The Christological Witness Function of the Old Testament Characters in the Gospel of John

PATERNOSTER BIBLICAL MONOGRAPHS

SERIES PREFACE

One of the major objectives of Paternoster is to serve biblical scholarship by providing a channel for the publication of theses and other monographs of high quality at affordable prices. Paternoster stands within the broad evangelical tradition of Christianity. Our authors would describe themselves as Christians who recognise the authority of the Bible, maintain the centrality of the gospel message and assent to the classical credal statements of Christian belief. There is diversity within this constituency; advances in scholarship are possible only if there is freedom for frank debate on controversial issues and for the publication of new and sometimes provocative proposals. What is offered in this series is the best of writing by committed Christians who are concerned to develop well-founded biblical scholarship in a spirit of loyalty to the historic faith.

SERIES EDITORS

I. Howard Marshall, Honorary Research Professor of New Testament, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

Richard J. Bauckham, Professor of New Testament Studies and Bishop Wardlaw Professor, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK

Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary, Colorado, USA

Robert P. Gordon, Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Cambridge, UK

Tremper Longman III, Robert H. Gundry Professor and Chair of the Department of Biblical Studies, Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, USA

Stanley E. Porter, President and Professor of New Testament, McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Copyright © S. Michael Ahn 2014

First published 2014 by Paternoster

Paternoster is an imprint of Authentic Media

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The right of S. Michael Ahn to be identified as the Editor/Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a license permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licenses are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–84227–801–7

Printed and bound in Great Britain

for Paternoster by

Lightning Source, Milton Keynes

To Judy, my God-given companion,

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

List of Abbreviations

List of Tables

Chapter 1 Introduction

The Two Testaments and Biblical Theology Movement

Canonical Approach

Tradition-Historical Approach

Christology within Jewish Conceptual Bounds

Centrality of Christology in the Fourth Gospel

Johannine Christology from the Vantage Point of the Jewish Context

The Main Thesis

History of Research

Theios Aner Theory

Johannine Christology and the Jewish Messianic Figures

T.F. Glasson

Wayne Meeks

J. Louis Martyn

Marinus de Jonge

Georg Richter, Francis Grob, and Wolfgang Bittner

Marie-Émile Boismard

Margaret Daly-Denton

Eric M.E. Wallace

Recent German Contributions with a Particular Emphasis on Scripture as Christological Witness

Martin Hengel

Andreas Obermann

Christian Dietzfelbinger

Wolfgang Kraus

M.J.J. Menken

William Loader

Klaus Scholtissek

Michael Labahn

Hans-Josef Klauk

Michael Theobald

Justification for the Present Study

Scripture as Christological Witness

Lack of study on the Old Testament characters

Legitimacy of tradition-historical approach

Methods

Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches

Intertextuality

Category of intertextuality

Implication of orality

Religious Comparative Analysis

Chronological boundaries of early Judaism

Terms

Typology and Prefiguration

Messiah and Christ

Contributions

Old Testament Characters as Christological Witnesses

Affinity between Early Judaism and John

Competency of Redactor/Author of the Fourth Gospel

Scope

Limitations

Chapter 2 The Jewish Patriarchs

Introduction

Jacob

Allusions to the Bethel Theophany: John 1:51

Narrative context

Excursus 1: The Son of Man in John 1:51

Jacob-Jesus typology

Ladder-Jesus typology

Contents of theophany

Summary

Jacob, the Provider of Water: John 4:10-14

Narrative context

Jacob’s well

The contrast of Jacob’s water with Jesus’

Summary

Abraham as Christological Witness: John 8:51-58

Narrative Context

Excursus 2: The Johannine Antagonists

Immortality of Jesus and of Abraham

Abraham’s Witness of the Pre-Existent Jesus

Temporal Priority of Jesus over Abraham

Summary

Conclusion

Chapter 3 Elijah

Introduction

Elijah in Second Temple Judaism

Eschatological Reconciliation Ministry

Malachi

Sirach

Apocalyptic Militant Subjugation

Sibylline Oracles and the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah

The Nag Hammadi Library

The Qumran Documents

4Q521

Scribal Expectation of Elijah’s Return

Elijah in the Synoptic Gospel

Elijah in John’s Gospel

Jesus as Elijah

Cullmann, Schnackenburg, and Robinson

J. Louis Martyn

Excursus 3: John Meier’s Eschatological Prophet Paradigm

John the Baptist as Elijah

Marinus de Jonge

Etienne Trocmé

John the Baptist Not as Elijah

Markus Öhler

High view of John the Baptist

Anachronism and the textual testimony

Narrative Function of John the Baptist in Fourth Gospel

Witness

Divine Provenance

Analogy with and Comparison to Jesus

Mediator

Recapitulation of the Old Testament

Conclusion

Chapter 4 David

Introduction

David in the Old Testament and in the Second Temple Period

Ideal Ruler

Exemplary Jew

Davidic Messianic Expectations in the Old Testament

Davidic Messianic Expectations in the Second Temple Judaism

1 Maccabees and Sirach

Psalms of Solomon

4 Ezra

4Q252

Summary

David in the Synoptic Gospels

Messianic Role of David in John

Daly-Denton

Jesus as the Replacement of the Temple: John 2:17

Jesus as a Davidic Posterity?: John 7:42

Jesus as Davidic King of Israel?: John 12:13

Passion as a Messianic Qualification

Judas’ betrayal as foreshadowed in David: John 13:18

Irony of Jewish persecution: John 15:25

Allocation of Jesus’ clothes: John 19:24

Jesus’ thirst: John 19:28

Not breaking of the legs: John 19:36-37

Piercing of the side: John 19:37

Conclusion

Chapter 5 Moses

Introduction

Mosaic Images in the Old Testament and in Early Judaism

Moses as Authority Figure with Particular Emphasis on Law-Giving and Legitimatizing

The Old Testament

Sirach, the Assumption of Moses, and 1 Esdras

4 Maccabees

2 Maccabees

Qumran

Excursus 4: The Letter of Aristeas and Moses

Moses as Prophet with Particular Emphasis on Intercession and Miracle-Working

The Old Testament

Sirach, 2 Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon

The Assumption of Moses

Qumran

Moses as Royal Figure

The Old Testament

God language of Moses in Exodus, Sirach, and Philo

The Exagoge of Ezekiel

The Sibylline Oracle

Philo

Josephus and Qumran

Moses as Eschatological Prophet

Deuteronomy 18:15

Rabbinic tradition

Samaritan tradition

Excursus 5: Schism between Jews and Samaritans

Qumran tradition

Summary

Moses in the New Testament

Moses in the Gospel of John

Law through Moses, Grace through Jesus: John 1:16-17

Structure of the prologue

Syntax

Semantics

Summary

Serpent of Moses: John 3:14

Context

T.F. Glasson

Critique of Glasson

Summary

Witness and Accusation of Moses: John 1:45, 5:37-39, 46

Controversial context

A series of witnesses

An allusion to the Sinai account

Klaus Scholtissek and the majority view

Bertold Klappert

Marie-Émile Boismard

Summary

Allusions to the Exodus Events: John 6:14-15, 32-33

Narrative unity

Thematic link between John 5 and 6

Wayne Meeks

Critique of Meeks

John Dennis

Critique of Dennis

Summary

Conclusion

Chapter 6 Concluding Reflections

Summary of Foregoing Observations

Research Results

Implications for Study of John’s Gospel

Appendix 1: Messianism/Christology in the Old Testament and in the Fourth Gospel

Appendix 2: Religionsgeschichte and the Fourth Gospel

Importance of Religionsgeschichte

Bickermann/Hengel Theory

Hellenistic (especially Gnostic) Influence

C.H. Dodd

Semitic Linguistic Features

Recent Archaeological Discoveries

Conceptual Affinities

After Dodd

Appendix 3: The Old Testament in John

Significance of the Old Testament

Fulfillment Motif in the Passion Narratives

Appendix 4: The Internal Well of Living Water in John 7:38

Appendix 5: Explicit Old Testament Materials in John

Appendix 6: Important Sources on the Study of the Old Testament and the Early Jewish Literature in the Gospel of John

The Hebrew Old Testament

The Greek Old Testament

The Greek New Testament

The Old Testament Apocrypha

The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha

The Qumran Literature

Early rabbinic Literature

The Samaritan Pentateuch

Hellenistic Writings

Miscellaneous secondary sources

Appendix 7: The Use of Rabbinic Materials for New Testament Studies

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Books

Articles

Dissertations

Author Index

Scripture Index

Index for Other Ancient Sources

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is in no way a product of one individual’s labor. I want to take this space to acknowledge those who have collaborated on seeing this study coming in print. Between 2009 and 2013, I was privileged to work with three different academic institutions as adjunct instructor: the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, USA, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, TX, USA, and the American Theological Institute, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Since May 2012, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, Mill Valley, CA, has hired me as Associate Professor of New Testament and associate director of the KEB program. Before and concurrent to serving at these seminaries, I was involved in a local church ministry as Senior Pastor of All Nations Baptist Church, Arlington, Texas, USA, between October 2006 and April 2012. It has been truly an honor and blessing beyond description to serve the Lord along with the people of God in these institutions. Pastoral and academic experiences I had at these places challenged me to realize intellectual and spiritual inadequacies on my part. At the same time, they also stimulated and shaped me to grow in maturity. As such, I have incurred a profound debt of gratitude to a number of individuals.

Dr. John Polhill, my doctor vater, at Southern Seminary was gracious to accept a weakling under his wings to nurture and train. It is not only his keen awareness and broad knowledge in linguistics and other areas of theological discourses but his warmth, kindness and love for the body of Christ that have left a long-lasting imprint in me. Dr. Robert Stein, for whom I had privilege to work as his graduate assistant, instilled in me the virtue and the beauty of precision in critically theological inquiries. Initially, I started a doctoral dissertation project with him. It is very regretful, however, that the project couldn’t reach completion. Even after a half-year of research in the area of Markan eschatology, my interest in the relationship between the Old Testament, early Judaism and John’s Gospel did not become abated and only remained rising. The topic stuck with me from the beginning of the doctoral study at Southern. Professors Mark Seifrid and Robert Plummer (SBTS) collaborated on this project as second readers. I am especially grateful to the former for the kind endorsement and some insightful suggestions he shared with me. Dr. Andreas Köstenberger of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary offered invaluable advice and even corrected me on several fronts as an external reader. Finally, I must mention a dear colleague and a German friend, Dr. Lars Kierspel, now teaching at Shiloh University, who has thoroughly read an earlier draft. Had he not rendered his service for me with his usual eyes of hawk, I would have been even more humbled. He saved me from a number of embarrassing mistakes that I made earlier and some of his suggestions and guidance have proven very helpful. These scholars contributed to this book significantly so now it stands much better in form and content. But, of course, all the shortcomings despite their assistance fall entirely upon myself.

The Kim professional development fund of Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary partially underwrote the book purchase expenses that were necessitated by this writing project. I extend my appreciation to Mr. & Mrs. David Kim for endowing this grant.

Dr. Michael Parsons, the commissioning editor of Paternoster also deserves appreciation for accepting this work into their monograph series and guiding me through sometimes what would have demanded patience at his end.

My family and in-laws in Korea, parents and the parents-in-law, supported the years of my study in the United States through their earnest prayer and sacrificial financial assistance. They are exemplary Christians and should be proud of this work because this is a small token of pouring out of their lives in up-bringing their children in a godly way. My daughter, Grace, was born during my doctoral study and she sustained me on course with her precious smiles and presence. My wife, Judy, encouraged and prayed for me, and beyond the fair portion of any wife endured my absence with her typical very cheerful spirit. She is a genuine example of God’s unfailing grace upon me, a sinner forgiven. It is to her that I dedicate this humble piece of study in the revelation of the divine mercy and salvation through his Son, Christ, the God incarnate.

S. Michael Ahn

2013

PREFACE

This book is a revised and significantly updated version of a doctoral dissertation previously submitted to and defended at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY, USA, in 2006. For this revision, pertinent studies appeared since its initial publication have been added into discussion and the wordings have been slightly smoothed out from its original draft. In addition, most of the French and German citations are translated into English except, only on a few occasions, the original wordings stand better untranslated.

This book sets out on an inquiry into the Christological function of the major Old Testament characters as described in the Gospel of John. In addition, possible connections between the Christology of the Gospel and the messianism of the early Jewish traditions are explored. It is primarily these two questions that this book tries to answer critically and exegetically.

It has become customary or even virtuous that recent theological monographs take on such lengthy discussions. Thus, it is daunting and has become almost impossible to read cover to cover most recent theological academic books in short breath. This study is structured in a way that the flow of the main argument is kept to the minimal and precision as much as possible for the purpose of speedy reading on the first encounter. However, plenty of in-depth discussions, side-notes, and concomitant references are offered in the footnotes. Also, readers are advised to turn to appendices where some important background issues are addressed such as the relationship between messianism and Christology, and early Judaism and the Fourth Gospel. With such an arrangement, it is hoped that serious students and researchers may use this book as a reference tool and a point of departure for further inquiries into the topics under discussion.

For the matter of format, the Turabian and the SBL styles have been eclectically adhered to as they deem appropriate (Kate Turabian et al., eds., A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 8th ed. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013]; Patrick H. Alexander et al, eds., The SBL Handbook of Style: For Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Early Christian Studies [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999]). For abbreviations, the guideline set forth by the Society of Biblical Literature was consulted and generally followed. The Hebrew and Greek fonts are employed from Microsoft Word©. For the English translation, New Revised Standard Version was cited throughout unless noted otherwise.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Two Testaments and Biblical Theology Movement

The bipartite nature of the Christian Bible has been recognized not only as a central issue of biblical theology, but a source of a perennial dilemma for biblical theologians for a long time.¹ One of the reasons for such a quandary lies in the considerable measure of incongruity that the two Testaments display with one another (and within themselves), notwithstanding a certain degree of commonality.² In the face of this observation, one group of scholars, especially some historical critics, has expressed skepticism toward the unity of the Old and New Testaments and further argued that biblical theology is possible only within certain confessional circles, reflecting reductionistic and positivistic methodology and a priori theological presuppositions.³ Along with the inherent flaws, some prominent biblical theologians also assessed the demise of biblical theology as inevitable. In the previous generation, Brevard Childs assessed the meagre beginning of this approach and foresaw its imminent ending:

The [biblical theology] movement was strongly Protestant in its orientation and directed consciously toward the needs of the Christian Church. Its influence spread widely beyond these borders, but the center of the movement remained concentrated in a limited area of the Protestant spectrum. The movement had a rather closely definable beginning and an approximate ending.⁴

However, such a judgment has proven not to be entirely correct because biblical theology continues to be a subject of much discussion as evidenced by the recent installment of journal series, monographs, and commentaries that closely address this topic.⁵ A significant number of biblical theologians are optimistic about the possibility of constructing a critically-analytical biblical theology.⁶ In this context, various attempts have been undertaken along this line. For the sake of space, only two of more popular approaches in this rubric of movement can be mentioned as samplings: canonical and tradition-historical approaches.

Canonical Approach

On the one hand, the enterprise of biblical theology has received more criticism than welcome in certain studies. For instance, the canonical approach, one of the more prominent approaches to biblical theology is most popularly advocated by B.S. Childs, who points to the importance of the present form of the biblical canon as it was received and interpreted within the early church.⁷ His assumption and methodology, however, have been frequently criticized for the ambiguity of his hermeneutical program and general ignorance of the original historical contexts.⁸ Furthermore, the paucity of this type of study in New Testament scholarship obliquely bears testimony to the exegetical obstructions intrinsic to pursuing such a venture.⁹ Finally, the advocates of such an attempt often place emphasis on the principal hermeneutical role of the receptive community. This reader-oriented tendency renders the canonical approach less attractive to the practitioners of the traditional historical-grammatical approach.¹⁰

Tradition-Historical Approach

This is a more positively received attempt than canonical criticism along the line of biblical theology, at least for the exegetes standing in the historical-critical tradition, is the tradition-historical approach, which seeks to find an overarching motif that weaves together the texts of the Old and New Testaments.¹¹ Hartmut Gese and Peter Stuhlmacher are usually associated with this systematic reading of the two Testaments through Zion, or Torah leitmotifs.¹² Gese argues, for instance, that successive Hebrew and Christian communities re-worked the previous generation’s doctrine of the law in the face of the present life setting. Thus, he finds several phases of the Hebrew belief in the law differently understood throughout the history of Israel. This reinterpreted law is the final product for the community of the time, but is fully comprehensible in light of the ultimately re-read law, the New Testament.¹³ Some students of Gese and Stuhlmacher and other scholars have taken up this program, and put on a new dress, the exile-and-restoration theme.¹⁴ Of course, Gese and Stuhlmacher, on the one hand, and the proponents of the exile-and-restoration theme, on the other, do not overlap exactly in their theological presuppositions and exegetical conclusions, but they do share much in common as far as their methodological presupposition is concerned. That is, a unifying theme visibly runs through the Old and New Testaments and exegetes can unpack it without inflicting violence to the texts.

Despite the considerable degree of enthusiasm with which a number of biblical students received these types of studies, these studies seem to possess both strengths and weaknesses.¹⁵ One of the positive contributions would be their recognition of the presence of a unifying theme woven together in the two Testaments. However, several negative upshots are inherent in this history -of-traditions approach. First, the theme of exile-restoration is surprisingly sparse in a great number of the books in the scripture. Second, it does not seem to appropriately take into account the scope of the divine redemptive plan which covers the whole world, not the nation of Israel. Third, a great portion of the scripture emphasizes personal piety upon which the eternal security of souls hinges.¹⁶ Finally and most directly contingent upon the thesis of this book, it undercuts or misrepresents the insurmountable centrality of God.¹⁷ In other words, they lose sight of the principal thrust of the Christian Bible. That is, the main agent of salvation history is differently put forth in the two Testaments. This peculiarity is, however, seldom or inadequately addressed in both canonical and tradition-historical approaches.¹⁸ What is fundamentally lacking in their studies is an aggressive engagement with the fact that the first Testament is deeply steeped in a scrupulous promotion of monotheism vis-à-vis Yahweh worship, whereas the second Testament is ditheistically oriented with a disproportional emphasis on the second person of the God-head, Jesus Christ. The statement of Seitz is pertinent on this perspective:

The Bible is not one continuous tradition history, like a novel with a beginning, a middle and an end. Something stops, and a history of effects is set in motion that testifies to the form of the original canon and the differentiation of traditions, of various sorts, form it…. The problem for the early church was not what to do with the OT. Rather, in the light of Scripture whose authority and privileged status were everywhere acknowledged, what was one to make of a crucified messiah and a parting of the ways?¹⁹

These two varying portraits of the two God-heads constitute one of the most vexing questions posed upon biblical theologians, and they call for serious consideration. One of the more oversimplistic responses to this question has been undertaken by a group of scholars who played down the testimonies of the Old Testament while stressing the uniquely elevated place of New Testament Christology.²⁰ The history of the biblical theology movement, however, generally disagrees with the sharp wedge that this movement has driven between the two Testaments, especially their presentation of the God-head.²¹

Christology within Jewish Conceptual Bounds

A more considerate attempt to account for this disparity has traced back the origin of Christology from the conceptual strands attested in the Old Testament and the subsequent Jewish traditions.²² This approach can be further divided into two sub-groups. The first sub-group, more popularly represented by Richard Bauckham, William Horbury, and others, maintains that New Testament Christology can be understood within the bounds of Jewish monotheism. Although in much different measure, they both postulate that Christian Christology is somewhat an organic outgrowth from perculiar Jewish monotheism.²³ However, as Hurtado has pointed out, the binitarian theology of early Christians differs significantly from the conventional Jewish monotheism. Accordingly, the Jesus event (not the Jewish heritage of nascent Christianity) must have been the principal impetus for the early Christian worship of the second God-head.²⁴

The other group has explored certain Jewish concepts (such as Son of Man, wisdom, or even angels²⁵) and heroic protagonists, such as Moses, Elijah, or David, in an attempt to ascertain if they were seen as dormant messianic icons which were later translated into Christian Christology.²⁶ This type of approach to New Testament Christology has found its way into the study of John’s Gospel, as well as into studies of other parts of the New Testament corpus. The present study aims primarily at assessing the value of the latter approach for understanding of the Gospel of John and its Christology in particular, by means of evaluating the Johannine texts that allegedly contain the traces of thought reflecting a Christology of Jewish heroes in view of the pertinent intertestamental Jewish writings that point to a redivivus eschatology.

Centrality of Christology in the Fourth Gospel

A serious student of the Fourth Gospel is immediately confronted with widely divided scholarly opinions on various issues surrounding John. ²⁷ There is, however, one aspect that seems to enjoy unanimity, that is, that Christology stands at the heart of the Gospel.²⁸ It may not be a coincidence that one of the most explicit Christological statements in the entire New Testament corpus is placed literally at the center of the Fourth Gospel: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). ²⁹ In this respect, one can come to good terms with Eduard Schweizer’s observation that everything in John is radically concentrated on Jesus.³⁰ Similarly, Otto Schwankl also notes that all other aspects of John’s theological concerns are subsumed under the rubric of Christology:

An important characteristic of the Gospel of John is the enormous concentration on Christology. In contrast, other subjects of theology, for instance, ecclesiology and ethics, are withdrawn. Those subjects are subsumed under or marginalized by Christology.³¹

He further goes on to spell out the centrality of Jesus in John in seven points: the Gospel’s concentration on Jesus, concentration on his words, Christological self-understanding of Jesus, Christological confessions, Christological titles, missionary Christology, and the I-am sayings.³²

Even without entering into a meticulous discussion on such notions, however, this centrality of Christology simply makes a compelling case at least on two grounds. First, structurally speaking, the introductory prologue (1:1-18) and the concluding purpose statement (20:30-31) constitute an inclusio and stand out as pivotal points in John’s overall narrative schemes.³³ The Johannine prolog elucidates in clear terms the pre-existence of Jesus and his participation in the creation of the universe with God the Father in terms of wisdom Christology. Labahn rightly observes that the Johannine prologue is programmatically placed at the beginning so as to unfold the unity of the Father and the Son for the rest of the Gospel.³⁴ The purpose statement placed at the end of the Fourth Gospel also points to the provenance of Jesus and his identity as the fulfillment of the old covenant:³⁵

But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)

Along with Martha’s confession in the middle (John 11:27), both sections speak of Christology in the highest terms possible in Jewish thought patterns, i.e., Jesus is portrayed as being equal to God (5:18; 10:30, 33).³⁶ Secondly, the content of the Fourth Gospel points to Jesus whose origin, divine and human nature, and works are constantly brought to the forefront throughout John.³⁷ This Chris-to-centric characteristics of the Fourth Gospel is in good accords with the rest of the New Testament writings. Frank Thielman judiciously sums up this perspective.

For all the distinctiveness of its discrete textual witnesses, the New Testament is remarkably homogenous in its commitment to these basic themes. It offers a compelling vision of reality … and it invites those who read its various texts sympathetically to adopt its Christ-centered vision of the universe as their own.³⁸

Similarly, Ferdinand Hahn states that the crucial point of reference for the entire New Testament traditions is the divine revelation in the person of Christ, from which all the questions concerning the New Testament derive:

The crucial point of reference throughout the New Testament tradition is the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ preaching and ministry stand necessarily at the beginning of the early Christian theological history. But now many problems are connected with the Jesus tradition and its place within a New Testament theology.³⁹

Recently, Dunn asserted that early Christianity was more God-oriented than Christ-oriented. However, the disproportional emphasis on the personhood of Christ and the way the New Testament describes the second God-head stand in stark difference from those of the Old Testament. It seems, therefore, justifiable to elevate the place of worship in Christ in modern Christianity.⁴⁰ In that sense, penetrating to the point is Martin Hengel’s assessment of Wrede whose theological framework downplayed the messianism but rather overemphasized the formative history of the early Christian communities. Hengel points to four aspects in which Wrede’s postulation is at fault: his denial of historicity of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, his misinterpretation of the Passion narratives, the disciples’ sudden change of faith in Jesus from unmessianic to heavily messianic, and the inadequate recognition of the Galilean-Jewish origin of Jesus and his first hearers and disciples.⁴¹ In a similar vein, Ferdinand Hahn critiques the history-of-religions program of Heikki Räisänen for he ignores the theological unity of the New Testament in its emphasis on theology and Christology and the early Christian approval of such a concept.⁴²

The recent insights gained from the genre-critical analysis of the four Gospels also call for an urgent need for Gospel scholarship to refocus upon the main character (i.e., Jesus) rather than the developmental history of the communities which are allegedly responsible for the shaping of the present canonical Gospels:⁴³

None of the four Gospels was written only for one particular community; far less do they simply reproduce the views of the one individual community. They give primarily the views of their authors.⁴⁴

This point does not rest on whether or not the canonical Gospels took on their literary form from a certain antecedent literary genre. Rather, the point is that the recent debates about the literary genre of the Gospels call attention to the centrality of the main character, Jesus.

Johannine Christology from the Vantage Point of the Jewish Context

If another consensus is to be designated, it would be the prominence of the Jewish religious/cultural milieu, with which a large number of Johannine exegetes associate the formation of the Fourth Gospel.⁴⁵ The foremost reason for such a judgment is due to the recent recognition of Gospel scholarship that the historical genesis of the Jesus tradition is deeply rooted in Jewish contexts:

The picture of Jesus that has [recently] emerged is more finely nuanced, more obviously Jewish … we read and read again the old Gospel stories and try to come to grips with the life of this remarkable Galilean Jew.⁴⁶

On a negative note, for example, it has become passé to posit the provenance of Johannine dualism exclusively in terms of Hellenism. Since the discovery of the Qumran documents, it has provided a fertile conceptual backdrop for such a distinct Johannine trait, and subsequent researches reveal pervasive dualistic symbols, language, and worldview present in Palestine through various intertestamental Jewish literatures including the Qumran documents during the New Testament era.⁴⁷

Unless a sharp bifurcation is to be placed between the first and the third life-settings (that is, between Jesus and his disciples, on the one hand, and the theoretical writer/redactor responsible for the present form of John’s Gospel, on the other), one cannot fail to notice the pervasive Jewish elements of the Jesus tradition, which characteristic also has been frequently criticized as lacking in the previous quests for the historical Jesus:

The third failure of previous quests [the Old and New Quests] has been the mistake of looking for a distinctive Jesus, distinctive in the sense of a Jesus different from his environment. This failure also has a twin aspect: first, the determination to find a non-Jewish Jesus.⁴⁸

Another reason for approaching Johannine Christology from Jewish viewpoints owes to the way in which the fourth evangelist portrays the main character of his Gospel.⁴⁹ That is, that Jesus is depicted primarily and exclusively in Jewish eschatological terms, i.e., Messiah (twice) and Christ (19 times), who was to fulfill the covenant promised in the Jewish scriptures.⁵⁰ Messiah, which is a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic word "Masiha) of this Semitic title does not connote any redeeming figure in the Hellenistic extra-biblical usages and it always refers to objects or abstract ideas. Not to mention the Semitic semantic provenance, therefore, the Greek epithet Christ was unintelligible to Gentiles in the Hellenistic cultural and/or religious contexts with reference to an eschatological overtone as denoted in the Fourth Gospel:⁵²

to persons;] describes a thoroughly secular, everyday process, and has no sacral under-tone at all.⁵⁴

Therefore, Craig Keener comments that

Messiah was a Jewish category, not Gentile, so it is hardly plausible that the title was invented by later Gentile Christians. Christ was a natural way to translate Messiah into Greek, and so it translates anointed one regularly in the LXX…. That John, writing in Greek, should explicitly translate Messiah as Christ (1:41), need not indicate Gentiles in his audience, as some have thought; quite the contrary, John is the only NT writer to include the Semitic term at all.⁵⁵

Finally, the Johannine narratives which inquire of Jesus’ identity manifest repeatedly a tenacious recourse to the exclusive Jewish messianic ideas and expectations as forecast, according to John, in the utmost Jewish authority, the Old Testament. In this respect, Klaus Scholtissek’s assessment is illuminating.

The Johannine Christology is fundamentally biblical theology in the sense that the fourth evangelist reformulates the Old Testament view of God and the covenant … and applies it to Jesus the Nazarene in terms of Messiah…. Like the synoptic Gospels, it was also important for John to interprete the salvific events in the life of Jesus the Nazarene (the incarnation, the death, and resurrection) in terms of the Messiah. The messianic expectation of early Judaism … has gone through a Christian transformation process. Nevertheless, to John’s Gospel, the incarnation of Jesus is to be understood messianically in the covenant history of Israel.⁵⁶

This aspect is most tangibly felt in the passion narratives in which the fourth evangelist depicts the suffering of Jesus as fulfilling the messianic qualifications as expected of the Old Testament.⁵⁷

As such, the aforementioned reasons lead one to conclude that Johannine Christology is dovetailed within the incipient Judaism, inclusive of the Old Testament. As a corollary, this judgment heuristically points to the ancient Jewish messianic antecedents as hermeneutically promising clues for a better understanding of Johannine Christology.⁵⁸ Although this perspective does not promote the sheer exclusion of Hellenistic divine mediator types or traditions, it must, however, be acknowledged that the Jewish religious traditions require a substantially much closer scrutiny than other religious-cultural variables with reference to the formation of the Johannine Christology. In this respect, the comment of Stephen Smalley is penetrating for the scope of this study.

Our consideration of the Jewish influence on the background to the Fourth Gospel leads us to the conclusion that John’s ethos is at root more in touch with Judaism than Hellenism … but if we accept the description of John’s background as ‘Jewish-Hellenistic’ … we must also recognize that the contact with Judaism is primary. The Hellenistic features of the Fourth Gospel tell us more about its final audience, that is to say, than about the background of its author or its tradition.⁵⁹

In contrast to the estimation of Bultmann, Otto Betz notes that the approach to the Gospel of John from Hellenistic frameworks is fatal to the interpretation of the Gospel despite its seemingly sparse citations of the Old Testament passages:

According to Rudolf Bultmann, the Gospel of John is largely free from binding of the Old Testament and in sharp contrast to Judaism; quotations from the Old Testament are quite rare, and the Jews appear overall as opponents of Jesus, as a representative of the faithless and the ungodly world. The Fourth Gospel, therefore, is seen as a Hellenized testimony of faith in which various sources are: (for instance,) a semeia source, which served chiefly the character of Jesus, a special source for the story of suffering and, in addition, this gnosticizing source (both are circulated widely), in which a pure heavenly revealer is proclaimed as the bringer of knowledge and truth, of light and life. But such hypotheses are disastrous for the right understanding of this gospel.⁶⁰

The Main Thesis

In Judaism of the second temple period, Jewish messianic figures were often expected to play a redivivus role such as that of the king David, Moses, or the prophet Elijah. This heightened interest was often juxtaposed in the eschatological contexts. Such traits of thought, language or metaphor, however, are strikingly absent in John’s Gospel. In view of this observation, therefore, this study sets out to make a case that the fourth evangelist presents the Old Testament characters primarily as witnesses to Jesus’ messianic identity in contradistinction to conventional Jewish messianic hopes prior to or contemporary with the writing of the Gospel. This conclusion, however, does not entail a sharp break between the Jewish Scriptures and the Fourth Gospel. One of the more conspicuous reasons lies in John’s belief that Jesus is the pivotal fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures and that their validity is assured as a cogent testimony to the messianic characteristics of Jesus the Nazarene.⁶¹

History of Research

Theios Aner Theory

Before summarizing the past contributions which sought to account for the Johannine Christology in light of the traditional Jewish messianic figures, it is worthwhile to comment on some previous attempts to resolve this question from the Hellenistic context. Hans-Jürgen Kuhn, for example, found no conclusive evidence that the evangelist spoke of Jesus in terms of a prophet. Further, he went on to note the absence of a miracle-working messiah in Jewish tradition. Thus, he postulated a theios aner Christology for the Signs Source in which Jesus is referred to as Son of God. Since the Son of God title is more akin to the Jewish context in his estimation, he dialectically came up with a merged conception of a Jewish Son of God and a Hellenistic miracle-working redeemer which he posited to be present in the Christology of the Signs Source in the Fourth Gospel.

The term, divine man, does not appear not only in John 1:35-42 and 44-50 but in the entire New Testament text. The Jewish Old Testament and Christian New Testament traditions do not use the adjective, divine, for human characteristics. Nevertheless, the texts in John 1 display a tendency to characterize Jesus in terms of a divine-man, although it may not be explicitly apparent. An analysis of the texts in John 1 results in the following. Literary criticism is a valid method for the quesiton of the formation of the Gospel of John. The Jewish Old Testament tradition should be seen as a general influence in its entirety. If the question about the miracles in the New Testament, or especially in the Gospel of John, is concerned, the Hellenistic expressions must be taken into account.⁶²

His point is that although the term, theios aner is explicitly stated nowhere in the New Testament, his analysis of the Fourth Gospel, and John 1:35-51 in particular, leads him to conclude that the Gospel reflects a fused expression, that of the Old Testament and Hellenistic myths, of a divine man with reference to Jesus in the latter traits.

Despite some measure of popularity since 1960s, the theios aner theory, however, has been deemed to be fraught with intrinsic methodical flaws.⁶³ John Polhill, for instance, offers a three-tiered caution.⁶⁴ First, the major sources cited to advocate the theory date back to from as early as the early third century A.D. onward. Thus, a serious anachronistic nature of the comparative approach hampers the alleged influence of the Hellenistic divine myths on Johannine Christology.⁶⁵ The advocates of the theios-aner theory usually claim the necessity of incipient oral traditions prior to their written stages. Granted that the existence of the extended period of an oral stage is certainly possible, however, it is precarious to pursue a scientific query solely on the basis of speculative oral traditions without any tangible evidence.

Second, the general characteristics of divine man myths are also problematic. In other words, the picture of a divine man is an artificially constructed one in that a number of recurring features are compiled from a number of sources so as to create a composite ideal figure. Polhill points out this shortcoming:

The concept theios aner is certainly freely used but seldom defined, and when it is defined, then so broadly that all figures rising out of antiquity might be subsumed under it.⁶⁶

Similarly, Scott laments an uncritical use of different ancient traditions:

by an ancient author. This recognition has given rise to questions about how much Bieler’s influential picture of a single, defined archetype for divine men was in fact created by his indiscriminate use of a single (anachronistic and imposed) title…. Bieler himself compounds so many features of the type, many of which are represented by only one or two (often anachronistic) members, that the very notion of a unified figure begins to seem forced.⁶⁷

It is thus doubtful as to whether the divine man image of Kuhn was created at his fingertips or it was actually circulated among the first century Mediterranean religio-cultural backdrops.

Finally, the history of religions approach, which Polhill labels as reductionistic, appears to assume an immense logical leap with great ease. Differently put, even if there are some parallel imageries and symbols between the miracle accounts of the Fourth Gospel and certain Hellenistic literature, they do not automatically necessitate a literary or social-cultural dependence between them (unless of course one document claims such relationship, for instance, as the Gospel of John evinces a direct dependence on the Old Testament which is attested ostensibly in the fulfillment formulae). These alleged parallels might simply suggest the universal nature of hope for a miraculous and gracious redemption from the common human ordeals experienced in the majority of cultures.⁶⁸ Thus, Polhill writes that

[t]here are parallels to nearly every detail of the Gospel miracles in the ancient literature—both as to form and content. This should come as no surprise. It is mere testimony to the fact that the miracle stories belong to the literary and social milieu of the first-century. One should expect an affinity with that milieu.⁶⁹

For the reasons discussed above, the juxtaposition of Johannine Christology with non-Jewish Hellenistic literature does not seem hermeneutically promising. Rather, a more obvious provenance of Johannine messianism is observed in references to the Old Testament symbols and figures, with which the fourth evangelist plainly and repeatedly associates.

Johannine Christology and the Jewish Messianic Figures

A number of studies sought to address the correlation between the Johannine Christology and the major Old Testament protagonists in John’s Gospel. A brief chronological overview of selective studies on such topics will provide us with a glimpse into the development of the scholarly assessment of the issue.⁷⁰

T.F. Glasson. Thomas F. Glasson published one of the seminal modern book-length treatments that located a thematic linkage of John’s Christology with an Old Testament messianic figure, Moses.⁷¹ He argued that Jesus is presented as a second (or new) Moses based on the typological parallels found in the Gospel and in some Jewish literature