The question of the reception of the Fourth Gospel in the early Christian communities has elicited much discussion in present and more distant times. The most significant recent contribution to the subject has come from Charles Hill, who argued, against what he perceived as an encroaching consensus, that John was a popular document among early Christians, and was not, as some had contended, a text viewed with suspicion by those who came to be called ‘orthodox’. The volume under review, which originated as a doctoral thesis written under the supervision of Simon Gathercole at the University of Cambridge, is evidently situated within this ongoing debate, though its author, Lorne Zelyck, does not expatiate on that historiographical setting. Its place within the latter is perhaps ambiguous. Clearly if Zelyck can show that a good deal of the so-called other gospels that he examines used John, he helps the cause of Hill and his ilk; but equally knowledge of John by the authors of these texts, who might be deemed ‘heretical’, could be helpful to the other side of the argument.

Zelyck begins his monograph by defining what a gospel is (a work that claims to give direct reports of the life and/or teachings of Jesus, and is primarily written in the third person), and indicating the scope of his work (it will incorporate a range of types of the genre defined as narrative, sayings and dialogue/discourse gospels, which are extant in Greek and Coptic, and chronologically go up to the end of the third century). He then discusses the criteria that he will use to determine use of the Fourth Gospel. Emphasis is placed upon the presence of common terminology, which is distinctive to the Fourth Gospel, upon contextual similarity, and upon what Zelyck terms evidence of a purposeful alteration of the Gospel. In all of this he is keen to weaken the view that where similarities between the Fourth Gospel and the ‘other’ gospels of his study can be discerned, these are best explained by reference to a common source, which is almost always a scholarly invention supposedly necessitated by the character of the parallel. It is in this context that Zelyck introduces what he terms the criterion of traditional interpretation, which asserts that when one of the gospel texts under discussion shares an interpretation of the Fourth Gospel with an early Christian text which refers directly to the latter, then we can posit knowledge on the part of the gospel text of the Fourth Gospel. This, Zelyck will maintain, is the key contribution of his thesis.

The main part of the dissertation implements what has been discussed in the first two chapters. Each text's relationship to the Fourth Gospel is discussed and the likelihood of knowledge of the latter placed under three different descriptions, probable, plausible and possible. While, inevitably, this part of the thesis is somewhat heavy-going, Zelyck proves himself a reliable guide and his conclusions are certainly defensible. So, the Egerton Papyrus probably used the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas plausibly and so on. Zelyck, as suggested by his criteria, is wise to the complex nature of influence, indicating a number of places where we can show that an individual author betrays exegetical engagement with the Gospel to arrive at a position which, strictly speaking, is not Johannine, and arguing that this can be shown to be the case, inter alia, with the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of the Saviour.

The conclusions to be drawn from this study are not straightforwardly clear, not least in the way in which they might influence the debate about Johannine influence. Patterns of use are not obvious, and, as Zelyck points out, some expectations are not confirmed (copious use of John by texts which might be termed Valentinian is not evidenced, for instance). Zelyck cautiously asserts that his research has not been able to demonstrate how the Fourth Gospel came to influence the writings that he has discussed, that is, it is very rarely possible to demonstrate that such a writing was influenced through actual reading of the Gospel. He is also clear that there is not enough evidence to show that the texts that he has discussed were particularly drawn to the Fourth Gospel.

As with most theses, the achievement of this one is modest, as the previous paragraph shows. Zelyck has done a job of work, which he has carried out both competently and thoughtfully. For him his main achievement lies in making plain the extent to which a number of the uses of the Fourth Gospel that he has identified reflect traditional theological interpretations witnessed in other early Christian writings as well as traditional selections of material. In his conclusion he outlines the consequences of such a realisation, both as this relates to the direct subject of his thesis (the use of the Fourth Gospel) and other matters relating to the gospel texts that he is discussing, such as the elucidation of their interpretation and their context; and he describes possible future avenues of research relating to this matter. His claim that he has developed a new criterion for determining usage of the Fourth Gospel, rather than use of a common tradition, will convince some but not others. To some, one assumes, the presence of these will support, rather than negate, claims that knowledge of the Fourth Gospel is indirect in the cases where Zelyck uses it. Zelyck, however, has done well to take the discussion in a new direction, and that his own conclusions on this matter might be contested is hardly reason for criticism in a field where presupposition often plays as much a role in discussion as examination of the evidence.