THE SON OF GOD AND THE SONS OF GOD A review of John W. Pryor's John: Evangelist of the Covenant People

Pryor has brought together into one small volume both a thematic reading of the text of the Gospel of John, and a finely-tuned treatment of John's Christology and ecclesiology. His detailed interpretation of the text elucidates the broad themes of the Gospel against background not only of the OT, but also the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Targumim, and rabbinic discussions of John's day, as do most of the better commentaries available. However, his more specific contribution is his grasp of how those broad themes cohere into a specific message relevant to the Christian community of John's time. For those of us who live and work at the more popular level of Biblical discourse, this generates a whole new light on John's intent as a writer to his community, and profoundly affects how that text is understood, integrated and applied by the popular level teacher and reader today. Interacting within the bewildering variety of studies in Johannine literature, Pryor's work maintains throughout a certain clarity and focus which actually appears to emerge from the text, rather than from discussions about discussions of the text. The result is refreshing and challenging.