I am therefore claiming that ‘the works of Abraham’ (John
8.39) refer implicitly to the Law observance of Abraham, which had the
vicarious effect of lifting his descendants (his ‘seed’) out of the slavery of
sin in the economy of merits. This is John’s significantly different way of
conceptualizing the Law in relation to sin (as say, compared to Paul in
Galatians). It fits in with many traditions in early Judaism outside the NT,
and with the early rabbinic literature as well. Secondly, Abraham’s ‘works’ are
the constellation of his righteous deeds that are exemplary for his posterity.
This includes the spectrum of behaviours, deeds and habits that characterized
the patriarch in antiquity, whether that was his ‘zeal’, his ‘faith’, his
‘obedience’, his ‘hospitality’, his tzedakah or any other number of
traits attributed to Abraham as he was refigured to fit different narratives
after the close of the biblical age.
There are other elements of the text (8.37-47) that
require attention against the intertextual field scripted in the chapter thus
far. Jesus tells the Jews that they are obeying the commands they hear from
‘their father’ (v. 38b), and that they do ‘their father’s works’ (v. 40) in
contrast to the works of Abraham. In v. 44, Jesus infamously clarifies that the
Jews have ‘the devil’ as their father and that they ‘choose to do his desires’.
The desires, works and commands of the ‘devil’ are thus set against the ‘works’
of Abraham and the paternity of God (‘if God were your father you would love
me’, v. 42; cf. ‘if you were the children of Abraham, you would do the works of
Abraham’, v. 40). Other texts in the various traditions of early Judaism set
the devil (or a deviltype figure) in opposition to Abraham, and indeed even the
works of the devil in opposition to the ‘works’ of God. For example, the
phrase ‘the works of Beliar’ (i.e. the devil) (T. Levi 18.12) constitutes a
close parallel to John 8.44 and Jesus’ reference to the Jews doing the devil’s
‘works’. The apocryphal Testament of Abraham, as we saw earlier in this
chapter, contrasts the devil’s ‘works’ with the purposes of Abraham. And in m.
Avot 3, we saw that the ‘disciples’ of Abraham’ are completely opposite to the
‘disciples of Beliar’ in their behaviour and dispositions. Of course, in 1 John
3.8-12 we saw the contrasts between Cain (who was ‘born of the devil’) and the
children of God in the outcome of their respective ‘works’. Cain, like the
devil (8.44), was both a liar and a murderer, and his ‘works were evil’ while
his brother Abel’s ‘works’ were ‘good’.
It is also important to notice how ‘Abraham’s works’ in
v. 39 are reiterated by negation in vv. 38a, 40. By suggesting that Abraham’s
‘works’ do not include ‘seeking to kill a man’, we can infer that some action –
or a group of positive, life-preserving actions, is entailed by ch. 8 vv.
39-40. In John 7.19-21, Jesus debates the overriding priority of the mitzvah
of פיקוח נפשׁ (‘saving a life’) in relation to the Sabbath, the latter of which
is said to ‘go back to the Patriarchs’ (i.e. it is associated with Abraham). In
the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Letter of James, we saw complex references
to Abraham and Rahab, and their ‘works’ that had the effect of ‘justifying’
them. I argued that Abraham’s ‘works’ (2.23-25) played upon the imperative to
‘save a life’; by refraining from slaying his son Isaac at the Akedah, Abraham
effectively saved a life and observed this commandment. Reading this in
conversation with 1 John 3.8-12 and the texts immediately above, Abraham is the
antithesis of the ‘murderer’, the one who takes a life. By telling the Jews
that they ‘seek to kill’ him, Jesus emphasizes their difference from Abraham
and their likeness to ‘the devil’. (Ruth Sheridan, The Figure of Abraham in
John 8: Text and Intertext [Library of New Testament Studies 619; T&T
Clark, 2020], 311-12)
To Support this Blog:
Email for Amazon Gift
card: ScripturalMormonism@gmail.com
Email for Logos.com Gift
Card: IrishLDS87@gmail.com
