Reverend Dr Peter Phillips is New Testament Lecturer at Cliff College, Derbyshire and Honorary Research Fellow at Manchester University.

• Chapter One: Introduction; 1.1 Introductory Comments; 1.2 Thresholds, Temples and Pompeii; 1.3 The Beginning as Threshold; 1.4 The Reader at the Threshold. 1.5 The Author at the Threshold; 1.6 Genette, Paratextuality and the Prologue; 1.7 Malbon's Three Functions of Gospel Beginnings; 1.7.1 The Interactional Function; 1.7.2 The Intertextual Function; 1.7.3 The Intratextual Function; 1.8 Thresholds and Welcome; Chapter Two: John's Prologue and Literary Theory; 2.1 Introductory Comments; 2.1.1 John's Prologue and Literary Theory; 2.1.2 John's Prologue and 'Rhetoric'; 2.1.3 John's Prologue and Sociolinguistics; 2.1.4 One Methodology: Three Languages - Sequential Disclosure; 2.2 John's Prologue and Literary Theory; 2.2.1 Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel; 2.2.2 The Print's First Kiss; 2.2.3 Excursus on Paragrammatic Reading; 2.2.4 Back to The Print's First Kiss; 2.3 The Role of the Reader and the Act of Reading; 2.3.1 Wolfgang Iser's Phenomenological Approach to Reading; 2.3.2 Sequential Disclosure and Sequential Reading; 2.3.3 Sequential Disclosure in Catherine Emmott's Narrative Comprehension; 2.3.4 Sequential Disclosure in Eco's Theory of 'Interpretative Cooperation; 2.3.5 From Theory to Practice?; 2.4.1 Stephen Moore on Sustained Interpretations; 2.4.2 Sternberg on David and Bathsheba; 2.5 The Role of Ambiguity in Sequential Disclosure; 2.6 Who, then, is the Reader?; 2.7 Sequential Reading and Educating Readers; 2.8 Conclusion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Appendix A: Logos: Some Quotations from Classical Texts.

"This demanding study is persuasive. Phillips's sophisticated analysis demonstrates that this Gospel has an evangelistic agenda."   Kent Brower JSNTS Booklist, 2007