This week is a Johannine week for three reasons.
First, I will finally get to meet someone I've come to know on Facebook, Professor Paul Anderson. Paul is a leading Johannine scholar, who has written widely and edited dozens of books in the prestigious series produced by Brill. Paul will be leading a seminar here on the Aberdeen campus on “Jesus in Johannine Perspective—Inviting a Fourth Quest for Jesus.”
I first came across Paul's name when I read his major monograph The Christology of the Fourth Gospel, which is based on his doctoral thesis at the University of Glasgow, which is another connection, as we share Glasgow as our alma mater.The magisterial Johannine scholars Raymond Brown, D. Moody Smith and C. K. Barrett wrote admiring and appreciative reviews of Anderson's study of John 6 as a primary text in exploring the Christology of John.
Beyond that Paul has been an encouraging friend to those of us likewise fascinated by the gospel of John. Questions, requests for guidance in reading, and at times a generous sending of some of his own articles, all combine to make him a reliable go-to friend and senior scholar. I look forward to meeting him in person.
Paul is a Quaker and his faith commitment both disciplines and enriches his academic work. He is in the tradition of Elton Trueblood and Richard Foster, committed to an expression of Quaker spirituality that is engaged with contemporary life and thought, while seeking to be faithful in understanding and applying the insights of his own tradition.
Continuing the Johannine week theme, secondly, on Sunday past, my long time and very good friend Ken Roxburgh was preaching on John chapter 4, and the Samaritan woman at St Paul's and St George's church in Edinburgh. He told me he would be taking a positive view of her, and offering an alternative interpretation to the pervasive view of her as an immoral woman in an atypical marital situation, and the source of much local scandal. Ken argues that the woman was one of the first couriers of the good news, commissioned by Jesus to push the message of the gospel into the wider and furthest margins of Jewish first century faith. That chimes exactly with where my own interpretation has come to rest, and such an interpretation opens up a whole range of new insights. You can hear Ken's sermon by clicking here.
Unconnected to these two friends tackling Johannine texts in different ways and for different purposes, a couple of weeks ago I borrowed The Woman at the Well, by Janeth Norfleete Day, a scholarly monograph published by Brill in 2002, some time before Paul became an editor for the publisher. It is a careful, clear thinking analysis of the text and its reception in sermons, commentary and art through the centuries. This is the kind of biblical scholarship that one way or another preachers are required to read as present day exegetes and expositors of the text, entrusted with exploring its meaning and its significance for our understanding and practice of faith. I think it would not be possible to read this book and weigh its evidence, and then be content to continue to slander one of the first women entrusted with the good news as an apostle to her own neighbourhood. More of that when I write a separate post on the argument of the book and on that central text of John on how God's good news can't be pinned down to our limited expectations.
So this week I finally get to meet Paul who kens stuff (a lot of stuff!) about John; I was able to listen to my close friend Ken, preaching on a key text for Christology and mission (and he also kens stuff!). And in addition, I'm finishing reading a Johannine monograph on The Samaritan Woman, that satisfyingly destabilises an interpretive tradition that does scant justice to the importance and truth of a long conversation by a well in Samaria, between Jesus and a woman whose life experience and spiritual alertness were life transforming for her and her community, as she sees and responds to the revelation of the One who came to her as Living Water.
Aye, a Johannine study week, of a gospel that like the living water it describes, "is like a well of water, springing up to eternal life."
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