Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. The challenges presented by the current global culture of violence are baffling. Humanity faces these unprecedented challenges that have origins in sacred texts containing violent events. “Spiritualizing” these events is not the solution to dealing with the problems they present. Christians should be prepared to doubt the texts that promote violence as a part of faithfulness to God. This article suggests the opposite of faith is not only doubt, but also fear. Christians demonstrate a cheap relationship with sacred texts when they fail to challenge traditi ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. The Gospel of John challenges the use of violence in both the exercise of power and in resistance to power. This article identifies how power is used in John, discusses who uses it, and examines how power is complicated or inhibited within the narrative. God and the Logos are introduced in the Prologue as the Gospel’s most powerful figures, yet their power is resisted. The Jewish leaders (often co-identified with “the Jews”) hold sociocultural power, though it is limited by Rome. The Empire looms in the background until the passion narrative, in which Rom ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. In antiquity, the entire Roman Empire itself was imagined as a household, with its inhabitants obedient children to their symbolic father, the emperor. The language and the literary context of John 14:1–7 suggest significant interplay with this way of conceptualizing the empire. The Fourth Gospel imitates imperial structures with its household imagery, in which God takes the place of “Father” and believers as “children.” The community of believers is thus imagined as an alternative household to Caesar’s empire, one with its own unique values and prioritie ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. In the resurrection narratives of John 20–21, the wounds of the risen Jesus serve a number of important functions. They work as markers of revelation, enabling disciples to recognize the identity of the crucified one in the risen one. They are symbols of colonialism and imperialism, creating solidarity between Jesus and the victims of such abuse and suffering. They are cultic symbols of sacrifice and purification, linked to the Johannine motif of Jesus as the Temple and sacrificial Lamb of God whose death on the cross effects cleansing, taking away the wo ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. John 7–8 narrates Jesus’s dialogues with his opponents and the crowds during the annual Jewish festival of Tabernacles. Through this sensory backdrop, Jesus makes exceptional claims both for himself and for how God’s people should respond (e.g., 8:12). Across John’s narration of Jesus’s public ministry, Jesus challenges mainstream closedness by opening covenantal relationship with God to all those who can respond accordingly to what God as Father is doing in this world through Jesus who is Christ and Son. Such confrontation peaks in John 7–8 through a par ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. In the Gospel of John, readers encounter a community of believers who gather behind locked doors even after they have heard Jesus is alive. What can one make of their actions? Why are they not rejoicing, spreading the good news? Something is amiss. Jesus is alive, but the disciples are terrified and appear uncertain about what to do next. Using a trauma-informed hermeneutic, I interpret the actions, words, and apparent mood of the disciples in John 20: 19–20 as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Jesus’s visible scars testify to his pain an ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. John’s version of Jesus’s temple entrance is remarkable for its depiction of Jesus wielding a whip and driving out animals and people from the precincts. Focusing on the violence of Jesus’s “righteous anger,” some interpreters have used John 2:13–22 to justify violence in God’s name throughout history. Others push back against such readings by mitigating or ignoring the violence of Jesus’s actions. This article seeks to find a middle ground by focusing on ancient understandings of what happens when holiness is profaned. Using 2 Maccabees as a comparison ..read more

Review &Expositor, Ahead of Print. In this article, I examine the declaration, “It is advantageous for you that one man should die for the people and not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11:50), which the high priest Caiaphas makes at the Sanhedrin’s deliberations about the necessity of Jesus’s execution. I argue that despite the narrator’s appreciative comment that Caiaphas “did not say this on his own, but, because he was high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but that he may also gather into one the scatter ..read more

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