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1-3 John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)
Yarbrough, Robert W., Yarbrough, Robert W., Stein, Robert
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eBook - ePub
1-3 John (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament)
Yarbrough, Robert W., Yarbrough, Robert W., Stein, Robert
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Robert Yarbrough, coauthor of the bestselling Encountering the New Testament, offers a historical and theological commentary on the Johannine Epistles in this addition to the BECNT series. The commentary features the author's detailed interaction with the Greek text, explores the relationship between John's Epistles and Jesus's work and teaching, interacts with recent commentaries, is attentive to the history of interpretation, and seeks to relate these findings to global Christianity. As with all BECNT volumes, this book combines academic sophistication with pastoral sensitivity and accessibility to serve as a useful tool for pastors, church leaders, students, and teachers.
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Biblical Commentary1 John
Introduction to the Johannine Letters
This introduction will focus primarily on 1 John. Because 2 John and 3 John left a much smaller footprint in patristic annals, there is little to discuss by way of specific evidence for matters like their date, provenance, audience, and reception history until more than a century after their putative composition. What can be said is that the language and substance of 2 John and 3 John, like that of 1 John, relate them to the Gospel of John (demonstrated concisely long ago by Weiss 1887â88: 2.186â87, 198; see also Holtzmann 1908: 362).1 And as Hill (2004: 450) shows, knowledge of Johnâs Gospel and at least two of his letters is probably attested in half a dozen writers prior to Irenaeus, perhaps as early as the late first century.2 This would be within scant years of the epistlesâ composition and not long after the Fourth Gospelâs first appearance. The Johannine tradition inscripturated in the extant canonical writings takes us back to within living memory of what the writer of Johnâs Letters seeks to describe and apply to his readersâ situation.3
Text
It would be frustrating, if not futile, to interpret ancient texts whose original wording is uncertain. The Johannine Epistles, in part or as a whole, have been preserved in about six hundred manuscripts, including two papyri (Klauck 1991: 4). They offer ârelatively few text-critical problems,â and no proposed emendation has found wide assent (1991: 5, 8).
Metzgerâs Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Metzger 1994: 639â51) discusses variants at some thirty-nine junctures:
1:4 (2Ă)
2:4
2:6
2:7 (2Ă)
2:14
2:17
2:18
2:20
2:23
2:25
2:27
3:1
3:5
3:13
3:14
3:19 (2Ă)
3:21
4:3 (2Ă)
4:10
4:19
4:20
5:1
5:2
5:6 (2Ă)
5:7â8
5:10 (2Ă)
5:13
5:17
5:18 (2Ă)
5:20 (2Ă)
5:21
The variants listed are significant, first, in the sense that the Editorial Committee of the United Bible Societies deemed them important for Bible translators to be aware of in their work of rendering the NT into vernacular languages around the world. These variants have also been at the center of discussion in establishing what remains todayâs standard critical Greek text for scholarly research (NA27 = UBS4).4 As this commentary will demonstrate in detailed consideration of variants, no major doctrines or points of interpretation are seriously affected by manuscript deviation. The wealth of witnesses allows, if not definitive clarification, then at least well-informed conjecture, wherever ambiguities exist.
Work on the text of Johnâs Letters has not stood still since the labors of the UBS Editorial Committee several decades ago. The Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of MĂŒnster in Germany conducted its own investigations and published its impressive findings on 1 John (B. Aland et al. 2003a; 2003b) and 2â3 John (B. Aland et al. 2005a; 2005b). Their selection of significant manuscript witnesses stands at 143 (not all of the six hundred extant witnesses noted above are significant for text-critical purposes): 2 papyri (đ9 [third century, containing several verses of 1 John 4] and đ74 [seventh century, containing much of 1â3 John]), 13 uncials, 117 minuscules, and 11 lectionaries (B. Aland et al. 2003b: B91). In addition, 37 other witnesses are excluded âbecause they are of minor importance for the history of the textâ (2003b: B91), meaning that the selection of witnesses is actually about 180. There are said to be 761 âpassages with variants in 1 John,â most of which are scribal miscues of no significance (B. Aland et al. 2003a: 28*), like spelling or word order or inadvertent errors. In the end, âdue to the simple style of 1 John there are very few passages where difficulties lead to major variants.â
Like the UBS Editorial Committee, the MĂŒnster Institute scholars find that about forty 1 John passages require discussion. In a striking confirmation of the UBS committeeâs earlier work, as well as of the stability of the textual witness, the Institute after years of work and thousands of hours of labor concluded that it would correct the current NA27/UBS4 Greek text at only three junctures in 1 John: (1) in 1:7 ÎŽáœł (de, but) should be omitted; (2) in 5:10 áŒÎœ áŒÎ±Ï
Ïáż· (en heautĆ, in himself) should be áŒÎœ αáœÏáż· (en autĆ, in him); and (3) in 5:18 αáœÏáœčÎœ (auton, him) should be áŒÎ±Ï
ÏáœčÎœ (heauton, himself). In the world of scholarship, this counts as valuable corroboration of academic work old and new.
Our state of textual certainty for 1 John is very high. The numerous variants inherent in the manual copying process offer rich potential for reflection on lexical possibility and semantic nuance, but they offer no room for pessimism regarding whether we know almost exactly what the original text contained.
There are discussable variants in Johnâs second epistle at 2 John 1, 3, 5, 8 (2Ă), 9, 11, 12, and 13 (Metzger 1994: 652â54). All are interesting but none critical for interpretation. The same can be said of 3 John, for which Metzger (1994: 655) discusses variants at 3 John 4, 9, and 15. These variants, plus about thirty more in 2 John and some three dozen more in 3 John, will be listed and discussed in the commentary.
Author
If the first concern of a commentary is the integrity of the text to be interpreted, the second is the identity of the writer, if this can be determined. The position taken in this commentary concurs with that expressed by Carson (2000: 132): âIn line with the majority view among Christian students during the past two thousand years (though out of step with todayâs majority), I think it highly probable that John the apostle wrote the Fourth Gospel and the three letters that traditionally bear his name.â
Extended technical justifications for this positionâthat Johnâs Letters have the same author as Johnâs Gospel and that all were written by Jesusâs disciple John son of Zebedeeâare accessible in NT introductions like that of Carson and Moo (2005: 229â54), in newer commentaries like those of Köstenberger (2004: 6â8) and Keener (2003: 81â114),5 and in monographs like Blombergâs (2001: 22â41). The emerging work of Hill (2004) appears to be tending in this direction as well. Yarid (2003) makes a detailed comparison between 1 John and the Upper Room Discourse (John 13â17). Scholtissek (2004) writes of the close relationship between Johnâs Gospel and 1 John seen in recent German scholarship, though his view that 1 John is simply an ad hoc epistolary rewrite of elements taken from the Fourth Gospel is unconvincing. Each of these studies cites corroborating sources. Finally, Bauckham (2006: 358â411) argues convincingly for the eyewitness origin of Johnâs Gospel and Johnâs Letters, though he thinks John is the Beloved Disciple mentioned in the Gospel, who was in turn the Elder who wrote the epistles. Bauckhamâs view concurs with that of this commentary that the Johannine corpus is not a literary contrivance or spiritual meditation but grows out of personal historical reminiscence of the life, teaching, and abiding will of Jesus.
The Disputed Nature of the Authorship Question
It would be possible to leave the matter there. But as the series preface indicates, this commentary targets people who are âinvolved in the preaching and exposition of the Scriptures as the uniquely inspired Word of God.â Such readers typically want to know whether what the text says is true. Some may be reading and teaching Johnâs Letters in parts of the world where Christians face ostracism and even persecution for the faith they profess. No responsible teacher wants to be sending people into danger and perhaps death based on old writings that lack veracity. The opening verses of 1 John claim that the author was an eyewitness of Jesusâs life. If this was really the case, the credibility of the letter is considerably enhanced. And since 2 John and 3 John stand in close conceptual relationâto each other and to 1 Johnâthe gravity of their admittedly sketchy content is maximized. The Jesus Christ presupposed and presented in Johnâs Letters takes the shape of a savior and master worthy of serious consideration and perhaps personal devotion. Luther (1967: 219) grasped this regarding 1 John: âThis is an outstanding epistle. It can buoy up afflicted hearts. Furthermore, it has Johnâs style and manner of expression, so beautifully and gently does it picture Christ to us.â
D. F. Strauss (1808â74) is commonly credited with being among the first of an illustrious line of scholars who worked hard to destroy the status of the canonical Gospels as possible sources of firsthand information regarding the things they report.6 In the judgment of many, he largely succeeded, as the generations of Gospels criticism since then attest. Grant and Tracy (1984: 12) observe that âmore than a century of modern critical study make[s] it impossible for us to employ the Gospel of John in interpreting the thought of Jesus himself.â But Strauss (1972: 69) also stated, âIt would most unquestionably be an argument of decisive weight in favour of the credibility of the biblical history, could it indeed be shown that it was written by eye-witnesses, or even by persons nearly contemporaneous with the events narrated.â I believe it can be and has been shown on cogent grounds that Johnâs Gospel, and following from that Johnâs Letters, are rightly understood as authored by an eyewitness to Jesusâs ministry. The classic treatment, never really refuted, is Westcott (1881: vâxxxv; 1908: ixâlxvii), whose findings on this point are substantially confirmed and extended more recently by Blomberg (2001) as well as in commentaries and other works already cited above. Reim (2005: 101n15) states: âAs far as I can see, in the Johannine Jesus-discourses there are virtually no words of serious substance not contained in the Synoptic words of Jesus and in Old Testament words of God or of the Messiah.â The distance between Johnâs writings and the Jesus of which they speak may be less vast and total than commonly supposed.
Nevertheless, it will not escape the notice of many conscientious preachers, students, and other thinking persons that a considerable mass of scholarly literature weighs heavily against the notion of the possibility of the Johannine traditionâs close proximity to Jesus and his actual times. And so I offer a short characterization of Johannine studies in recent decades to help explain why I do not view the current majority consensus as compelling. I want readers to see why the consensus rejecting Johannine and eyewitness authorship commands respect but not necessarily obeisa...