By Brad Miner, The Catholic Thing - Whenever people ask me what they should read to help them understand the Catholic faith, I say: “Chapter 1 of John’s Gospel.” In his new book, In the Beginning Was the Word: An Annotated Reading of the Prologue of John, Anthony Esolen has distilled that to just the first 18 verses of John 1. Professor Esolen has written a tour de force of linguistic and Biblical scholarship that may well endure as an essential evangelical tool for years to come. If you look at John in the right way, it’s hard then to look away. Ever.