Greetings!

What follows is a new website, “James Swetnam’s Thoughts on Scripture”. This website is designed to replace my previous website, “James Swetnam’s Close Readings”. This latter website, which I cancelled in 2018, was built around my book Hebrews—An Interpretation. This latter book-size product of my first website (Entries ## 29, 30, and 31) was published in 2016 by GBP (The Gregorian & Biblical Press) in Rome. Hence it is not reproduced here. But other features of “James Swetnam’s Close Readings” are reproduced here: my curriculum vitae, my bibliography, some of my past life in anecdotal form (“Persons from the Past”). The new feature of what follows is a concentration not on the Epistle to the Hebrews (although occasional remarks about it may be called for), but on the Fourth Gospel. As in my presentation of Scripture in the previous website, “proof” of an interpretation is not attempted. Rather, an attempt is made to present an interpretation that is plausible. Further, no attempt is here being made to use my status as an argument for what I present. I am a believing member of the Roman Catholic Church, a member of the Society of Jesus, and a professor emeritus of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. But none of these factors should be adduced to support the opinions being presented here. The opinions speak for themselves or not at all. True, the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church have been used to illumine what I think is objectively in the text under consideration if such there be, but no attempt to use such teaching to read things into the text is being attempted. Illumination from beliefs is legitimate if used for exegesis, but not for eisegesis.