Drzewo figowe, osioł i woda żywa. Rola Księgi Zachariasza w Ewangelii Janowej

Abstract

In four sections, the article deals with four specific issues related to the use of the Book of Zechariah in the Fourth Gospel. First, nine different ways in which the Old Testament is employed in John’s Gospel are presented. In this section the article aims to justify focusing on the use of a single OT book in John’s Gospel, an approach which appeals to many scholars as the most appropriate way of dealing with the broader issue of the use of the OT in the Fourth Gospel. Such a seemingly narrow methodological choice enables the exegete to investigate virtually all possible uses of a particular OT text (book), applying the appropriate attention and thoroughness. Second, the article discusses two major methodological problems connected with the study of the OT in the Fourth Gospel, namely (1) the absence of careful, widely accepted def nitions for the literary devices of quote, allusion, and echo; and, related to this, (2) the elusive nature of any objective criteria for identifying allusions and echoes. The article also broaches the issue of the rightly questioned legitimacy of using the term “intertextuality” within the realm of biblical studies employing the historical-critical method. As to the problem of def nitions, Ben-Porat’s definition of literary allusion, together with Sommer’s approach to the phenomenon called an echo, are adopted in this article. Thirdly, the article presents a case study of one particular allusion in the Fourth Gospel, namely the mention of the fig tree in the narrative of the call of the first disciples in John 1:45-51. Indeed, the question of why Nathaniel confesses Jesus to be the Son of God and the king of Israel (1:49) following Jesus’ statement that he saw him under the fig tree (1:48) stands as a perennial crux interpretum in Johannine studies. Seeing an allusion to the prophecy of Zec 3:10 seems to solve this problem convincingly. Fourth, the article discusses the use of explicit quotations from Zechariah in the Fourth Gospel. The current study reveals that there are two basic focal points of the major Johannine references to Zechariah: (1) the cleansing narrative (Jn 2:13-22), with its references to Zec 6:12-13 and 14:21, and the triumphal entry narrative (Jn 12:12-16), which quotes Zec 9:9, both refer to the rebuilding of the temple; and (2) Jn 7:38, quoting Zec 14:8, and Jn 19:30-37, quoting Zec 12:10 both relate to the gif of the Spirit. Taken together, the references to Zechariah in the Fourth Gospel express two facets of a single, fundamental Johannine theological paradigm, i.e. that Jesus is the new temple: (1) the cleansing and rebuilding of the temple, understood as both Jesus’ body and the community of believers, and (2) the gif of the Spirit flowing out of the new temple, Jesus’ body.