Understanding the Fourth Gospel
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:26th Apr '07
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This hardback is available in another edition too:
- Paperback£41.49(9780199544226)
In this fully revised new edition of a pioneering study of John's gospel, John Ashton explores fresh topics and takes account of the latest scholarly debates. Ashton argues first that the thought-world of the gospel is Jewish, not Greek, and secondly that the text is many-layered, not simple, and composed over an extended period as the evangelist responded to the changing situation of the community he was addressing. Ashton seeks to provide new and coherent answers to what Rudolf Bultmann called the two great riddles of the gospel: its position in the development of Christian thought and its central or governing idea. In arguing that the first of these should be concerned rather with Jewish thought Ashton offers a partial answer to the most important and fascinating of all the questions confronted by New Testament scholarship: how did Christianity emerge from Judaism? Bultmann's second riddle is exegetical, and concerns the message of the book. Ashton's answer highlights a generally neglected feature of the gospel's concept of revelation: its debt to Jewish apocalyptic.
Understanding the Fourth Gospel is surely a classic: it sets a new agenda for Johannine studies overall, is endlessly illuminating in detail, and beautifully written * Robin Griffith-Jones, Times Literary Supplement *
John Ashton has already done more than anyone else in our generation to help us to study and understand the Fourth Gospel this...[is a] magisterial book. * Robin Griffith-Jones, Times Literary Supplement *
The JTS review of Ashton's first edition concludes on an entirely favourable note: 'In the way in which he draws together the threads of recent research, as well as in his own contributions, Ashton truly represents the advance of Johannine scholarship since Bultmann and Dodd' (JTS 43, 1991, pp. 594-600). This assessment still holds true. * D. Moody Smith, The Journal of Theological Studies *
[A] major treatise on the theology of John. * International Review of Biblical Studies *
The new edition of Understanding the Fourth Gospel will continue to be consulted as a highly significant volume and a standard text on John's Gospel. It offers fresh insight into this theologically rich gospel. * Paul Foster, Expository Times *
ISBN: 9780199297610
Dimensions: 224mm x 144mm x 34mm
Weight: 1g
606 pages
2nd Revised edition