Köstenberger's Gospel Of John

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Kostenberger combines culture, social critic and intellectual exposition in his Book to give the reader a thorough understanding of the Gospel of John. The Book depicts a modern mind colliding with the divine ancient text.
After considering the historical context of the Gospel as well as its relation to other New Testament writings, Köstenberger turns to his exegetical work. An introduction to each exegetical unit is provided along with the author’s own translation of the Greek text.
In the course of his verse-by-verse comments, Köstenberger incorporates references to other ancient writings that help explain the book’s theological, cultural, and social context.
Kostenberger’s Introduction is a very short (18 pages) and moves through the …show more content…

The usage of obscure English poses a problem also to the non-native speakers. Another weakness of the commentary is its style of assumption without proper explanation to the reader how such conclusion are derived.
Kostenberger translates John 3:19 “This is the verdict: light has come into the world, but people preferred darkness to light; for their deeds were evil.” The words translated “preferred” are almost universally translated “loved” and “more than” (i.e. “loved darkness more than light”). The word “loved” is identical to the word “loved” in John 3:16 just 3 verses earlier (“God so loved the world”). It is difficult to see why Kostenberger would lessen the force of this statement from “loved darkness” to “preferred darkness” and he offers no explanation in his text.
Kostenberger translates John 3:9 “Nicodemus answered and said to him, ‘how can these things happen?’” The commentary points out that nearly all translations of this verse (NIV, NASB, NRSV, NKJV, NLT, ESV, TNIV, et. al.) render this verse “How can these things be?” Kostenberger then writes: “However, the translation ‘How can these things happen?’ is preferable” without offering any explanation at all as to why it is preferable or what difference it makes. Perhaps he thinks it is simply obvious, but the fact that it wasn’t obvious to any of the translation committees of all the major English translations of the Bible cries

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