the-bible-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls

122 A STUDY IN SHARED SYMBOLISM AND LANGUAGE
a devout Jew, Jesus makes the required pilgrimage up to Jerusalem for the
feast (7:10) and enters the Temple (7:14). This great feast at the end of
the year (Tishri, in early fall) celebrates the ingathering of the crops and
is sometimes called “the Feast of Ingathering.” It is also called the Feast of
Booths, when Jews celebrate the period in the wilderness following the
exodus from Egypt.
Parts of John 7 and 8 may indicate how some Jews remembered the
way this feast was celebrated when the Temple was still standing, or how
it may have been commemorated in the synagogue from which they were
later excluded. The Fourth Evangelist has Jesus stand up in the Temple
on the last day of the feast and exhort those who heard him to “come to
me and drink” (7:37–38). The multiple references to water and to “rivers
of living water” may reflect the seven-day water libation ceremony (m.
Sukkah 4:9). When the Temple cult was active, a priest would obtain
water in a golden container from the pool of Siloam, south of the Temple.
The priest would then proceed ceremoniously through the “Water Gate”
of the Temple, pour the water into two silver bowls near the altar, from
which the water would pour forth from perforated holes. This libation to
Yahweh would elicit rejoicing and the playing of trumpets, flutes, and
rams’ horns. On the one hand, Jews in the Johannine community may
have remembered experiencing these celebrations. On the other hand,
they may have remembered reliving them in synagogues. In either case,
the Fourth Gospel mirrors the fact that both of these once-cherished celebrations
are no longer possible for the Jews in the Johannine community.
Jesus’ words “I am the light of the world” (8:12), reminiscent of
Qumran ideology, have an interesting setting. He is said to have uttered
them also during the Feast of Tabernacles, in which one ceremony is
called the “lighting of lights” (m. Sukkah 5:2). Well after 70 C.E. Jews
would have remembered the lighting of lights and the dancing that ceremoniously
accompanied it in the Temple. Perhaps these customs were
reenacted in some way in synagogue services. I tend to agree with Gale
A. Yee who, in Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John, contends that the “attention
that the Fourth Evangelist gives these festivals strongly suggests that
these feasts had an important place in the piety of his community as
Jewish Christians.” 78 Whether the Evangelist is referring to the Temple
ceremony of Jesus’ time or recalling how Tabernacles was celebrated after
70 C.E., it is clear that Jewish festivals play an important, if perhaps only
a rhetorical, role in the Gospel. This fact underscores the Jewishness of
78. Gale A. Yee, Jewish Feasts and the Gospel of John (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1989),
27 (italics hers).