In order to read the Gospel of St. John with some intelligence, it is necessary to understand its purpose and its plan. For in the whole range of literature there is no composition which is a more perfect work of art, or which more rigidly excludes whatever does not subserve its main end. From the first word to the last there is no paragraph, sentence, or expression which is out of its place, or with which we could dispense. Part hangs together with part in perfect balance. The sequence may at times be obscure, but sequence there always is. The relevancy of this or that remark may not at first sight be apparent, but irrelevancy is impossible to this writer.
The object which the Evangelist had in view in writing this Gospel we are not left to find out for ourselves. He explicitly says that his purpose in writing was to promote the belief that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John 20:31).
The object of the Gospel being kept in view, the plan is at once perceived. Apart from the Prologue (John 1:1-18) and the Appendix (John 21.), the body of the work falls into two nearly equal parts, John 1:19-John 12., and John 13.-John 20.
Marcus Dods was a Scottish divine and biblical scholar. He was born at Belford, Northumberland, the youngest son of Rev. Marcus Dods, minister of the Scottish church of that town.
He studied at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, graduating in 1854. Having studied theology for five years he was licensed in 1858, and in 1864 became minister of Renfield Free Church, Glasgow, where he worked for twenty-five years. In 1889 he was appointed professor of New Testament Exegesis in the New College, Edinburgh, of which he became principal on the death of Robert Rainy in 1907.
Throughout his life, both ministerial and professorial, he devoted much time to the publication of theological books. Several of his writings, especially a sermon on Inspiration delivered in 1878, incurred the charge of unorthodoxy, and shortly before his election to the Edinburgh professorship he was summoned before the General Assembly, but the charge was dropped by a large majority, and in 1891 he received the honorary degree of DD from Edinburgh University.
He edited Lange's Life of Christ in English (Edinburgh, 1864, 6 vols.), Augustine's works (1872-1876), and, with Alexander Whyte, Clark's Handbooks for Bible Classes series. In the Expositors Bible series he edited Genesis and 1 Corinthians, and he was also a contributor to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and James Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible.
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