History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel.

HISTORY AND THEOLOGY IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL. By J. Louis Martyn. Third Edition. Louisville, KY/London, UK: Wesminster John Knox Press, 2003.

This is an enlarged and revised edition of a very significant study of John's Gospel that was first published in 1968. This new revised edition includes a comment and a postscript by D. Moody Smith. The book is divided into three parts, with seven chapters in all; the work includes also four small excursuses. Martyn takes John 9:1ff as the basis for his studies. In vv 1-7 we have a typical miracle story (a blind man is made to see), and in vv 8-41 we have a dramatic extension of the story. The complete presentation, so it is argued, has a twofold importance. In the first place, it is a witness to a singular event during the earthly career of Jesus, and this has its main locus in vv 1-7. Secondly, it is also a witness to Jesus' continuing presence in events actually happening in the Johannine church, and this kind of witness is primarily in vv 8-41.

Martyn points out that the most important circumstance reflected on the second level of witness has to do, not with the imposition of a synagogue ban, but with the formal separation of church and synagogue affected through the Jewish benediction against heretics. For this reason, in John 9:22, "the Jews had already agreed" refers to the action taken about CE 85 by the Jannia council (under Gamaliel II) to say differently the birkath-ha-minim (benediction against heretics) so as to make it a useful means for detecting Christian agents. In John 12:42 "the Pharisees" pass on to the messengers who delivered the newly formulated benediction in John's city or to member of the local synagogue who enforced this reformulation.

Thus, in Martyn's belief, John's Gospel affords a picture of a Jewish community troubled by the introduction of a new technique for discovering those Jews who wished to hold a double loyalty to Moses and to Jesus the Messiah. Even against the will of some of the synagogue leaders, the amended benediction was being used definitively to segregate Christians from Jews. Martyn further notices a significant parallelism between John 5: 1-47 and 7: 11-82, on the one hand, and John 9: 1-41 and 10: 1-42, on the other, and he makes some good observations, John 5 and 7 describe a two-level drama similar to that discernible in John 9. The local synagogue not only subjected members to cross-examination; it also defined Jewish-Christian missioners as mesithim ("beguilers"), and on the basis of that definition it could institute legal proceedings against them. Such is the kind of situation held to be reflected in John 7: 32-52, where the authorities assemble the local leaders to take action against Jesus, who here stands for propagandists of the church's faith. Furthermore, the local leaders of the synagogue in John's city knew that to the danger of excommunication and the legal process applicable to Christian beguilers must be added the recommendation that synagogue members refrain from conversing with Christians.

In his later chapters, consequently, Martyn is led to enquire into the exact subject matter of such conversations. This, he finds, circles around the question of Jesus' identity: Is he the Messiah? In the two-level excommunication situation of John 9, the titles "Prophet" and "Son of Man" also come into view, and in v 22 it is declared that excommunication follows upon confession of Jesus as Messiah. Thus it is shown that the issue of Jesus' identity and status stands at the center of the synagogue-church discussion, and that the relation ships among these titles need to be explained with the help of any information that can be found in the Jewish sources. Finally, Martyn's view can be described as maintaining that a monolithic rabbinic Judaism expelled all Jews who believed in Jesus from the local synagogues.

This book is valuable, not because it is a fundamentally different approach from that of other scholars (such as Buhmann, Dodd, Hoskyns and Kasemann), but because it both builds upon and moves beyond other scholars' work on the Fourth Gospel. In addition, the majority of New Testament scholars on John's Gospel and the history of early Christianity have found Martyn's theories convincing, mainly because it enhances the intelligibility of John's text. This monograph has many positive qualities. It offers the careful reader an excellent explanation of the main theological concepts of John's Gospel. This third revised edition of Martyn's book is a compelling and understanding study that every student of the Fourth Gospel has to take into consideration.

Otis Coutsoumpos

Silver Spring, MD 20901