New Work on St John's Gospel

Extract

Two groups of Christian scholars have met recently—one at Oxford, the other at Louvain—to consider the Gospel of St John; and the papers read at both meetings are now published. The English group was mostly Anglican, the Continental one (French, Belgian and Dutch, but using the French language) was Catholic; but this difference only appears obviously in two or three of the contributions to the English volume. Together these books are a striking witness to contemporary interest in the most sublime of Christian documents. This interest is particularly keen just now for several reasons including, besides a general stimulus coming from the Qumrân discoveries, the recent publication of an important new manuscript of the fourth Gospel and, in the field of Johannine theology, Dr C. H. Dodd’s great work, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (1953). It is in this theological field that the books we are reviewing make their chief contribution. The Catholic volume in particular offers some really distinguished pieces of biblical theology; indeed it is only fair to say, and one may say this without any parti pris, that of these two books the one that carries an imprimatur is by far the more important. The English work is relatively slight in scope and quality.