Few scholarly constructs have proven as influential or as durable as the Johannine community. A product of the era in New Testament studies dominated by redaction criticism, the Johannine community construct as articulated first by J. Louis Martyn and later by Raymond E. Brown emerged with an explanatory power that proved persuasive to scholars deliberating on the provenance and emergence of the Johannine literature for the next 50 years. Recent years, however, have seen this once dominant paradigm questioned by many of those working with the Gospel and Letters of John. The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate is dedicated to exploring the current state of the question while shining a light on new and constructive proposals for understanding the emergence of the Johannine literature. Some contributions accept the idea of a Johannine Community but suggest different ways we might know about the nature of that community. Others reject the existence of a Johannine Community, suggesting alternate models for understanding the emergence of these texts. These proposals are themselves set in perspective by responses from senior scholars.
Christopher Seglenieks works at the Bible College of South Australia, an affiliated college of the Australian College of Theology. Christopher W. Skinner is professor of New Testament and Early Christianity and Graduate Program Director in the Theology Department at Loyola University Chicago.
List of Tables and Figures Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Christopher W. Skinner and Christopher Seglenieks Chapter 1: The Rise, Demise, and Afterlives of the Johannine Community Christopher W. Skinner Part I: New Approaches to the Johannine Community Chapter 2: Reading the Johannine Community in the Letters: A Method Christopher Seglenieks Chapter 3: The Language of John: Idiolect, Sociolect, Antilanguage, and Textual Community David A. Lamb Chapter 4: Disentangling "Mom's Spaghetti": A Socio-Cognitive Approach to the Complexity of the Johannine Community Christopher Porter Chapter 5: Triangulating a Johannine Community from John 18:28-19:22 Laura J. Hunt Chapter 6: The Johannine Community and the Johannine Community Vision: Historical Reflection, Rhetorical Construction, and Narrative Ecclesiology Andrew J. Byers Chapter 7: Renewing Johannine Historical Criticism: A Proposal Hugo Mendez Chapter 8: The Legacy of the Beloved Disciple: The Johannine Letters as Epistolary Fiction Elizabeth J. B. Corsar Part II: The Way Forward? Responses to the Proposals Chapter 9: Who Are the Children of God? Rhetoric, Memory, and Creating Communities with the Johannine Writings Alicia D. Myers Chapter 10: The Johannine Situation-An Advance over Imagined Communities Paul N. Anderson Chapter 11: Seeing with the Eyes and Hearing with the Ears: Community Hypotheses in Johannine Scholarship Adele Reinhartz Bibliography About the Contributors
Most narratives are written by someone for someone. Was that the case for the Fourth Gospel? This illuminating collection enables a number of newer perspectives in the search for the Gospel's presumed origins. Gifted authors challenge long-accepted historical paradigms, raising questions that shine fresh light upon why this Jesus-story was written, how it was written, and for whom it was written. The Johannine Community in Contemporary Debate should become an important point of reference for all future discussions of these major interpretative issues. -- Francis J. Moloney, senior professorial fellow, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
