The Witness of Two People

Excerpt

Jesus now reverts to the topic of testimony. The shifts back and forth between Jesus as witness and Jesus as judge would appear sudden and awkward if the dispute in chapter 5 had not already prepared readers for the irony of Jesus’ dual role, which in turn reflects Yahweh’s functioning as both witness and judge in the trial scenes of Isa. 40–55. Having stressed his self-authenticating witness, Jesus can now return to the conventions of ordinary Jewish trials—In your law it is written that the witness of two people is true. As he did in 5:31–7, he again accommodates himself to the law’s requirements (cf. Deut. 19:15). But the concession to the opponents’ standard of judgement (‘your law’) is ironic. The law required two witnesses, not including the accused, and an appeal to God is not envisaged as one of these. The force of Jesus’ mention of the law appears to be that if the law demands two human witnesses, then he will supply two divine witnesses—himself and the Father. In the end, however, Jesus’ witness to himself and his and the Father’s joint witness amount to the same thing because of the unity between the Son and the Father who sent him. More

Lincoln, Andrew T. The Gospel according to Saint John. London: Continuum, 2005. Print. Black’s New Testament Commentary.