Jesus and violence during Tabernacles: Wit, mercy, and accountability in John 7–8

Abstract

John 7–8 narrates Jesus’s dialogues with his opponents and the crowds during the annual Jewish festival of Tabernacles. Through this sensory backdrop, Jesus makes exceptional claims both for himself and for how God’s people should respond (e.g., 8:12). Across John’s narration of Jesus’s public ministry, Jesus challenges mainstream closedness by opening covenantal relationship with God to all those who can respond accordingly to what God as Father is doing in this world through Jesus who is Christ and Son. Such confrontation peaks in John 7–8 through a particularly violent interaction between Jesus’s radical acceptance and the resulting discontent in those who prefer the status quo. At the heart of this conflagration, the intrusive encounter between Jesus and the woman ensnared by the Pharisees (7:53–8:11) models a call for mercy and unity in community amid conflict. Despite the textual instability of its foundation, this passage must be given its due as an alternative of mercy to the violence that surrounds it in the final form of John’s Gospel. The presence of this passage in John’s canonical narrative presents a powerful antidote to the chaotic violence that surrounds it.