To say that the Hebrew Scriptures are about Jesus, in the normative sense, does not convey what Jesus meant when he said the Scriptures “testify about me” (John 5:39), or what Paul means when he writes, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3-4). The Gospel which Paul delivered (παρέδωκα, “traditioned”) is not a reference to the four Gospels but to the Law, the Psalms and Prophets, which (in and of themselves) do not deliver the story of Jesus; but given the life of Christ, they testify to and interpret Jesus. Apart from events in the life of Christ, it would be hard to locate such things in the Scriptures, but given the reality of Christ, the Scriptures are a means of understanding these events and these events unveil the meaning of Scripture. As John Behr writes, “Read in the light of what God has wrought in Christ, the Scriptures provided the terms and images, the context, within which the apostles made sense of what happened, and with which they explained it and preached it.”[1] Paul calls this regulative interpretive method the rule of faith (Rom. 3:27), which is not only a basic premise for reading Scripture but is the situation in which Scripture is constituted. Scripture is an interpretation of the person of Christ (in both Testaments), and this is the substance of its unity and meaning. The ultimate meaning and significance of the text, is not in the original intent of the author, in the history behind the text, or even in the immediate reference of the text. The meaning is in Christ.
As in the Gospel of John, the point in either the Old Testament references or the Gospel explanation, is not to provide a mere account of the history or story of Jesus, but rather there is an intertextual weaving in the Apostolic explanation, which relies upon the Scriptures, the living tradition, the witness, providing the Gospel (preached first, then written). As John says of Jesus, “He has explained Him” (Jn 1:18), but this exegesis of God in Jesus is through Scripture. The exegesis of Scripture itself is never the point, but Christ is explained through the medium of Scripture (the exegesis of God). The point is not to understand the text, the original meaning, or the author’s intent, as in historical-critical scholarship. The point is to understand Christ, and through Christ to understand God. Christ explained, “according to the Scriptures,” becomes the sole subject of Scripture throughout.
As Jesus says, “It is they that bear witness about me” (Jn. 5:39). We understand that it is on the basis of the Old Testament witness to Christ, that the identity of Christ (who he is, in the language of the Gospel) is spelled out: “We found the Messiah” (1:41); “You are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel” (1:49); “This is the prophet” (6:14; 7:40); and, “My Lord, my God” (20:28). Jesus as the Logos (of Genesis and the Targums), is the initiator of a new humanity in his first week: showing in day one, with John the Baptist, the transition to a superior kingdom, and in day two with John pointing to Jesus as a new sort of Passover Lamb a new atonement, and in day three the first disciples and the assembling of the Church (true Israel begins), and day four and five the chief apostle and the apostles selected, and day six Israel, without guile, is selected, and day seven with the Cana miracle, pointing to the passion, resurrection, and wedding feast of the Lamb. The new creation of John 1, followed by seven days of unfolding new creation culminates in a new Israel. Jesus then inaugurates a new Temple, lending new significance to the feasts, the Sabbath, the Father’s household, the law, which at the same time provide the interpretive frame for understanding who he is.
Jesus indicates his signs inherently bear testimony about his identity, “for the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish—the very works that I do—testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me” (Jn. 5:36; see also 10:25, 37–38; 14:11). However, even the seven signs in John have as their interpretive frame, the Hebrew Scriptures: 1. the new wine (a phrase related to God’s blessing in the Hebrew Scriptures) of Cana points, as indicated, to the passion – or to the “coming of the time” of Jesus’ death and resurrection. 2. The cleansing of the Temple is an overt reference to the death and resurrection and a new understanding of kingdom and temple. 3. the cure of the royal official’s son (4:46-54) demonstrates Christ’s power to speak events into reality, as at creation. 4. the cure of the paralytic at the pool (5:1-17) points to the healing of the nations fulfilling the prophecies of Isaiah. 5. the multiplication of loaves (including walking on water) (6:1-66) speaks of the period of the Exodus when God led Israel through the Sea and fed them in the wilderness and revealed his true identity (I am that I am). 6. the cure of the man born blind (9:1-41) is a direct fulfillment of Isaiah 35:5. 7. the raising of Lazarus (11:1-44) points to Jesus’ resurrection, and the raising of all Israel. In Isaiah God promised to raise up Israel on the third day after they were cut down and killed in exile, and in Ezekiel, God promised to gather scattered Israel again, and this gathering is described as a resurrection (“The dry bones shall rise again” Ezekiel 37:1-14). Christ’s resurrection is more fully understood in this light, and gives a new depth of meaning to the rescue of Israel.
Throughout, Christ is duplicating and fulfilling or giving final meaning to the history of Israel. The Exodus of Israel and the original Pascha (or Passover) is the type of the true Passion of Christ (Christ is the true Passover Lamb). In turn, Moses warded off the deadly snakes in the wilderness but this event finds its true meaning in Christ: “Just as Moses raised the snake in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that those who believe in Him may have eternal life” (John 3:14).
The intertextuality in John is sometimes an overt quote, an echoing of an event or a name, a fulfilling in a prophetic sense, or a filling out of meaning, but throughout the life and sayings and events of Christ, are witnessed to or according to Scripture. The true bread from heaven (6:41–42), the heavenly King and Truth (18:36–38), and the true prophet (7:47–52), resonate with and complete the prior understanding of the Scriptures. The Jews Jesus addresses (in Jn. 5) fail to understand their Scriptures, and he accuses them of voiding Scripture: “You do not have His word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent” (Jn. 5:38). They may have memorized much of Scripture, and they may have literally been wearing Scripture on the phylactery around their head, but nonetheless, they have emptied out the word of God by focusing on the Scriptures apart from Christ.
John is simply a case in point of what Paul means about the testimony of Scripture. It is not that Scripture alone is enough, or that the Gospel is understood in isolation from Scripture, but the Gospel is the point of Scripture. Paul illustrates (in 2 Cor 3:12-4:6), seeming to build upon the saying of Jesus: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” (John 5:46). There is no accepting Moses and rejecting Christ, as Moses is all about Jesus. In Corinthians, Moses’ veil is simultaneously a cover-up of the fading sort of glory, whose only function is to point to the unfading glory of Christ: “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Co 3:18). The veil of the law, taken as adequate, hides the true glory, but taken as a type is itself an indicator of the unfading glory of Christ. The limit of the one is a means of understanding the other.
The true proclamation of Scripture, found in Christ, means that Scripture must be read within the interpretive frame (the hermeneutic) of the Gospel (Christ crucified and raised). “Read in the light of what God has wrought in Christ, the Scriptures provided the terms and images, the context, within which the apostles made sense of what happened, and with which they explained it and preached it, so justifying the claim that Christ died and rose according to the Scriptures.’”[2]
[1] John Behr, Formation of Christian Theology: The Way to Nicaea, Vol. 1, (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 27-28.
[2] Baer, 27.