What is the difference between the Word Bible Commentaries and Word Bible Themes series?
The WBC are commentaries. The Word Biblical Themes are additional essays related to themes or topics in the biblical book.
Do you have an example table of contents for the Word Biblical Themes on John's Gospel?
This is WBC John 2nd Ed.
Here ya go...
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CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
1. Interpreting the Gospel of John
Authorship
Purpose
Jesus after the flesh—after the Spirit
2. The Word Made Flesh
“The Word” in ancient times
Christ—the Word
Christ—the Mediator
The only Son
The “I am” sayings
3. The Signs of Jesus and Their Significance
The water into wine
Two healings
The feeding of the multitude and walking on the sea
The healing of the man born blind
The raising of Lazarus
4. Jesus and the Jewish Festivals
The Passover Festival
The Festival of Weeks
The Festival of Tabernacles
The Festival of the Dedication
5. Jesus and His Own: The Upper Room Discourses
The footwashing and prophecy of betrayal
The departure and return of Jesus
Jesus, the True Vine
The opposition of the world to the church
The ministry of the Spirit and the joy of the disciples
The prayer of consecration
6. The Glorification of Jesus
Index of Scriptures
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And here is a small snip-it (1st 3 paragraphs) from chapter 1.
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1
INTERPRETING THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
Ever since the church realized that it possesses not one Gospel but four it has come to see that the Gospel of John is “different.” Something about its presentation of Jesus marks it off from the others, and makes it unique. A great deal of discussion about this difference has taken place in modern times. It used to be said that whereas Matthew, Mark, and Luke gave the bare facts of the story of Jesus, John gave us the facts plus interpretation. We now know that that is an overstatement. Each of the first three evangelists had his own understanding of Jesus, and each wrote up his account in order that the light of Christ might shed its maximum illumination upon the circumstances of the churches he knew. Those men had profound insight into the life and teaching of Jesus and the revelation of God that he brought.
Yet everyone who has considered the matter agrees that these observations apply to the fourth evangelist and his Gospel in a very special way. One has only to pick up the book and read its opening sentences to realize what a unique slant the evangelist gives to the familiar story of Jesus. There is something paradoxical about the introduction to this Gospel (1:1–18). It is written in the simplest language possible. Indeed, the first five verses are not only in “basic Greek,” to coin an expression in imitation of “basic English”; a beginner who has taken only his first steps in learning the language can make out those sentences. And yet the significance of its utterances about Jesus is nothing less than breathtaking. The Prologue plumbs the depths and scales the heights of the doctrine of Christ beyond anything written in the Bible. It unveils the central place of the Son of God in revelation, in creation, and in redemption; and it relates all this not only to the record of God’s revelation in the Old Testament but also to the religions and philosophies of the ancient world from primeval times to the fashionable thought of the evangelist’s day.
One of the greatest teachers of the early church, Clement of Alexandria, who was acquainted with the thought of the world of the second century of our era, wrote about this book: “John, perceiving that the bodily facts had been made plain in the gospel, being urged by his friends and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual gospel.”1
Beasley-Murray, George R. John. Edited by Ralph P. Martin and David A. Hubbard. Word Biblical Themes. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 1989.
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