What follows is a gathering of the many little interludes through which John gives us a robust picture of the first century Jewish imagination, as well as many examples of those who, like Peter, ventured a confession of Jesus’ identity and got it right. 20:31).Īlong the way, John reproduces the Synoptics’ strategy of offsetting true confession with the popular speculations of the leaders and the crowds-only now these speculations are multiplied like so many verbal loaves and fish, and we come away with a rich sense of the Jewish longing for a Coming One (or two!) who will restore religious purity and sovereign rule to the Jewish nation.
So he had the freedom to take his time on his way to accomplishing his primary purpose-which was, incidentally, to persuade his own readers to make the exact same confession as Peter (“…that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,” Jn. Writing three decades after the Synoptics began circulating, John could be reasonably certain that his readers were familiar with at least one of these written accounts of Jesus’ life. So while we come away from this brief narrative with a sense that the people were scrambling to explain Jesus by way of their national expectations, those expectations are only sketched for us in the lightest of lines.Įnter John the Evangelist, who just has to be different, whenever he can be. After all, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are most interested in showcasing Peter’s great confession and Jesus’ response to it (which is, at the moment, “Correct! But don’t tell anybody.”). Could he even be John the Baptist, the nearest example of a prophet anyone knew of in recent memory, and executed by Herod only a few weeks ago?īut the Synoptics stop here with their account of the common folks’ conjectures.Was he Jeremiah, or one of the other famous prophets?.Was he Elijah, who was prophesied to appear as the forerunner of the Messiah?.The crowds are bursting with speculation about who he is, and their guesses reflect the categories and expectations they have heard since childhood, shaped by Hebrew prophecy and centuries of imagination about an expected figure who would set things to rights both within and for their nation:
Naturally, they are all trying to figure him out. The ordinary people have by this time come to know him as a riveting teacher and powerful healer, and over five thousand of them have recently been satisfied with a meal made of five loaves and two fish, distributed by his hands.
8:27-29 and Lk 9:18-20) is set within the context of popular confusion about Jesus’ identity. Peter’s bold confession that Jesus is the Christ (recorded in Mt.
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