New Testament scholar Francis J. Moloney of Australian Catholic University offers his readers a compendium of scholarship on the Gospel of John, whose erudition, size (more than 600 compact pages), and price will make it unaffordable for most students as well as beyond the competence of the casual biblical reader. But no good biblical library can afford not to have this volume in its collection, and I venture to suggest that at least some of its essays should be assigned to any graduate-level student of the Fourth Gospel. For scholars, it is a treasure trove of twenty-two studies published over the past forty-two years, and with six new essays appearing here for the first time. But the volume is not simply a collection of Johannine miscellanea. Arranged under three headings, namely, “The Johannine World,” “Johannine Theology,” and “The Johannine Text” (which is not devoted to textual criticism and could perhaps have been better entitled “Critical Interpretation of Selected Texts”), the studies constitute a virtually comprehensive treatment of the Fourth Gospel but not in the form of a chapter-by-chapter commentary. The studies presume a reader who is more than a beginner in Johannine scholarship. And herein lies its distinctiveness in relation to many collective volumes.

In the introduction Moloney, an openly Catholic, but in no sense “denominational” interpreter, traces his own journey as a scholar of the Johannine literature, especially the gospel. It is a story that many working in this field today will recognize: from the rigorous, and extraordinarily fruitful, but ultimately limited and limiting espousal of the historical critical method as the “gold standard” of interpretation by Catholic biblical scholars in the wake of Vatican II, into more expansive and theologically fruitful literary approaches, and finally at least to the boundaries of postmodern approaches such as ideological criticism, performance criticism, and other culturally determined forms of engagement with the text, about which Moloney has qualified reservations shared by many of his contemporaries. By frankly engaging the interpretive paradigm of the world “behind the text” (i.e., all that which, both positively and negatively, contributed to the production of the text), the world “of the text” (i.e., the literary artifact that is the product of that complex historical/literary process), and the world “before the text” (i.e., that which, through interpretation, the reader(s) generates by interaction with the text), even as he remains somewhat reserved about the third as it is employed by its most adventuresome (and sometimes dogmatic) exponents, Moloney draws his reader into not only the Johannine text but the fascinating and challenging historical stream of Johannine scholarship. This is not a domain in which the answers have become classic, and one has only to make them one's own. It is a world in constant fluctuation and evolution, in which interpretation will never be definitive, closed, able to be simply imbibed, but open and enticing, challenging the reader, as co-creator with the text of ever-new meaning, into a revelatory process that is unending, and, as the gospel says, invites each succeeding generation of interpreters to believe anew and thus have life in Jesus’ name.

One of the most important contributions Moloney makes to the vast literature on the Gospel of John is his collating, in regard to each passage or topic he addresses, of the existing positions, theories, and interpretations that have gained some traction in the academy. Thus, the reader is not given one defended position on the theme or part of the gospel Moloney is interpreting, but is introduced into the current discussion of that passage or section of the gospel. Moloney is not, however, a mere collector or transmitter of the available material. He presents authors and positions that corroborate, challenge, enrich, and expand his own positions, as well as those that are critical, so that the reader is not simply furnished with an acceptable interpretation or invited to “choose sides,” but is personally engaged with the Johannine text itself from a variety of angles. One does not feel even subtly coerced or indoctrinated, but invited to evaluate one's own, perhaps insufficiently examined positions and to engage Moloney's own positions critically. Whether eventually agreeing with Moloney or not, this reviewer found that his positions were always well-argued in open dialogue with challenging alternatives honestly presented.

The reader will find many of the fascinating and vitally important theologically freighted issues in Johannine scholarship to which Moloney returns repeatedly from diverse standpoints he has taken throughout his career. These include that of the “scriptural” character of the gospel that raises questions about the author(s)/evangelist, the intended and actual readers, the theology of time in relation to revelation, and of history to the literature that constructs it. For example, Moloney raised the issue of the “reader” (in or of) the Fourth Gospel in 1992 and returned to related issues in 2006, 2008, 2009, 2014, 2016, and 2017. This is just one example of the fascinating phenomenon of the scholar-at-work that this volume offers in relation to a number of ever-actual Johannine questions. While I (and I suspect many of his scholarly peers) could point to a number of topics treated by Moloney about which we could have spirited discussions, even genuine disagreements, we are all in his debt for his lifetime of meticulous and creative scholarship and the profundity and fertility of his reflection on the Fourth Gospel.