The garden
Eden Reopened – John 8, 9, and 10 is the Garden of Eden!
You were not taught to read John 8, 9, and 10 as one scene. The talk says the scene replays the garden, expels a man whose eyes were opened, and has Jesus open the way back.
Coming up next The leaders' father is on trial
Summary
The temple sequence is read as one scene with no original chapter break: a fatherhood trial, then a man born blind, then the sheepfold, with the same audience still there. In the trial, the leaders' father and Jesus' Father are not the same, and from the beginning is taken as the garden, where the death threat failed and the serpent's words held. Jesus makes mud and opens eyes that never worked, which is set beside the serpent opening eyes, and He compares Himself to the bronze serpent rather than to Moses or to Yhwh.
He sends the man to the pool whose name means sent, fed by the Gihon, a spring that shares a name with a river from Eden. The leaders interrogate instead of celebrating, require the oath give glory to God, which the talk identifies as Yhwh's oath from Joshua after Jericho, and expel the man. The expulsion verb is the one used when the humans were driven from the garden, in the order dust, opened eyes, truth, interrogation, fear, curse, and expulsion. The healing is on the Sabbath, tied to the rest that seals a creation without a curse, while Jesus says His Father is still working and that Yhwh turned that rest into a trap.
The sheepfold is not taken as a soft picture. After the garden was guarded, Jesus says He is the door, and His voice is the one the sheep follow, against Yhwh's voice that produced fear. Sacrifice that fed Yhwh is reversed: the shepherd's life runs toward the sheep, and Jesus leads them out of the fold. The talk says this stays hidden if Yhwh is the Father, and that the eye-opener in the garden and the eye-opener in Jerusalem are the same person.
