Over, under, and through John's story of Jesus are unforgettable ideas and concepts, profoundly simple and simply profound, for the author's own audience and beyond. These ideas did not originate in a vacuum. They have recurred and been repeated before and after the writing of the Fourth Gospel. For this reason we will examine the meaning of its words and themes in the context of its Jewish-Greco-Roman milieu. Much of our intertextual understanding will be derived from alleged parallels that involve comparisons of similar vocabulary and phrases, as well as parallel concepts and images from the Old Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, and other relevant writings. Such parallels will help to determine the meaning of a word or expression, the translation of a particular language, determining any direct influences upon the Fourth Gospel, parallel traditions, or the influence of its ideas, as a creative and inspiring work of later antiquity.

In this fully revised new edition of a pioneering study of John's gospel, John Ashton explores fresh topics and takes account of the latest scholarly debates. Ashton argues first that the thought-world of the gospel is Jewish, not Greek, and secondly that the text is many-layered, not simple, and composed over an extended period as the evangelist responded to the changing situation of the community he was addressing. Ashton seeks to provide new and coherent answers to what Rudolf Bultmann called the two great riddles of the gospel: its position in the development of Christian thought and its central or governing idea. In arguing that the first of these should be concerned rather with Jewish thought Ashton offers a partial answer to the most important and fascinating of all the questions confronted by New Testament scholarship: how did Christianity emerge from Judaism? Bultmann's second riddle is exegetical, and concerns the message of the book. Ashton's answer highlights a generally neglected feature of the gospel's concept of revelation: its debt to Jewish apocalyptic.

In this exegetical study of the Gospel of John, Andreas Kostenberger strives to discover and articulate a throroughtly biblical theology of mission which would have contemporary implications for how the church responds to Christ's mandate.

In New Perspectives on Healing, Restoration and Reconciliation in John, Jacobus (Kobus) Kok investigates the depth and applicability of Jesus’ healing narratives in John’s gospel. Against the background of an ancient group-oriented worldview, it goes beyond the impasse of most Western approaches to interpreting the Biblical healing narratives to date. He argues that the concept of healing was understood in antiquity (as in some parts of Africa) in a much broader way than we tend to understand it today. He shows inter alia why the interaction between Jesus and the Samaritan woman could be interpreted as a healing narrative, illustrating the ancient interrelationship between healing, restoration and reconciliation.