<\/p>
In a 1956 JBL <\/em> article on John\u2019s gospel, one Pierson Parker makes the intriguing statement that 1 John makes almost as much sense read backward as it does read forward. This is evidence that the letter\u2019s contents are \u201cdisconnected\u201d and that the letter reads like \u201can old man\u2019s anxious exhortations to his flock.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s evidence of something else, not an old man\u2019s anxiety, but his cunning, his deliberate construction of a letter that reads forwards, backwards, and from the middle. Certainly, as John Breck has shown, some sentences of 1 John can be read in multiple ways, each coherent, each bringing out some fresh aspect of John\u2019s message. Why not the whole letter? <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a 1956 JBL article on John\u2019s gospel, one Pierson Parker makes the intriguing statement that 1 John makes almost as much sense read backward as it does read forward. This is evidence that the letter\u2019s contents are \u201cdisconnected\u201d and that the letter reads like \u201can old man\u2019s anxious exhortations to his flock.\u201d Perhaps it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-nt-1-john"],"yoast_head":"\n