First Glance

For more than a century, scholars have considered the Gospel of John to be latest (second century) and the most indebted to Greek philosophy of all the Gospels. But as James H. Charlesworth explains in “Reinterpreting John,” that view is being turned on its head by new manuscript discoveries-prominent among them the Dead Sea Scrolls. The emerging scholarly consensus sees John to have been written around the year 100 and to be the most thoroughly Jewish of the Gospels. Charlesworth guides us through the documents that are responsible for this sea change in Johannine studies, taking special note of the many similarities in thought and expression between key Dead Sea Scrolls and the Fourth Gospel.

Charlesworth is the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Languages and Literatures at Princeton Theological Seminary and editor of the Princeton Dead Sea Scrolls Project. He has written or edited 26 books, including The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (2 vols., Doubleday: 1983 and 1985), winners of the Biblical Archaeology Society’s Book Award, Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Doubleday, 1992) and John and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Crossroad, 1990). An ordained Methodist minister, Charlesworth is also an avid basketball and tennis fan and, when his knees are not hurting, player.