The glory of Jesus is a leitmotif of the Fourth Gospel and probably reflects both the Shekinah “glory” of Israel’s God revealed in Jesus as well as honor attributed to Jesus by John. The Jewish wisdom teacher Ben Sira also employs glorification language frequently and carefully in Sirach. Bringing these two texts into conversation illuminates the peculiar and unique ways in which John portrayed the identity of Jesus.
In Sirach 45:1-5, in particular, Ben Sira praised the glory of Moses—a man beloved of God, made equal to the angels, great before his enemies, powerful in word, intrepid before kings, sanctified in faithfulness, party to the holy presence of God, and privy to the secret things of God. Given that John also had much interest in Moses comparison and typology, setting these texts side-by-side brings to the forefront the double-nature of the Fourth Gospel’s glory-Christology. On the one hand, the Johannine Jesus offered great demonstrations of power and authoritative teaching. On the other hand, he fared quite the opposite as Ben Sira’s vision of the exalted Moses, especially in John’s passion narrative where Jesus appears frail, weak, shamed, and defeated. Comparing the Moses of Sirach to the Jesus of John’s Gospel especially reveals the Evangelist’s paradoxical theology of gloria in profundis—the humble glory of God demonstrated in Jesus.
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P. Phillips, The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: A Sequential Reading (London: T& T Clark, 2006), 203; also Kelly and Maloney, Experiencing God: “Only in the Bible does [glory] mean both the social acknowledgement of one’s reputation and role, and the unique saving revelation of God” (p. 12).
R.A. Culpepper, “The Christology of the Johannine Writings,” in Who Do You Say I Am? (ed. M. Powell and D.R. Bauer; Louisville, ky: wjk, 1999), 76; cf. R. Kysar, “The Lukan story clearly distinguished the crucifixion and resurrection from the ascension. For a period of forty days the resurrected Christ appeared to his disciples (Acts 1:3). Then, as they looked on, Christ ‘was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight’ (Acts 1:9). The suggestion of most of the Gospel of John, on the other hand, is that the crucifixion is that “lifting up.” The resurrected Christ is not to be distinguished from the exalted Christ. Crucifixion means exaltation, of which resurrection is the expression. Hence, crucifixion and resurrection are bound together in the Gospel of John. The resurrection is in itself the meaning of the crucifixion. Resurrection is the exaltation that crucifixion brings. Consequently, the Fourth Evangelist has no use for an exaltation scene similar to that found in the Acts of the Apostles.” See R. Kysar, The Maverick Gospel (rev. ed.; Louisville, ky: wjk, 2007), 53; pace M.C. de Boer who argues that the departure language of John should be taken primarily in reference to Jesus’ resurrection, and that exaltation imagery was placed on Jesus’ death as a later, “secondary” development in the Johannine tradition; see “Jesus’ Departure to the Father in John: Death or Resurrection?” in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel (ed. G. Van Belle et al.; Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 1-20.
See J. Crenshaw, “The Book of Sirach,” The New Interpreter’s Bible (ed. L. Keck; nib V; Nashville, tn: Abingdon, 1997), 630.
See B. Corley, “Sirach 44:1-15: An Introduction to the Praise of the Ancestors,” in Studies in the Book of Ben Sira (ed. G.G. Xeravits and J. Zsengellér; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 151-152.
See J. Collins, Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (Edinburgh: T& T Clark, 1997), 101.
Benjamin G. Wright III, “The Use and Interpretation of Biblical Tradition in Ben Sira’s Praise of the Ancestors,” in Studies in the Book of Ben Sira (ed. G.G. Xeravits and J. Zsengellér; Leiden: Brill, 2006), 194. Larry Hurtado draws attention to a pool of Jewish traditions that viewed Moses in an especially exalted way (including Sirach). Hurtado surmises that much is made, then, of Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai where he directly encountered God. One such interpretation comes from Pseudo-Philo (11:4; 13:8-9) where we learn that Moses “was covered with invisible light—for he had gone down into the place where is the light of the sun and moon.” See L.W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (2nd ed.; London: Continuum, 1998), 57.
See S. Pancaro, The Law in the Fourth Gospel (NovTSup 42; Leiden: Brill, 1975), 469-471.
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The glory of Jesus is a leitmotif of the Fourth Gospel and probably reflects both the Shekinah “glory” of Israel’s God revealed in Jesus as well as honor attributed to Jesus by John. The Jewish wisdom teacher Ben Sira also employs glorification language frequently and carefully in Sirach. Bringing these two texts into conversation illuminates the peculiar and unique ways in which John portrayed the identity of Jesus.
In Sirach 45:1-5, in particular, Ben Sira praised the glory of Moses—a man beloved of God, made equal to the angels, great before his enemies, powerful in word, intrepid before kings, sanctified in faithfulness, party to the holy presence of God, and privy to the secret things of God. Given that John also had much interest in Moses comparison and typology, setting these texts side-by-side brings to the forefront the double-nature of the Fourth Gospel’s glory-Christology. On the one hand, the Johannine Jesus offered great demonstrations of power and authoritative teaching. On the other hand, he fared quite the opposite as Ben Sira’s vision of the exalted Moses, especially in John’s passion narrative where Jesus appears frail, weak, shamed, and defeated. Comparing the Moses of Sirach to the Jesus of John’s Gospel especially reveals the Evangelist’s paradoxical theology of gloria in profundis—the humble glory of God demonstrated in Jesus.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 453 | 42 | 3 |
Full Text Views | 213 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 100 | 4 | 0 |