For John, as for that other most "Jewish" of Gospels, Matthew—but in a very
different manner—Jesus comes to fulfill the mission of Moses, not to displace
it.145 The Torah simply needed a better exegete, the Logos Ensarkos, a fitting teacher
for flesh and blood. Rather than supersession in the explicitly temporal sense within
which Paul inscribes it, John's typology of Torah and Logos Incarnate is more
easily read within the context of what Jacques Derrida has argued for as a prevailing assumption of Western thought, that oral teaching is more authentic and transparent than written texts.146 God, thus, tried the text, and then sent his voice,
of God" (Schnackenburg, John, 228). This doubleness, certainly a blunting of Ockham's razor if nothing else, seems unnecessary to me. Assuming that up until v. 14 it is the Logos Asarkos
who acts makes better work of John's narrative as well, and we need, therefore, assume no pre-