John The Beloved

The final book of the Bible, Revelation prophesies the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the "Beast" will be destroyed and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. With an introduction by Will Self.

A study of the life of the Apostle John, focusing on the background that formed his personality and the incidents that caused change in him.

"The Beloved Disciple" is the trade book adaptation of the bestselling, video-based, interactive Bible study "Beloved Disciple." It shows readers that John was uniquely chosen to be the one who received the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and that Christ still desires to reveal Himself to His disciples today.

Second-century Christians had a significant role in shaping the import of the literary sources that they inherited from the first century through their editorial revisions and the church traditions that they appended to them. Michael J. Kok critically investigates the supposed clues that encouraged select Christian intellectuals to infer that John, one of Jesus’ chosen twelve apostles, was the mysterious “disciple whom Jesus loved” and to ascribe the fourth canonical Gospel as well as four other New Testament books back to him. Kok outlines how the image of Saint John of Ephesus was constructed. Not all early Christians approved of the fourth canonical Gospel and some expressed strong reservations about its theology, preferring to link it with a heretical adversary rather than with an authoritative Christian founder figure. Discover how the moves made in the second century were crucial for determining whether this Gospel would be preserved at all for posterity, much less as part of the scriptural collection of the developing Orthodox Church.

"The Gospel of John refers five times to "the disciple whom Jesus loved." From the second through the present century, scholars have sought to identify this "disciple," traditionally concluding that he is the author of the Gospel and is indeed none other than John the son of Zebedee." "In recent phases of research, however, the identification of the Beloved Disciple with John the son of Zebedee has been exposed as weak and unpersuasive. Yet, according to James Charlesworth, even this new research is problematic in that it tends to ascribe priority in discerning the meaning of the Gospel of John to documents other than the Gospel itself. Moreover, this research tends to impute historical accuracy to documents that were not primarily intended to present histories." "Based on extensive research, then, Professor Charlesworth has concluded that the primary texts in the Gospel of John and the reflections of modern scholars indicate that any identification of the Beloved Disciple - whether with one of the disciples specified in the Gospel, with one who is anonymous in this Gospel, or with some symbolic theme - must provide credible answers to eight questions."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A leading New Testament scholar explores key issues in the Gospel of John.

"This study in Johannine ecclesiology reconstructs the history of one Christian community in the first century -- a community whose life from its inception to its last hour is reflected in the Gospel and Epistles of John. It was a community that struggled with the world, with the Jews, and with other Christians. Eventually the struggle spread even to its own ranks. It was, in short, a community not unlike the Church of today. This book offers a different view of the traditional Johannine eagle. In the Gospel the eagle soars above the earth, but with talons bared for the fray. In the Epistles we discover the eaglets tearing at each other for possession of the nest" -- Back cover.