Rodolfo Estrada

This book provides a Latino reading of John’s prologue with special attention to how the themes of race, kinship, and the empire are woven throughout the gospel. By drawing from the insights of Latino texts and theology, this book reveals how the prologue provides a lens to read the entire gospel with a keen awareness of Jesus’s engagement with people groups―from his own family to the Roman authorities. As I believe, the prologue shapes the reader’s imagination even before a person enters the narrative. By understanding the function of the prologue, we have a better sense on how we are to understand Jesus’s identity.

How do the Greco-Roman views of ethnicity inform our reading of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel? This study not only reviews the role of ethnicity and race in the ancient world; it also proposes a bold new understanding of Johannine pneumatology. From an ethnocritical perspective, this study argues that the Spirit was articulated for an ethnically diverse Johannine community that was dealing with the issues of race relations. The Spirit is the divine breath of God that commissions Jesus for the redemption of all ethnicities. The Spirit is involved in the maternal birth of all ethnic members who are in the family of God. The Spirit draws all people despite their ethnic lineage and heritage. And the Spirit is actively involved as an advocate for the minoritized community undergoing synagogue violence. Will the members of the Johannine community still hold onto ethnic ideologies of dehumanization that were prevalent of their age? Can the Johannine community still have the Spirit and support ideologies of ethnic division and hate? This study seeks to answer these questions.