In 1985, Maarten Menken’s essay “The Quotation from Isa 40,3 in John 1,23”¹ signaled an important development in the direction of the work being done at the time to characterize the form of the explicit Old Testament citations in the Gospel of John.² Over a roughly ten-year time span, Menken continued to publish one after another article devoted to a focused treatment of each of the Gospel’s citations³ until, in 1996, his bookOld Testament Quotations in the Fourth Gospel: Studies in Textual Formrepublished the revised sum of his previous work, adding to it an introduction, a conclusion, and...

It is well known that Zechariah, particularly what is commonly called Second Zechariah (Zech 9–14),¹ had a significant impact on the writers of the four gospels, as well as on the authors of various other New Testament books.² The Fourth Gospel (FG) indeed exhibits an unmistakable preference for Second Zechariah,³ for the only two explicit citations in the FG from the Minor Prophets, or Book of the Twelve,⁴ are from this part of Zechariah. The first is in 12:15, citing Zech 9:9 at the triumphal entry, and the second is in 19:37, citing Zech 12:10b at the end of...

Research on the Fourth Gospel’s biblical quotations has perhaps come of age. Begun by August Franke in the late nineteenth century,¹ it surfaced as a brief skirmish between Alexander Faure and Friedrich Smend in the early twentieth century² before coming into its own as a palpable subfield of Johannine studies with Edwin Freed’sOld Testament Quotations in the Gospel of Johnin 1965.³ Since then, it has yielded no less than six full monographs or major book sections, and, with the recent adoption of new approaches, it shows little sign of having yet run its course.⁴

The issues traditionally addressed...

InScripture Cannot Be Broken: The Social Function of the Use of Scripture in the Fourth Gospel, I contend that the author of the Fourth Gospel deploys Scripture in order to achieve certain goals for his or her sectarian community. What I wrote then still largely inheres:

To inquire after John’s use of Scripture is not to ask an unusual question. But to inquire after thesocial functionof John’s use of Scriptureis. Oddly, those who have worried about the social history of the Johannine community have not addressed the way John usesScriptureto do somethingforand...

After the work of George Kennedy, interest in the light that classical rhetoric can shed on the New Testament has boomed among certain interpreters.¹ While initially the majority of this work was limited to dissecting the arguments found in the Pauline Epistles, the rhetorical nature of the gospels is now also being acknowledged.² The Gospel of John, in particular, is ripe for rhetorical exploration with its numerous discourses and clear persuasive intent expressed in 20:30–31. Andrew Lincoln, Harold Attridge, and George Parsenios have noted a number of connections between John and juridical rhetoric while Jo-Ann Brant emphasizes the Gospel’s...

The editorial comment in John 2:17 (“His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’”) interrupts the narrative flow between the account of Jesus’s actions in the temple (vv. 14–16) and the inquiry by “the Jews”¹ as to what sign Jesus gives for acting as he does (v. 18). Interpreters disagree about the significance and function of the citation of Ps 69:9 in verse 17, but most agree that “will consume” (καταφάγεται) is a reference to Jesus’s death, and nearly all agree that “zeal for your house” (ὁ ζῆλος τοῦ οἴκου σου) refers to...

John 8:12–20 depicts Jesus engaged in a debate with the Pharisees over the validity of his self-testimony. After Jesus claims to be the “light of the world” (8:12), the Pharisees reply that Jesus testifies to himself, which automatically invalidates the content of his testimony (8:13). Jesus counters their concern with a concession: “even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I know where I came from and where I go; but you do not know where I come from or where I go” (8:14). The Pharisees’ purported lack of knowledge about Jesus’s true identity corresponds to,...

Over the past few decades the study of “John and Scripture” has been approached from a variety of perspectives and with a wide range of methodological tools. The textual form and function of the explicit quotations in John’s Gospel have, inevitably, received most attention to date, but a number of scholars are now venturing beyond the relative comfort zone of direct—and largely identifiable—quotations to explore the interpretative mechanisms at work within a narrative also saturated with a rich deposit of scriptural concepts and motifs. There is also a growing recognition that discussion of John’s engagement with the Scriptures...

In an intriguing essay reprinted inThe Fourth Gospel in First-Century Media Culture, Tom Thatcher suggests an unusual and provocative model with which to conceive of John’s Gospel.³ Thatcher’s proposed imagery of a memory theater reflects a hermeneutical approach not normally associated with gospel studies, nor for that matter with biblical interpretation in general. Thatcher, who sketches the essential evolution of classic memory arts through Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian—a craft extended and further developed in the Middle Ages—posits that John fashioned his Gospel by means of established Greco-Roman organizational devices and structures designed to aid the memory,...