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 and the Lord’s Supper.336 Another complementary reading of this symbolism might be that the blood and water represent John’s final identification of Jesus with the temple and its cult. Hahn notes that we are told in Ezekiel 47:1–11 that living water would flow out of the eschatological temple. Read in light of this passage, it would appear that John is suggesting, yet again, that Jesus’s body is the eschatological temple. The same author has also pointed to the rabbinic tradition that two streams, one of water and the other of blood (i.e., from the sacrifices), flowed out of the Second Temple.337 As we observed earlier, the temple was the locus of God’s glory in the Old Testament. From it he mediated his holiness to his people. Read from this perspective, John asserts that as the glory of God, Jesus now mediates that same holiness to the Church by his death and through the sacraments.
This scene also evokes more Edenic imagery as well. Christ lying dead on the cross is reminiscent of Adam asleep giving birth to Eve out of his side. This parallel has been frequently noticed throughout the history of exegesis.338 In support of this reading, it should be observed that the crucifixion occurs on the sixth day of the week (the day of the creation of humanity) and that (as Wright noted above) Jesus has been identified as the true man (ecco homo, actually “human,” “anthrōpos” John 19:5). Read in this light, John appears to be asserting that Jesus is the second Adam and does for the Church through Word and sacrament what Adam did for Eve. This interpretation is bolstered by J. Ramsey Michaels’s observation that John possesses no description of ripping the veil of the temple.339 If Jesus is the true Temple, then the piercing of his heart is the actual ripping of the veil. Therefore, much like the preincarnate Christ gave himself over to ancient Israel by his presence in the cult, he now gives himself to the Church through Word and sacrament. In contrast to the Israelite cult though, he now ceases to be segregated from them, but instead directly gives himself over to them in the means of grace.
By rising from the dead in a garden on the first day of the week, Jesus reveals himself as the new Adam and the divine agent of new creation. In the garden Mary mistakes him for the gardener (20:15), the vocation held by Adam prior to the Fall. In effect, Adam has returned to the garden and creation has begun anew. By faith (3:16), one enters into this new creation and is “born again” (3:3), this time of “water and the Spirit” (3:5), that is, through baptism. In this passage, we are reminded again of the original creation in which the Spirit hovered over the waters (Gen 1:2) and recognized the new act of creation that Jesus brings to us, mediated through Word and sacrament.
221. See the following commentaries: Alexander, Gospel of Mark; Carrington, According to Mark; Cranfield, Gospel; J. Edwards, Gospel; France, Gospel of Mark; Gould, Critical and Exegetical Commentary; Gnilka, Evangelium nach Markus; Grundman, Evangelium nach Markus; Hauck, Evangelium des Markus; Hobbs, Gospel of Mark; Horne, Victory According to Mark; Huby, Evangile selon Saint Marc; Hunter, Gospel; Jeremias, Evangelium nach Markus; S. Johnson, Commentary on the Gospel; Juel, Mark; Keegan, Commentary on the Gospel; Keil, Evangelien des Markus und Lukas; Kilgallen, Brief Commentary; Lagrange, Evangile selon Saint Marc; Lamarche, Evangile de Marc; LaVerdiere, Beginning of the Gospel; Lenski, St. Mark’s Gospel; Lohmeyer, Evangelium des Markus; G. Martin, Gospel according to Mark; Michael, Am Tisch der Sünder; Menzies, Earliest Gospel; Morgan, Mark; Moule, Mark; Nineham, Saint Mark; Riddle, According to Mark; Sabin, Mark; J. Schmid, Evangelium nach Markus; Schnackenburg, Evangelium nach Markus; Schanz, Evangelium des Heiligen Marcus; Schweizer, Mark; St. John, Analysis of the Gospel; Taylor, Mark; Trocmé, L’Evangile selon Saint Marc; Weidner, Mark; Wellhausen, Das Evangelium Marci; Witherington, Gospel of Mark; Wohlenberg, Evangelium des Markus; Wolff, Mark.
222. Witherington, Gospel of Mark, 69–70.
223. Gathercole, Pre-Existent Son, 236 (emphasis added). Also see the arguments for early high Christology in Bauckham, God Crucified; Hurtado, How On Earth; Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ.
224. Hengel, Four Gospels, 95.
225. N. T. Wright, Christian Origins, 2:615–31. Also see an argument about this theme in Mark in Horne, Victory according to Mark, 14–24.
226. This is a theme throughout the Gospels: Mark 2:27–28, 8:11–13, 8:31–32, 38, 8:38—9:1, 10:32–34; Matt 8:20, 12:8, 12:38–42, 13:37, 41–42, 16:27–28, 18:11, 20:17–19, 24:30, 25:31–32; Luke 6:5, 9:26–27, 9:58, 11:29–32, 18:31–34.
227. Nineham, Saint Mark, 61–62.
228. Motyer, “Rendering of the Veil,” 155–57.
229.
