The Gospel of John: Temple and Christology

2019 ◽  
pp. 197-221
Author(s):  
Eyal Regev
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Flexible Model

This chapter addresses the scholarship on the Temple in the Gospel of John. John relates Jesus to the Temple, attributing to Jesus certain features of the Temple. He does so since he uses the Temple as an explanatory model for understanding Jesus. Indeed, Jesus's role and character are explained in terms of several characteristics that are also shared by the Temple. Portraying Jesus as analogical to the Temple does not aim to show that the Temple is no longer relevant. Instead, the Temple is used as a model by which to comprehend Jesus's religious function. This “Temple Christology” provides a more flexible model that corresponds with the literary evidence. The result is a less radical relationship between Jesus and the Temple. Jesus is neither the new Temple nor a full replacement of the Temple. He is like the Temple—serving similar religious functions but certainly not all of the Temple's functions.

scholarly journals ‘Breek die tempel af’: Etiese dimensies in Johannes 2:13-22?

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan G. Van der Watt
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Surface Level ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
Performative Text ◽  
The Temple

Destroy this temple’: Ethical dimensions in John 2:13–22? The question asked is to what extent could one speak of ethical dynamics in the Gospel of John, even in cases where there is no surface level textual evidence for the presence of ethical material? It is argued that through the process of rereading (‘relecture’), which is invited by the Johannine text as performative text, ethical dimensions are highlighted in texts where such emphases were not apparent at the first reading. As example the events at the temple, narrated in John 2:13–22, are analysed.

John the Evangelist

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-98
Author(s):  
John Behr
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
The Body ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
High Priest ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Temple

Chapter One explores the figure of John and his Gospel from historical testimony given in the second and third century CE and as treated in contemporary scholarship. The John who wrote the Gospel, the chapter argues, was not the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve apostles, but the disciple of the Lord, the Elder who resided in Ephesus. The first part of this chapter also examines, on the basis of the historical evidence, the occasion for the writing of the Gospel, and argues for the unity of the Johannine corpus (including the Apocalypse). The second part of the chapter turns to the description given by Polycrates of Ephesus that John wore the ‘petalon’ in Jerusalem, that is, that he was the high priest of the temple, which, this chapter argues, refers to the fact that, in the Gospel of John, he alone amongst the disciples stood at the foot of the cross as the body of Jesus was lifted up upon the cross as the true Temple. It was, moreover, as this chapter shows, only the followers of John who had an annual celebration of Pascha, held on 14 Nissan, until the mid to late second century, when others began to celebrate this feast on the following Sunday, leading to the Quartodeciman controversy, the association of Sunday with the Resurrection, and the development of the Tridium, the three-day celebration of the Passion.

Zu den Toponymen Lithostroton und Gabbatha in Joh 19,13. Mit einem Lokalisierungsversuch des Prätoriums des Pilatus

2015 ◽  
Vol 106 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-200
Author(s):  
Cornelius Vollmer
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
North West ◽  
Mount Zion ◽  
The Temple

Abstract: This study examines two toponyms that only occur in the story of Jesus’ Passion in the Gospel of John (19,13), Λιθόστρωτον and Gabbatha. Based on a range of sources the argument is made for their definition as and their location at the outer court of the Gentiles of the Temple (λιθόστρωτον; cf. 2Chron 7,3; Josephus, Bell. 6,85.189) on Mount Zion (Gabbatha; presumably deriving from ,גִּבְעָתָהּ „her [Zion’s] hill“ from Isa 31,4). The result has also consequences for the location of Pilate’s Praetorium at Jerusalem in so far as it is topographically connected to the above mentioned toponyms. Hence the locality where the flagellation, interrogation and trial of Jesus took place was the Fortress Antonia which stood directly adjoined to the Temple plateau at its north-west corner – at least if we follow the Gospel of John.

‘The Temple of His Body’

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-193
Author(s):  
John Behr
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
John 1 ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Way

Chapter Three opens Part Two of this work, which looks at what it is that is ‘finished’, as Christ affirms with his last word from the Cross in the Gospel of John. This chapter focuses on Christ as the true Temple, erected when his body is lifted up upon the Cross, Building upon the work of Mary Coloe and others, this chapter explores how Christ is presented in the six feasts which structure the narrative of this Gospel, culminating in the Passion and the appearances of the Risen Christ on the first and eighth day. In addition, this chapter also examines the way in which imagery drawn from the Tabernacle and Temple are used to explain Christ’s flesh (John 1:14 and 6), the relationship of this flesh, his glorified body, to the Eucharist and martyrdom, broadening in this way what is meant by ‘incarnation’.

Violence as Sign in the Fourth Gospel

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 100-117
Author(s):  
Jennifer Glancy
Keyword(s):  
Gospel Of John ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Passion Narrative ◽  
Symbolic Communication ◽  
Hand Functions ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Violence ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Temple

AbstractThe Gospel of John twins the history of Jesus' body with the history of the temple. On John's telling, intersections of those two violent histories are multiple. In the fourth Gospel, the violence directed against Jesus' body that unfolds in the passion narrative is catalyzed (on a narrative level) by Jesus' own physically enacted violence at the temple site. Jesus' action at the temple, his use of a whip to drive out his fellow Jews, is a form of symbolic communication. Jesus' appearance in the temple, whip in hand, functions as a violent epiphany, a moment of self-revelation akin to his self-revelation at Cana. Recognition of the temple incident as sign forces us to consider what, precisely, Jesus reveals about himself when he picks up a whip to clear men and goods from the space he calls his Father's house. As Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht argue, "Violence is a form of communication…. Symbolic violence, profanation, is used by members of one community… in order to mobilize their own communities, to make their definition of reality the dominant one…. By profaning the other's sacred place you make the other profane, an alien with no claim to possession of that space." By encoding violence as sign the Gospel of John not only records the history of violence but becomes an episode in that history.

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