Murray Harris's John 3:16

Murray J. Harris

Murray J. Harris, professor emeritus of New Testament Exegesis and Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has written a nice little book on probably the most famous of all Biblical passages: John 3:16.  John 3:16: What's it All About?(Cascade; 2015). To call this a book is a bit of a stretch as it is probably closer to the size of an essay. Weighing in at twenty-nine pages of text (forty-two when endnotes are included), Harris provides a straightfforward exegesis, first, by providing a brief overview of authorship (Harris opines for the traditional understanding of John, one of the twelve being the author), and then by discussing the context of the famous passage, by examining Jesus' discussion with Nicodemus. On this score, Harris does seem to ignore the narrative function of the time of Jesus' and Nicodemus' discussion,(i.e. 'at night') preferring to elucidate the timing of the meaning by purely historical reasons, (e.g. "Jewish rabbis taught that the ideal time to study the law was at night..." ; 3-4).

After this, Harris goes through each phrase contained in the passage (e.g. "For God" [8-9]; "so loved" [10-11]; "the world" [12,13], etc.) Finally, the book ends with a section called "Final Comments" (27-29), where Harris lists six adjectives that describes what "eternal life" looks like (e.g. "Embodied," "Localized," "Personal," "Active," "Corporate," "Permanent").

All in all, this is a good little book for those who want to discover as the subtitle asks "What's it All About?"