Judge Jesus

Approaching Jesus’s Messianic Judgeship in the Gospel of John from an Early Jewish Perspective

Jeremiah L. Stallman

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781725298439
  9781725298446
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725298453
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

How do you understand the messianic judgeship of Jesus? Interpreting certain themes in the Gospels is often done through a twenty-first-century Western perspective. Judge Jesus will seek to help a modern reader of the Gospel of John see the concept of Jesus's messianic judgeship through the eyes of a first-century Jewish audience. Judge Jesus will explore how the themes of judgment and messianic expectation throughout Early Judaism impacted how John's Jewish audience would have understood the words of his Gospel. As a twenty-first-century interpreter of the Gospel of John, your studies will be greatly enhanced as you start to see these themes in the same way that John's Jewish audience originally understood the words that he wrote.

1

Introduction

The modern Christian reader of the Gospel of John tends to interpret the Gospel through a twenty-first-century mindset, full of well-nuanced descriptions of Jesus influenced by the rest of the New Testament and nearly two thousand years of Christian interpretation. The original readers of the Gospel of John had a different interpretive lens through which they would have understood the words of Jesus. John’s audience was comprised of both Jews and gentiles.1 This study will focus on John’s Jewish audience, due to the Jewish nature in which the Gospel was written and due to John presenting an audience of Jews, who would have initially interpreted Jesus’s words through their own Jewish mindset. The overall goal of this study is to not just establish how John’s first Jewish audience would have understood Jesus’s teachings within their own beliefs and traditions, but also to demonstrate to the modern interpreter of the Gospel of John that a deep study of early Jewish beliefs and traditions concerning messianic expectation, including of the role of judge, illuminates and amplifies Jesus’s teachings concerning his own role as Messiah and judge.

Jesus presents himself as having the role of judge in the Gospel of John.2 For the modern Christian, this is not a problem, since Jesus’s claim as judge fits with other New Testament teachings concerning his role as judge and with the Christian belief that Jesus is God. However, the question is rarely, if ever, asked concerning how John’s Jewish recipients react when Jesus boldly proclaims to the religious leaders at the temple that “not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22) and later, “He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man” (5:27). Were these claims by Jesus something completely foreign to the Jews, or was there a precedent in their own messianic expectation for the messiah to be given the right to judge? In the writing of his Gospel to his own audience, it seems that John assumes his audience would have been familiar with the early Jewish beliefs concerning the expected messiah and his role as eschatological judge.3 This project will specifically explore early Jewish literature, with special consideration of early Jewish beliefs on messianic expectation and the role of judgment. These Jewish beliefs will then be the lens through which the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John will be explored, in order to reveal just how radical Jesus’s words would have been to John’s first-century Jewish audience. Thus, the modern reader of the Gospel of John will better understand John’s presentation of Jesus’s words concerning his role as messianic judge through an early Jewish interpretive lens.

Why This Study is Needed

Within the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in Second Temple Jewish studies, especially as they relate to New Testament interpretation. However, there still remains a vast need for these studies in New Testament commentaries, introductions, teaching materials, etc. The scholarly community is aware of their existence and is overall familiar with the implications and importance they hold for New Testament biblical studies. The well-informed pastor will add these implications to his sermon. Many biblically literate people in the church are not aware of early Jewish sources and may see extrabiblical sources in a negative light. Another reason for this study is to point the biblically literate (and biblically illiterate) church community to the fact that early Jewish documents are necessary to help the church understand more fully the teachings of Jesus.

Another reason this study is needed is because there is very little interaction in early Jewish studies as they relate to the Gospel of John. Various scholarly works have focused on early Judaism and the Synoptic Gospels or early Judaism and the Pauline Epistles, but very few scholarly works consider early Judaism and the Gospel of John. Furthermore, this author is unaware of any scholarly sources that extensively consider John’s representation of Jesus as messianic judge in light of early Jewish belief. Thus, there is a great need for increased scholarship in this area of interpreting various aspects of the Gospel of John in light of early Jewish beliefs.

Seeing Things from an Early Jewish Perspective

The modern reader of the Gospel of John does not read and understand the presentation of Jesus’s teachings in the same way that John’s original audience understood them. The author of the Gospel of John writes to a first-century audience that would likely have understood John’s Jewish references and the words of Jesus’s teachings from a first-century Jewish perspective. A first-century Jewish reaction to the teachings of Jesus is not...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Themes of Judgment and Messianic Expectation in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
• Chapter 3: The Themes of Judgment and Messianic Expectation at Qumran
• Chapter 4: The Danielic Son of Man and Its Development in Second Temple Judaism
• Chapter 5: The Audiences and Their Messianic Expectations Represented in the Gospel of John
• Chapter 6: Jesus’s Representation as the Son of Man in the Gospel of John
• Chapter 7: Jesus’s Teachings on Judgment and Judgeship in the Gospel of John
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Appendix: An Example of Further Study
• Bibliography