Thank you for your article. I'll have to re-read it, and look up some of your books.
Re John as anti-Jewish, it occurred to me some time ago that such as understanding neglects Jesus' and his movement as prophetic. The self-critical spirit of the West came not from the Greek philosophers, but from the prophets of Israel; and it is surely the case that Jesus and his movement saw themselves as standing in that prophetic tradition. John speaks from within the Jewish ethnos. Perhaps the critical scholarship msses this because the critics were raised in the post-enlightenment tradition of self-congratulation rather than prophetic critique and lamentation. John, like Josephus and others uses "the Jews" not as outsiders ,but as a synonym for "the people" (given the context in which the Gospel is set). Ladt of all, can John's Jesus be seen as the father of "anti-Semitism" (apparently coined by the 19th century Wilhelm Marr) when the Samaritan woman and Pilate both identify him as a Jew, and when Jesus tells the formr "salvation is of the Jews" (Jn. 4:22--how chauvinistic and non-inclusive!)?
Thank you for your article. I'll have to re-read it, and look up some of your books.
Re John as anti-Jewish, it occurred to me some time ago that such as understanding neglects Jesus' and his movement as prophetic. The self-critical spirit of the West came not from the Greek philosophers, but from the prophets of Israel; and it is surely the case that Jesus and his movement saw themselves as standing in that prophetic tradition. John speaks from within the Jewish ethnos. Perhaps the critical scholarship msses this because the critics were raised in the post-enlightenment tradition of self-congratulation rather than prophetic critique and lamentation. John, like Josephus and others uses "the Jews" not as outsiders ,but as a synonym for "the people" (given the context in which the Gospel is set). Ladt of all, can John's Jesus be seen as the father of "anti-Semitism" (apparently coined by the 19th century Wilhelm Marr) when the Samaritan woman and Pilate both identify him as a Jew, and when Jesus tells the formr "salvation is of the Jews" (Jn. 4:22--how chauvinistic and non-inclusive!)?