Reading John and 1, 2, 3 John: A Literary and Theological Commentary by Alicia D. Myers (review)

Writing a commentary on any biblical book is not an easy task. Writing a commentary on four biblical books with such a complex, interrelated set of critical issues as the Gospel and Letters of John and doing so in a manner that balances scholarly interaction and accessibility to the nonspecialist is even more challenging. In this volume, Alicia Myers has accomplished these challenging tasks and done so admirably. The result is an illuminating, fresh analysis of the Gospel and Letters of John with special attention to their literary, rhetorical, and theological aspects.

The book is divided into three major sections. First is a general introduction to the Gospel and Letters of John. Here, M. covers many of the standard introductory issues such as authorship, genre(s), and major theological concerns. In this section, M. also takes a very balanced stance with regard to two major historical/hermeneutical issues concerning these writings: first, the analysis of these texts in light of a reconstructed history of a Johannine community; and, second, the related question of the extent to which to interpret the Gospel and Letters in light of each other. M. takes what she calls “a middle way” (p. 5) with respect to these issues, acknowledging the legitimate insights afforded by scholars with contrasting positions on these issues while not overreading hypothetical community histories into the texts.

The next major section is M.’s commentary on the Gospel of John. Distinctive to M.’s approach to the Gospel narrative is her analysis of the text in light of the conventions of Greco-Roman compositional rhetoric. Throughout her reading of John, one finds references to Cicero, Quintilian, and the progymnasmata, As a result, M. does an excellent job of situating the Johannine writings within the literary world of Greco-Roman antiquity. Moreover, M. is unafraid to take stances against the grain of conventional Johannine scholarship. This appears, for instance, in M.’s parsing of the Gospel’s literary structure. Drawing on patristic reception history, M. argues for reading John 1 as a literary whole with the Gospel’s Prologue comprising only vv. 1–5 (pp. 37–40). Verses 6–14 introduce John the Baptist, and vv. 15–18 are part of his testimony, which thus segues into the narrative material in 1:19–28. Furthermore, M. opts to see the material from the raising of Lazarus through Jesus’s prayer of intercession (11:1–17:26) as constituting a single unit, instead of positing a firm sectional break at 13:1 (p. 150).

Similar to her treatment of the Gospel, M. offers a very detail-oriented, perceptive literary and rhetorical reading of the letters. She proposes that 2 and 3 John be read as separate cover letters for 1 John: 2 John initially accompanied 1 John, and their rejection by Diotrephes led the Elder to compose 3 John as a separate cover letter. M. stays true to her balanced, “middle way” of reading the letters on their own while also attending to their linguistic, thematic, and textual connections with the Gospel.

Myers is a very close, attentive reader of the biblical texts, and her many sharp literary observations, especially concerning intratextual connections, make this volume stand out. As mentioned above, very illuminating is M.’s analysis of the Johannine writings in light of Greco-Roman compositional rhetoric. She knows the current secondary scholarship and deftly allows it to inform the exposition—while also not getting bogged down in the details or intrascholarly debates. As a result, the volume is quite readable and wears its deep learning lightly.

As with any substantive engagement with biblical texts, there are matters on which scholars might take issue with M.’s presentation. For instance, M. identifies numerous chiasms, inclusions, and concentric literary structures throughout these writings on both the micro and macro levels. While the Johannine writings certainly do display this compositional technique...