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INTRODUCTION

(by John Drane)

John has always been recognized to be different in character from the other three gospels. At the time that William Barclay was himself a student, it was fashionable to explain this by supposing that John’s account is an essentially fictional narrative, loosely based on the synoptic gospels, but concerned more with defending early Christian beliefs than with providing any sort of independent testimony to the life and teaching of Jesus. By the time that Barclay wrote this volume, the idea that John’s gospel should be rehabilitated as a credible historical account had been proposed by several leading scholars, but was still a matter of considerable ongoing debate. Barclay unhesitatingly accepted this ‘new look’ on John, not only affirming the essential trustworthiness of the gospel as an authentic presentation of the life and teaching of Jesus, but also connecting its composition with the apostle John himself. His proposal that the finished gospel was not actually written down by the apostle himself, but reflected the life and faith of a ‘Johannine community’ that flourished in Ephesus towards the end of the first century, has been more fully explored since Barclay’s time, and is now widely accepted among New Testament scholars, though some would be inclined to date the gospel itself a little earlier than AD 100.

Some aspects of this commentary would certainly be expressed differently today, especially Barclay’s descriptions of the ‘opponents’ whom he believed John was countering. He scarcely noticed the anti-Jewish tone of some passages which has been the subject of heated debate, and the description of Gnosticism at 1:3 as ‘an intellectual and philosophical approach to Christianity’ is by no means the whole story. Texts written by Gnostics themselves have shown that Gnosticism was not an exclusively Christian phenomenon, while some doubt that ‘Gnosticism’ as such really was a definable entity, preferring to see it as a more loosely formulated ‘attitude’, much like today’s ‘New Age’, with which it has much in common.

In characteristic Barclay style, this volume is concerned with the wider meaning of the text to Christian life and witness. He has a good deal to say about what would now be called contextualization, the relevant expression of the Christian message in different cultures. The recurrence of this theme throughout not only reveals Barclay’s own underlying concern for effective mission, but also highlights an issue which continues to be a key challenge for the Church at the beginning of this new century.

John Drane

University of Aberdeen

2001