Josiah D. Hall
This chapter seeks to demonstrate that the theme of divine presence pervades the Johannine narrative. Building on the conceptual metaphor of identifying a constellation in the night sky, the chapter considers passages which Johannine scholars have long recognized as forming a “temple motif” throughout the Gospel. I argue that the theme of divine presence recurs and develops across each of these passages. In particular, I contend that John’s focus in the “temple incident” (John 2:13–22) lies not on the physical structure of the temple, but rather on debates about Jesus’s authority to determine where the divine presence could dwell. This perspective on the temple incident reorients how one might understand the function of the temple throughout the Johannine narrative and its relation to Jesus’s absence. Building on the earlier work of Judith Lieu, I suggest that the temple’s primary function in John’s narrative is to provide the appropriate setting for scenes where the narrative’s characters will seek and struggle to perceive Jesus’s identity as the enfleshed divine presence.