52 As Ego Eimi
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
52 JSNT 17 (1983) 52-59 WHO OR WHAT WAS BEFORE ABRAHAM J& JOHN 8:58? Edwin D. Freed Gettysburg College Gettysburg, PA 17325 Chapters 7 and 8 of the Gospel of John have their setting at the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem where Jesus is said to be in constant controversy with the Jews. In chapter 8 there are three occurrences of the absolute use of ego eimi, that is, without a predicate (8:24, 28, 58). Elsewhere I have presented evidence to show that the words ego eimi in 8:24 /l/ and 8:28 HI reflect the writer*s unique concept of Jesus the Christ, the Son of God (8:24; 20:30, 31), and Son of ^an (8:28). In the passage now under consideration (8:58), in response to Jews who misunderstand Jesus, he remarks: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, ego eimi". According to most scholars this is one of the clearest instances of the absolute or predicateless ego eimi and as such indicates some aspect of Jesus' divinity /3/. I should like to suggest, rather, that the meaning of the sentence in the mind of the writer was: "Before Abraham was, I, the Christ, the ^on of God, existed1'. The pre-existence of the Johannine Christ scarcely needs to be argued /4/. John 8:58 is one of the best passages to support such pre-existence. But whether in Jewish literature around the time of John the messiah himself or only the name of the messiah was thought to be pre-existent is a matter of debate. Joseph Klausner /5/ maintains that the messiah "existed before the creation of the world". He bases his view on 2 Esdr. 12:32; 13:26,52; 14:9, and Enoch 39:6, 7. On the other hand, G.F. Moore /6/ says that "'the name of the Messiah1 was in the mind of God before the creation of the world" but that the Messiah himself was not "an antemundane creation". Thus we have the two sides of the debate. Into that debate I shall enter only as it pertains to several messianic ideas which may have influenced John in his creative use of Jewish ideas in developing his own about Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, as ego eimi. Freed: "Before Abraham" in John 8:58 53 In Enoch 48, where the son of man and the messiah are identified, reference to the pre-existence of both the name and the person of the son of man is clearly implied, if not stated. In w. 2 and 3 the writer mentions only the name: And at that hour that Son of Man was named In the presence of the Lord of Spirits And his name before the Head of Days. Yea, before the stars of the heaven were made, His name was named before the Lord of Spirits. But in v. 6 the writer speaks of the person himself: And for this reason hath he been chosen and hidden before Him, Before the creation of the world and for evermore. Since in Hebrew thought the name represents the essence of the person, there can be little doubt that the idea of pre-existence was in the mind of the writer of Enoch /7/ when he wrote as he did about the Son of man/messiah. That the author of John had the same idea in mind when he wrote about the Christ, the Son of God, and Son of Man (8:24, 28, 36) as ego eimi seems to me the best explanation of 8:58. However, I am aware that a crucial question with respect to my argument in the minds of some readers will be that of the date of the Parables of Enoch (37-71) which contain the son of man sayings. Do they date from before or after the time of John? Opinions on the subject vary widely. Those of several well known authorities are mentioned here. M. Black had argued that for several reasons the Parables were medieval in origin /8/. But he has since stated that he now believes they are Jewish and post-Christian and date from about A.D. 100 /9/. J.T. Milik /10/ maintains that the Parables are Christian and are to be dated about A.D. 270. After a review and discussion of Milik1s position, M.A. Knibb concludes that "the evidence for the view that the Parables are a Jewish, rather than a Christian, composition is overwhelming". According to Knibb, they are to be tentatively dated from "the end of the first century A.D." /11/. At the other extreme J.B. Frey /12/ argued for a date as early as the second century B.C. And many scholars have dated the Parables before A.D. 70 /13/. Since there has never been a consensus concerning the date of the Parables of Enoch, and since I am not in a position to 54 JSNT 17 (1983) make a judgement, I can do no better than accept the opinion of J.H. Charlesworth: "If, as most specialists concur, the early portions of 1 Enoch date from the first half of the second century B.C., chapters 37-71 could have been added in the first century B.C. or first century A.D." /14/. For me, of course, the crux of my case does not depend entirely on the inconclusive issue of dating the son of man sayings in the Parables of Enoch, but on a number of other factors as well. There is sufficient evidence to indicate that Jewish messianic ideas and speculation were at a peak before and after the wars against Rome in A.D. 66-73. The story of Bar Kokhba, who thought of himself as "the star out of Jacob" (messiah; Num.24:17) and was acclaimed as the messiah by Rabbi Akiba, is now well known. The belief in his pre-existence has survived in Christian tradition. Eusebius (4:6:2) reports that he "claimed to be a luminary who had come down from heaven" /15/. With respect to the title "Messiah" in John, C.H. Dodd /16/ has written: "no other New Testament writer shows himself so fully aware of Jewish ideas associated with it as does the Fourth Evangelist". In connection with the idea of the hidden messiah, an idea contained in the passage from Enoch 48 quoted above, in John 7:27, Dodd quotes 2 Esdr. 13:52: "Just as one can neither seek out nor know what is in the deep of the sea, even so can no one upon earth see My Son . but in the time of His day" /17/. The idea that the reign (time) of the messiah would endure forever, an idea also known to John (12:34), was an essential aspect of messianic belief from the beginning. The messianic ruler was to be "a father everlasting" whose era of government and peace would be "without end" (Isa. 9:5,6). From such ideas it would be easy for the view that the messiah had always existed to develop. Indeed, the messianic prophecy of Micah may have been a basic passage from which that view developed. There the origins of the ruler of Israel to come "are from of old, from ancient days". "From ancient days" indicates an indefinite period of time. A passage in the Psalms of Solomon says that God already knew the messiah, even though he had not yet come: "This (will be) the majesty of the king of Israel whom God knew; he will raise him up over the house of Israel . ." (17:47). There is a consensus among authorities that these psalms were written in the first century B.C. This passage seems to imply that the messiah already existed but whose coming was still expected. The same idea occurs in 2 Esdr. 12:32: "This is the anointed one whom the Most High has kept Freed: "Before Abraham" in John 8:58 55 until the end of days". During the time John was written (end of first century A.D.), there were many ideas with respect to the messiah and his coming "in the air", so to speak. Among such ideas, very probably, were those of the messiah1s hiddenness and his pre-existence. Although John was surely influenced by Jewish messianic ideas, one really need not search for precise parallels in Jewish literature from his time to substantiate the thesis of this article. Any writer who could write that the "Word" was in the beginning with God would have no reservation about having Jesus say to the Jews that as Messiah he existed before Abraham. Yet, there is another curious bit of evidence that when John composed the ego eimi passage in 8:58, he was influenced not only by the Jewish idea of a pre-existent messiah but by the notion of a hidden messiah as well (the same combination as in Enoch 48:2, 3, 6). Let us recall here that John began his narrative about Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles by saying: "Then he [Jesus] also went up, not openly but in secret" (en kryptô; 7:10). He concludes his narrative by saying: "But Jesus hid himself (ekrybê) and went out of the temple" (8:59). It makes no sense to take the sentence as meaning that Jesus first hid himself physically and then went out of the temple. The sentence stands in contrast to the one in John 12:36 which does make sense: "And when he had gone out he hid himself from them".