Understanding Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John: Polemic, Tradition, and Johannine Self-Identity [Hardcover]

Understanding Judaism and the Jews in the Gospel of John: Polemic, Tradition, and Johannine Self-Identityreopens the perennial question of the Fourth Gospels perplexing characterization of the Jews. According to the reigning paradigm, the Gospel of John witnesses to a communitys burgeoning sense of religious distinctiveness. Ethnically Jewish believers in Jesus had begun to forge a new identity incontrastto 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 evangelists choice of terminology: the Gospels setting, its intended audience, and, above all, Johns indebtedness to Scripture. As a first-century Jew well-versed in Israels sacred texts, the evangelist has modeled his story of Jesus after patterns familiar to him from the ScripturesScriptures in which Israelite authors consistently portray their ancestors as faithless despite Gods powerful work on their behalf. John is a relentless critic, but such cutting theological assessment had long been part of Israels counterintuitive way of telling its history.This book shows how the Fourth Gospel's language about the Jews is profoundly shaped by its scriptural imagination. It is the product of a self-consciously Jewish author who saw himself as living and writing from within the Jewish tradition.Nathan Thiel, PhD, is an independent scholar. His main areas of research are ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean history and culture with a focus on Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.

The Gospel of Johns 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 andlã²