Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

marks of Jewish identity such as Torah, Temple, Sabbath, and Festivals. But

in John Jesus fulfills and replaces these key institutions. And it alone

among the gospels has an explicit Christology of pre-existence, divinity,

and incarnation — not only in its prologue (“In the beginning was the

Word,andtheWordwaswithGod,andtheWordwasGod....Andthe

Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” 1:1, 14) but on Jesus’ own lips:

“No one has ascended to heaven except the one who descended from

heaven....BeforeAbraham was I am....TheFather and I are one....

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (3:13; 8:58; 10:30; 14:9). Jesus is

the one and only path to God and to eternal life: “I am the way, the truth,

and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me” (14:6).

Instead of teaching in parables and aphorisms, the Johannine Jesus de-

livers long monologues. Their subject is not the kingdom of God but Jesus’

identity as the only Son of the Father come down from heaven to reveal

and to save. In dialogues with his opponents, which frequently turn into

monologues, the subject of controversy centers not on aspects of Jewish

halakah but on Jesus’ identity and self-claims. Gone in John are debates

over fasting, tithing, food purity, oath taking, and divorce. Instead, Jesus’

healing on the Sabbath quickly provokes the charge that he makes himself

out to be “equal to God” (John 5:18; cf. 10:33). When the Jews assert their

Abrahamic paternity and deny Jesus’ divine paternity, he replies, “You are

of your father, the Devil” (8:44). Though he submits to the Father’s will

and declares “the Father is greater than I” (14:28), he does not hesitate to

claim unity with God (e.g., 10:30, 38; 14:10-11; 17:21). From the narrator’s

point of view, though, this is not blasphemy, since Jesus is no mere man

but the Logos incarnate. Doubting Thomas does well to bow before Jesus

and call him “My Lord and my God!” (20:28).

The most revealing passage in the Fourth Gospel for the Johannine

community’s separation from the synagogue comes in the story of the

man blind from birth in John 9. The passage starts off as a Synoptic-like

healing story, but after he heals the man Jesus is absent for most of the

chapter, so that the focus falls on the man. He is hauled before “the Jews”

twice and interrogated. The more they pressure him to denounce Jesus as a

sinner, the higher and bolder his claims about Jesus become. In the scope

of some twenty verses, he goes from referring to him as “the man called Je-

sus” to saying “he is a prophet” to declaring “he is from God.” His Pharisaic

interrogators expel him from the community, “for the Jews had already

agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the messiah would be put

out of the synagogue (aposynagZgos,9:22; cf. 14:42; 16:2). When Jesus later

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Early Judaism and Early Christianity

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:19 PM