# “What a book” by James Hamilton

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2025/09/13/what-a-book-by-james-hamilton/
- Published: 2025-09-13T09:00:00-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“One day I hope to offer to John my congratulations and appreciation. I fully expect
him to direct all praise to God in Christ through the Spirit, as he should, but 
I hope he also feels encouraged that we appreciated the difficulty of what he undertook,
the profundity with which he accomplished it, and the elegance and beauty that by
God’s grace he gave the world. What a book.

And it goes without saying but must be said: As good as the Gospel of John is, the
master whose story it tells is even better.

John has produced a book that brings together the world-historical import of a Genesis
with the reflective depths of an Ecclesiastes. His is a book that radiates as much
glory as the Psalter even as it scales theological heights with ease comparable 
to Isaiah, with the urgent passion and love of Deuteronomy joined to the symbolic
power of Hosea.

John was a man who meditated on the Scriptures, and in his beautiful book we read
the words of someone shaped by them, a man who knew what it was to be loved by their
fulfillment, a man who followed in the footsteps of his master and made God known
to men.”

–James Hamilton, [_In the Beginning Was the Word: Finding Meaning in the Literary Structure of the Gospel of John_](https://amzn.to/3IaKC32)(
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2025), 13.

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