Kostenberger on the Purpose and Occasion of John's Gospel

[[I tried to submit the following at Deinde, but couldn't manage it.]]
Andreas Kostenberger http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/?p=47 posts on the purpose and occasion of John's Gospel.

AK (no word if he wears number 47 during intramural sporting events) posts based largely on a large, recent article of his on the topic, available in PDF online at his website: "The Destruction of the SecondTemple and the Composition of the Fourth Gospel, " TrinJ 26NS (2005): 205-42.

Particularly astute in regards to 'occasion' is this quote from Peter Walker, Jesus and the Holy City (Eerdmans, 1996, p. 197): "As a result, if any of his readers felt bereft of the Temple and of the spiritual focus provided by Jerusalem, John would have encouraged them not to mourn the loss of the city, but rather to see what God had done for them in Jesus. . . . The Evangelist, writing after the Temple's destruction, does not bemoan its loss. . . . The presence of God has not been withdrawn, for Jesus has taken the place of the Temple. Jesus gives more than the Temple had ever given. . . . Jesus stands in the place of everything that Israel has lost."

I like this a lot, although I shouldn't like to drive too much of an analytical wedge between occasion and purpose...