Of sheep, shepherds, and temples: A social identity reading of the Good Shepherd Paroemia on the way to a destroyed temple

Abstract

The Good Shepherd paroemia of John 10 is often read as an inserted soliloquy between the once-blind-man of John 9 and Jesus’s actions in the temple at the Feast of Dedication. In this context many readings perceive a two-level engagement drawing upon the perceived intertextual allusions to Ezekiel 34—and the further host of shepherd imagery in the Hebrew bible—and relating it to the context of a Johannine Community. From this perspective the Good Shepherd narrative is read as a condemnation of the Pharisees, and the “sheep of another fold” is taken as a reference to the incorporation of Gentiles in a “post-parting of the ways” or Birkat Haminim context. However, this two-level reading regularly dislocates the Ezekiel intertext from its own context of exile. Furthermore, although readings of John 10 recognize the presence of an intertext with Zechariah 10–11, they rarely invest it with the significance of Ezekiel 34. Therefore, this paper seeks to read the Good Shepherd paroemia through the lens of Social Identity Theory in the temple-removed context shared by Zechariah and Ezekiel, and the context of John’s audience in a post- 70 CE environment. From this context we will look at the shepherd and flock imagery in order to consider whether the integration of flock (10:17) and the sheep of another fold (10:16) fit better in a diaspora Jewish context struggling with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple under Titus in 70 CE. Through this lens we will see how the intra-group dynamics of the Good Shepherd monologue contribute to the ongoing social discourse around Jewish ethno-cultic practices without the Jerusalem temple.