The Community of the Beloved Disciple

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The life, loves and hates of an individual church in New Testament times. Considers the life and writings of St. John.

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The Definitive Treatment of a Difficult Topic.......2006-08-31

It is rare indeed for a specialized monograph to still be the authority on its topic of choice after nearly thirty years. In the case of this book, "The Community of the Beloved Disciple," which stirred controversy at its publication and still does today, it is even more remarkable. Building on the seminal work of his associate, J. Louis Martyn, at Union Theological Seminary, Brown explicates a fully fleshed out historical and textual criticism of the Johannine Corpus. And what did Brown posit that still manages to raise such passions? He posits five persons named John plus an unnamed Beloved Disciple as responsible for the corpus instead of one solitary John the Apostle. For Brown, these persons named John were John the Apostle, John the Evangelist, John the Redactor, John the Presbyter, and John the Revelator. The only one that might not be important for the development of the Johannine corpus in Brown's read is the Apostle John.

Mainstream Reformed Protestant seminaries are still willing to to deal with only one John who was the Apostle and the Beloved Disciple and all else rolled into one. Generally, Conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants along with Fundamentalist Protestants all find Brown's work in this book anathema. Apostolic authority seems to be the rock upon which their textual acceptance is built in the case of the Johannine corpus. Therefore, against all odds and facts, they firmly reject Brown's well grounded historical analysis and textual criticism for what appear to be little more than dogmatic reasons. Upon the Reverend Father Brown's death recently, the Catholic Commonweal Magazine opined that American Catholicism had lost its greatest scholarly treasure. Few are willing to deny that Raymond E. Brown was one of the greatest if not the greatest of recent Johannine scholars. As well as this book, almost all his other far less controversial works are magisterial. In almost every other matter orthodox, in this case, Brown chose to depart from received orthodoxy based on the facts as he read them.

Anyone, deeply interested in the Johannine corpus must deal with this work. This is not a book for a beginner in Johannine or New Testament studies. However, considering the complexity of the material covered, the book is clearly understandable and very readable. Nothing here is surpassed or outmoded by later scholarship. Are there other ways to look at the Johannine corpus from a historical point of view? Certainly there are, but single author attribution is not one of them. The facts militate against such a reading. The work of Gunter Stemberger and others place the Johannine community in the Galilee/Syrian border area not in Ephesus. Unfortunately, most of that scholarship is not translated out of the German language. Can one avoid this controversy? Most assuredly, Leon Morris in his magnificent commentary on the Johannine corpus in the New International Biblical Commentary Series says nary a word about historical analysis. However, this work explains a great deal quite persuasively while still leaving intact a marvelous, faith affirming set of sacral documents for the reader's edification. I recommend this book most highly.

the best book on 4G.......2006-06-20

The late Raymond Brown was the world's leading scholar of the Gospel of John. His analysis combines the best available evidence with a reasoned historical reconstruction. Father Brown was a Catholic and he is considered too conservative by many. As a protestant, I think the only time he lets his catholicism color his thinking is when he discusses the "sacramental" nature of 4G. Other than that, I believe his approach is that of the objective historian. His analysis is not perfect, but no one has done any better- yet.

Influential, but thankfully on the way out.......2006-05-26

This work was Brown's most succinct development of his theories regarding the elusive Johannine community and how its development can allegedly be seen in the Fourth Gospel and Johannine epistles. In this work, Brown came to accept some key conclusions of his colleague at Union Seminary in NY, J. Louis Martyn, and retreated from many of the historical views of the Church, mostly for ill.

Brown believes that the Fourth Gospel and Letters were not designed to provide the reader with historically accurate information regarding the person of Jesus Christ or even necessarily his actual ministry activity. Instead, Brown thinks that the writings instead reflect the exclusivist (though not completely sectarian) and beleaguered condition of the community decades after the historical events of Jesus. For Brown, the Fourth Gospel in particular makes Jesus something of a spokesperson for the attitudes of the Johannine community decades later, so that Jesus becomes a pliable character that is made to fit the story the author(s) wants to tell. As a result, the Fourth Gospel is accurate only to the extent that it accurately portrays the attitudes of those who wrote it. It does not give us an accurate picture of Jesus himself, but only the Jesus of the author's own making.

On one level, Brown's scholarship is brilliant. And I for one am willing to give Brown the benefit of the doubt in some ways. I can believe that Brown was sincerely trying to rescue the Fourth Gospel in particular from the post-Holocaust garbage bin by relegating many of the hostile confrontations with 'the Jews' to the later attitudes of a community that eventually lost much of its identity anyway. By doing this, Brown was able to exempt the historical Jesus from anti-semitism by saying that the accounts in the Fourth Gospel were not historical to Jesus, and that Jesus himself never said what the Fourth Gospel says he said. This allowed Brown to say that the Fourth Gospel was still valuable, while taking much of the sting out of it and redeeming it from anti-semitic interpretation by relegating most of the Fourth Gospel to entirely situational material that is not normative on the church today.

The problem is that Brown's proposal is evidentially vacuous (as even he refreshingly hints at in the opening of the book) and methodologically flawed from start to finish. First, Brown's proposal is, as Carson once noted, a stack of inferences heaped on inferences. Brown's approach is essentially a structuralist approach, which seeks to develop a theory from entirely within the text with no external controls to govern whether there's any truth to what he's saying. Structuralism as a literary method of interpretation has been rightly discredited rather thoroughly for over 2 decades now, and this immediately dates Brown's work and makes it severely suspect. This is why Brown's approach is slowly on the way out in academic circles in favor of more synchronic approaches to interpretation.

The one external control Brown attempts to apply to his analysis is borrowed from Martyn's theory of the Twelfth Benediction. This is the late 1st C Jewish benediction that allegedly threw Jewish Christians out of the synagogue for confessing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Both Brown and Martyn believed this was a critical event in the history of the Johannine community and explains the hostility with 'the Jews' that we find in the Fourth Gospel. For Brown, we can find this tumultuous event in the Fourth Gospel because the writer(s) have imposed it back onto their narrative of Jesus. The problem is that the Twelfth Benediction never actually says what Brown claims. The 12th Benediction is just a rather generic condemnation of the Nazarenes (Christians) with no mention of putting anyone out of the synagogue. In order for Brown to use this external control to advance his theory, he has to make it say what it doesn't clearly say at all. Problematic to say the least.

In addition, his flawed structuralism allows him to develop a Bultmannian-like source theory without calling it a source theory. Instead of various literary sources being smashed together in the Fourth Gospel, Brown argues that differing streams of Johannine tradition were smashed together so that the Fourth Gospel reveals the development of the tradition that can be fairly easily identified. For Brown, this is the only way to explain how the Fourth Gospel can both repeatedly praise and condemn the world. But again, there are no external controls to govern his analysis, and his approach is severely deficient in recognizing the nuances with which the author utilizes the terminology he does. Instead of doing the hard work of syntactical and theological analysis, Brown opts instead to punt the difficulties of the Fourth Gospel to an untestable and unprovable source theory that presumes discontinuity as a methodological starting point rather than proving it evidentially. This results in a circular argument where unity of authorship is denied to make way for a source theory that conveniently denies unitary authorship. Such interlocking reconstructions that ignore the hard data in favor of softer inferences is methodologicaly deficient.

Lastly, this theory does violence to the text itself regarding such things as authorship and eyewitness testimony. The Fourth Gospel presents itself as an eyewitness and apostolic account, and Brown, who once agreed with this, offers us no reasons why we should now follow him in backing away from this constant thrust in the document. Instead, Brown now says that a writer, or group of writers decades later have put words in Jesus' mouth to make him say what they want him to say in order to deal with the later community's own problems and hardships. But of course, the Fourth Gospel itself never claims this of itself, and in fact, claims the opposite. This means that Jesus' prophecy in John 13 about a day when his followers will be put out of the synagogue is no longer a bonafide prophecy, but a later author's imposition back onto the narrative of an event that already happened, and then trying to pass it off as an authentic prophecy of Jesus to the beleaguered community it was written for. In order to believe something like this with absolutely no evidence to back it up is to bring a presumption of guilt to the text that is hermeneutically unwarranted and intellectually flawed.

In the end, to follow Brown is to reach a conclusion in which the historical Jesus is not really available to us in John's writings. We can know very little about Jesus himself from reading the Fourth Gospel. The best we can do is learn about the community who wrote the document and was the intended original audience of the document. This conveniently removes Jesus himself from the Gospel account, which allows us to do the very thing the author of the Fourth Gospel allegedly did - craft whatever kind of Jesus we want because that's the best we can do. It's a very American approach to spirituality, but in the end, it stands opposed to the Christian faith and the apostolic witness.

Recommended reading........2005-12-05

This is an excellent introduction to the Gospel of John. I am not a fundamentalist yet do not always agree with the exegetical approach to scripture, yet enjoyed the appoach of Raymond Brown. I read it and still came out with my faith in Jesus, still ascribe to the creeds and know that miracles happen.

A true classic.......2005-08-28

This book deepened my appreciation for the Gospel of John, drawing my attention to details and showing me the potential significance of those details. Anyone who has reason to preach, teach or reflect upon the Gospel of John should study this book.

The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John (Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible)

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Outstanding commentary

The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John (Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible)
Georg Strecker , and Harold W. Attridge
Manufacturer: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0800660471

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Outstanding commentary.......2006-03-07

The Hermeneia series is an expensive but outstanding set of commentaries. The main advantage for an English or North American student is that they offer the opportunity to engage the studies of outstanding European scholars that might not otherwise be available. Strecker's work has been translated from German but reads very easily and smoothly. The quality of the series is outstanding, both in the physical presentation of the books to the detail and care put into the writing of the commentary itself.
I find the Johannine letters to be wonderful windows into the early church, and Strecker's work is comprehensive in it's analysis of the deep themes that run through these letters. Strecker has a great ability to give understanding to the Greek words such as agape which dominate the writing and theology of these letters. He is able to demonstrate both the similarities between I John and II and III John while giving proper respect to each letter as an individual entity.
I am a lay student attempting to study my way through the New Testament to enhance my understanding of these books and also to help my preparation as an adult and high school teacher. This book has been very helpful to me in both these goals. It would help to have a basic knowledge of Greek to read the text, but it is not essential. I have read Marshall's volume in the NICNT series, and I would favor slightly favor this book. Both are outstanding commmentaries. I enjoyed this commentary and the format, which leaves most of the scholarly discussion in the footnotes, to be accessed if needed. This book is pricey, but well worth it if you want to explore the riches of these wonderful letters.

A Love Supreme: A History Of The Johannine Tradition

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Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm

A Love Supreme: A History Of The Johannine Tradition
Allen Dwight Callahan
Manufacturer: Augsburg Fortress Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0800637089

Book Description

Callahan suggests that scholars have wrongly placed the sequence and therefore the importance of the works collectively known as the Johannine tradition—the Gospel of John and the Johannine Epistles. His proposal includes literary, theological, and historical analysis as he argues for the reevaluation of a significant part of the biblical canon.

"The Johannine Epistles … are the literary beginnings of a process that ultimately bears fruit in a narrative representation of Jesus. In the Epistles of John and the Gospel of John, we learn that the greatest love is to live for one's friends. Love is how one lives, not how one dies, and one may only die in love as one lives in love. No one has greater love than to put one's life at the disposal of those one loves."

—from the Prologue

Customer Reviews:

Acknowledgment, Resolution, Pursuance, Psalm.......2005-05-14

There is so little written about these little letters and that which is out there is dull and so much Raymond Brownian bore. Callahan gets at the beautiful and thrilling truth that in these letters we have a fight on our hands. And just maybe the winner in the end isn't who we think it is. But more amazing--is that we have a bible that includes the fight, the disagreements. Callahan, points out the characters, the structure, the undertow in a way that makes these three little forgotten books compelling and important in a time when we need to be asking questions about the ramifications of calling THEM the enemy and US the righteous.

If you want to know about the epistles of John there really is no other book out there but this one. If you want to know what it means to love, this one helps there too.

Johannine Epistles: Critical and Exegetical Commentary (International Critical Commentary Series)

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Johannine Epistles: Critical and Exegetical Commentary (International Critical Commentary Series)
A. E. Brooke
Manufacturer: T. & T. Clark Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on: The Epistle to the Hebrews (International Critical Commentary)

ASIN: 0567050378

The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (New Testament Theology)

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Getting to see 1 John on its own terms

The Theology of the Johannine Epistles (New Testament Theology)
Judith M. Lieu
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 052135806X

Book Description

The Johannine Epistles have long been recognized as contributing a vital element to the theology of the New Testament. Usually it is to the Gospel that the reader turns first in order to explore that contribution; the First Epistle is treated as a supplement, while 2 and 3 John--because of their brevity--receive little attention. This book allows the Epistles to speak for themselves, and shows that they sound a distinctive note within Johannine theology, in particular, and the thought of the New Testament, in general. Dr. Lieu carefully outlines their most important theological themes which, when understood in their original setting, are seen to have rich potential for the continuing theology of the Church.

Customer Reviews:

Getting to see 1 John on its own terms.......2003-10-14

This book is in theory a survey of the theology of 1 John, 2 John and 3 John but in practice is an exposition of 1 John with the other two being addendums. This, however much it is to be lamented, is really a strength of this book. Most of the NT books beyond Hebrews tend to get ignored (with the exception perhaps of Revelation) and even when they are given attention they receive very little. And so, 1 John being much more important than its companions, it is a virtue of this book devoting 129 pages almost entirely to 1 John.

Judith Lieu begins by looking at the setting of 1 John to its history and general Johannine "milieu" but is able, finally, to decide to treat 1 John on its own accord, without making it stand in the shadow of the Gospel and this decision frees the rest of the book to settle down and hear it on its own terms.

The meat of the book looks at its themes but before it does so Lieu reminds us that 1 John is an enigmatic writing, defying the conventions that most other letters use in the NT. Whereas Paul and Hebrews and others do theology through argumentation and linear thinking, 1 John is a strange sea of propositions that are neither argued nor pondered but simply affirmed. Lieu notes that 1 John's thought has been likened to that of a spiral rather than a straight line - it continues to cover the same ideas but always by bringing in new relationships to other ideas and so moves a step forward. At the center of this spiral Lieu identifies eternal life, which is the overriding concern and backbone of this letter.

As a result, 1 John's goal is not primarily to correct false teaching, encourage ethics, innovate a new theology or persuade the readers to some course of action but simply to reaffirm and remind them of that which they already know, believe, do and maintain and how those things confirm their possession of eternal life. This sets up tensions between the author and community (the use of "we" and "you pl." serves to identify the author with his community even though he is writing to them), imperative and indicative (the commands are simply to keep doing what they already know to do), and dualism and election (being chosen by God and being a participant in a spiritual battle in the world). Lieu looks at how the community understands religious experience, the paradox of sins and sinlessness and authority.

2 and 3 John are explored, but even when mined at such depths their contributions are shown to be primarily concerning church, authority and ministry and how in these documents an anti-establishment view is being developed within the Johannine circle.

In the end Lieu connects these thoughts to the Gospel and to the NT as a whole and then goes on to expound on its meaning for today. These are treated as usual.

Book Description

A rich mine of exegentical insights worthy of the attention of any serious reader. Religious Studies Review

Customer Reviews:

A clear, direct and spiritually rich book.......2000-03-31

Rufolf Schnackenburg's commentary on the Johanine Letters is one of the best ever written. The author works with the historical critical method, and he has made a work that can enrich your spiritual life. His work does not have as encyclopedic size as Raymond E Brown's, but you fill find it always helpul, because Schnackenburg takes time to offer sound solutions that any johananine reader can find. This new revised edition is a serious need if you consider that R. Schnakenburg has been humble enough to accept somebody else was right and he was wrong (by example he accepts now that 2 Jn's phrase ''to walk en aletheia'' doesn't simply mean ''to walk'', but to walk in the truth in its particular johanine sense. Rudolf Schnakenburg is a believer exegete and this really is a good notice. Buy this book, read it with a prevous prayer and Jesus will make you happy.

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The Johannine Epistles
C.H., Dodd
Manufacturer: Pomona Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1406788309

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Contents Include - The Johannine Epistles in the Early Church - Background and Settings of the First Epistle - Character and Contents of the First Epistle - Relation of the First Epistle of the Fourth Gospel - Character and Contents of the Second and Third Epistles - Place, Date and Authorship of the Johnannine Epistles - COMMENTARY - THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN - Exordium:Theme and Purpose of the Epistle - What is Christianity? - Life in the Family of God - The Certainty of the Faith - Postcript - THE SECOND EPISTLE OF JOHN - Epistolary Introduction - The Christian Life - False Teachers and How to Treat them - Epistolery Conclusion - THE THIRD EPISTLE OF JOHN - Epistolary Introduction - Gaius and the Travelling Missionaries - The Recalcitrance of Diotrephes - A Testimonial for Demetrius - Epistolary Conclusion

The Gospel According to John and the Johannine Epistles (Collegeville Bible Commentary ; 4)

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The Gospel According to John and the Johannine Epistles (Collegeville Bible Commentary ; 4)
Neal M. Flanagan
Manufacturer: Liturgical Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0814613047

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