Using various narrative approaches and methodologies, an international team of forty-four Johannine scholars here offers probing essays related to individual characters and group characters in the Gospel of John. These essays present fresh perspectives on characters who play a major role in the Gospel (Peter, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, Thomas, and many others), but they also examine characters who have never before been the focus of narrative analysis (the men of the Samaritan woman, the boy with the loaves and fishes, Barabbas, and more). Taken together, the essays shed new light on how complex and nuanced many of these characters are, even as they stand in the shadow of Jesus. Readers of this volume will be challenged to consider the Gospel of John anew.

Applying a comprehensive theory of character to the Gospel of John, Cornelis Bennema provides a fresh analysis of the characters and their responses to Jesus. While the majority of scholars view most Johannine characters as “flat,” Bennema demonstrates that many are complex, developing, and “round.” John’s broad array of characters correspond to people and their choices in real life in any culture and time. This book highlights how John’s Gospel seeks to challenge its readers about where they stand in relation to Jesus.

Did first century Mediterranean readers of the Fourth Gospel have comparable literary examples to inform their comprehension of Moses as a character? In addressing this question, Harstine's study falls into two parts. The first is an analysis of the character Moses as utilized in the text of the Fourth Gospel. The second is an examination of other Hellenistic narrative texts, in which the character of Homer is also considered, as another important legendary figure with whom the readers of the Fourth Gospel would have been familiar.

This volume examines the Fourth Gospel narrative in terms of its character portrayal, especially the portrayal of anonymous characters. It focuses on how characterization impacts readers, eliciting their involvement in the narrative, particularly the recognition of and response to Jesus' identity, and how anonymity facilitates that participation. The first chapters examine the understanding of characterization in contemporary literary theory, then the author explores other contemporaneous narratives for the function of anonymous characters in those narratives. The final chapters examine specific character portrayals in the Fourth Gospel, demonstrating how the narratives of anonymous characters draw the reader into participation in the narrative and enables identification with those characters, especially the disciple Jesus loved, the Johannine paradigm of discipleship.

This volume examines characters in the Fourth Gospel and provides an in-depth look at different approaches currently employed by scholars working with literary and reader-oriented methods. Divided into two sections, the book first considers method and theory, followed by exegetical character studies using a literary or reader-oriented method. It summarizes the state of the discussion, examines obstacles to arriving at a comprehensive theory of character in the Fourth Gospel, compares different approaches, and compiles the diverse methodologies into one comparative study. Through this detailed exegesis, the various theories will come alive, and the merits (or deficiencies) of each approach will be available to the reader. This volume is both a comprehensive study in narrative/reader-oriented theories, and a study in the application of those theories as they apply to characterization. Summing up current research on characters and characterization in the Fourth Gospel, this book also provides a comprehensive presentation of different approaches to character that have developed in recent years.

Craig Koester's respected study uses the symbolic language of the Gospel of John as a focus to explore "the Gospel's literary dimensions, social and historical context, and theological import." This edition is fully revised and updated and includes a number of new sections on such topics as Judas and the knowledge of God. Fresh treatments are given on a number of issues, including the Gospel's Christology. This new edition offers both new insights and proven worth for students and scholars alike.

In The Adaptable Jesus of the Fourth Gospel, Jason S. Sturdevant argues that the Gospel of John portrays Jesus as an adaptable teacher, who accommodates to different people in various ways to a singular end, to bring each to faith. In the same way, the Logos accommodates to humanity via the incarnation. Adaptability serves as both an interpersonal and universal category. Early Christian interpretations of John, especially that of John Chrysostom, describe the Jesus of John by echoing characterizations of the ideal Greco-Roman pedagogue, adapting to his diverse students. By looking to such interpretations, as well as illumination from the milieu of the Fourth Evangelist, Jason S. Sturdevant provides a new lens through which to understand the characterization of the Johannine Jesus.

Essential classroom resource for New Testament courses In this book, a group of international scholars go in detail to explain how the author of the Gospel of John uses a variety of narrative strategies to best tell his story. More than a commentary, this book offers a glimpse at the way an ancient author created and used narrative features such as genre, character, style, persuasion, and even time and space to shape a dramatic story of the life of Jesus. Features: An introduction to the Fourth Gospel through its narrative features and dynamics Fifteen features of story design that comprise the Gospel of John Short, targeted essays about how John works that can be used as starting points for the study of other Gospels/texts

This book sheds new light on the women in the Fourth Gospel. Unlike most works that approach the topic from a historical-critical perspective, this book approaches the topic from a historical-literary perspective and attempts to illustrate for the modern reader how a first-century reader would have understood the characterizations of the women, given first-century cultural and literary norms and the theology of the implied author. The thesis of this book is that the primary purpose of the women in the Fourth Gospel is to support the portrayal of Jesus as the Messianic Bridegroom and further the plot of Jesus' giving the people the power to become children of God (John 1:12). This historical-literary analysis exposes a highly androcentric and patriarchal text, which leads the author in the end to question current assumptions that behind the text exists a community or school whose egalitarianism extended to women.

This volume represents the most thorough study of characters and characterization in the Fourth Gospel heretofore published. Building on several different narrative approaches, the contributors assembled here offer sixty-two essays related to characters and group characters in John. Among these are detailed studies presenting fresh perspectives on characters who play a major role in the Gospel (e.g., Peter, Mary Magdalene, etc.), as well as original studies of characters who have never been the focus of narrative analysis before, characters often glossed over in commentaries as insignificant (e.g., the boy with the loaves and fish, the parents of the man born blind, etc.). Clearly, characters in John stand in the shadow of the protagonist -- Jesus. In this volume, however, they step fully into the light. Thus illuminated, it becomes clear how complex and nuanced many of them are.