[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to another episode of the London last CM, a podcast devoted to serious thinking for a serious church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host for this episode, Zach Williams.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're a new but listener to the podcast, we want to welcome you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're wondering kind of what we're about here at the London last CM, we can really kind of summarize it in four seas.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those seas being charity, curiosity, critical thinking, and cheerful confessionalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are virtues that we value highly.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're really seeking to do is to develop an intellectual culture that is built around these things, both for the edification of the church and for the glory of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our guest today is a first time guest on the podcast, but one that many of our listeners, I'm sure will be familiar with.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had the privilege for nearly eight years of knowing him as Pastor Jim, but many of you will know him as Dr.

Jim Hamilton.

[SPEAKER_00]: Professor of Biblical theology at Southern Seminary, author of numerous books and commentaries, co-hosts of the Babotalk podcast put on by non-marks, et cetera, et cetera.

[SPEAKER_00]: And just one personal word here about Jim, you know, when you spend nearly eight years around somebody, you really get a good idea of that person's character.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I just want to tell you quickly three things about Jim Hamilton.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, you will be hard for heart press to find a man who loves the Bible more than Jim Hamilton does.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a man who just really gets giddy about the word of God and that's a great trait to have and a pastor and a professor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Second of all, whether you agree with or not, you will never have to wonder where Jim Hamilton stands on important issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's a man of deep conviction and again, another great trait to have and a pastor.

[SPEAKER_00]: And thirdly, [SPEAKER_00]: And I admire all these traits about him, but maybe this one the most.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jim Hamilton is a family man.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is a man who really is an exemplar in the way that he leads his family, godly example.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, Jim, I just want you to know really thankful for you, brother.

[SPEAKER_00]: Really appreciate you and just really thrilled to have you on the podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the London, I see him.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, brother.

[SPEAKER_01]: Glad to be here.

[SPEAKER_01]: Really appreciate your kind words.

[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I can go home now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, not quite.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got a few things to talk about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Jim, you've you've made a lot of contributions to the field of biblical theology.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've written a lot of really good books, but we're here today to talk about your newest book just recently published by Baker academic and titled in the beginning was the word.

[SPEAKER_00]: finding meaning in the literary structure of the gospel of John.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's new books that you've put out on the gospel of John.

[SPEAKER_00]: And before we get into some of the details of the book, I'm wondering if you might just share a little bit of your personal journey that kind of brought you to this point of writing this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: How does it kind of who played baseball to University of Arkansas and writing a book on the literary structure of John?

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe just share a little bit of background on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I appreciate that question.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting that you frame it that way.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my dad was a basketball and baseball coach and had played professional baseball briefly.

[SPEAKER_02]: My mother was an English teacher.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I feel like I got a love for sports and a work ethic to really try to improve on the baseball field and basketball court from my father.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I also got a love for books and literature from my mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I would say in a way I came by this naturally.

[SPEAKER_02]: And those, those two interests, you know, baseball and literature, they really collided at the University of Arkansas, where the coaching staff would tell the team, do not take English classes in the spring.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because in the spring, of course, a baseball team is traveling a lot.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the English department was one of the only departments on campus that took attendance.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if you were in English classes in the spring, you were likely going to fail because you had to miss so much class.

[SPEAKER_02]: So when my [SPEAKER_02]: English, I remember my baseball career came to an end.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was free to be an English major.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I love of literature, my desire to understand how books are structured, how they're put together, what their inner logic is.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like that naturally fed into a desire to understand both individual books of the Bible and the whole Bible itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's good.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a, that's some good background there on how you're, your interest in literature in general kind of fed into your, [SPEAKER_00]: interest in the word of God and it's funny how the Lord, you know, uses those gifts and interests for his kingdom and in ways that you don't expect and so really really appreciate that about you.

[SPEAKER_00]: So one of kind of the major themes, not just of this book, but in a lot of your writing that you have emphasized over the years.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's this idea of embracing the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure some of our listeners who have familiar with your work have maybe heard you expound on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But maybe for the sake of our listeners who aren't as familiar with your work, maybe you could give us just kind of a brief introduction of what that means and why you think that's so critical in our reading of scripture.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I appreciate that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, by this phrase, interpretive perspective, one way to, another way to just talk about that would be to talk about their worldview, or if you wanted to do it in kind of, you know, street parlance, you could, you could refer to their slant.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, everybody has a slant, an angle, a way of looking at things, a perspective from which they're coming.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what I'm saying is we need to become so familiar with the biblical authors, the way they think about things, the way they look at the world, the way that they tie themselves in with other books that we understand their slant.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, growing up, sometimes I would watch the Chicago Cubs on television, and they had this great broadcaster named Harry Carey, who he loved baseball, and he also loved beer.

[SPEAKER_02]: And by the end of the game, you know, you could almost tell that Harry Carey had had a certain number of those [SPEAKER_02]: But because of this, you knew how to interpret what he was saying.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he had certain expressions that just marked his, his lingo, like one of the things he loved to say was holy cow.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so if something great happened, particularly if the cubs did something great, [SPEAKER_02]: He was going to come out with holy cow.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so knowing Harry Carey and knowing the way he looked at things, you knew how to interpret him.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is the way it is for lots of people and the biblical authors are no different.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one thing I want to emphasize about this is that we're really trying to get at [SPEAKER_02]: what the human authors of scripture intended to communicate by talking about their interpretive perspective.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think for instance, there are things that are directly relevant to what the biblical authors are talking about.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then there are a lot of things that are irrelevant all together irrelevant.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you understand their perspective, if you know what they're talking about, if you know where they're coming from, [SPEAKER_02]: you can discern the difference between which maybe words they are using might be relevant and which words that might show up in other ancient Near Eastern texts or maybe even other books of the Bible, but you know because you understand their perspective that that's actually an irrelevant use of that term.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's not as significant for interpretation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So another aspect of this is I think it's always beneficial to ask the big worldview questions.

[SPEAKER_02]: So where did we come from?

[SPEAKER_02]: What has gone wrong?

[SPEAKER_02]: What has got done to initiate a solution to what has gone wrong?

[SPEAKER_02]: What has got promised to the people being described by the biblical author?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then, therefore, what can we expect in the future about how God is going to resolve what has happened and bring about the purposes that he set out to achieve when he began to create in the first place?

[SPEAKER_02]: And in all of this, I'm assuming that the biblical author is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Lord is ensuring that what the Bible, what the biblical author intends to communicate is what the Lord wants communicated to his people.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then as we move from the earliest biblical authors to later biblical authors, we're now moving into how has, have these later authors interpreted earlier scripture.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I think the inspiration of the Holy Spirit guarantees that the later biblical author has correctly understood what the earlier biblical author intended to communicate.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm a big proponent of authorial intent, and I think that we need to continue to look for the intent of the human author as part of our attempt to, as Paul does in X- seventeen-three, explain [SPEAKER_02]: and demonstrate that these things are so, that it was necessary for the Christ first to suffer and then to rise from the dead, and that this Jesus is the Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that the biblical authors are really showing us how to make persuasive arguments, and it's our responsibility to carefully understand what exactly they're trying to claim.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: I remember my first semester of seminary at Southern, I took your Hermitutic class, and I think I remember the way you worded it there, [SPEAKER_00]: was if you want to learn how to read the Bible, read the Bible, and pay attention to how the biblical authors are reading and interpreting earlier parts of scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a really, a really helpful emphasis.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I appreciate your emphasis on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of getting into some of the specific themes of the book.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk a little bit about this idea of the literary structure [SPEAKER_00]: of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: What exactly do we mean when we're talking about literary structure or literary structure or plural in the Bible?

[SPEAKER_00]: And what are some of the predominant literary structures that you see the biblical authors using?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so thanks for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: So first let me say that, you know, I remember when I was, I cannot, I can picture where I was when it occurred to me, maybe John didn't just sit down and start writing and then when he had said everything, he had to say he stopped.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was kind of this, oh, well, maybe he planned it and maybe he [SPEAKER_02]: He thought about it and maybe he put some things down and then strategically thought about how to arrange those things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe he actually pondered which episodes he should select and which maybe he should leave out and how he should frame all of this.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things that I think we ought to think more about is why have the biblical authors arranged their material in the way that they have?

[SPEAKER_02]: And really, I'm looking at the material [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm always asking the question, why, for instance, do I have these repeated phrases?

[SPEAKER_02]: Why do I have a series of units opened with the same phrase?

[SPEAKER_02]: So for instance, in John chapter one, [SPEAKER_02]: There are a series of paid paragraphs that all begin with the phrase the next day.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think the first one is like John chapter one verse twenty nine and then the next one is like verse thirty five and then the next one is like verse forty three the next day the next day the next day and so this is one of the one of the ways that John structures his material.

[SPEAKER_02]: He'll use these repeated phrases.

[SPEAKER_02]: He does it again in like chapters five through seven, maybe into eight, where five one is like metatata in Greek after these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: Six one after these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: Seven one after these things.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's using this repeated opener to kind of almost wave a flag and say, hey, I'm starting a new, a new thought unit here.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's one of the, one of the literary devices.

[SPEAKER_02]: Another very common literary device is the inclusio.

[SPEAKER_02]: where you will have, for instance, you know, it's unfortunate the way the paragraphing works in the ESV and the way the subtitles are.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in John chapter five verse nineteen, the ESV reads, so Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then in verse thirty, [SPEAKER_02]: the ESV renders it, I can do nothing on my own as I hear I judge.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that phrase of his own accord and on my own, it's like off how to.

[SPEAKER_02]: The sun can do nothing from himself and then he says something very similar in five, thirty.

[SPEAKER_02]: So unfortunately, the ESV has used five, thirty to start a new paragraph and they've inserted a subhead over chapter five or thirty witnesses to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_02]: When I think it's rather the case that those two references to what Jesus does off how to, you know, from himself or of his own accord, they're forming an inclusive that brackets the intervening material.

[SPEAKER_02]: So these are very common features of the biblical author's way of framing their material.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, we're looking at authors who they didn't, they didn't hit return on their keyboard and then hit tab to make the first line in dent five spaces.

[SPEAKER_02]: The way that they signaled, okay, I'm starting a new paragraph is, for instance, what I was talking about a minute ago, you reuse that same phrase the next day or perhaps the way you signaled, okay, I'm at the end of a thought unit and [SPEAKER_02]: What I'm going to say next is going to take off in a new direction is they come back and reuse the phrase that they started with and and form an inclusio so that this is very common in John's gospel and often also within these within these self-contained thought units what you'll find is a strategic arrangement of the material [SPEAKER_02]: where the first part of it corresponds to the last part, the second to the second to last, the third to the last, and then however many pieces there are in between, and then there's kind of a central turning point.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's almost like you walk up the steps on a pyramid, you get to the top of it, and you walk down the steps on the other side.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that literary device is referred to as a chiasm.

[SPEAKER_02]: Based on the Greek letter chi which looks like an axe and it's sort of working from the top left down to the center and then back out you could think of it as a picture frame where you've got the frame and then a mat and then the photo and then the mat and then the frame and you might even have several layers of mats.

[SPEAKER_02]: So these are very common ways for the biblical authors to structure their material and I think that [SPEAKER_02]: that if we see these things, we will understand why the biblical authors have positioned things the way that they are.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think I know I probably know how you're going to answer this follow-up question, but for the sake of our audience, I want to ask you, is it easy and possible to discern these things in our English translations?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or is this something where we really need to be familiar with the Greek and the Hebrew to kind of get a good grasp in of these literary structures and be able to see them clearly?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's possible in the English, and I think that if you pay close attention, really, the key here is that you remember what you've already read.

[SPEAKER_02]: So one of the things I like most about analyzing texts in this way is that it requires such close attention.

[SPEAKER_02]: It really requires almost locking in into your short-term memory, the phrases that begin the unit, so that when you hit them again at the end of the unit, you're like, oh, yeah, just saw that phrase.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that that's a joyful kind of discovery in and of itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's possible to do this in English, but I think it's even more clear in the original text in the original language text, whether we're talking about Hebrew or Aramaic.

[SPEAKER_02]: or Greek because sometimes what the biblical authors will do is they might not use the exact same phrase, but they might use the exact same grammatical formulation.

[SPEAKER_02]: So for instance, you know, in a Greek text, you might have [SPEAKER_02]: the very same order of parts of speech, like article noun, you know, linking verb, chi, and then another noun or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then the close of the inclusio might be a different noun, different, you know, last two nouns, but it's the same order, article noun, chi noun, or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So looking at it and, you know, in English, the translators may or may not represent [SPEAKER_02]: the phrasing in terms of the parts of speech with parallel formulations.

[SPEAKER_02]: So being able to look at it in Greek and Hebrew, [SPEAKER_02]: increases your confidence and helps you see things that don't necessarily come across in translation.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And do you think you see these kinds of structures?

[SPEAKER_00]: I guess what I'm trying to ask, do you see I'm pretty kind of like evenly distributed across scripture or do you have you found like in your study that in certain parts of scripture?

[SPEAKER_00]: You find these kind of structures more common than in other places or is it kind of varied?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think they're very common and you know there's a lady named Mary Douglas who is an anthropologist not for not exactly a biblical scholar.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what her personal religious beliefs were.

[SPEAKER_02]: She was an anthropologist who studied ancient rituals and that took her into the books of Leviticus and numbers.

[SPEAKER_02]: and she found chastic structures all over the place.

[SPEAKER_02]: She commented on how modern scholars will often refer to these ancient texts as being disordered inexplicable in their organization, having these befuddling repetitions and strange quotations of [SPEAKER_02]: earlier material later in the text and what she posited was that when you read a modern scholar talking about an ancient text that is disordered like this, you should probably think to yourself, I bet there's a characteristic structure there.

[SPEAKER_02]: She referred to it as a ring structure or ring writing, but she's talking about the same things.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this is true for biblical studies.

[SPEAKER_02]: So particularly like in Romans five, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, people will often suggest or they'll they'll assert that in Romans five, twelve through twenty one, it's like Paul starts into a sentence and then they'll talk about how he kind of chases a rabbit and he kind of gets lost in his thoughts and then he resumes the earlier sentence.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually what Paul is done is he's created a chastic structure that is very carefully organized, very [SPEAKER_02]: discernible if you know what you're looking for and what he's done is framed these comparisons between Jesus and Adam in the center and then he set it up at the beginning and then he's returned to the setup at the end.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not that he got lost in his thoughts and it's not that he got lost, you know, he chased a rabbit and made this digression and then was like, oh, I got to get back to what I was saying or something like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he's very organized.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so all that to say, I think you can find this in apocalyptic literature.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's in epistolary literature.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's in the gospels.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's in Psalms.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's in Old Testament narrative and other.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think it's almost pervasive in the [SPEAKER_00]: What more follow-up question to this, is this something that you think is unique to biblical writings during this time?

[SPEAKER_00]: Or is this more of a, or are other kind of extra biblical texts, authors of extra biblical texts during this period?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it's a, it's a vast period of time, Bob, written over.

[SPEAKER_00]: But is this something you see kind of in text outside of scripture as well?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so Mary Douglas says, and she wrote this book called Thinking and Circles.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, she's talking about ring riding.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she says that you can find these structures in ancient Iranian poetry in ancient Chinese Confucian literature.

[SPEAKER_02]: And and and and in Homer's Ili at an Odyssey.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she she eventually says, you know, so many cultures across such vast [SPEAKER_02]: geographic spaces, there's no way that they all influenced one another.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so she posits that this is just something that's inherent in the human way of thinking.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's built into us to start in a certain way, have rising action to a climax, and then descending action to a conclusion that sounds a lot like the starting point.

[SPEAKER_02]: And really, you know, that's Aristotle's plot line, but that also can be thought of in kinastic terms.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in addition to all the ancient texts that Mary Douglas has found this in, [SPEAKER_02]: I have argued in an article in the Journal of the Evangelical Teological Society that the Athenation Creed is kinestically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the guy that Edmund P.

Hill, who translated and wrote the notes for the new city version of the customs on the Trinity, he argues that a customs on the Trinity is kinestically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: Just last week, I came across or someone sent to me this journal article.

[SPEAKER_02]: arguing that that bail wolf is caustically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, you know, it's referred to as something like a ring structure in bail wolf or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we could go on and on like this.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think every one of the individual Harry Potter novels is caustically structured and that the seven novels as a set are caustically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: The novel [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the title of it is leaving me.

[SPEAKER_02]: F Scott Fitzgerald, what's he famous for?

[SPEAKER_02]: The car crash in the center, Gatsby, the great Gatsby.

[SPEAKER_02]: That novel is caustically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: I've seen arguments online that the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are and that the and that Starwater wars are caustically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I think this stuff is is really pervasive and the great storytellers use it all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the question is, when are you going to reach out to the JK Rowling and ask her if she did this consciously or subconsciously with Harry Potter?

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there's a guy named John Granger who he writes at HogwartsProfessor.com and he has all but done that and Jake and and he's got a much bigger platform than I have and Jake E.

Rolling is ignoring him.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, but I think it's demonstrable.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's there for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I mean, the point being where, you know, we're not pulling ideas out of thin air here.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're dealing with [SPEAKER_00]: a type of writing that, you know, you work you as pervasive, not even just in scripture, but far beyond biblical writings as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's very helpful.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's dig now into the book of John a little bit, gospel of John, and kind of the specific arguments you're making with regard to this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: So just kind of broadly speaking, [SPEAKER_00]: What are some of the ways that you think a proper understanding of the literary structure of John shapes are reading and understanding of the gospel and kind of how we interpret it?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's fun to think about, you know, people often ask the question, what is the purpose of John's gospel?

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, he says at the end of chapter twenty, these things are written that you might believe.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, when we once we lock into the literary structure of the gospel, I think we see that right after the opening five verses in the beginning was the word and so forth, when he gets to chapter one verse six, he starts relating this this information about John the Baptist, there came a man sent from God.

[SPEAKER_02]: His name was John, but he came as a witness to bear witness concerning the light that all men might believe through him.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got John the Baptist, testifying or bearing witness that all might believe in one six through eight.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you've got John the evangelist saying that he composed the gospel in order to persuade people to believe in in chapter twenty.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's like verses thirty and thirty one.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got the whole gospel framed by these statements that John wants people to believe.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the opening unit of the gospel, chapter one versus one through eighteen, is itself caistically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: So you know, it starts talking about Jesus in one, one to five.

[SPEAKER_02]: It ends talking about Jesus in one, sixteen through eighteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: In second position, you have this testimony of John the Baptist in second to last position.

[SPEAKER_02]: In chapter one, verse fifteen, he comes back to John the Baptist.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is one of the things that kind of structures help us to understand.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's an instance where if you're just reading through John I and you read this stuff about the Baptist and then he goes on to talk about Jesus some more, then he comes back to the Baptist and you're like, why is he doing that?

[SPEAKER_02]: Why didn't he just say this about the Baptist up in one six through eight?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, the reason is because he's creating this literary architecture.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then in the center of this, one nine is about how Jesus came as the light, one fourteen is about how we saw His glory.

[SPEAKER_02]: Then in the middle, one ten through twelve, he came to his own and his own did not receive him.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's one ten ten and eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then one twelve, but to all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God.

[SPEAKER_02]: So there's this rejection and reception thing that's happening there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So belief, I would say, and in a way what John is saying is, are you going to reject Jesus or are you going to receive him?

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the question that he's pressing on his audience.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then as you work your way through the gospel, there's also a whole lot about how Jesus has come as the fulfillment of the temple.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, one, fourteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: The word became flesh and tabernacleed among us, or made his dwelling among us.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's clearly presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of the tabernacle.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then in chapter two, Jesus says, destroy this temple and John explains.

[SPEAKER_02]: He was talking about the temple of his body.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then as you continue through the gospel, these themes of either rejecting or receiving Jesus and receiving Him as believing in Him and experiencing the fulfillment of the temple, which has to do with enjoying the presence of God, you might even say, abiding in Christ, [SPEAKER_02]: as though Christ is the temple and you're dwelling in the house of God, you know, better as a day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere and blesser to those who are ever in your courts.

[SPEAKER_02]: They are always singing your praise.

[SPEAKER_02]: This kind of thing from the Psalms.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think this is what John is suggesting when he presents Jesus as the fulfillment of the temple and then he's talking about people being in him, abiding in Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's all this glorious [SPEAKER_02]: truth about how people need to believe in Jesus and they need to abide in Him and thereby they will experience the fulfillment of God's promises from the Old Testament.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that the literary structure of the gospel helps us to see how this is these are the notes that John is sounding at beginning and end and all throughout understanding the literary structure helps us to order our interpretation of what we find in the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's very helpful and just kind of as a follow up question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think and a related question?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think a proper understanding of the literary structure of John?

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it helps to highlight any areas of the book that maybe has been neglected and previous biblical scholarship?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think that it helps us to see how the whole gospel is organized.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it helps us to appreciate why John has put things where he's put them.

[SPEAKER_02]: So let me just say a word about chapters five through eleven and how they stand across from chapters twelve through seventeen.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in five through eleven, [SPEAKER_02]: I think the Inclusio around that material is Jesus saying in five, twenty five, a time is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then that's basically what happens when he raises Lazarus from the dead at the end of chapter eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that Inclusio of the dead hearing the voice of the Son of God and living, five, twenty five to the raising of Lazarus in eleven, forty four, [SPEAKER_02]: That inclusion is bracketing all this material in chapters five through eleven, all of which takes place in public at a series of feasts.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's at a feast in John five.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's at a feast in John six, a Passover.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's at Tabernacles, and I think seven through nine, and then he's at Hanukkah or dedication in ten, and then he's back at another Passover in eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's all in public, it's at a series of feasts, and at the feasts are all of these crowds.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so that's five through eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: In chapter twelve, what you get is around twelve, twenty, the Greeks come to see Jesus.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when Philip and Nathaniel bring these Gentiles to Jesus, he says, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

[SPEAKER_02]: and then in chapter seventeen when he lifts up his eyes to the father and praise he says father the hour has come glorify your son that the son may glorify you so this this idea of the hour having come for the son of man to be glorified that really is the inclusion around chapter twelve through seventeen and then you look at that material and it all happens [SPEAKER_02]: pretty much in private, not among the crowds.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's set the last feast, the one at which he's going to be crucified, the Passover, as opposed to a series of feasts.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Jesus is not among the crowds.

[SPEAKER_02]: He's with only his disciples.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think you can you can see how it's almost like John is presenting what Jesus is ministry is like in public at the feasts among the crowds and inviting you to compare and contrast that with his ministry in private with only the disciples at the last feast.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that kind of observation I think is not [SPEAKER_02]: It's not terribly common.

[SPEAKER_02]: People will often say, John one through eleven is a book of signs.

[SPEAKER_02]: John twelve through twenty one is a book of glory.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's the standard kind of breakdown.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that the literary evidence for the inclusion around chapter five through eleven, the inclusion around twelve twenty through seventeen, I think that helps us to sharpen our focus and really be able to see what's there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So in a way, you know, discerning the contours of the literary structure is kind of like being able to describe the difference between the carefully cultivated grass and the mulch bed and then the vegetable garden.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, once you have, if you don't have terms for these things, and if you don't know what you're looking for for the boundaries between them, you think, oh, look at all the growth out there on the lawn or in the pasture or in the yard, and it all just kind of runs together.

[SPEAKER_02]: But once someone points out to you, well, actually, do you see that fence there and that the gardener put up?

[SPEAKER_02]: And do you see that boundary marker between, and do you see how on the surface, it's not grass that's being watered and nourished, it's actually mulched and [SPEAKER_02]: You know, when people point out these differences, you're like, oh, it's like I never saw this before.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's the kind of thing that the literary structure puts us in position to appreciate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that's a really helpful emphasis on just like having the terminology to to be able to describe what we're looking at.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think, you know, if I just think about like, you know, the average person sitting in a pew on a Sunday, you know, they may have never, you know, they might have been reading the Bible their whole life.

[SPEAKER_00]: But may have never been, you know, tall had a really kind of think about and interpret the Bible much less to, you know, discern literary patterns and scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're kind of going to circle back to that towards the end and kind of talk about some practical ways that people can kind of work on.

[SPEAKER_00]: cultivating that kind of eye for these things, but I do think that's a very helpful point that just having a category for these kind of structures is a really helpful started place.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to play devil's eye advocate a little bit here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you know, I mentioned that I said under your preaching for nearly eight years, benefited from it and why is it, you know, [SPEAKER_00]: can't fully describe here.

[SPEAKER_00]: But anybody who said under preaching knows that you have a particularly keen eye for seeing kind of structures in scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to play devils advocate a little bit, how would you respond to those who say that you're just imposing something on the text?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not really there, but the juicy there, and maybe it's just kind of an artificial imposition upon the text.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my response would be, well, let's look at the evidence together.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you have a better explanation for the order of the material and the form that it takes, persuade me of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I don't think I'm going to find it persuasive, for instance.

[SPEAKER_02]: that John just sort of haphazardly arranged his gospel such that you have this statement at chapter two verse twenty two when therefore he was raised from the dead his disciples remember that he had said this and they believe the scripture in the word that Jesus has spoken and then you have a very similar statement word in almost the same way at a chorus corresponding spot near the end of the gospel at chapter twenty verse nine [SPEAKER_02]: And then you have a very similar statement, worded almost the same way at almost the exact center of the gospel in chapter twelve verse sixteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: So and and those are the only three places in the gospel near the beginning to twenty two near the end chapter twenty verse nine and near the center twelve sixteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's not haphazard.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's not the work of a later editor who smuggled it in there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it needs some kind of explanation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I want a satisfying explanation for why that's there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Also, you know, just a moment ago, I was talking about chapters five through eleven and twelve through seventeen, well, before and after those units in chapters two through four, the first miracle is in Cana and two one through eleven.

[SPEAKER_02]: The last miracle is back in Cana at the end of chapter four.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's like four, forty three through fifty three or something like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: The last unit in chapter four.

[SPEAKER_02]: The narrative goes from Cana to Cana.

[SPEAKER_02]: Similarly, and I don't think this is coincidental, right after the high-free sleep prayer in John seventeen, John eighteen opens with Jesus in the garden, and it closes with in chapter twenty.

[SPEAKER_02]: verses one through eighteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jesus is back in that it's not the same garden, but he's in a garden.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that whole section chapter eighteen verse one through twenty eighteen starts in a garden and ends in a garden and in the same way that that John I think has has sort of [SPEAKER_02]: bracketed chapters two through four with the first sign and the second sign.

[SPEAKER_02]: And in the account of the second sign, he's referring back to the first sign that he had done in Canaan when he changed the water to wine.

[SPEAKER_02]: So he's clearly tying chapters two through four together.

[SPEAKER_02]: Similarly, in the first episode in chapter eighteen, this is where Judas and [SPEAKER_02]: the cohort of Roman soldiers and the officials from the Jews come to arrest Jesus and Jesus comes out to them and he says to them, whom do you seek?

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, that's the first episode.

[SPEAKER_02]: The last episode in twenty, like verses eleven through eighteen, Mary is weeping in the garden and she sees the risen Christ and she thinks he's the gardener and he says to her, whom do you seek?

[SPEAKER_02]: And also he addresses her as woman [SPEAKER_02]: woman whom do you seek and you know back in chapter two at the changing of the water to wine he had addressed his mother as woman.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I don't think this is accidental that John has put this together this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's also the case, remarkably, that the only instances of Mary, Mary, the mother of Jesus, being kind of on the scene in the narrative are at Cana, at the changing of the water to the wine, and then at the crucifixion.

[SPEAKER_02]: And again, this is in two through four and eighteen through twenty, these corresponding parts of John's gospel.

[SPEAKER_02]: The second narrative, after he's arrested in the garden, Peter and John followed Jesus to the house of the high priest.

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter can't go in.

[SPEAKER_02]: John's able to go in because he's known to the high priest and he comes out and gets Peter and Peter goes in.

[SPEAKER_02]: The second to last unit, take it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember it's Mary or some other woman comes and tells the disciples that the tomb is empty.

[SPEAKER_02]: And what happens?

[SPEAKER_02]: Peter and John go running to the tomb.

[SPEAKER_02]: And John gets their first and he doesn't go in and then Peter shows up and he goes in.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is not accidental for these units of material to correspond to one another in this way.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think they're crying out for an explanation.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're crying out for someone to give a rationale for why John has arranged the material in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: A question that kind of is popped in my mind that maybe more related to the previous question we asked, but I'll just ask it now.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you see the same kind of [SPEAKER_00]: patterns and themes show up and some other other writings of John and scripture such as book of Revelation.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know you've preached the Revelation at least once and even like the epistles do you see some of these similar themes come up in his other writings?

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that the book of Revelation is chastically structured.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know all the things that Jesus promises to the seven churches in Revelation two and three all those things are realized in chapters twenty through twenty two and then you know [SPEAKER_02]: at the very center of the book, eleven fifteen through nineteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: The seventh trumpet is blown, which is like the you know the seventh trumpet blasts it's like the great Jubilee trumpet you would think that's going to be at the end of the book, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Why is it in the dead center?

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think it's in the dead center for a literary reason.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when that seventh trumpet is blown, [SPEAKER_02]: The angel cries out, the kingdom of our Lord, or the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

[SPEAKER_02]: And he shall reign forever and ever.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the heavens open and the temple is seen and so forth.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's the kind of thing that to our Western kind of unbiblical, unbiased way of thinking, we would think that would be the last thing in the narrative.

[SPEAKER_02]: And instead, it's dead center.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, and then there are corresponding things on either side, you know, the beast rising up and making war on the servants in chapter eleven, the two witnesses, and then the the beast receiving power for forty two months and making war on the servants and killing them in thirteen.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's eleven eight and thirteen eight, where it's almost a quotation.

[SPEAKER_02]: The same words stated on either side of that central piece of material.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think Revelation is definitely a kind of stict structure.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when it comes to the epistles, first I get into John, I don't have the structure worked out, but I really like Robert Yarbrough and I think he's a great scholar.

[SPEAKER_02]: But in his commentary on the epistles of John, he says, I have no way of discerning the structure of first John.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just gonna follow the paragraphs in the Nestle Alon's Greek New Testament.

[SPEAKER_02]: And, and, you know, I think probably there's a kiosk structure at work in first shot.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have it worked out, but I suspect it's there.

[SPEAKER_02]: So to answer your question, I think the gospel of John is a kiosk.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think revelation is a kiosk.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I've got, you know, the receipts on those, I haven't yet worked through the epistles, like I would like to, but I suspect that first second their genre also caistically structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, just kind of a side and a shameless plug here, speaking of the book of Revelation to our listeners, if you haven't.

[SPEAKER_00]: watch the most recent evening of eschatology that Kenwood Institute put on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would highly recommend that someone describe it to me this way and I thought it was good.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it may not have been as entertaining as the original one that Desiring God put on, but it was more edifying.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's my plug for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got a few minutes left here in this last kind of few minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of want to bring this home and kind of see if we can give some practical advice to our listeners.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I've kind of got two different groups in mind here.

[SPEAKER_00]: First group of people that I kind of want to address here is just those that are [SPEAKER_00]: You know, not necessarily preaching and teaching on a weekly basis, but just wanting to read the Bible, wanting to learn to read the Bible better, what practical advice, what you have for them, kind of training themselves to discern these kind of literary structures and scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: I know we've talked about that a little bit, maybe if you could kind of just summarize it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what are some ways that readers can go awry as they are seeking to do this as well?

[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe some some encouragement, some conscience in this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, great question.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for that.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the best thing we can do is repeatedly read the text of Scripture itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And preferably, if you've had Greek and Hebrew, I think you should try to read passages repeatedly in Greek and Hebrew.

[SPEAKER_02]: And you don't have to [SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to do this all at once.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can work through, let's say a Hebrew text or a text in Greek, carefully looking up all the words, figuring out the grammatical constructions, and then just keep reading that passage and just read it over and over and over again until [SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to think about what that word was that you had to look up the first time you looked at it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think what you'll find is that as you get these words and phrases embedded in your mind, you'll notice when they recur.

[SPEAKER_02]: As you keep reading through, let's say you're working through John chapter one.

[SPEAKER_02]: or, you know, John two, this is what happened to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was just reading straight through John's gospel and I got to the end of John four and I thought to myself, man, that account of the healing of the official son is so similar in like the order of events to the changing of the water to wine and then I just started looking at it and thinking about those two passages and all the similarities just jumped off the page at me.

[SPEAKER_02]: Important, whether in [SPEAKER_02]: the original Greek or Hebrew or in English to repeatedly read the same passages over and over.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think you'll be surprised that all of the things the Lord brings to mind, the connections with other scripture, the connections within this particular passage, the Bible is so profoundly interconnected with itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're always just skimming over the surface and moving on to the next passage, you don't [SPEAKER_02]: You don't always pick up on everything that there is to see in terms of the interconnectedness.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so that would be my encouragement to read and reread passages over and over again, day after day, week after week and just really soak yourself in the scriptures, cautions.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is so easy for us to do the kind of reader response thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: What does this mean to me?

[SPEAKER_02]: And then we don't ever ask ourselves ourselves, is that actually what the biblical author intended to communicate?

[SPEAKER_02]: So it's almost like we get a nugget.

[SPEAKER_02]: The Lord spoke this to me.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then that's what the passage means even if that's not exactly what the passage is saying and it's easy for us to just sort of associate in our minds this emotional experience that we had with this passage of scripture and not come back to it with fresh eyes.

[SPEAKER_02]: That would be my caution would be don't let familiarity dull you to the freshness, the profundity, the depths that are there.

[SPEAKER_02]: Keep your eyes open and keep your brain turned on and keep asking yourself, what did the biblical author mean to say?

[SPEAKER_02]: And how is this passage interconnected with itself and with other passages of scripture?

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think as we, as we can try to read the Bible in a fresh way, encounter it a new, [SPEAKER_02]: will go ever deeper into it.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's true meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's very good.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so now the kind of the second group that I want to address is those who are preaching and teaching on a regular basis, you know, whether it be pastors, Sunday school teachers, whatever it might be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm framing this question the way that I am because I think you do this really well.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think you're a good person to address this question.

[SPEAKER_00]: How do you incorporate these kinds of ideas, discussions about literary structure into your preaching and teaching?

[SPEAKER_00]: without getting too deep into the weeds and it becoming more an academic lecture than a sermon.

[SPEAKER_00]: What are some tips you have advised for those who want to maintain, giving, do attention to these things, but also speaking, you know, truths and optical things into the life of their years?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, that's a challenge.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I think what I would say is the more we have for ourselves memorized and meditated upon the text, the easier what you're describing will be.

[SPEAKER_02]: Because if I've memorized and meditated upon the text, and really, that's just a matter of, you know, what am I gonna give my mind to?

[SPEAKER_02]: What am I gonna give my time to?

[SPEAKER_02]: I think far too many biblical scholars spend more time reading commentaries than they spend meditating on the primary source text, the Bible itself.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I suspect that far too many preachers spend a lot more time reading stuff about the Bible than they spend prayerfully memorizing and meditating on the Bible.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think that if we've done that, if we've internalized the passage, if it's written on our hearts, and if we're able to smoothly, fluently think our way through the passage, things are going to jump out at us.

[SPEAKER_02]: We're going to see the structure, and it's going to be natural to us to point out features of the structure, because we know the text so well.

[SPEAKER_02]: Also, that process of, you know, as your, I think [SPEAKER_02]: I think there's no better way to try to meditate on a passage than to try to recite it because as you are trying to quote a verse and then quote the next verse and then quote the next verse as you're doing this it forces you to get [SPEAKER_02]: kind of behind the eyeballs of the biblical author and try to get into his way of thinking and think to yourself how did he organize his thoughts and what comes next as you're trying to dredge up from the depths of your memory the next phrase you're asking yourself what's the logic at work [SPEAKER_02]: on which this biblical author is operating.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is forcing you into the deep meaning of the text.

[SPEAKER_02]: And hopefully it's also bringing about transformation in your own soul.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then I think that's going to be what best puts you in position to expose the text to others.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of it made me think of, I've read.

[SPEAKER_00]: multiple historical authors and I think of some unlike Andrew Fuller, you know, a teen century Baptist and some of his ordination sermons and one of the things that he says multiple times to young pastors and preachers is [SPEAKER_00]: read the Bible, you know, not just as a preacher looking for something to say to your people, read the Bible as a Christian and seek to absorb it and fork to benefit your own soul.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then you will be better positioned to deliver God's word to God's people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you've hit on a similar theme here and a really good theme.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I thank you for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're getting short on time here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe just a spitball question real quick in one minute, one minute here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the entire Bible structured as a chaiism.

[SPEAKER_02]: It might be, you know, for that to work, I think the final, well, I don't know who put the books in their canonical order.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not prepared to say that the ordering of the books is as part of the Holy Spirit and intended by one mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not prepared to make that claim for the collection of the sixty-six books.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think we have to be dealing with the mind of an individual author when we're looking for literary structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: wise counsel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Jim, this has been such a pleasure and a privilege.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thank you so much for being with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's been such a joy to have you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate you and your faithfulness and praying for continued blessings upon you there at Southern Seminary and Kenwood Baptist Church.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, then know the Lord's going to continue to use you to do great things there.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks, Zach.

[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate you and I appreciate the ministry of the lemon last meal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: And to our listeners, we're thankful for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for listening to the only analytic Baptist and confessional podcast on the planet.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we hope we'll tune in again, and we'll see you soon.