Often in Christian circles, many people repeat words and phrases but they don't always know what the phrase really means. Some of these common phrases and words include; "believe in Jesus", "having Jesus in your heart", and "be saved". These types of Christian buzzwords and buzz phrases are often misused or oversimplified to the point of robbing the phrase of almost any real substance and meaning. This problem is what originally sparked our live-stream series called "What Does it Mean?" to help people understand the deep theological implications of what is being said.
The Bread of Life
One such phrase is when Jesus says “I am the bread of life” in John 6:48. Many Christians today think of the sacrament of communion when they hear this. Especially when Jesus says in verse 53, “…unless you eat the body of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in yourselves.” Surely, Jesus is speaking of the ritual of communion here, he must be! Well, let’s take a closer look.
A few things to note about the context moving forward: for one, the last Passover meal hasn’t happened yet, the one where Jesus uses the bread and wine as symbols for his impending sacrifice. So he cannot be alluding to a sacrament that hasn’t happened, and a theology that wouldn’t develop until much later, such as transfiguration. Secondly, he’s speaking in Capernaum at a synagogue (verse 59), immediately after he performed the miracle of multiplying the five loaves of bread to feed 5,000 people with 12 full baskets leftover. Jesus expected people to understand him then, at that very moment. He’s not trying to allude to a future event in this conversation, and Jesus seemed a bit surprised that people didn’t seem to get it right away¹.
Something to point out is that the people who were listening and having this conversation with Jesus seemed to understand the allegory Jesus had presented to them. The “difficulty” they were having is accepting that he is talking about himself.
Jesus makes the comparison of the manna to himself very plainly:
"Amen, amen I tell you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat and not die. I am the living bread, which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. This bread is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” John 6:47-51 (TLV)
Now usually in Judaic thought, the manna is also an allegory for the Torah. The Jewish philosopher Philo tells us explicitly that the manna is the word of G-d, the Torah, meant to be ingested (eaten). Just as the manna provides nourishment in the desert so too the Word of G-d gives nourishment to the soul, and the manna is a representation of G-d’s word providing nourishment². Philo bases this on the verse in Deuteronomy:
He afflicted you and let you hunger, then He fed you manna—which neither you nor your fathers had known—in order to make you understand that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of Adonai. Deuteronomy 8:3 (TLV)
This imagery with the manna and the miracle of feeding the 5,000 is important because this is a messianic prophecy! The Midrash Rabbah contains a call back to how The Messiah will be a prophet like Moses. This is important because immediately after the miracle John records that the people proclaimed:
“…This is most certainly The Prophet who is to come into the world.” John 6:14b (TLV)
John’s use of the words “the prophet” is very pointed. “The prophet” is none other than the long-awaited messiah who will be a prophet like Moses. In the words of the Midrash Rabbah:
Just as the first redeemer caused manna to fall in the wilderness, as it is stated ‘Hashem said to Moses “behold - I shall rain down for you food from heaven”(Ex 16:4), so too will the final redeemer cause the manna to fall, as it is stated, “there shall be an abundance of bread on the earth”(Ps 72:16) Kohelet Rabbah 1§28
It’s almost as though Jesus is specifically trying to make this connection for us here in John’s gospel. The way John wrote his gospel is as though he was looking at a Targum the entire time. Each time in the Targums when you see the phrase “G-d descended” or something to that effect, the Targums render it as “the Memra (Logos/Word) descended”. This is because it is understood in Judaism that G-d “sends His Word” to accomplish something. This type of understanding can be seen in examples such as Isaiah 55:11.
so My word will be that goes out from My mouth. It will not return to Me in vain, but will accomplish what I intend, and will succeed in what I sent it for. Isaiah 55:11 (TLV)
The Difficulty
Jesus speaks of himself as having “descended from Heaven” and John makes it very clear that Jesus is “the Word made flesh”. This is the difficult thing his listeners cannot seem to grasp, the idea that Jesus is “from Heaven.” This is why they ask:
“Isn’t this Yeshua the son of Joseph whose father and mother we know? How can he now say ‘I have come down from Heaven’?” John 6:42 TLV
The metaphor in and of itself wasn’t hard for them to grasp. It was common to associate the bread from heaven representing Torah/Word of G-d, and that he himself is this “bread from Heaven”, and to “eat” it is an allegory for consuming his teachings and internalizing them, for they are the life-giving Word of G-d. The difficult part for them to grasp was that they already knew Jesus.
They likely watched him grow up, like any other boy in the town. Jesus seemed so much like a normal human to them, like other rabbis around him, the idea that he was a Heavenly being was just a little outside of their grasp. Even the idea of “eating” the messiah wasn’t outside of the Judaic understanding, the Talmud even makes such statements, with the understanding of “consuming” or “absorbing” the teachings or the enjoyment of being in the presence of the messiah.
Rabbi Hillel says: There is no Messiah coming for the Jewish people, as they already ate from him, as all the prophecies relating to the Messiah were already fulfilled, during the days of Hezekiah. -b. Sanhedrin 99a §3
Difficulty Resolved
We can see that the manna and the bread of life and the Torah/Word of G-d are, in the Jewish mind, interchangeable. That eating this 'bread' is nourishment for the soul. In John's gospel, he is trying to get you to see that the bread of life is his "body" in that he is the living embodiment of the Torah/Word of G-d from Heaven. To "eat" his body is to obey and follow his teachings (which are the Torah). He says "his body" to mean that you can look to him for the example of how to live out the Torah, with your own body.
In the same way that one "consumes" a book or "binges" a TV show, we "consume" the Word/Torah of G-d. Just as bread nourishes the body, the Torah nourishes the soul. Therefore the Torah/Word of G-d is the bread of life. Jesus is the Torah in bodily form, and like the manna, which descended from Heaven, represented the bread of life which is Torah, so too in John's gospel, Jesus descended from heaven as the Torah in a body. Thus, his "body" is the "bread of life". And all this immediately follows the miracle of literal bread from Heaven, to illustrate his point.
Overusing this phrase has, over time, hollowed it out of its deeper meaning theologically, which John went through great pains to preserve. John's gospel is mystical, using mostly metaphors to convey deeply mystical theological topics. Today, we use the symbolism of bread and wine as a reminder of the "bread of life". These are supposed to serve as reminders that just as we eat bread for bodily nourishment, we should also be eating the bread of life/Word of G-d/Torah to nourish our souls, which gives us eternal life. This means to live obediently and in the example set for us by the Messiah, who was the "bread of life" in bodily form. The Torah made flesh.
Footnotes
¹ John 6:60-63 ² Philo, legum Allegoriarum 3:169-177
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