Jesus and Scripture by Steve Moyise

Author:Steve Moyise
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006710, REL006100
ISBN: 9781441237491
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Allusions

In the dialogue with Nathaniel, where Jesus calls him an ‘Israelite in whom there is no deceit’ (John 1.47), the final saying is: ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1.51). This somewhat obscure promise is reminiscent of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28.12–15, where he sees a ‘ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it’ (Gen. 28.12). In common with Jewish interpretation, the fact that the final pronoun (‘descending on it’) is unspecified means that it could be read as ‘descending on him’, and this appears to be the catalyst for further specifying it as the ‘Son of Man’. Though the quotation is obscure and its fulfilment does not appear anywhere in John’s Gospel, there is a certain appropriateness to Nathaniel, a true Israelite, since Jacob’s name was later changed to ‘Israel’ (Gen. 32.28).

In John’s account of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus does not utter the words of Isaiah 56.7/Jeremiah 7.11 (‘My house shall be a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers’), but says to those selling doves: ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place’ (John 2.16). Although most scholars think that John is responsible for placing this incident at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry rather than at its end, the accusation of making the temple a marketplace seems more appropriate to the situation than the Synoptic reference to a ‘house of prayer’ or a ‘den of robbers’. Indeed, it has been suggested that the words could be an allusion to Zechariah 14.21, which promises that ‘there shall no longer be traders[7] in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day’ (Zech. 14.21). Perhaps the most we can say is that at some point in his ministry, Jesus launched a protest against the running of the temple and justified it by reference to Scripture, although there is some ambiguity as to which Scriptures were actually cited.

In his reply to Nicodemus, Jesus states that there is earthly knowledge and heavenly knowledge, and in words reminiscent of John 1.51, ‘No one has ascended into heaven except the one descended from heaven, the Son of Man’ (John 3.13). He then gives an illustration of both his fate and his role in salvation: ‘And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (John 3.14–15). The incident to which this refers occurs in Numbers 21.1–9, where Moses is told to make a bronze serpent on a pole, so that those who have been bitten by a serpent can look at it and be healed. This use of Scripture is often called ‘typology’, where certain events or people are said to correspond to later events. In this case,

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