John's Jesus and theTemple

For a nice summary on the history of the First and Second temples in Jerusalem as well as their relationship to the Gospel of John, my friend Chad did some research on the topic.

Chad's Paper

It cannot be overstated that the Jerusalem temple, as Chad stated was the center of the Jewish religion prior to 70 C.E. Chad does a very nice job of identifying the various factions, the Christian Jews, the Pharisaic Jews, and even the ever elusive Essenes, while locating their role in Jewish history and John’s story.

As Chad points out in John 4, the story of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman can be seen as anti-temple centered religion narrative. The Johannine community, as Raymond Brown pointed out, had strong affiliations with the Samaritan community and John 4 may be a reflection of that. Jesus, ironically, shows zeal for the temple in John 2 and with what looks like his violent actions, may have stopped the worship of YHWH altogether that day in temple, since the sacrifice was so important. Jesus, in the Evangelist’s record of the good news, is the new Temple of God. Johannine theodicy does not, like the Pharisaic Jews replace the temple with the law, or reject the temple completely like the radical Essenes, but transforms the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus into the new Temple. Therefore, it is not a supercessionist argument where a construction of a temple is not necessary; rather, the temple was a sign (like Jesus’s miracles in John) that pointed to the presence of the Father. As Chad says, “people no longer had to go to God at the temple, but that God had approached them and dwells with them through the on going presences of Jesus.”

Commentary on John 1:47-51

Attached on this link is my commentary on John 1:47-51, using some insights from the Septuagint (Greek) version of the prophet Zechariah's writings.

Heaven Has Opened Up