Seite - 39 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Band 02/01

“This Voice Has Come for Your Sake” | 39www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 35–47 But all is not simple with signs. First, they are not always effective, because some people who have seen many of Jesus’ signs do not believe in him (12:37). Further- more, another strain in the gospel prefers faith that does not come from seeing signs: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (20:29). John knows such dramatic miracles do bring people to faith, but such signs-based faith is temporary and inadequate, a “beginner’s faith”, Kysar suggests, like training wheels on a bicycle.8 Koester goes further, saying John thinks signs-faith is not true faith at all.9 In either case, the final editor seems to prefer those who believe without signs, which naturally would include his own com- munity, living at the end of the first century and not eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life. John shows no such ambivalence about the sense of hearing. Hearing, like seeing, is a symbol for understanding and recognition, but the author never suggests believ- ers should “grow out of it”. One probable reason is that hearing is a more traditional metaphor, with deep roots in the Hebrew Bible. At Sinai, Israel heard the voice of God and agreed, “We will do and hear” (Exod. 24:7; author’s translation). God says he will come to Moses in thick cloud (obscuring vision) “that the people may hear when I speak with you, and so trust you ever after” (Exod. 19:9). Israel’s fundamental statement of identity is Deuteronomy 6:4, the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”10 Later, the rabbis develop the idea of the bat kol, literally “the daughter of the voice”, God’s voice which comes out of heaven to speak to people.11 Similarly, the memra (lit. “word” in Aramaic) represents God through speech in the Targumim, the earliest translations and commentaries on the Bible, and in rabbinic and apocryphal works. Along with the more capacious idea of the Schehina, God’s emanation that appears in biblical, rabbinic, and mystical literature, these evocations of God’s voice reassure believers of access and communication with God even after the end of revelation and prophecy. The second, perhaps more important reason that John does not discount the sense of hearing, is that it is precisely the way that his community comes to faith. Liv- ing sixty to seventy years after Jesus, they are not eyewitnesses to his ministry. Hear- ing the words and deeds of Jesus proclaimed by teachers is how they “see” Jesus and God. Their guarantor is the eyewitness called the Beloved Disciple, now dead, whose testimony is the bedrock of the gospel. The Beloved Disciple saw the signs, but the community hears the report of the signs. Were hearing an unreliable medium, their basis for belief would be threatened. 8 Kysar 2007, 99. 9 Koester 2003, 139. 10 Note also that Israel’s status as chosen is contingent on seeing and hearing, Exod. 19:4–5, “you have seen what I did to the Egyptians … if you obey [lit. really hear] my voice … you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples”. Failing to hear God’s voice and obey the commandments brings down curses in Deut. 28:15. In Proverbs, Wisdom is personified as a woman who calls out to hearers. 11 See b.Yoma 9b, which says that after the death of the last prophet, God communicated through a bat kol.