The Gospel of John and Christian Origins (22 page)

Jesus undoubtedly claimed prophetic status during his lifetime: it was implicit in his career as a preacher and teacher. The Gospel, however, goes much further by making it clear from the very first chapter that he was perceived by others to be “the one of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote.” There seems to be an important distinction between
a
prophet, that is to say, anyone who can legitimately claim to speak on behalf of God, and “
the
prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14), a particular individual who will fulfill the promise of Moses that “the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you” (Deut. 18:15), a promise repeated to Moses a few verses later: “I will raise up from among them a prophet like you . . . and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command them” (18:18).

It might be argued that this promise is quite specific, in that it concerns a particular prophet distinguished from all others by his close resemblance to
Moses; but it is fair to ask whether this is to read too much into it. Moses is unquestionably the archetypal prophet, but anyone who speaks legitimately on behalf of God already resembles him in that respect: a line toward the beginning of the
Community Rule
refers to “Moses and all his servants the prophets” (1QS 1:3; see 1QpHab 7:5). Another document from Qumran, however, shows that the expectation of a particular prophet was not restricted to Christian circles. The
Community Rule
refers to a time when “there shall come
the Prophet
and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel” (1QS 9:10); 1 Maccabees too testifies to the expectation of a new prophet. When the stones of the altar had been defiled by Antiochus, Judas Maccabeus set them aside “until there should come a prophet to tell what to do with them” (4:46; cf. 14:41). There is no direct allusion to Deuteronomy in either of these instances, but proof comes in another important manuscript from Qumran (4Q175) entitled by Geza Vermes “Testimonia or Messianic Anthology.”
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This consists of a succession of passages from three books of the Bible.
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The first of the these is drawn from the Samaritan book of Exodus and combines two texts from our Deuteronomy, 5:28-29 and 18:18 (quoted at the end of the preceding paragraph); the second cites the oracle of Balaam: “A star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:15-17); the third is the blessing of Levi in Deut. 33:8-11. So here is a firm attestation of the expectation of three eschatological figures, a Moses-like prophet, a messianic star, and a Levitical priest.
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In the Gospel, of course, the three titles disowned by John the Baptist differ from this list insofar as the third of them, Elijah, is not a priest but another prophet, and in any case in the Gospel as we have it Jesus is not recognized as Elijah.
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Moreover, even though there now can be little doubt that the reference in John 1:21 and 45 is to the Moses-like prophet, there cannot so early have been any suspicion that Jesus had already superseded Moses or would eventually do so.

The first sign in the Gospel that problems had arisen concerning the two titles of Messiah and Prophet comes once more in chapter 7. Besides questions about Jesus’ messiahship, this chapter reflects a rejection of the claim that he was the expected prophet. On the last day of the feast (of Tabernacles) Jesus issued the extraordinary invitation, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink,” whereupon “some of the people said, ‘this is really the prophet.’ Others said, ‘This is the Messiah’ ” (7:37-41). A denial of the second claim comes immediately: “Is the Messiah to come from Galilee?” The denial of the first claim is deferred to the last verse of the chapter (giving a chiastic structure to the whole episode), in a sardonic reply to Nicodemus: “Search and see that the prophet does not arise from Galilee” (7:52).
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No further comment is made at this juncture about the role of this new prophet. Perhaps there was already a perceived risk that the Moses-like prophet who was to come would eventually take Moses’ place and actually supersede him, but this is not indicated here, and the full significance of the claim that Jesus is the prophet has yet to emerge. In chapter 6, which belongs to the second edition of the Gospel,
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the claim becomes explicit in the response of those who have just witnessed the miracle of the loaves and fishes: “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world” (6:14).

This response stands in stark contrast to the reception of the blind beggar in chapter 9. “What do you say about him [Jesus],” demanded the Pharisees, “since he has opened your eyes?” He said, “He is a prophet” (9:17), a reply that provoked an angry rejoinder: “Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner” (9:24). It is this exchange that led to the key distinction already mentioned more than once, between the disciples of “that fellow” and the disciples of Moses. For although the assertion of the blind beggar was no more than a simple recognition that Jesus was
a
prophet, the inference drawn by the Pharisees was that he was now challenging the position of Moses as
the
prophet of God, the bringer of the law. The Jesus group in the synagogue had now come to be regarded as “the disciples of that fellow” [Jesus],
as opposed to
“the disciples of Moses.” Once this had happened there was no conceivable chance that the two groups could remain together. This is surely the crucial point, very much more significant than the ostensible reason for the dismissal of the followers of Jesus—their claim that he was the Messiah. For regardless of whether they were aware of it at the time, the group that split off from the synagogue was now no longer Jewish in the religious sense of the word, but Christian.

The upshot of my argument is that the Johannine community came to see Jesus as having ousted Moses from his position at the heart of the Jewish religion so as to take his place as the bearer of grace and truth. This is stated clearly in the Prologue, which cannot therefore have been composed before the final rift between the two parties in the synagogue. Moreover, such an extreme statement of absolute opposition must have been preceded by a long buildup of festering antagonism. As it happens, there is quite a lot of evidence in the Gospel itself of the extraordinary bitterness with which the Johannine community came to turn against its Jewish traditions. I treat it now under the rubric of “Family Quarrels.”

Taken together, this evidence points to a sustained attack on all that traditional Judaism most valued. It may be divided into four categories, relating to (1) family or ancestry, (2) sacred space, (3) feasts or festivals, and (4) the law.
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Briefly, then, under the first category, family or ancestry, the main evidence concerns Abraham, the first and the most revered of the patriarchs. There is nothing in the Gospel, or anywhere else in the New Testament for that matter, to match the virulence of the dispute between Jesus and the Jews in chapter 8, where Jesus denies that his adversaries, though in fact descendants of Abraham, have any right to call themselves his children, and insists that their true father is not God, as they claim, but the devil (8:37-44).  Such a terrible accusation amounts to a complete denial of family and national identity. In 1:51 the Son of Man—Jesus himself—takes the place of Jacob, whose other name is Israel, as the true intermediary between heaven and earth. Later in the Gospel, asked by the Samaritan woman whether he is “greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well,” Jesus responds by contrasting the water from that well with the water he will provide himself, “a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (4:12-14).  He does not actually answer the woman’s question, “Are you greater than our father Jacob?” (4:12), or the question of the Jews, “Are you greater than our father Abraham?” (8:53), but we have to infer that, had he answered, the answer must have been yes. In fact the Jews are denied the parentage of Abraham, and in two separate passages, by taking on the role of Jacob, Jesus dismisses more of their most valued traditions.

Next what I have called sacred space. We have already seen that, as early as John 2, Jesus asserts that he will build, or rather raise, a different kind of temple, which he specifies as his own body. At the time the Gospel was composed, of course, the temple had already been destroyed; but Jesus’ promise of a completely different temple effectively reduces it to insignificance and brushes aside any hopes they may have had of a later restoration of the sacred edifice that had been at the heart of their religious practice for centuries. In chapter 4, what comes under attack is not just the temple but the city of Jerusalem itself: “the hour is coming,” Jesus tells the Samaritan woman (for whom the mountain near where they were standing, Mount Gerizim, was truly holy), “when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father: the hour is coming when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth” (4:21, 23).

Most of the great Jewish festivals are also threatened. Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, is never mentioned in the Gospel, but in one way of another all the other major festivals come under attack: the Feast of Sukkoth (Tents or Tabernacles), above all a
water
festival, is appropriated by Jesus at the feast itself: “if anyone thirst,
let him come to me
and drink” (7:37). Next Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication: when Jesus declares, in the context of this feast, that
he
is the one consecrated by the Father (10:36), he is effectively challenging the significance of the renewed dedication of the altar of the temple. Still more remarkably, when Jesus is taken down from the cross, his body still unbroken, a verse from Exodus insisting on this is quoted to prove that
he and he alone
is the true Paschal Lamb (19:36; Exod. 12:46). Thus, the greatest Jewish feast of all, the Passover, is also superseded.

Finally, the law. As elsewhere in early Christian circles, the law continued to be valued by John as testimony to the truth brought by Jesus: “You search the scriptures,” he tells the Jews, “because you think that in them you have eternal life; but they really bear witness to me” (5:39). And again, in the same discourse: “If you believed Moses you would believe me, for he wrote of me” (5:46). But from John’s perspective (which differs from that of Paul or of Matthew) Moses is good for nothing else. The verse from the Prologue that I have already quoted more than once deliberately belittles the law: “grace and truth came about through Jesus Christ” (1:17). So in one way or another all that the Jews held most dear, all that entitled them to be proud of their own identity, has been swept aside. They have been denied a family, a city, and a sacred space. The great festivals that marked their year in the way that Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost came to do in Christendom, have been dismissed. The very heart of their religious belief, the law, has been torn out. Why should they not be angry?

In the present chapter I have focused on just one of Jesus’ titles, that of the Prophet. The conviction grew that he was indeed the Moses-like prophet whose coming had been announced and was expected, culminating in a belief that he had actually superseded Moses. But this conviction did not and could not imply a belief that he was thereby claiming equality with God. A prophet is one who speaks on behalf of God and who by the very nature of his calling is subordinate to God. Moreover when Jesus is accused of claiming equality with God he firmly denies this, as the Gospel makes clear, and talks instead of the prophet’s duty to speak
on behalf of
God. When charged with ditheism, he is quick to reply: “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, that the Son does likewise” (5:19; cf. 8:28). It is true that in this passage Jesus explicitly recalls the Father/Son relationship. But he does so to emphasize that it is God, the Father, who is in control. His assertion that he does nothing of his own accord is repeated in different terms several times in the Gospel.  He does not speak on his own authority (7:17-18; 12:49; 14:10), and he does not seek his own will (5.30; 6.38). He has not come of his own accord (7:28). Stated positively, he does the will of the Father, does his work, fulfills his commandments (4:34; 5:36; 10:37-8; 17:4). The Father works through him (14:10).
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Clear as they are, these emphatic assertions by Jesus of his own subordination to God leave us wondering how and why they were so misunderstood by his adversaries. Something has been left unsaid. If the claim to be a prophet, or even the prophet of God par excellence cannot even come close to a claim to equality with God, then the challenge remains to find something in the Gospel to account for the murderous hostility of “the Jews” that finds expression so often in its pages.

Part of the answer is to be found in the close association between prophecy and mission. While recognizing the prophet’s subordinate role, we should also remember that Jesus’ relationship with God is thought of throughout the Gospel in terms of the Jewish law of agency, whereby the agent is virtually identified with his master, just as an ambassador, by a legal fiction, is identified with the country he represents. In the simple formula of the Mekilta, “an agent is like the one who sent him.”
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Finally, in certain contexts, there appears to be a recognition by the evangelist that Jesus’ relationship with God was that of a son and heir: “the Father loves the Son and has given everything into his hand” (3:25; cf. 10:18; 13:3; 17:2).
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Yet even in combination the themes of mission, agency, and sonship do not fully account for the Gospel’s high Christology. We should now ask whether the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel was thought to be truly divine in the sense that he was subsequently defined to be by the Christian church. This question will be addressed in the next chapter.