John D. Currid, The Case for Biblical Archaeology: Uncovering the Historical Record of God’s Old Testament People

the vividness of John 20 in light of the rhetorical categories of ekphrasis and energeia as techniques used to persuade the reader to believe in Jesus. Evaluation of this work is difficult because the selections are quite distinct in their approaches and varied in their interpretations. Come and Read offers a range of interesting insights on the Gospel of John from both seasoned scholars and new voices. The contributions are well-written and present interesting exegetical and hermeneutical insights. The clustering of different approaches around a specific text is noble and a welcome change to the narrow parochialism of biblical scholarship. However, the book’s goal of capturing comparison, interaction, and interdependence among the contributions is harder to perceive. This results in two issues with the work. First, the different goals of the various contributions make comparison across the essays difficult. Some essays lean more on the hermeneutical and illustrate a particular usefulness of theory as it is applied to a text (Jodfrey, Parker). Others tend to emphasize the historical and literary backgrounds of the text with illustrative primary sources (Keener, Carter, Larsen). Still others prefer a more focused, complete analysis that moves commentary-like through the interpretation of the text (Lee, Koester). These differences are not so much the result of the interpretive approaches as they reflect different goals. Some scholars argue a specific point, while others put forth a broader reading. Such unevenness hampers the dialogue between the approaches. Second, the essays are not written for a reader to get a sense of the interpretive debates on a single passage or the places in which the different approaches diverge and intersect. If one is specifically focused on an aspect of Johannine scholarship such as the rhetoric of John’s Gospel, the book is an excellent resource. But as a “deliberate conversation” (p. 2) between approaches, the book could do more to aid the reader. Perhaps an introduction or conclusion to each section could better guide the reader to this end. As it stands, the book displays excellent Johannine scholarship but struggles to bridge the divide between the approaches. Overall, Come and Read offers a strong collection of contributions to the study of John and expertly presents the complexity of biblical interpretation in the twenty-first century. While the work is not well-suited for a college classroom or a general reading audience, it is a good resource for the academic community or a graduate class on John’s Gospel.