Overview

This book is a verse interpretation of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John numbers among the most important and influential texts in all of human history. With its emphasis on the word and on symbolic thought, together with the cohesiveness of its structure-its many dialogues and monologues-John lends itself to a presentation in verse, specifically the lyric form that predominates English poetry today. This verse interpretation presents John's Gospel in an aesthetically harmonious lyric form. It is an experiment, not an exercise in scholarship. Perhaps in some defiance to poetic values, these lyrics stand as unadorned as possible, so that each acuminated image and phrase intends, as did the original Greek, to pierce the thin veil between the human and the divine, and to allow the Gospel's symbols and metaphors, so essential to poetic discourse, to stand before us transparent as glass. Arguably, it is the Gospel most foundational to Christian theology. The secondary literature that surrounds it is immense, its every word examined in exacting detail, from many angles and within many different contexts. The words of John are keys meant to be played by the soul. They are essential ingredients for the development and refinement of the Everlasting Spirit. Though an overall consensus has been reached with regards to both the structure and message of John's Gospel, several controversies remain, mainly with regards to its authorship. For most of its history, these concerns were of considerably less importance to John's audience, which was comprised primarily of the clergy and the lay community. Since at least the third century CE, the author of the Gospel was believed to be John the Apostle, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus, the son of Zebedee and brother of James the Apostle, identified within the text-though unnamed-as ""the Beloved Disciple."" The Gospel was thought to have been composed in the final decades of the first century after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE, after which John, in his old age, lived in exile among a community of followers somewhere in Greece; like all the books of the New Testament, John was written in Greek and, furthermore, its content seems intended for a Greek audience. The Gospel of John, the three epistles attributed to John, and the Book of Revelation make up the entirety of what has come to be known as Johannine literature.

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9781962847100

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The Gospel of John is one of the most troubling books in the Christian canon. Its severe depiction of Jesus is unlike that of the other Gospels; it presents a supremely confident and almost uncanny figure in confrontation with the religious establishment of his day. It is a work of penetrating clarity, a poetic vision which has seized the imaginations of great artists and thinkers since it first was written. Eric Hoffman's Come and See is a testament to the Gospel of John's inspirational force. It is a book of signs: all that we see signifies. What if Charles Reznikoff had translated John? This, I know, is a strange question, but Hoffman's book gives us the answer. Hoffman makes it new. Come and see. -Norman Finkelstein

Author Information

Eric Hoffman is the author of several books of poetry, including, most recently, Inscribed Red: Haiku Versions After Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (Spuyten Duyvil, 2024), a translation of Sumitaku Kenshin's Unfinished (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023), and Circumference of the Sun (Dos Madres Press, 2021). He edited a new edition of Philip Pain's Daily Meditations (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021) and is the author of Oppen: A Narrative (Shearsman, 2011, rev. ed. Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), a biography of poet George Oppen, among numerous other works. He lives in Connecticut.

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