The Gospel of John, a Commentary, Craig S. Keener (author), Baker Publishing Group, 2012, Volumes
One and Two, ISBN 978-0-8010-4675-9, The Gospel of Matthew, a Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8028-6498-7
The Craig Keener commentaries on the gospels of Matthew and John are the definitive reference books
on these two gospels. The books were published originally in 1999 (for Matthew) and in 2002 (for John),
but have been reissued in hardcover and paperback. These are scholarly books; I could not find one
page in any of them that is not replete with footnotes. I may be wrong; we are dealing with 3,500 pages
among these three volumes, and I haven’t finished reading all three volumes. But it is noteworthy that
people buy these books to read them cover to cover, so interesting is the material Keener has
assembled. Author Anne Rice (The Vampire Chronicles) keeps these books on her desk at all times to
consult them in her own writings on religion, or to read them at leisure.
It is not simply that Keener has a readable, intelligent, scholarly style, who only occasionally drops
academic references that only specialists would appreciate. Keener seems to have an encyclopedic
knowledge of the source material from early Christianity, as well as the later material that has arisen
over 2,000 years which illuminates the development of the religion. Even scholars have confessed their
unfamiliarity with some of the documents and facts Keener has investigated.
The books are organized sequentially by chapter and verse of the gospels, which is a standard approach,
but the information provided for any particular verse is so detailed, and so wide-ranging, that it is easy
to get lost in curiosity and wonder on the interpretation of just one verse. To take the Gospel of John,
after a thirty page introduction on the nature of source material and limitations on writing commentary
on the gospels, Keener launches into a 330 page introduction to the Gospel of John. This is before
discussing even one verse, and to give you an idea of the depth of material involved, here are the seven
sections of this book-within-a-book:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Genre and Historical Considerations
The Discourses of the Fourth Gospel
Authorship
Social Contexts
A Jewish Context
Revelatory Motifs: Knowledge, Vision, Signs
Christology and Other Theology
Just to give you a better idea of what is involved, here is the further breakdown of sub-chapters on
Genre and Historical Considerations:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
g)
Proposals Concerning Gospel Genre
Biographies
The Gospels as Historical Biography
Noncanonical Gospel Traditions
Source Criticism of the Fourth Gospel
John, Historical Tradition, and the Synoptics
John and Historical Tradition
h) John’s Distinctive Style and Adaptation of the Gospel Form
i) Conclusion
Reading just the introduction to the book is a valuable experience because of the scholarly detail Keener
presents. The Commentaries are no less informative, and while this is reference material readers can
look up as necessary, there is a small drawback to having such varied pockets of information grace every
page, for over 1,750 pages (these are just the Commentaries on John, chapter and verse). By seeking
out a particular chapter or verse, you are liable to miss some important insight that is buried somewhere
else in the book, or off in Book Two. For this reason, it makes sense to read at one’s leisure (because
there is an awful lot of reading involved), not just the introduction, but the commentaries and the
footnotes.
Let’s take a sample passage from the Introduction to the Gospel of John, to see the depth in which
Keener explores every question. The sub-chapter in question is “Conflict with the Synagogue,” which
reviews how John structured his gospel at a time when some Jews were beginning to break away from
the synagogue and explore Christian thinking and religious practice. The point here being, that the
Gospel of John seems directed largely at Jewish believers or newcomers, and not at Gentiles.
Views about setting in life affect the context in which we read the Gospel, for better or worse.
For example, the late second-century church read the Gospel as a polemic against Gnosticism,
finding it useful for that purpose; the gnostics undoubtedly saw a different purpose for the
Gospel. Many scholars, based on a particular reading of 20:30-31, believe the Gospel was written
to evangelize Diaspora Jews and proselytes. Although it is hardly likely that allies of the
synagogue authorities would be willing to hear the book [notice that Keener does not say people
would “read the book,” as these scrolls were read out to mostly illiterate audiences], Jewish
friends and relatives not yet committed on the issue might. But given the meaning of “faith” in
the gospel (which informs our reading of 20: 30-31: see our comment there), and the fact that
John presupposes his audiences’ knowledge of many events and people from the Gospel story, he
probably encourages the faith of those who are already believers, summoning them to deeper
faith. He may wish to equip them for their own debates and witness, however (15: 26-27), as
Luke may have wished to accomplish in the speeches in Acts. Knowing what conflicts prompted
his particular emphasis on how to believe in Christ’s signs (20: 30-31) is significant. Volume One,
page 195
In this one paragraph, Keener informs us that people read the gospel of John quite differently,
depending on the age and the spirit of the time in which they lived. They might read John as a polemic
to help believers strengthen their faith; or, in the first few centuries when Christianity was battling
Gnosticism for converts to this new religion, Christians at that time might use the Gospel as a weapon
for or against Gnosticism. We ourselves, reading the gospel in the 21st century after Christ’s birth, are
much better informed about what this book is about when we think carefully about the modern biases
we may bring to our reading. While it is typical in these sort of commentaries on the gospels for the
author to cite verses in this or other books in the Bible, and Craig Keener makes such references in most
paragraphs, I have left out the footnotes, of which there are eight on this page alone. The bibliography
found at the end of Volume Two is 166 pages long, and that is followed by an index by subject matter,
and an index “of Scripture and Old Testament Apocrypha,” which is nearly 200 pages long, and allows
the reader to work backwards – to select a passage from Scripture or the Apocrypha, and find out where
in these two volumes it is referenced.
Great scholarship indeed, you might say – what with all the footnotes and indexes. But such scholarship
is meaningful only if the conclusions drawn from the sources tells us something that is meaningful. To
see what I mean, here is another random sample, taken from the commentary on John 18:3, where
Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.
That those who came to arrest Jesus brought not only weapons [see footnote 88] but lanterns
and torches (18:3) may be significant. Not only Roman soldiers but also the temple police on
their night watch would carry lanterns, and especially if they expected Jesus to flee into dark
corners of the olive grove, they would hardly depend solely on the light of the Passover’s full
moon. [see footnote 89] That John, alone of the Gospels, mentions this historically likely touch,
however, may suggest that he also derives symbolic, ironic import from it: the agents of darkness
prove completely unaware that they are approaching the light of the world. [see footnote 90]
Footnote 88 says:
Stauffer, Jesus, 120, thinks that clubs (Mark 14:43), in contrast to weapons that some would
consider ornamental (m. Sabb. 6:4), violated the Sabbath. He counts this a reason against the
Synoptic dating of the Last Supper, but if correct, his observation may simply imply an early
Christian charge of priestly impiety or the priests’ exploitation of exemption for defensive warfare
in the case of what might appear a dangerous police action.
Footnote 89 provides seven sources that describe the importance of a full moon during Passover.
Footnote 90 provides a source that suggests the arrest of Jesus at night has symbolic import for John –
the agents of darkness are approaching the light of the world.
While it helps when reading Keener to skip over the footnotes, so as to stay within the flow of the text,
it is necessary to go back later and read the footnotes. Not all of them have text like the two quotes
above (most are simply references to other ancient sources and commentary, or to books used as a
reference by Keener), so it is not too time-consuming reading his footnotes. From this example, we can
see that the arrest of Jesus poses more questions than it answers. Were the Synoptic gospels (Matthew,
Mark and Luke) right about the timing of the Last Supper in relation to the arrest in Gethsemane? Was
it likely the soldiers carried only clubs, and if so, why does Mark have a verse that says one of the
defenders of Jesus struck off an ear of one of the soldiers (which Jesus promptly healed)? Is this
because Mark’s theme throughout his gospel is the importance of Jesus’ miracles, whereas the theme in
John is the importance of faith?
Another critical question regarding Keener’s Commentaries has to do with his frame of reference. He is
a believing and practicing Christian – a former atheist who became born again. Is he more likely to
believe in the miracles and the resurrection, and does this bias affect his writing? Keener does use
modern secular scholars as sources of ideas and facts. Prominent Jesus Seminar scholars, like Marcus
Borg and John Dominic Crossan, are cited occasionally. On the subject of miracles, Keener quotes Borg,
saying he “rightly points out” that:
The primary intellectual objection to it [supernatural activity] flows from a rigid application of the
modern worldview’s definition of reality. Yet the modern view is but one of a large number of
humanly constructed maps of reality. It is historically the most recent and impressive because of
the degree of control it has given us; but it is no more an absolute map of reality than any of the
previous maps. All are relative, products of particular histories and cultures, the modern one, like
its predecessors, will be superceded.
Keener adds his own observation: “Whether or not one likes such cultural trends, the days when
supernatural phenomena can be simply dismissed without discussion may be numbered.” I don’t see
how this can be an entirely objective sentiment on the part of Keener. There is a good deal of Bible
scholarship that can be relative and dependent on its own time and culture. As pointed out earlier, we
need to think carefully about the different ways past cultures thought about John’s overall themes, and
what our modern biases may say about these themes. The fact that the gospel of John was written at a
time when women were being pushed out of leadership positions in Christian “churches” (to use that
word in a general sense), or that presbuteros (our modern-day priests) were allowed to marry, can cause
us to focus almost exclusively on these issues in the Gospel, since they are important issues in our own
time.
Yet it is hard to think that the acceptance of miracles and the resurrection of Jesus can be viewed
relative to their time. Either miracles are possible or they are not, irrespective of the time in which you
live. Many cultures believed in signs and wonders, but such belief does not mean they actually
occurred. I do not think Keener is being absolutely objective in this matter. It is more like he is hoping
that in some future age, superstition will revive so that the Resurrection can be accepted once again
among even rational, scientific thinkers. This is obviously an important topic for Keener, as he published
in 2011 a further defense and elaboration on the argument that miracles do occur with some frequency.
His book, Miracles, the Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (Two Volumes), is said to have the
same rigorous approach to scholarship. I have not read it yet, so I must suspend judgment.
Fortunately, these sort of passages on the supernatural are infrequent in the Gospel of John
Commentaries. As a writer who specializes in historical fiction set in the first and second century, I find
that Keener’s books are a goldmine of material. But I am not recommending them for that purpose, or
even for their scholarly merit. I am recommending them for the average individual who is curious about
the New Testament and the gospels of John and Matthew in particular. Both believers and nonbelievers can benefit from informed readings of Scripture.
As to the Gospel of Matthew, Keener’s book has been revised in 2009. It is still one volume, not two,
because Keener has, in the Gospel of John, done the basic work of describing the milieu in which
Christianity developed in the first century. In this book, Keener has an introduction that is only 71 pages
long. The same extensive and informative scholarship is at work in this book as it is in Keener’s analysis
in the Gospel of John.
There is no evidence yet that Keener is ready to publish commentaries on Luke and Mark, to complete
the cycle. For one thing, he has been working on his two volume set covering New Testament miracles.
He has also published, in 2012, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels, a rebuttal of sorts to the historical
Jesus books published by Jesus Seminar scholars. Let’s not leave out another two volume set published
in recent years, and devoted to commentary on Acts of the Apostles.
Craig Keener has obviously been incredibly busy publishing so much in the way of extensive scholarship.
The good news is that there is a real public appetite for books of this nature. His commentary books
alone, have sold over half a million copies. If you are financially well-situated, you might consider buying
them, bearing in mind the paperback versions sell for at least $25 in used condition. Fortunately, most
libraries carry these books, so it is worth your while checking these out from the library. Your
understanding of early Christianity will be considerably broadened as a result.
Garrett Glass
jehoshuathebook.com