Spirit of Truth is the first of a two-volume study of the origin and development of the teaching of the Holy Spirit as it appears in the Gospel and First Epistle of John. Scholarly works on Johannine Pneumatology have tended to concentrate on the image of Spirit as Paraclete or Advocate, and have neglected the specific 'hermeneutic' or teaching-interpreting role attributed to the Spirit throughout the New Testament and specifically in the thought of the fourth evangelist. The purpose of this study is to explore and explain how this hermeneutic function developed in Johannine thought and ecclesial experience, and to stress its vital implications for scriptural interpretation and preaching within our church community today. The first volume reveals the influence of the Old Testament, Zoroastrianism and Qumran texts on the shaping of the figure of the Spirit in Israel's religious experience. It traces the origin of the image of Spirit of Truth through the Old Testament and intertestamental Judaism. Its dualistic aspect ('spirit of truth/spirit of deception,'as in I John 4:6) is shown to be rooted in the Dead Sea Scrolls and, ultimately, in the ethical-eschatological dualism of the Iranian prophet Zarathustra. This book shows, finally, how Israel came to know the Spirit as a blessing, sanctifying, protecting and revealing divine presence.
This book sheds new light on the women in the Fourth Gospel. Unlike most works that approach the topic from a historical-critical perspective, this book approaches the topic from a historical-literary perspective and attempts to illustrate for the modern reader how a first-century reader would have understood the characterizations of the women, given first-century cultural and literary norms and the theology of the implied author. The thesis of this book is that the primary purpose of the women in the Fourth Gospel is to support the portrayal of Jesus as the Messianic Bridegroom and further the plot of Jesus' giving people the power to become children of God (John 1:12). This historical-literary analysis exposes a highly androcentric and patriarchal text, which leads the author in the end to question current assumptions that behind the text exists a community or school whose egalitarianism extended to women.
