The theme of Jesus being the New/Second Adam is not unique to Paul (see Rom 5; 1 Cor 15; cf. Phil 2). It is also part-and-parcel of the Christology of the Synoptic Gospels. For a book-length study, see Brandon D. Crowe, The Last Adam: A Theology of the Obedient Life of Jesus in the Gospels (Baker Academic, 2017). We also have this theme in the Gospel of John. One example of this can be seen when one compares John 19:34 with Gen 2:21-22 (LXX):
But one of the soldiers
with a spear pierced his side (πλευρά), and forthwith came there out blood and
water. (John 19:34)
So God laid a trance
upon Adam and put him to sleep; and he took one of his ribs (πλευρά) and filled
up the flesh in the place of it. The Lord God built the rib (πλευρά) that he
took from Adam into a woman, and he led her to Adam. (Gen 2:21-22 Lexham
English Septuagint)
As Joseph Ratzinger (the then-future Pope
[emeritus now] Benedict XVI) noted:
For John, the picture
of the pierced side forms the climax not only of the crucifixion scene but of
the whole story of Jesus. Now, after the lance-thrust that ends his earthly
life, his existence is completely open; now he is entirely “for”, now he is
truly no longer a single individual but “Adam”, from whose side Eve, a new
mankind, is formed. That profound description in the Old Testament according to
which the woman is taken from the side of the man (Ge. 2.21ff.)—an inimitable
expression of their perpetual dependence on each other and their unity in the
one humanity—that story seems to be echoed here in the recurrence of the word “side”
(πλευρά, usually translated—wrongly—by “rib”). The open side of the new Adam
repeats the creative mystery of the “open side” of man: it is the beginning of
a new definitive community of men with one another, a community symbolized here
by blood and water, in which John points to the basic Christian sacraments of
baptism and Eucharist and through them to the Church as the sign of the new
community of men. (Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity [trans.
J.R. Foster; New York: Herder and Herder, 1970], 180)
On John’s theology of water baptism in
3:3-5, see:
On the Eucharist, including a discussion
of John 6 and τρωγω, see:
