Divine Absence and Judgment in the Absence of Jesus

In this chapter, I argue that John employs the increasing tension between divine presence and absence to transfer the negative consequences commonly associated with divine absence from those who believe in Jesus to the unbelieving world. I first survey Graeco-Roman epiphanic narratives to demonstrate a common expectation that violent divine judgment was expected against those who failed to discern and rightly respond to a manifestation of divine presence. I then examine three key passages which depict Jesus’s staged departure from the Jerusalem temple (8:31–59; 10:22–40; 12:20–50). I argue that John’s understated narrative of this departure activates the expectation for violent divine judgment, which John then subverts in order to portray Jesus’s departure and physical absence from the world as God’s judgment on unbelief. The chapter then considers the implications of construing Jesus’s departure and absence as divine judgment and how they illuminate contested areas in scholarship, including the timing of Jesus’s departure, John’s use of a descending-ascending redeemer motif, and John’s depiction of those he labels “the Jews”.