Did Jesus really call the Jews of his day children of the devil? Would he label Jews of today the same way? Did the Jews kill Jesus and then violently expel from the synagogue anyone who accepted him as a promised Messiah? The Christian church has found answers to these and other similar questions in the Gospel of John. But Jewish readers are justifiably offended by many of John’s answers. The eleven essays offered here present facts everyone should know. They are written by a modern Jewish scholar responding to troubling questions about John raised over a period of more than forty years by his university students, by congregants in synagogues he has served as spiritual guide (rabbi), and by Christian colleagues with whom he has worked throughout his long career. Designed to engage thoughtful readers from every religious background, these essays encourage questions and suggest plausible answers to the problems in John by illustrating the difference between the answers of John and the facts of history. They also compare John’s Jesus with the teachings of the modern church about the treatment of “others,” love for all humanity, and the wholeness of body and spirit.

In recent years, the disciplines of biblical studies and systematic theology have grown apart and largely lost the means of effective communication with one another. Unfortunately, this relational disconnect affects more than just these particular fields of study; it impacts the life of the church as a whole. The first St. Andrews Conference on Scripture and Theology brought leading biblical scholars and systematic theologians together in conversation, seeking to bridge the gap between them. Due to its profound influence on the development of Christian theology, John's Gospel is an ideal base for rekindling fruitful dialogue. The essays here -- taken from the inaugural conference -- consider this Gospel from many angles, addressing a number of key issues that arise from a theological discussion of this text: John's dualism in our pluralist context, historicity and testimony, the treatment of Judaism, Christology, and more. -This is the beginning of a conversation that can only be enriched by variety and experimentation. . . . It is a signpost . . . pointing towards a not-too-distant future when interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration between these two natural partners will become, no longer occasional and surprising, but a normal and essential element in the flourishing of both.- -- Richard Bauckham (from the introduction) Contributors: Paul N. Anderson Stephen C. Barton Richard Bauckham D. Jeffrey Bingham C. Stephen Evans Terry Griffith Martin Hengel Kasper Bro Larsen Tord Larsson Judith Lieu Andrew T. Lincoln Jurgen Moltmann Carl Mosser Stephen Motyer Murray Rae Anastasia Scrutton Marianne Meye Thompson Sigve K. Tonstad Alan J. Torrance Miroslav Volf Rowan Williams

In Exegeting the Jews: The Early Reception of the Johannine "Jews", Michael G. Azar analyzes the rhetorical function of the Gospel of John’s "Jews" in the earliest surviving full-length expositions of John in Greek: Origen’s Commentary on John (3rd cent.), John Chrysostom’s Homilies on John (4th cent.), and Cyril of Alexandria’s Commentary on John (5th cent.). While scholarship often has portrayed the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of the Gospel’s “Jews” as simply and uniformly anti-Jewish or antisemitic, Azar demonstrates that these three writers primarily read John’s narrative typologically, employing the situation and characters in the Gospel not against contemporary Jews with whom they regularly interacted, but as types of each patristic writer’s own intra-Christian struggle and opponents.

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.

John situates certain events in Jesus' ministry specifically during four Jewish festival seasons: Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, and Dedication. According to John, Jesus replaces these feasts in his special relationship to the Father, making them obsolete. The Book of Signs [John 1:19-12:50], is important for this study because it is here that John explores the significance of Jesus in light of the symbolism of the Jewish feasts. . . . We will therefore focus our discussion predominately on the Book of Signs, pointing out in the course of our study where the festival motifs are resumed in the Book of Glory [John 13:1-20:31]. --from the Introduction

Daniel DeForest London argues that the Fourth Gospel offers a potentially transformative response to the question of suffering and the human compulsion to blame. Based on his reading of John 9 (the man born blind), London argues that the Gospel does not offer a theodicy, but rather a theodical spirituality, an experience of praying the question of suffering and remaining open to a divine response. London shows how the Johannine Jesus’s response poses three sets of symbols in dichotomy (day/night, vision/blindness, sheep/wolf), each subverted by another, core symbol (light, judge, shepherd). By interpreting these symbols in light of mimetic theory, he argues that Jesus’s response reveals the scapegoat mechanism in which an innocent victim is blamed by violent victimizers. However, rather than blaming the victimizers, Jesus continues to engage with the characters who appear to be villains: the light of the world transforms night and day into one continuous day; the Good Shepherd welcomes sheep and wolf into his beloved flock. In this way, readers are invited to bring to the Johannine Jesus their own violence, resentment, and wolfish rage regarding the question of suffering and to experience the theodical spirituality of the Fourth Gospel.

Growing up in an ethnic suburb in Cleveland, Aaron Milavec was an impressionable adolescent whose religious and cultural influences made it natural for him to pity, blame, and despise Jews. All of that began to change in 1955 when Mr. Martin, a Jewish merchant, hired Milavec as a stock boy. Milavec's initial anxieties over working for a Jew surprisingly gave way to profound personal admiration. This, in turn, plunged Milavec into a troubling theological dilemma: How could God consign Mr. Martin to eternal hellfire due to his ancestral role in the death of Jesus when it was clear that Mr. Martin would not harm me, a Christian, even in small ways? This book is not for the faint-hearted. Most Christians imagine that the poison of anti-Judaism has been largely eliminated. In contrast, Milavec reveals how this poison has gone underground--disfiguring not only the role of Israel in God's plan of salvation but also horribly twisting the faith, the forgiveness, and the salvation that Christians find through Jesus Christ. This painful realization serves as the necessary first step for our healing. At each step of the way, Milavec's sure hand builds bridges of mutual understanding that enable both Christians and Jews to cross the chasm of distrust and distortion that has infected both church and synagogue over the centuries. In the end, Milavec securely brings his readers to that place where Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity can again be admired as sister religions intimately united to one other in God's drama of salvation.

Diving into the Gospel of John displays the rich and diverse arguments John presents for his thesis that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing, readers/listeners will find eternal life. John's arguments are developed in four parts. The first two chapters develop the author's literary techniques that are often based on ambiguity and his key symbols and concepts, the understanding of which are essential to fully appreciate the Gospel. Chapters 3 through 6 progressively portray the author's evidence for his thesis in the form of signs, testimony of those who encounter Jesus, Jesus's self-identification, and Jesus's relationships to others. Chapters 7 and 8 show how the author uses theatrically patterned dialogues and triadic discourses to convey Jesus's identity and mission. Finally, chapters 9 through 11 provide important hints that the author gives for his thesis: Jesus's appeals to time, the indirect use of seven as the number of completeness, and invocation of parentage in pointing to salvation. Through diving into the Gospel, readers will discover the richness of John's argument, the Jesus he portrays, and the God Jesus reveals. The book aims to stimulate commitment, challenge mind and spirit, and encourage further reflection and conversation.

Until the mid-1960s, most commentators of the Gospel of John were aware of a polemic against 'the Jews,' yet they did not consider it with reference to contemporary ethical discussion. A shift in focus in Johannine scholarship is noticeable from the mid-1960s and 1970s to the present, where commentators began to connect the Gospel's polemic against 'the Jews' with potential anti-Judaism in the text. As yet, very little work has been done to answer the question of how this change in sensitivity came about. This book is a historiography of one scholar's growing awareness of potential anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John with the intention of using this individual history to explain the larger trend in biblical studies. Sonya Cronin examines the published work of Raymond Brown, a prominent Catholic New Testament scholar, between the years 1960-1998. The book contextualizes Brown's work by evaluating the impact of ecclesiastical statements and the influence of earlier and contemporary Johannine scholarship on Brown's biblical interpretation, and then posits theories as to why change occurs at specific times.

Only the most naïve or tendentious among us would deny the extent and intensity of suffering in the world. Can one hold, consistently with the common view of suffering in the world, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? This book argues that one can. Wandering in Darkness first presents the moral psychology and value theory within which one typical traditional theodicy, namely, that of Thomas Aquinas, is embedded. It explicates Aquinas's account of the good for human beings, including the nature of love and union among persons. Eleonore Stump also makes use of developments in neurobiology and developmental psychology to illuminate the nature of such union. Stump then turns to an examination of narratives. In a methodological section focused on epistemological issues, the book uses recent research involving autism spectrum disorder to argue that some philosophical problems are best considered in the context of narratives. Using the methodology argued for, the book gives detailed, innovative exegeses of the stories of Job, Samson, Abraham and Isaac, and Mary of Bethany. In the context of these stories and against the backdrop of Aquinas's other views, Stump presents Aquinas's own theodicy, and shows that Aquinas's theodicy gives a powerful explanation for God's allowing suffering. She concludes by arguing that this explanation constitutes a consistent and cogent defense for the problem of suffering.