73 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN Here Childs makes our point malgré lui: no “overarching framework” corresponding to the “P” source is a prerequisite for John to serve a distinctive hermeneutical function among the Gospels; the model is already there in “D” 15. Indeed, we may observe an historical development that is, to be sure, most likely coincidental, but that reinforces our point. The church’s early rejection of the alternative of a single, edited Gospel in Tatian’s Diatessaron bears intriguing resemblance to the refusal of the mysterious, likely exilic (or even post-exilic) final redactors of the Pentateuch to work the content of Deuteronomy into the Tetrateuch 16. Secondly, there is a fascinating parallel in the larger structure of the two testamental canons, as recognized by Sheppard: Moreover, the potential of letting the theological views of a later period help define the meaning of earlier traditions is built similarly into the shape of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In the former, the prophets whose books often predate the present Torah are, nonetheless, put after the Torah as though they are commentary on it. So, in the New Testament, the letters of Paul which were written before are placed after the Gospels as theological commentary on the same subject. If the Prophets are for Judaism in the shadow of the Torah, so Paul’s letters are placed in subordination to the rendering of the gospel through the narratives about Jesus 17. 15 Whether or not John does indeed serve such a distinctive hermeneuti- cal function, of course, remains to be determined. 16 The literature on the final formation of the Pentateuch is as vast as it is often speculative. A recent proposal that independently notes several of the same points of similarity with the Fourth Gospel that are brought out in this essay is by R. HESKETT, “Deuteronomy 29-34 and the Formation of the Torah”, The Bible as a Human Witness to Divine Revelation. Hearing the Word of God through Historically Dissimilar Traditions (eds. R. HESKETT ‒ B. IRWIN) (London 2010) 32-50. 17 SHEPPARD, “Canonization”, 30. Indeed, one is tempted to press the struc- tural parallel further still, to include the Former Prophets (or Historical Books) vis-à-vis Acts as (among other things) explicating how the Torah/Gospel played out in the early history of the community, the Latter Prophets vis-à-vis the Epis- tles (Paul et alii) as challenge and commentary on the Torah/Gospels in the com- munity, and the Writings (especially Daniel) vis-à-vis Revelation as bringing an apocalyptic vision of the future to the Torah/Gospel in a community in extremis, under persecution. Still, however fascinating the resemblance in result may be, intentional imitation of the TaNaK structure on the part of the NT is, of course, a matter of pure speculation and, in any event, takes us beyond our present focus.