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Contemporary Johannine scholarship displays remarkable methodological diversity. There remain historical critics, interested in the ways in which texts such as John are embedded within, reflect the values of, and interact with the context of the ancient world. Some attend to the structural features of ancient society that provide the framework within which the Gospel might have meaning.1 Others wrestle with the text's diachronic development.2 Some scholars, such as our colleagues who are inaugurating a consultation on "Jesus, John, and History," pursue the historical-critical quest to what other colleagues would judge to be a Quixotic end. Still others worry not so much about the historical Jesus lying behind the text as about a sectarian community, defining itself through the text, against a dominant group.3 Presidential Address delivered at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Denver, Colorado. 1 For a comprehensive application of social sciences models to the Gospel, see Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John (Minneapolis: Augsburg-Fortress, 1998).

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