71 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN The selection of Deuteronomy and John for this study is by no means arbitrary, given the surface parallel noted at the outset, but the presence of additional similarities in canonical function is by no means self-evident, either. For one thing, their relationship to the preceding books appears to be radically different. Deuteronomy is temporally sequential to Genesis-Numbers and presents itself all-but-explicitly as a hermeneutical key to them: Moses relates the essentials of prior history and law to the generation that has come of age in the wilderness, who knew not the deliverance at the Sea, nor the making of the covenant at Sinai 8. John, by contrast, is temporally parallel to the Synoptic Gospels, with no overt commentary on them whatsoever 9. Indeed, if any Gospel makes explicit, internal claim to hermeneutical priority (despite Sheppard’s aforementioned qualms about the book’s original genre), it is surely Luke: Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1,1-4 NRSV — here and throughout, except as noted) However, any claim to preeminence within the NT canon is thoroughly undercut by Luke’s placement in the midst of the others, as but one-quarter of the “fourfold gospel”. So what is the relationship of John to the other three gospels? In general, commentators have held that the canon has established parity among all four: each is not the gospel “of” someone, but the gospel “according to” (κατά) someone (to cite the second-century superscriptions). The statement of Irenaeus of Lyons (ca. A.D. 180) 8 The point is made and developed by B.S. CHILDS in his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia, PA 1979) 224. 9 Indeed, there is a debate within NT scholarship over what acquaintance, if any, the author of the Fourth Gospel had with any of the other three. See D.M. SMITH, John among the Gospels. The Relationship in Twentieth-Cen- tury Research (Minneapolis, MN 1992). G. THEISSEN, Fortress Introduction to the New Testament (Minneapolis, MN 2003) 172, holds that “Gospels are presupposed in the Gospel of John, without being taken over as sources”.