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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
E. L. Allen, writing in a little noticed article in 1953, claimed that just as the early Christian Apostles were the representative of Jesus in accordance with the shaliach conception of Rabbinic Judaism, Jesus himself was portrayed as the representative or shaliach of God in a number of New Testament works from the writings of Paul to the Gospel of John. Some fifteen years later, apparently without knowledge of Allen's essay, Peder Borgen examined the representative idea, or the agency idea as he more aptly called it, in Jewish halakhic writings and argued that the long recognized sending motif in John showed close affinities with this material. He went on to argue that the portrayal of Jesus as a ‘heavenly agent who has come down among men’ needed to be understood in terms of Jewish Merkabah mysticism. Merkabah mysticism combined among other things,halakah, heavenly figure and the heavenly world just as the concept of agency does in the Gospel of John. He was also able to show the same phenomena in Philo and suggested that this too must be seen as part of the background for the agency concept in John.
1 Allen, E. L., ‘Representative-Christology in the New Testament’, HTR 46 (1953), pp. 161–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 The halakhic writings contain Jewish laws or ordinances governing daily activities based on the oral interpretation of the Old Testament and are found in the Talmud.
3 Borgen, P., ‘God's Agent in the Fourth Gospel’, Religions in Antiquity: Essays in Memory of E. R. Goodenough, edited by Neusner, J. (Leiden: Brill, 1968), pp. 136–148.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., pp. 144–147. Merkabah mysticism is the name given to the esoteric mystical tradition of the Jewish Rabbis which was concerned with the knowledge of the heavenly world.
5 For Bultmann's views see ‘Die Bedeutung der neuerschlossenen mandaischen und manichaischen Quellen fur das Verstandnis des Johannesevangeliums’, ZNW 25 (1925), pp. 104–109Google Scholar, and more recently his The Gospel of John (ET Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971), pp. 248–252.Google Scholar
6 Meeks, W. A., ‘The Divine Agent and his Counterfeit in Philo and the Fourth Gospel’, Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity, edited by Fiorenza, E. S. (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), pp. 43–67.Google Scholar
7 Buhner, J.-A., Der Gesandte undsein Weg im 4 Evangelium (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1977).Google Scholar
8 Ibid., pp. 270–398.
9 Borgen, , ‘God's Agent’, pp. 138–144.Google Scholar
10 Barrett, C. K., ‘Shaliah and Apostle’, Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube, edited by Bammel, E., Barrett, C. K. and Davies, W. D. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 94–102.Google Scholar
11 Barrett, Ibid., pp. 90–91 correctly observes that the principle of agency ‘in itself is one that operates in practically all civilized societies’.
12 Schweizer, E., ‘Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Hintergrund der “Sendungsformel”: Gal. 4.4f. Rom. 8.3f. John 3.16f. I John 4.9’, ZNW 57 (1966), pp. 199–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Rengstorf, K. H., ‘
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14 Ibid., pp. 398–400, 406.
15 Borgen, , ‘God's Agent’, p. 144.Google Scholar
16 Meeks, , ‘Divine Agent’, p. 55.Google Scholar
17 E.g., Bousset, W., Kyrios Christos (ET New York: Abingdon, 1970), pp. 31–152.Google Scholar
18 Cf. Allen, , ‘Representative-Christology’, p. 166.Google Scholar
19 Cf. Phil. 1.6–11; I Cor. 1.30; 3:23.8:6; 11.3; Rom. 8.32; and I Thess. 4.14.
20 Cf. Phil. 2.6–8; Rom. 5.19; and Rom. 3.24–26.
21 Borgen, , ‘God's Agent’, p. 141.Google Scholar
22 Borgen's own demonstration of this principle in John is marred by the fact that he has to draw from several unrelated passages to prove that the necessary framework is present for the principle to be reflected in his key text, John 12.31–32. See Ibid., pp.140–142.
23 Cf. also II Cor. 1.1; II Cor. 5.20; I Thess. 2.6; and Gal. 1.1.
24 Casalis, G., Correct Ideas Don't Fall from the Skies, (ET New York: Orbis Press, 1984), p. 48.Google Scholar
25 See Kim, S., The Origin of Paul's Gospel (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1981), for an extensive working out of this theme.Google Scholar
26 See e.g. Matt. 26.47–56; Luke 24.25–27; and Acts 13.27–29.
27 The one apparent exception is Gal. 3.13. In this passage Paul creates an ad hoc argument using Deut. 21.23 to prove that Christ redeemed those under the law by becoming a curse for them by the manner of his death upon a ‘tree’. This use of the Old Testament to interpret the meaning of Jesus' death differs completely from the Synoptic Gospels and Acts which seek to demonstrate that Jesus' death was a fulfilment of prophecy.
28 Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 93–94.Google Scholar
29 Barrett, C. K., A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: A. and C. Black, 1973), p. 163.Google Scholar
30 Dunn, J. D. G., ‘Paul's Understanding of the Death of Jesus’, Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology, edited by Banks, R. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 140.Google Scholar
31 See Rom. 3.24–26; 8.32; Gal. 4.4–5; Col. 1.13ff.