Brooke Foss Westcott’s Commentary on the Epistles of John

This is the fourth of Bishop Westcott’s commentaries that I have been able to digitise. You can find the full list here. My thanks to Book Aid for making this public domain title for digitisation.

Brooke Foss Westcott [1825-1901], The Epistles of John. The Greek Text with Notes and Essays, 2nd edn. Cambridge & London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1886. Hbk. pp.378. [Click to visit the download page for this title]

Table of Contents

• Introduction to the First Epistle
• Introduction to the Second and Third Epistles
• First Epistle: Text and Notes
• Second Epistle: Text and Notes
• Third Epistle: Text and Notes

1. The Two Empires: The Church and the World
2. The Gospel of Creation
3. The Relation of Christianity to Art

Preface

In the present Commentary I have endeavoured to follow the plan which I sketched in the notes on the Gospel of St John in The Speaker’s Commentary. It formed no part of my design to collect and discuss the conflicting opinions which have been held on the structure of the writings or on the interpretation of separate passages. Such a labour is indeed of the deepest interest and utility; but it appeared to me that I might help the student more by giving the results at which I have arrived, and by indicating the lines of inquiry by which they have been reached. In pursuing this end it has been my main desire to call attention to the minutest points of language, construction, order, as serving to illustrate the meaning of St John. I do not venture to pronounce that any variation is trivial or unimportant. The exact words are for us the decisive expression of the Apostle’s thought….

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