Sunday, May 14, 2023

Richard David Aus on John 19:28

  

Ps 22:16 (Eng. 15)

 

The basic motif of “My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaves to jaws” is applied in 2 Targ Est 5:1 to Esther’s coming before King Ahasuerus: “With tears she prayed fervently, sot that her throat and lips became dry.”

 

In John 19:28 Jesus on the Cross says, “I thirst.” He is then given vinegar to drink, after which he dies. Jesus’ thirst at this point is “to fulfill the scripture” (v. 28), certainly referring to Ps 69:22 (Eng 21): “for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Yet the basic idea of Jesus’ thirst on the Cross may originally have been occasioned by Ps 22:16. (Robert David Aus, “The Release of Barabbas (Mark 15:6-15 par.; John 18:39-40), and Judaic Traditions on the Book of Esther,” in Barabbas and Esther and Other Studies in the Judaic Illumination of Earliest Christianity [Studies in the History of Judaism; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 13)

 

Further Reading:


Full Refutation of the Protestant Interpretation of John 19:30