions ofJohn are proposed for public worship services and how editors subsequent to those who produced the Roman Lectionary (1969) think the Johannine sense is better preserved Preface both by non-omission and by starting and stopping the reading at places other than the ones first proposed. For those who preach from one of the church lectionaries currently in use, the intermittent use of pericopes from John may create a problem. As selections from this Gospel are in terspersed within the three "synoptic years," they seem to be used to complement the other Gospels rather than to have an independent existence. This means that developing a sustained Johannine outlook in the pulpit will not be an easy matter. Any single development by John is an integral part of his project. This can mean that congregations who hear good preaching will have John's few major motifs made clear to them whatever the pericope in hand. Some people are by tempera ment already on the Fourth Gospel's wavelength. Others will never be. By the homilist's careful exposition, all hearers should be free to decide. The chapter divisions in the commentary are in some cases dictated by the inner logic of the Gospel; in others they are the simple matter of conforming to the choices made when thirteenth-century Archbishop Stephen Langton of Canter bury divided it into chapters. Thus, the subject matter of John 18-19 makes those chapters a natural grouping. The case is similar with 13-17 and 20-21 (although the argument for treating the latter two separately could be termed as strong or stronger). John 1:1-18 and 19-51 deal with quite distinct mat ters, yet they will be commented on together. The same is true of 4: 1-42 and 43-54. One familiar division which this commentary will not em ploy, except to note its popularity, is that between a "Book of Signs" (1:19-12:50) and a "Book of Glory" (13-20), with chap ter 21 as an appendix. The reason is that all such editorial helps for writer and reader--except for the last-named, which is a clear fact of the Gospel's composition-give the impression that the author had this distinction in mind. That would be hard to establish. Jesus' "raising up" in both crucifixion and glorification is the greatest of the signs in the Gospel, although not so desig nated by that word, yet it does not appear in a hypothetical "Book of Signs." Likewise, Jesus' glory with the Father is re vealed, not merely anticipated, by his words and works in the first twelve chapters. The clear distinction between the two ix "books" proves inadequate although undoubtedly a convenient device.
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