The Questions of Jesus in John—Logic, Rhetoric and Persuasive Discourse

Estes, a postdoctoral research fellow at Dominican Biblical Institute, presents a study of the gospel according to John that focuses on Jesus' use of questions. He argues that questions are an important rhetorical device for Jesus' message and that their appearance in John is sorely under-appreciated by a tradition of exegesis that focuses on propositions and statements. This bias against questions, he further argues, goes deeper in Western culture, even though in the ancient context they were a legitimate way of creating a dialogue. To this end, he argues that John's gospel is essentially dialectical and rhetorical. Estes explains why questions are important, how they function in ancient and contemporary contexts, as well as between the Hebraic and Greco-Roman contexts of Jesus and John's time. He presents an analysis of "how questions work," and spends most of the text examining several categories of questions in John. This is a fascinating book that interrogates Jesus' message as it was delivered. Beyond theologians and students of the Bible, it will be of interest to speech-act theorists and psychoanalysts studying speech. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Douglas Estes, Ph.D. (2006) in Theology, University of Nottingham, is currently postdoctoral research fellow at the Dominican Biblical Institute, Limerick, Ireland. He is the author of several books including SimChurch (Zondervan, 2009) and The Temporal Mechanics of the Fourth Gospel (Brill, 2008).