Jesus as Means and Locus of Worship in the Fourth Gospel

Sacrifice and Worship Space in John

Troost-Cramer

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532612862
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

"The anti-Semitic Gospel"--this is how the book of John is frequently described and perceived, thanks to the pervasive presence of "the Jews" as Jesus' enemies who harass the Son of God to his death. But how accurate is this assessment?This book presents John as Jewish to its core, a record of first-century Judaism's searching for a place of worship after the traumatic destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. As Judean religious authorities regrouped to redefine the faith of Israel, the Jesus sect within Judaism took a different course, proposing that worship was not to be found in Torah study or in the temples of Roman civic religion, but in the person of Jesus, Israel's Messiah. John achieved this by presenting Jesus as the sacrifice demanded of all worship in the ancient Mediterranean, the temple in which sacrifice was performed, and the priest who offers the sacrifice, with those who embraced this sacrifice as Israel in the wilderness, possessing the divine Presence in its midst. Relying on traditions of the Binding of Isaac, the Suffering Servant, and Jewish temple rites, John, far from proclaiming the futility of Jewish worship, seeks to preserve it in the person of Jesus.

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Introduction to this Study

Many scholars of John have examined this Gospel’s theme of Jesus as the temple, a motif woven throughout the fabric of John’s grand Christology.1 While some, such as M. A. Daise and most notably Mary Coloe, contend that the Gospel represents Jesus as the temple only during his earthly life, and that at the cross the community of his followers became the temple, others agree that, from the Fourth Gospel’s perspective, the person of Jesus continued to be the locus of worship after his resurrection, in keeping with the sense particularly of John 2:19, 21 (τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ σώματος αυτοῦ) utilizing the term employed to reference specifically the Holy of Holies, ναός, and present also in 1:14 (Jesus, the λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο, “tabernacled among us,” the verb ἐσκήνωσεν harking back to the Exodus tabernacle that housed God’s divine Presence/Glory); 1:31 (the Glory/Presence is made known to Israel in Jesus); 1:50–51 (with references to Jacob’s dream at Beth-El, the “house of God,” meeting-place of heaven and earth); 18:12–20, 38 (Jesus claims to be equal to the Father, indicating that he is the Father’s own Presence/Glory); and the entire passion and resurrection narratives, as we will see.2 In John 2:19, Jesus tells the Ἰουδαῖοι in the temple complex that should they destroy “this temple,” Jesus himself would raise it in three days. Verse 21 identifies “this temple” that will be raised up as “the temple of [Jesus’] body,” indicating that Jesus’ body—not the community—remains “this temple” even after the resurrection.3 As Sandra M. Schneiders observes, if the risen body of Jesus is the temple, and if Jesus abides with his faithful forever, then it follows that those faithful are (not the temple but) Israel, in the midst of which God’s Glory dwelt in the temple’s prototype, the tabernacle.4

What does it mean, though, to say that Jesus is “the temple”? Since the purpose and function of a temple in antiquity was to provide a locus of worship in the form of sacrifice, the argument of this thesis is that the motif of Jesus as temple is entirely based upon the idea that he is a sacrifice—indeed, that he is the sacrifice that fulfills all the functions of the Jerusalem temple’s sacrificial institution in the post-70 CE absence of that institution.5 Given that worship (both Jewish and polytheistic) in first-century Palestine and the wider Roman world was defined by sacrifice, the issues of temple and sacrifice are symbiotically connected and a picture emerges in the Fourth Gospel of Jesus fulfilling the temple’s functions as the locus of sacrifice. Hence, the very reason why John portrays Jesus as the temple is because John claims that Jesus is a sacrificial offering. In order to illustrate this, John pits geographical regions against each other in order to craft the Gospel’s unique theology upon the framework of the ancient rivalry between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel and Judah.6 This rivalry is the basis of the Gospel’s use of the term Ἰουδαῖοι, as a marker that designates Judeans from those the Gospel terms “Israelites.” The former refers to those without temple and sacrifices; the latter, to those who have Jesus as sacrifice and temple.

At this point, a succinct review of scholarship will be helpful in assessing the differing viewpoints on the presence (or the lack thereof) of a sacrifice theme in the Fourth Gospel. After summarizing the work of scholars who agree that John presents Jesus as sacrifice, we will overview relevant scholarship that argues the opposite. We will then preview the main points of the argument of this thesis: corollaries from the Dead Sea Scrolls, specific references to sacrifice in John and their parallels to Philo and rabbinic texts, John’s presentation of Jesus as locus of worship as “protest literature” providing an alternative to Roman polytheist worship structures, and the relation of the debated term Ἰουδαῖοι to John’s worship theme.

Scholars such as Bruce H. Grigsby, Paul M. Hoskins, P. Grelot, J.D.M. Derrett, Frédéric Manns, Rainer Metzner, J. T. Nielsen, and Dennis R. Lindsay have noted a sacrifice theme running strongly through John that displays Jesus not only making sacrifice, but being sacrifice. These scholars base this perspective chiefly on the Gospel’s passion narrative and on the “bread of life” discourse in John 6 (indeed, this thesis will argue that the Bread of Life Discourse is one of several clear prolepses of the passion), as well as rabbinic material that interprets the Passover lamb as a sacrifice of atonement connected to the binding of Isaac.7 In order for this connection to apply to John, we must examine whether there is “Isaac typology” (or “Akedah typology”) in the Gospel. Two scholars, Bruce H. Grigsby and Paul M. Hoskins, may be taken as respective examples of this viewpoint. Both agree that John “contains a Passover typology” that underlies the entire Gospel; indeed, Hoskins claims that this typology is not incidental to the Gospel’s Christology but is its very foundation and essence.8 For Hoskins, John’s theme of deliverance, of transference from darkness to light, is centered in the first-century concept of the Passover lamb as the instrument of deliverance from the death of the firstborn recorded in the book of Exodus; John reinterprets this deliverance as deliverance from the death resulting from the effects of sin. There are indications that Passover was associated with the self-offering of Isaac: Grigsby cites several rabbinic texts that view Isaac’s willingly offered blood as the blood that redeemed Israel when the destroying angel smote the firstborn of Egypt; hence, Isaac was associated with the Passover lamb, which was viewed in rabbinic writings such as Gen. Rab. 22 and many others as a sacrifice of atonement.9 As Frédéric Manns notes, Tg. Lev 22:27 even go so far as to claim that the whole system of animal sacrifice in Jewish worship was intended to atone for Israel’s sin by animals’ blood reminding God of the shed blood of Isaac.10 Therefore, if the Passover was associated with the Akedah, and if there are parallels between Jesus and Isaac in John, then the Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus as paschal victim connects him to Isaac traditions and portrays him as a sacrificial offering.

Although John’s themes of Jesus as temple a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction to this Study
• Chapter 2: The Johannine Jesus Fulfills the Functions of the Temple
• Chapter 3: The Johannine Passion as Sacrifice Event Revealing the Place of Worship
• Chapter 4: Relocation of Worship Space
• Chapter 5: The Translation of Ἰουδαιοι as “Judeans”
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Bibliography