On “Reading John in Ephesus” by Sjef Van Tilborg***

The concept of this book is an intriguing one. Given that most scholars tend to believe that John's Gospel and letters were written in the city of Ephesus, Van Tilborg sets out to explore what readers in Ephesus would have thought of the works. In that effort, he looks at concepts like kings, gods, temple, and teachers and students, comparing the Christian and Jewish concepts with those that would have been common among residents in Ephesus. To make such comparison, Van Tilborg examines more than anything else the epigraphs that reside among the city's surviving architecture.

The results, however, I found somewhat underwhelming. One thing is that Van Tilborg writes very much for the scholarly audience. Many quotes from epigraphy are left in Greek, leaving one without a strong understanding of Greek with a lot to wonder what's being said. The cases where parallels are drawn prove generally not to be as paradigm shifting as one might wish. Ephesians respected the gods; Christians respected Jesus. Emperors were thought of like gods; Jesus was thought of like a god. And so on.

Of course, as with most books, there were occasional gems of interest, like the large number of epigraphs with John's name featured versus the much smaller number with Paul's name, suggesting that indeed John had a larger role in the city. It's these sort of things that made the book worth the effort.