God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29). Raymond Brown notes that this description of Jesus is reminiscent of both the Suffering Servant and the paschal lamb.321 These two echoes of the Old Testament fit together nicely insofar as we have seen that Isaiah envisions a universal Passover lamb to match his universal exodus. Jesus’s identification with the paschal lamb is also shown by the fact that his death occurs during the festival of Passover. Later, it will be shown that other details of Jesus’s passion reinforce his fulfillment of the Passover sacrifice.
Beyond the Passover sacrifice, there is much in John’s narrative to suggest that Jesus is also the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement. In this regard, it should first be noted that the location of Jesus’s betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane is significant. As George Beasley-Murray observes, John, like Luke, does not give us the specific name of the garden of Jesus’s betrayal (although 18:1 strongly implies Gethsemane).322 In other words, John appears to be interested in emphasizing the location of the beginning of Jesus’s passion as simply a “garden.” From the re-creation imagery used by John earlier, it is not unlikely to think that John intends his readers to think of this garden as a new Eden.
The second interesting thing about the location of Jesus’s arrest is that it takes place at the base of the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives is not only the route through which David fled from Absalom (as we mentioned in our discussion of Mark), but it is also the location where Ezekiel saw the glory of the Lord resting when it left the temple (Ezek 11:23).323 Read in this light, the Mount of Olives has become the real temple, since it is de facto the new holy of holies where the kavod has come to rest. As a result, the themes of both the true Temple and Eden come together in a remarkable way. The identification of Eden as the protological temple was, as Stephen Um demonstrates, by no means limited to the Old Testament, but was widely recognized in the literature of Second Temple Judaism.324 If this reading of John’s intention is correct, then John wishes to portray Jesus as the new Adam and the true high priest standing in the reconstituted garden-temple of Eden.
The location of the narrative within the true garden-temple then forms the context of Jesus’s atoning actions. These actions draw a striking parallel with the liturgy of the Day of Atonement as it was possibly practiced during the time of Christ. First, let us examine the description of Jesus’s arrest:
Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he.” Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” (18:4–8, emphasis added)
Andrei Orlov has noted the significance of the fact that John mentions the divine Name “I AM” three times (though Jesus himself, of course, technically only speaks the divine Name twice, and only implies it in the Greek a third time) and has connected it with traditions in the Mishnah concerning the liturgy of the Day of Atonement.325
According to the Mishnah, after the high priest completed his ritual sacrifices of the bull and the goat meant for YHWH, he would confess the sins of the people over the scapegoat while reciting the following prayer:
O Lord, your people, the house of Israel, has committed iniquity, transgressed, and sinned before you. Forgive, O Lord, I pray the iniquities, transgressions, and sins, which the people, the house of Israel, have committed, transgressed, and sinned before you, as it is written in the Torah of Moses, you servant, “For on this day shall atonement be made for you to clean you. From all your sins shall you be clean before the Lord.” (Yoma 6:2, emphasis added)326
There is an obvious parallel between this text and John’s description of Jesus’s arrest, the chief one being that there is a threefold repetition of the divine Name. Both the location of the recitation of this prayer and the reaction of the hearers is also highly suggestive. First, this prayer is spoken after the priest comes out of the holy of holies, which, as we have seen, is where John effectively places Jesus. He moves towards the people in the way that John described Jesus’s moving towards the guards. The reaction of the guards directly parallels the description of the priest and people in the courtyard of the temple:
And the priests and people standing in the courtyard, when they would hear the Expressed Name [of the Lord] come out of the mouth of the high priest, would kneel and bow down and fall on their faces and say, “Blessed be the name of the glory of his kingdom forever and ever.327
Despite these significant parallels, we must remain somewhat cautious regarding this interpretation in light of the fact that the Mishnah was compiled more than one hundred years after the writing of John’s gospel (probably around AD 200).328 These parallels are at least highly suggestive and fit well with the earlier scholarship that showed John viewed Jesus’s ministry as tied up with the fulfillment of the Jewish liturgical calendar.
The rest of John’s passion narrative offers other echoes and similarities with the Day of Atonement. If Jesus offers himself up in the temple-garden as the goat for YHWH, then he must also be cast out of the city like the scapegoat. For this reason he is crucified outside the city (19:17). Of course, the difficulty is that there were two goats, and only one Jesus. Since the goat for YHWH was killed in the temple and the scapegoat was cast out of the city unharmed, it might be argued that John combines the two events of bloody sacrifice and being cast out into a single one. In fact, John is careful to tell us that the place where Jesus was crucified also had a garden (i.e., in reminiscence of the garden-temple) nearby: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden” (19:41, emphasis added).329
There are other aspects of John’s description that suggest that John means to imply that Jesus’s blood is offered up in a garden-temple. The garden spoken of in 19:41 is ultimately where Jesus is buried. Later, on the day of resurrection when Mary Magdalene looks into the tomb where Jesus had been laid she sees “two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet” (20:12, emphasis added). Wright has observed that this strongly parallels the liturgy of the Day of Atonement wherein the blood of the first goat was placed on the mercy seat between golden images of the two cherubim on the cover of the ark.330 Jesus’s person is therefore the new mercy seat (hilastērion).
John’s crucifixion scene itself also further reinforces this interpretation. As Jesus dies he cries out “tetelestai” a word frequently written on a paid bill in the Hellenistic world. 331 Indeed, Jesus is not just the victim on the Day of Atonement, but the priest. John also uses the word “chitōn” to describe the seamless garment that Jesus wears as he is brought to the site of crucifixion (19:23–24). This word is used in the LXX to describe the garment that the high priest wore on the Day of Atonement (see LXX Exod 28:4, Lev 16:4).332
Beyond parallels with the Day of Atonement, there are other hints in the passion narrative of the fulfillment of the Passover sacrifice. According to some, the piercing of Jesus’s side hearkens back to the Passover lamb. Hans Urs von Balthasar cites the rabbinical legislation concerning Passover that prescribes that the blood of the slain Paschal lamb must be drained from the heart.333 Schnackenburg argues that the passage regarding the piercing of Jesus’s side must be interpreted as conveying that the soldiers intended to pierce his heart, since we are told that it is their goal to make certain that Jesus is dead.334 Since Jesus is pierced through the heart and his blood is drained, he is the true “lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). While Jesus is dying, the vinegar given to him to drink is hoisted on a hyssop branch (19:29). This is the same branch used to smear the blood of the Passover lamb on the lintels of the houses during the exodus (Exod 12:22).335 In other words, by his substitionary death, Jesus releases humanity from sin, death, and the devil just as the lamb served as the catalyst for the exodus from temporal bondage in Egypt.
After being pierced by the Centurion’s spear, blood and water flow from Jesus’s side (John 19:34). Following a long established patristic reading of this text, Oscar Cullman and Rudolf Bultmann have suggested that the flow of blood and water represent the sacraments of baptism