The Good and Evil Serpent (97 page)

John 3:14–15 is a significant passage. The unit is carefully composed, and most likely reflects long and in-depth discussions in the Johannine community of the meaning of Jesus’ death and his relation to Moses. John 3:14–15 is shaped by a sociological context that has separated Johannine Jews from those who claim to be Moses’ disciples. The latter introduce the Johannine narrative and are echoed repeatedly throughout the narrative theology that follows after 3:14–15.

What is the meaning of “in the wilderness” in John 3:14? A focus on 3:14 awakens something that the Jews in the Johannine community knew well. The phrase “in the wilderness,” would, most likely, remind them of the heading of the fourth book of the Torah (= Pentateuch), which we call “The book of Numbers.” The opening words of the Hebrew text are: “And Yahweh spoke to Moses.” These are followed by: “In the wilderness.”
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This observation reveals another careful use of words by the Fourth Evangelist, and it would certainly have been noticed by at least some of the Jews who read the Fourth Gospel and the Book of Numbers as Scripture.

More than one typology from Numbers is evident in the Fourth Gospel.
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The serpent was a type and Jesus the antitype; that seems indisputable.
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This typology from Numbers is developed within a larger typology. The final editor of Numbers recounts, with a ritual celebration of God’s mighty acts in history, how Israel journeyed through the wilderness successfully. They lived in tents. God’s tabernacle was a tent. The people saw God’s glory as a cloud by day and fire by night. Such imagery has shaped the Prologue of the Gospel of John, especially in the climactic verse 14: “And the Word flesh became, and pitched a tent among us. And we beheld his glory.” The continuing presence of God, God’s glory, and the imagery of God tenting among us were most likely derived by the Fourth Evangelist from the Book of Numbers. It is no wonder, then, that he was fond of this book of Scripture and obtained from it his typology of the serpent for Jesus’ final day on earth: Jesus’ crucifixion was also his exaltation.

The Book of Numbers apparently supplied two journeys for the Fourth Evangelist. First, it supplied the concept of Jesus’ journey from above to the earth and his return above to the Father. Second, it provided a paradigm: the journey of Jesus’ followers through the wilderness of life, and drinking “the living water” that provides eternal life. Thus, Jesus’ followers were to perceive that Jesus’ way led to the necessity of the cross on which Jesus was exalted like a serpent (the symbol of new life) and from which he was freed to return to his Father.

The Book of Numbers is not the only source of the Evangelist’s thought in 3:14. The verb “to lift up” does not derive from Numbers 21. The Fourth Evangelist inherited it either from the kerygmata in the Palestinian Jesus Movement or from a study (perhaps his own) of Isaiah 52:13 (esp. in the LXX): “My Servant … shall be exalted” or “lifted up.”
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The fact that the passages in the Fourth Gospel in which the verb “to lift up” occurs (3:1415, 8:28, 12:32–34) are linked traditionally with the Synoptic passion predictions (viz. Mk 831, 9:31, 10:32–33) should not suggest that the Fourth Gospel is dependent on the Synoptics. All four Gospels were preceded not only by the early proclamations
(kerygmata)
but also by the beginnings of teaching and research
(didache)
in the Palestinian Jesus Movement.

One final word on “as” (
) and “so” (
) in John 3:14 seems prudent. We have seen that “as” most likely modifies a clause: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up.”

This grammatical construction is used again by the Fourth Evangelist in 5:21 and 5:26. Each time it seems to echo the leading thought of 3:14–15; that is, this unit of thought stresses that Jesus is the source of life. Note the construction:

For as (
) the Father raises the dead and gives life (
),
So
(
) also the Son gives life (
) to whom he will. [5:21]

For
as
(
) the Father has life (Zwi]v) in himself,
So
(
) he has given to the Son also to have life (
) in himself. [5:26]

These verses seem to echo the thought of 3:14–15; that is, they stress that belief that resurrected life is possible now through Jesus (cf. Jn 5:21 and 25). He, Jesus, conveys to the Johannine Jews what the symbol of the serpent in the Asclepian and other cults conveyed to their devotees. The serpent symbolized life (Pos. 20), renewed life (Pos. 26), and immortality and resurrection (Pos. 27) for the Johannine Jews. They shall have eternal life; the conclusion of the result clause in John 3:15, “that all who are believing in him may have eternal life.”

Son of Man Traditions in John
. The key Christological term in John 3:14–15 is “the Son of Man.” As with the Synoptics (Mt, Mk, and Lk) so with the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is portrayed as referring to himself as the Son of Man. The Son of Man concept, not a title, appears for the first time in Daniel 7:13. The seer Daniel has a dream in which he sees “one like a Son of Man” who is “coming with the clouds of heaven.” Scholars have assumed this figure represents collective Israel, but Middle Aramaic and the picture of one coming on clouds seem to indicate a cosmic person. This mysterious vision or dream in Daniel influenced the author of the
Parables of Enoch (1 En
37–71). We now know that this text was composed by a Jew and perhaps sometime in the late first century
BCE
.
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The term, “Son of Man,” is attributed to Enoch, but only in the conclusion of chapter 71.