Preface

Summary

This book embodies the first course of Sarum Lectures in the University of Oxford, delivered in 1954–5. The actual contents of the lectures are represented by the Introduction and Part I, A and B, though the version here given is substantially fuller than the lectures as delivered. The whole work may be regarded as a sequel to my earlier book, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge, 1953), or as an expansion of the Appendix to that book, entitled ‘Some considerations upon the historical aspect of the Fourth Gospel’.

In the course of fifty years I have learnt much about this gospel from books, much also in conference and discussion with fellow-students of the New Testament–more, certainly, than I could now trace to its sources. But here I have tried to take a fresh look at the gospel itself as it lies before us, with the historical question in mind. Where I have consciously borrowed information or suggestions, I have made my acknowledgements. If through ignorance or forgetfulness I have omitted to do so, I offer my apologies. It cannot but be that many of my observations have been anticipated; vivant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! But such as they are, they are the fruit of an individual approach along one particular line, and I hope they may prove some contribution to the collective effort by which our understanding of the Gospel story must be enlarged.