Whereas Luke and Matthew are literary products of gospel reading, only the Johannine corpus demonstrates within the canon how a gospel was read by a specific network of early Christian communities. The Johannine Epistles (likely penned in a context later than that of the Fourth Gospel) affirm, clarify, expand, modify, and in some cases even omit key themes emphasized by the evangelist. This unique intra-canonical reception of John affords the earliest model of an early Christian community’s gospel reading. After analyzing the broad reading dynamics imposed by the Johannine literature’s placement in the sequence of the canon, this chapter explores the interpretive practices of the Elder in order to discern a Johannine theology of textuality, writing, and gospel reading.

This chapter discusses the critical issues that are peculiar to the interpretation of John, including its date of composition and historical value relative to the other gospels, its literary relationship to the Synoptic tradition, its characterization of “the Jews,” and various theories concerning its social-historical connections to the community addressed in the Johannine letters.