Gospel of John Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Setting: the Johannine community debate=== For much of the 20th century, scholars interpreted the Gospel of John within the paradigm of a hypothetical "[[Johannine community]]",{{sfn|Lamb|2014|p=2}} meaning that the gospel was held to have sprung from a late-1st-century Christian community excommunicated from the Jewish synagogue (probably meaning the Jewish community){{sfn|Hurtado|2005|p=70}} on account of its belief in Jesus as the promised Jewish messiah.{{sfn|Köstenberger|2006|p=72}} This interpretation, which saw the community as essentially sectarian and standing outside the mainstream of early Christianity, has been increasingly challenged in the first decades of the 21st century,{{sfn|Lamb|2014|p=2-3}} and there is currently considerable debate over the social, religious and historical context of the gospel.{{sfn|Bynum|2012|p=7,12}} Nevertheless, the Johannine literature as a whole (made up of the gospel, the three Johannine epistles, and Revelation), points to a community holding itself distinct from the Jewish culture from which it arose while cultivating an intense devotion to Jesus as the definitive revelation of a God with whom they were in close contact through the [[Paraclete]].{{sfn|Attridge|2008|p=125}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page