For more than a century, there has been a clear scholarly consensus that the guiding principles of the earliest known New Testament commentary, Heracleon’s hypomnēmata on the Gospel of John, are a number of "Gnostic" or "Valentinian"  dogmatic points that Heracleon attempts to read into the Fourth Gospel. After Ansgar Wucherpfennig’s well-received argument that Heracleon is one of the first Christians to apply Greco-Roman literary criticism to a biblical writing , and my own successful attempt at distinguishing more trustworthy references, such as verbatim quotations and non-interpretive summaries, from explanatory paraphrases and mere assertions in Origen’s presentation of Heracleon , it is time to make a new overall assessment of Heracleon’s exegetical methodology.

This paper argues that Heracleon performs his exegesis of the Johannine gospel in three distinct stages: First, he paraphrases the gospel passage to accentuate the features of the text he finds most relevant to discuss. Then, he analyzes the text in detail, using various methods of Greco-Roman literary criticism including word studies (γλωσσηματικόν), analysis of what is reported in the text (ἱστορικόν), and attention to narrative characters (πρόσωπα). Lastly, he applies the text to a theological theme of potential interest to his audience. Two such themes are apparent form the available material: the history of God’s salvific actions toward humanity, and the process of leading people toward conversion to a Christian faith.