John Turner on the Old Testament background of John 10

It is true that many components of the imagery derive from the OT; for example, Ezek. 34:13-16: 'I shall lead them out of the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land . . . I will feed them with a good pasture . . . I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord God. I will see the lost.' Further, in Psalm 100 one finds much of the vocabulary of our passage: "Know hat the Lord is God! It is he that made us and not we; we are *his* people, and *the sheep* of his *pasture*. Enter his *gates* with thanksgiving, and his *courts* with praise!' Many more passages could be adduced, but while there is no gainsaying that such OT imagery is certainly part of the background of our passage, nowhere can one find the motif of the sheep recognising the model shepherd who gains welcome entrance to the sheepfold through the door as opposed to the thief and robber who steals into the sheepfold by another, illegitimate way and calls the sheep with a strange voice . . . The imagery of the shepherd in this discourse seems to owe much to concepts found in OT texts, especially Num. 27:17 and Ezek. 34. It seems that the evangelist meant to present Jesus as the appropriate leader of the community in contrast to the Jewish authorities to whom the discourse is addressed. He even may have had in mind the question of the legitimate post-Easter leader or shepherd of the Johannine churches, mainly on the grounds that the discourse is formulated in the concepts of the following and protection from external threat, and that Jesus is portrayed as possessing unique characteristics of leadership, mainly knowing his own and laying down his life for the sheep. At any rate, such leadership seems to be the dominant thrust of the discourse. (John D. Turner, “The History of Religions Background of John 10” in The Shepherd Discourse of John 10 and Its Context, eds. Johannes Beutler and Robert T. Fortna [Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series vol. 67; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 33-52m here, pp. 43, 49-50)