Journal for the Study of

the New Testament

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Book Reviews : Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of

John (Anchor Bible, 30; Garden City, New York:
Doubleday, 1982). Pp. xxviii + 812. $18
I. Howard Marshall
Journal for the Study of the New Testament 1984; 7; 119
DOI: 10.1177/0142064X8400702213
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119
read

much like a thesis, as which it began life. For the purposes of his
he wisely deals with the Fourth Gospel and 1 John as literary
their final form, rather than trying to disentangle their sources
and redactions. Throughout, the author argues strictly from the text, the
background to which he knows intimately.
Rightly, Whitacres investigation moves directly from the Gospel to the
first letter of John; for he regards these two documents as distinctive, but
closely related. He regards the opponents of the Johannine Christians as
Jews (representatives of official Judaism) who, despite their obedient loyalty
to God, are by their rejection of Jesus as the Messiah Son of God selfdeceived and deceiving others. Using the traditions he holds in common with
the opponents, John argues that Jesus is the revelation par excellence of the
Jewish God (p. 25), and that in rejecting Jesus the Jews have rejected their
own God. The obvious anti-Judaism of the Fourth Gospel may thus be
regarded as providing a necessary Christian exegesis: telling the story of
Jesus in the light of Johns central theological vision of the gracious love of
God.
Whitacres balanced exegesis of the Johannine Gospel and letters is
expert, and he presents his case with considerable clarity. But what appears
to be missing is any real definition of Johns opponents, difficult as their
character may be to determine, and any firm conception of their relationship
to the Johannine community. Here the evidence of 2 and 3 John is vital, but
ignored. Moreover, while Whitacre may be right to resist any description of
the opponents error which required the term heresy (or heretical
tendencies), he is probably going against the evidence by delineating that
error as a straightforward rejection of Jesus, rather than probing more fully
the christological issues (including possibly diverse estimates of the person of
Christ) involved. In all this, some further refinement of the nature and
purpose of these documents would have been welcome.
Neither of these specialist monographs is likely to set the world of
Johannine scholarship on fire, but both will make a sound contribution to
current study of the Fourth Gospel and 1 John.
too

exploration
products in

Stephen

S.

Smalley, Coventry Cathedral, Coventry CUI SES

E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible,

New York: Doubleday, 1982). Pp. xxviii + 812. $18.

Raymond

30; Garden City,

Browns new commentary on 1-3 John must undoubtedly be

hailed as the definitive work on these epistles in English. It is written in the
authors exceptionally limpid and attractive style, carefully organized so that
the more technical information and discussions come in exegetical notes

Raymond

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120
while the main lines of the authors interpretations are set out in extended
sections of comment. It is characterized by a profound knowledge of all
recent discussion of the epistles, exhibited in copious bibliographies, and by
an exhaustive discussion of virtually every problem raised by the epistles and
of all solutions that have any claim to plausibility. The author offers his own
interpretations of disputed points, based on careful and detailed argument,
and often sheds new light on the text. The result is a major reinterpretation
of the epistles. Two criticisms may be offered which do not in any way lessen
our respect for the remarkable feat performed by the author in organizing
such an enormous mass of material in so lucid a manner. The first is to
observe that the commentary is excessively long (812 pp. to cover 2601
words of text, as compared with the authors 1400 pp. on the 15,416 words of
the Gospel); while one can appreciate why the author has divided his
material into Notes and Comment, there is a good deal of overlap and
repetition throughout the book. Second, it is a pity that in so long a
commentary the author could not find room for some indication of how he
sees the significance of the epistles for today, but perhaps the nature of the
Anchor Bible forbids this.
The general character of Browns reconstruction of the history of the
Johannine community and its consequences for the interpretation of the
epistles were summarized in his book The Community of the Beloved
Disciple. Briefly, he argues that the epistles represent the response of a
Johannine tradition-bearer (not the author of the Gospel) to the situation
caused by a group who had seceded from the church and who held a
differently developed understanding of Christianity from that of the
community itself, although both groups would have claimed that their
theology and practice was based on the tradition embodied in the Gospel
itself The secessionists accepted the christology expressed in the Gospel but
understood it in such a way as to deny that the incarnation of the Son of God
and in particular his death had any real salvific significance. Both groups
made claims to sinlessness, but in the authors eyes the secessionists were
not greatly concerned about ethics and did not love their brothers, who are
defined by the author as the members of the community. Throughout the
first epistle the author is dealing with this situation. The epistle is regarded
as being in effect a set of comments on the Gospel in order to explain it as
really supporting the authors views, and this helps to explain the apparent
lack of logical order in places. At the same time, the epistle can be divided
into two major parts introduced by the parallel phrases in 1.5 and 3.11, the
first part expressing the obligation to walk in the light and the second the
obligation to show love in deeds. The division of the material into smaller
sub-sections is carefully discussed. The logic of the epistle, however, is not
explicable with complete certainty; while the Greek is mostly fairly simple, it
is so only on a superficial level and in Browns view it is extremely ambiguous and obscure when one searches for a precise meaning conveyed by it.
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121
The epistle begins with a commentary on the prologue to the Gospel
which stresses the importance of the earthly ministry of Jesus; its clumsiness
makes it impossible to believe that it was composed by the author of the
Gospel. The ethical implications of the statement that God is light are
brought out by considering a series of claims made by the secessionists
which progress towards a climax; Brown argues that this section reflects
Johannine conversion paraenesis, and that the author stresses the death of
Jesus as atonement over against the secessionist denial of the need for it.
Further false secessionist claims are exposed in 2.3-11 before the author
addresses the community in 2.12-17, using the general address little
children followed by statements addressed to the old and young within the
community. It was the secessionists who loved the world, not in the sense of
practising worldliness but in the sense of taking their version of the gospel to
a world which had rejected Jesus; their lives showed an absence of
otherworldliness. The secessionists in fact are condemned as antichrists; the
author does not regard them as being or ever having been true Christians,
and he does not expect the true community to love them or to pray for them
in their state of deathly sin. The community must not be misled by them but
must follow the knowledge imparted by the Spirit with which they had been
anointed. (This could lead to subjectivism in teaching in a community which
did not look back to apostles but had based itself on the tradition interpreted
by its tradition-bearers; hence the problem reflected in 3 John, where
Diotrephes was excluding all visiting preachers-for fear of admitting the
secessionists-and making himself the sole exponent of orthodoxy in his
church.) If the secessionists incorporated the final, great Liar, the orthodox
by contrast were sinless-this statement being an expression of the authors
eschatological hope tempered elsewhere in the epistle by a certain realism.
Although the community are exhorted powerfully to love, such love is
merely for one another. Along with love the author stresses the need for right
faith, which must be in the Jesus Christ who came not only in the water of
his baptism but in the water-and-blood of his death (John 19.34).
This brief summary may whet the readers appetite for further details of
Browns interpretation of the epistles. He claims that he found the writing of
his commentary to be exciting, and despite the need for much stamina to
stay with him to the end readers will share something of his excitement. I
find myself in agreement with many of his exegetical decisions, based as they
are on extremely close wrestling with the text, and with much of the general
interpretation of the epistles. At other points I have certainly been forced to
reconsider previously held views. Yet inevitably there remain points, some of
them major, where the authors theses are not immediately compelling. I still
find it difficult to believe that the secessionists based their views on the
tradition recorded in the Gospel without ignoring some of its central
teaching, and in particular the view that they merely played down the
importance of the earthly life of Jesus seems less persuasive than the view
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122

they had a fundamentally wrong understanding of the person of Jesus. I

suspect too that the community had not such a closed outlook as Brown
suggests, and I have not been persuaded that the author of the epistles was a
different person from the author of the Gospel. It is clear that Browns view
of the Johannine literature will be the focus of debate for some time, but our
immediate response to his work must be one of gratitude for so stimulating
and comprehensive a presentation of his research.
that

I. Howard
Aberdeen

Marshall, Department of New Testament Exegesis, University of

Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter

Books; Waco, Texas, 1983). Pp. xix

Biblical
357. $18.95.

(Word
+

Commentary, 50; Word

Large-scale commentaries on Jude and 2 Peter are rare events in the history
of NT scholarship. So the addition of a major new commentary on these two
neglected NT documents is to be welcomed. The author of the commentary,
Dr Richard Bauckham of Manchester University, has already demonstrated
his expertise on the apocalyptic tradition in Christianity. He has read widely
for this commentary, and readers will be grateful for the detailed study
which accompanies his exegesis. Much careful thought has obviously gone
into the preparation of this commentary. Bauckham has not been content to
accept received wisdom on a variety of issues, and his research on various
areas of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic has served as a useful preparation
for this book.
Bauckham believes that Jude belongs to apocalyptic Jewish Christianity
and was written to oppose itinerant charismatics who espoused antinomian
libertinism (he rejects gnostic influence). He thinks that a late date for Jude
is not required and that its apocalyptic perspective is not inconsistent with
authorship by Jude, brother of Jesus. He thinks that it was written c. AD 8090 and was intended to defend the apostolic message in the post-apostolic
age. Once again there is a rejection of gnostic influence on the opponents
combatted in 2 Peter. Rather, they are characterized as those who wished to
disencumber Christinaity of its eschatology and its ethical rigorism, which
seemed to them an embarrassment in their cultural environment, particularly
after the failure of the Parousia expectation. Despite the wealth of detail I
cannot pretend that I am convinced by all the positions adopted. For

example, I
gnosticism

would have welcomed more on the possible relation between

and apocalypticism. Also, I remain sceptical about Bauckhams
claim that Jewish apocalyptic was much concerned with the theological
problem posed by the delay of the eschatological judgment. One or two
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