John, the Maverick Gospel

by Ribert Kysar

Book by Robert Kysar

Genres: New Testament, Theology, Religion, Christian

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Kendall Davis]

This intro is trash. Kysar is utterly infuriating and engages in absurdly simplistic analysis. I was amazed at his ability to find contradictions under every single rock in the Fourth Gospel. His presentation of John as just another piece of general religious literature was insipid because it failed to do justice to John and world religions, which Kysar seems to assume are basically Christianity in non-Western dress.

Kysar's intro is a good example of what happens when mainline exegesis allows the so-called historical-critical method to suck out the spiritual life and vitality of scriptural exegesis. Kysar is certainly sincere in trying to make this gospel meaningful for the contemporary church, but he fails to do this because this text is not scripture for him. It's just one early Christian text among others.

Kysar does occasionally have an insightful comment in this introduction. Perhaps I am overly cynical, but to me this usually felt like the case of broken clock being right twice a day.

[Randal Pendleton]

I abandoned this book shortly after starting. It was a text used by a discussion group at our church. I dropped the book as part of me dropping the group, and I’m not sure how I feel about the book - or about the gospel of John, for that matter.

[Abigail]

I have some difficulties with what seemed to me to be a basic concept in this book. That's that the gospels should be approached using predominantly literary tools (eg, source and redaction criticism) without equal attention being paid to historical tools. For that reason I found the discussion of post-modernism very superficial, because it did not seem to deal with the issue of whether post-modernism as he described it was a valuable or an appropriate tool for New Testament studies. I was also disappointed by his lack of attention to internal and external historical evidence. I found the tone very inconsistent, sometimes approaching the condenscending. Surely in this day and age this is the wrong tone to take in an overview addressed to 'the beginning student of New Testament literature'. That being said, I found some of his insights interesting and useful. If there is a fourth edition, I suggest losing the historically inadequate 'could the evangelist have been a woman' appendix and beefing up the post-modernism appendix. I think I would always be in disagreement about its applicability but I am sure it can be better explained and defended!

[Alan Zabel]

I found "John, the Maverick Gospel" incredibly illuminating. I read it for a lenten church Bible study class. This is an academic book, but as the subject is the Gospel of John, there certainly is a spiritual/faith dimension to its study. In a way, the book is really dense with lots of material - but it's not a struggle since the ideas and patterns presented are compelling, and provided new insights relating to my own faith journey.
For me, faith certainly is much more than "facts". So looking into the origin and motivation of scripture is not contrary to faith, but enhancing. After all, we are seeking a lens into the lives and struggles of the earliest Christians. That can inform our own lives and struggles in a meaningful way.
The only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 is that I found the whole discussion of post-modernism near the end less than satisfying. However, the breadth of insights in the rest of the book more than made up for this. I really learned a lot.

[wes Goertzen]

i read this along with a bunch of other stuff this spring. it is good. kysar's a good scholar (though any time anyone hazards a statement like this there is bound to be vehement diagreement). But alas I wasn't quite convinced by much of his post modern take. I don't think he followed his own logic through at times. Its been a number of months since I read it so I can give any helpful examples. Its a very good beginner book on John.

[Thomas]

I re-read this for a paper on Dualism in the fourth gospel. Kysar does a good job of expressing a lot of ideas in few pages, and usually does so pretty clearly (although the prose gets clumsy at times, as others have noted).

Skip the portion on post-modern analysis of John. It seems to be included as a bone thrown to the Po-mo theologians, but it doesn't do a great job or offer anything unique.

[Spencer]

An excellent book on a number of levels. While not all of Kysar's claims are convincing, his mastery of the material is excellent.

I would recommend his bibliography if only for research purposes. It alone is excellent.

Best introduction to John to be read alongside, perhaps, Raymond E. Brown's.

[Bob Buice]

Very informative. Writing style is a little clumsy in places.