NEW ICC VOL: McHugh on John 1-4

I am slowly making my way through John McHugh’s new John 1-4 (ICC; 2009).  McHugh passed away on 3 Feb., 2006 quite suddenly, having worked through only the first four chapters of Gospel of John for the ICC.  The NEw Testament editor of the ICC, Graham Stanton, took it upon himself to collect McHugh’s notes and compile this commentary.  As a result of this situation, the commentary does not contain front matter (authorship, provenance, setting, etc…).  The commentary begins straightaway.

McHugh taught at Durham University with Charles Cranfield and C.K. Barrett.  He also served as a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

Having worked through some early sections of the commentary, I am quite pleased with McHugh’s work.  He is very attentive to grammatical issues, as to be expected of the ICC.  His discussion of text-critical matters is also impressive.  In terms of the history of interpretation, he surveys broadly on any textual crux, including pre-critical perspectives.  Perhaps most appealing (and surprising), he engages the theology of the text very well.

The commentary contains a number of excurses on historical, textual, literary, geographic, thematic, and theological issues.  The commentary is well over 300 pages and will serve as a handy resource for research on John.