Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Temple in the Gospel of John

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Interpreters of the Fourth Gospel continue to seek fresh approaches to its interpretation, often seeking to demonstrate the explanatory power and usefulness of applying new methods. Alongside such efforts, interpreters continue to follow more traditional approaches and to ask traditional questions. One traditional line of questioning involves the examination of the connections between the Fourth Gospel and the Old Testament. Stephen Neill, among others, believes that the Old Testament background of the Fourth Gospel is more significant than is often appreciated:

I am convinced that, the more carefully the Gospel is studied, the clearer it becomes that the Hellenistic elements belong to a secondary phase of interpretation, and that the deepest elements in the thought, the bony structure on which the whole Gospel is constructed, are derived from the Old Testament.1

John himself gives support to Neill’s conviction in those passages where it is explicitly indicated that the Old Testament points to Christ (especially, 1:45, 5:39–47), justifying John’s christological interpretation of the Old Testament.2 The use of the Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel and the hermeneutical axioms by which John interpreted the Old Testament deserve ongoing study. If Neill is right, attention to these two areas will continue to produce fruitful insights for interpreters of the Fourth Gospel comparable in significance to insights gained through the application of new interpretive methods.
p 2 The following study will focus on one aspect of John’s use of the Old Testament. Jesus is commonly portrayed in the Fourth Gospel as the fulfillment and replacement of those Old Testament institutions that preceded him. D. A. Carson summarizes the theological significance of this replacement when he says that Old Testament institutions ‘find their true significance and real continuity in him who is the true vine, the true light, the true temple, the one of whom Moses wrote.’3 As this quote attests, one of the Old Testament institutions fulfilled and replaced by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel is the Temple. John makes explicit the connection between Jesus and the Temple in John 2:19–22. At one time, interpreters commonly noted that John 2:19–22 suggests a typological relationship between Jesus and the Temple.4 Recent interpreters often note that Jesus is portrayed as the replacement of the Temple, but only a few continue to suggest that a typological relationship between Jesus and the Temple lies behind Jesus’ statement in 2:19.5
This study aims to fulfill two primary objectives: (1) to examine John’s portrayal of Jesus as the fulfillment and replacement of the Temple and (2) to explore the possibility that the relationship between Jesus and the Temple may properly be described as typological. The results obtained from accomplishing these two objectives will be significant for the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, the use of the Old Testament in the Fourth Gospel, and biblical theology.
In order to lay a suitable foundation for the work at hand, the following matters deserve some initial introductory discussion. The first area of concern p 3 is how this study is related to recent emphases in Johannine studies. The second is to outline the methodological framework undergirding the study. The third is to review relevant scholarly literature on the fulfillment or replacement of the Temple in the Fourth Gospel and on typology. Finally, a chapter-by-chapter overview will lay out the plan for the work.

Background for the Current Study: Contemporary Trends in Johannine Studies

Probably the most noticeable trend in contemporary Johannine studies is the focus on literary-critical approaches.6 R. Alan Culpepper is often given special recognition for demonstrating the promise of examining the Fourth Gospel as a literary work.7 Culpepper’s literary-critical study of the Fourth Gospel uses terminology and theory developed by academicians for use in analysis of fictional narratives.8 Culpepper’s initial work has been followed in rapid succession by numerous other works. While some have followed up on Culpepper’s groundbreaking insights, others have worked more independently by adopting or adapting an impressive variety of literary theories, including reader-response and structuralism.9 One of the positive aspects of literary-critical analyses of the Fourth Gospel has been a focus upon the text in its canonical form, diverting attention away from its sources and redaction. Although some have questioned the appropriateness and fruitfulness of literary studies, literary-critical terminology and theory continue to be prominent in recent works on the Fourth Gospel.10
Even so, literary-critical approaches to the Fourth Gospel do not monopolize p 4 the field. The methodological diversity that characterizes the current scene in Johannine studies brings with it a tendency toward exclusivity and conflict.11

1 Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 346. Cf. D. A. Carson, ‘John and the Johannine Epistles,’ in It Is Written: Scripture Citing Scripture: Essays in Honour of Barnabas Lindars, eds. D. A. Carson and H. G. M. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge, 1988), 245. On the other hand, note the lack of enthusiasm for the OT background of the Fourth Gospel evident in D. Moody Smith’s treatment of ‘the history-of-religions problem’ in Johannine studies (D. Moody Smith, ‘Johannine Studies,’ in The New Testament and Its Modern Interpreters, eds. Eldon J. Epp and George W. MacRae [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989], 276–9).

2 Carson, ‘John and the Johannine Epistles,’ 252.

3 Ibid., 256. It is important to maintain a tight connection between fulfillment and replacement in order to understand the type of replacement that is characteristic of the theology of the Fourth Gospel. As discussed later in this chapter and in chapter 5, such a connection is coherent with a traditional typological understanding of the relationship between OT institutions and their NT fulfillments.

4 See the commentaries by Johann Bengel, E. W, Hengstenberg, John Lightfoot, and Heinrich Meyer at John 2:19–22; see also Patrick Fairbairn, The Typology of Scripture, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1963), 217–8.

5 In favor of a typological relationship are D. A. Carson, Richard Longenecker, Leon Morris, Samuel Amsler, E. Earle Ellis, Harald Sahlin, and Leonhard Goppelt (D.A. Carson, The Gospel according to John [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 182; Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975], 153–4; Leon Morris, The New Testament and the Jewish Lectionaries [London: Tyndale Press, 1964], 71; Samuel Amsler, L’Ancien Testament dans l’église: Essai d’herméneutique chrétienne [Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Delachaux and Niestlé, 1960], 217–8; E. Earle Ellis, Paul’s Use of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957], 91; Harald Sahlin, Zur Typologie des Johannesevangeliums, UUÅ, no. 4 [Uppsala: A.-B. Lundequistska, 1950], 12–13; Leonhard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, trans. D. H. Madvig [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 191).

6 Literary critical approach is here meant to describe a variety of approaches variously classified using descriptors like ‘narrative criticism’ or ‘new literary criticism.’

7 His groundbreaking work was Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel: A Study in Literary Design (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Concerning the promise of Culpepper’s approach, see Xavier Léon-Dufour, ‘Bulletin d’exégèse du Nouveau Testament: L évangile de Jean,’ RSR 73 (1985): 252–3.

8 Even more narrowly, the literary theory that Culpepper draws upon was developed with respect to analysis of nineteenth-century fiction (Carson, John, 67; cf. Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, 4–6, 9–11, 101–6).

9 For a convenient summary of literary theory as it relates to biblical studies, see Anthony Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics: The Theory and Practice of Transforming Biblical Reading (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 471–514.

10 Concerning appropriateness, see Jürgen Becker, ‘Das Johannesevangelium im Streit der Methoden (1980–1984),’ TRu 51 (1986): 14–15, and Carson, John, 63–68; concerning fruitfulness, see John Ashton, Studying John: Approaches to the Fourth Gospel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 156; concerning the limitations and concomitant presuppositions involved in the application of certain literary theories in biblical studies generally, see Thiselton, New Horizons in Hermeneutics, 471, 491, 493, 502.

11 Cf. Thomas Brodie’s short history of interpretive approaches to the Fourth Gospel and his observations about methodological ‘totalitarianism’ (The Gospel according to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary [New York: Oxford University, 1993], 3–10).