Over the past two decades, Ruben Zimmermann has sought to advance Johannine scholarship in several respects and to challenge the scholarly consensus at various points. Many of his studies explicitly embrace an interdisciplinary methodology and apply, in particular, insights gained from contemporary work on images and metaphor, narratology, and ethical theory. This volume, edited by Dieter T. Roth, presents twenty-five essays - several of which appear here in print or in English for the first time - under five headings: Imagery, Parables, Characters, Christology, and Ethics. These essays address a broad spectrum of questions and issues in the Fourth Gospel, and they are brought together in the present format in the hopes of contributing to and further stimulating truly groundbreaking work in the treasured, ancient text of the Gospel of John.

Born 1968; 1999 Dr. theol. from the University of Heidelberg; 2003 Habilitation from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University München; currently Professor of New Testament and Ethics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz, Germany and research associate at the Department of Old and New Testament Studies of the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa.