The Fourth Gospel in four dimensions : Judaism and Jesus, the Gospels and Scripture / D. Moody Smith.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [221]-267) and indexes.

The Gospel of John in its Jewish context : why begin with Judaism? -- Judaism in the Johannine context : does the Gospel of John misrepresent Judaism? -- The stressful tension between Judaism and the Johannine Jesus : revisiting and evaluating J. Louis Martyn's classic proposal -- The problem of history in John : the gospel narratives as history at two levels -- John's quest for Jesus : the pastness of the present Jesus -- John's portrait of Jesus : Jesus portrayed as talking christology in John's narrative -- Jesus tradition in the Gospel of John : are John's differences from the synoptics coincident with their historical value? -- Redaction criticism, genre, narrative criticism, and the historical Jesus in the Gospel of John : does John also enshrine a separate memory? -- The historical figure of Jesus in 1 John : Jesus at the beginning giving a commandment for the future -- From synoptic Jesus to Johannine Christ : historical considerations : choosing between genuine historical alternatives -- The question of gospel genre : did Mark create the genre? -- John and the apocryphal gospels : was John the first apocryphal gospel? -- The problem of faith and history : common to both John and the synoptics, and peculiar to neither -- When did the gospels become Scripture? What did their authors intend and their readers assume? -- Four gospels and the canonical approach to exegesis : should their being together in the New Testament make a difference in their interpretation? -- Toward a canonical reading of the fourth gospel : canonical readings from Clement of Alexandria through Abraham Lincoln to Rudolf Bultmann and C.H. Dodd.