Quotations in John

Studies on Jewish Scripture in the Fourth Gospel

Michael A. Daise

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780567681836
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Michael A. Daise identifies literary features found in six quotations in the Fourth Gospel, suggesting they should be revisited as clusters rather than as discrete units. Three quotations are the only ones whose introductory formulae explicitly ascribe them to Isaiah; three are the only ones cast as being 'remembered' by Jesus' disciples; and each of these groupings forms an inclusio within the Book of Signs which, when combined with the other, produces a chiasmus to Jesus' public ministry. Daise examines these clusters in three studies, addressing their exegetical issues and theological implications. After an introductory apologia for an historical-critical and theological approach, the first two studies distil narrative themes embedded in the Isaianic and 'remembrance' inclusio s. The third study then reconstructs the synthesis of these themes created by the chiasmus, and translates its key elements into theological categories. Daise concludes that, while the Isaianic inclusio brings 'closure' to the Book of Signs -by disclosing the angelic cause of the Jews' unbelief - the 'remembrance' inclusio creates an anticipation of the Book of Glory - by casting Jesus as poised to establish a new dynasty with the casting out that angelic cause. Daise further argues that this broader storyline carries ramifications for an array of motifs in the Fourth Gospel's theological taxonomy: in particular its christology, soteriology, eschatology, ecclesiology and pneumatology.

Part I

ISAIAH, JESUS AND THE JEWS

Chapter 1

ISAIAH 40:3, A CALL TO BELIEVE

A. Quotations of Isaiah and Jesus’s public ministry

Three quotations in John are the only ones explicitly ascribed to Isaiah. The first is the citation of Isaiah 40:3 at John 1:23, where, responding to queries about his identity, John replies, ‘I am “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’”, as Isaiah the prophet said.’⁹⁸ The second and third are the quotations of Isaiah 53:1 at John 12:38 and Isaiah 6:10 at John 12:40, both cited by the evangelist to interpret the Jews’ unbelief at the end of Jesus’s public ministry:

But though he had done so many signs before them,

they were not believing in him,

that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he said,

‘Lord, who has believed our report?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed’?

For this reason they were not able to believe,

for again Isaiah said,

‘He has blinded their eyes

and hardened their heart,

lest they see with the eyes

and discern with the heart,

and turn, and I heal them.’⁹⁹

The evangelist closes these last two quotations by tying them to Isaiah’s vision of divine glory in Isaiah 6, the same chapter from which the second of the citations was drawn: ‘These things Isaiah said, because (or when) he saw his glory and spoke about him.’¹⁰⁰

These quotations form an inclusio to chapters 1–12 which unfolds as a commentary on the Jews’ responsibility and response to Jesus’s public ministry; and in this chapter and the next (Part I) they will be engaged with a view towards offering alternate hypotheses to the exegetical problems they raise and teasing out the theological import of this literary structure which they create: John 1:23/Isaiah 40:3 in the present chapter; John 12:38/Isaiah 53:1 and John 12:40/Isaiah 6:10 in Chapter 2. The endeavour will conclude that, as an inclusio, these quotations bring closure to the Book of Signs by unfolding as (1) a call to believe in Jesus, (2) a lament that no one had and (3) a disclosure that the insight needed to do so had been cosmically obstructed.

B. The Johannine rendering of Isaiah 40:3 (John 1:23)

The quotation of Isaiah 40:3 at John 1:23 is placed in the mouth of John the Baptist and functions as the obliging part of his answer to a query about his identity. The passage in which it occurs is labelled ‘the testimony of John’,¹⁰¹ and it turns on questions put to him by priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem by the Jews – particularly, the Pharisees. When they first ask him ‘Who are you’?, John replies thrice in the negative. He denies he is the Christ and successively answers ‘no’ to further suggestions that he is Elijah or ‘the prophet’. When they ask him again who he is, if not these three, he holds forth by ‘making’ Isaiah 40:3ab ‘his own’ (zu eigen macht)¹⁰²:

He (John) said,

‘I am “a voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Make straight the way of the Lord’”,

as Isaiah the prophet said.’¹⁰³

1. The text

The HB, LXX and Johannine renderings of this verse are shown in Table 5.¹⁰⁴

Table 5 Isaiah 40:3 in the HB, LXX and John

2. The version cited

The version cited is almost certainly the LXX. The LXX, itself, diverges from the HB in one, possibly two, respects; and, save for the verb εὐθύνατε, John’s rendering follows suit: like the LXX, it reads ‘Lord’ (κύριος) for the tetragrammaton; and, if the ambiguous

was intended as a predication (‘a voice calls’), the Fourth Gospel, like the LXX, takes those words instead as a genitive construct – φωνὴ βοῶντος, ‘a voice of one calling’. A Hebrew Vorlage could (and to some extent has) be(en) argued on two grounds: that since Aquila independently translated

as a genitive construct (albeit with different vocabulary – φωνὴ καλοῦντος), so might the evangelist have done; and that since εὐθύνατε can plausibly be explained as a translation of

in HB Isaiah 40:3c,¹⁰⁶ the rest of the lines quoted could similarly be explained as a translation of HB Isaiah 40:3ab.¹⁰⁷ Following the guiding assumption used here, however, neither of these prospects (nor their combination) marshal a case compelling enough to offset the verbal agreement that occurs between John 1:23 and the LXX, and this leaves it more probable that the evangelist has re-presented the Greek rather than translated the Hebrew.

The case for a LXX source has been pressed further by Schuchard and Menken, but on premises that are open to question. Schuchard argues on the grounds of syntax and original context: (a) like LXX Isaiah 40:3 (over against the HB), he contends, the evangelist adjoins the phrase ‘in the wilderness’ to the phrase ‘a voice of one calling’ (syntax)¹⁰⁸; and, (b) echoing LXX Isaiah 40:2 (over against its HB counterpart), the evangelist depicts priests hearing (and presumably reporting) John’s salvific declaration of Isaiah 40:3 to Jerusalem (context)¹⁰⁹ – that is to say, Schuchard argues that if the pericope surrounding the quotation echoes LXX Isaiah 40, the quotation, itself, is likely drawn from that same version.¹¹⁰ Both of these premises, however, have been rightly questioned by Menken, who observes (a) that since John does not cite Isaiah 40:3c – which could better indicate the syntax of ‘in the wilderness’ – the role of that phrase at John 1:23 is uncertain¹¹¹; and (b) that had the evangelist wished to portray the priests in John 1 on the basis of LXX Isaiah 40:2, he would not have included Levites along with them: ‘And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you”’?¹¹²

Menken’s own case for a LXX (or, as he entertains, pre-Aquilan¹¹³) source turns on vocabulary – specifically (as noted above), the verb βοᾶν in John’s rendering of the verse. Since that verb is a hapax legomenon to Johannine literature, he contends, and since John elsewhere expresses ‘calling’ with the verbs κράζειν¹¹⁴ or κραυγάζειν,¹¹⁵ βοᾶν is more likely to have been imported from the LXX than to have been used as a gloss for

.¹¹⁶ As argued above, however, Menken’s approach to this matter labours under several difficulties¹¹⁷: specifically for this quotation, (1) he fails to note that the verb in the quotation which he does ascribe to the evangelist (εὐθύνειν) is also a hapax legomenon to Johannine literature; (2) he elsewhere declines to read hapax legomena as indicators of a LXX source¹¹⁸; (3) his inferences about the evangelist’s preference for κράζειν or κραυγάζειν overreach the (relatively meagre) data available on Johannine parlance¹¹⁹; and (4) he does not consider that, like other terms he lists as more probable translation choices for the evangelist, βοᾶν, itself, was generously used as a LXX gloss for

(and, so, could furnish an apt option for the evangelist’s own rendering of the Hebrew).

A LXX source for the quotation may perhaps increase the likelihood that the verse was brokered by the Synoptic gospels, which likewise cite the passage.¹²⁰ Partly supporting Synoptic agency is that like the Fourth Gospel, they too ascribe the verse explicitly to Isaiah: in Mark, ‘As it is written in Isaiah the prophet’; in Matthew, ‘For this is that which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying …’; and in Luke, ‘As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet’.¹²¹ Added to this, however, is that, even more evidently than John, the Synoptics draw the verse from...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Editorial Notes
• Introduction
• Part I ISAIAH, JESUS AND THE JEWS
• Part II THE DISCIPLES, THE SPIRIT AND THE SCRIPTURES
• Part III CHIASMUS AND THEOLOGY
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Ancient Sources Index
• Modern Authors Index
• Imprint