Understanding Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John

Polemic, Tradition, and Johannine Self-Identity

By: Nathan Thiel

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Hardcover | 15 October 2024

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Hardcover
218 Pages

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22.9 x 15.2

Hardcover

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Understanding Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John: Polemic, Tradition, and Johannine Self-Identity reopens the perennial question of the Fourth Gospel's perplexing characterization of "the Jews." According to the reigning paradigm, the Gospel of John witnesses to a community's burgeoning sense of religious distinctiveness. Ethnically Jewish believers in Jesus had begun to forge a new identity in contrast to the Jews. Nathan Thiel assesses the weaknesses of the prevailing model, arguing that the fourth evangelist still saw himself as living and working within the Jewish tradition. Yet if the Gospel of John is the literary product of a self-consciously Jewish author, why would he speak so often and so critically of "the Jews"? Thiel considers the factors which have conditioned the evangelist's choice of terminology: the Gospel's setting, its intended audience, and, above all, John's indebtedness to Scripture. As a first-century Jew well-versed in Israel's sacred texts, the evangelist has modeled his story of Jesus after patterns familiar to him from the Scriptures-Scriptures in which Israelite authors consistently portray their ancestors as faithless despite God's powerful work on their behalf. John is a relentless critic, but such cutting theological assessment had long been part of Israel's counterintuitive way of telling its history.

Industry Reviews

The Gospel of John's relationship to ancient Jews and Judaism continues to be one of the hottest topics today in the study of the New Testament. In this well-written and carefully argued book, Nathan Thiel acts as a trustworthy guide, skillfully leading the reader through the often mirky waters of Johannine interpretation toward a clearer picture of John's intra muros vision of Jewish identity. This is a stimulating and insightful book, which no student of John's Gospel will be able to ignore. -- Wally V. Cirafesi, Lund University Thiel contends that the gospel's notoriously hostile depictions of Jews must be considered in view of its author's design to depict Christianity as a kind of Jewish revival movement. Set within Israel's venerable tradition of prophetic moral critique, the evangelist's rhetoric is shown to alternate between expressions of sympathy and scorn suited to its literary medium. Eloquent and inventive, intellectually honest yet no less sensitive to the needs of contemporary readers troubled by its discomfiting subject matter, this is a welcome contribution to scholarship on one of the gospel's most challenging interpretive dilemmas. -- Joshua Ezra Burns, Marquette University

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