Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? — the authorities mock the suggestion, calculating Jesus's age as not yet fifty years old (making his memory of Abraham impossible). The literal objection misses the point: Jesus is not claiming to remember Abraham but to assert that Abraham, in his faith, reached toward the messianic age and Jesus's arrival. The authorities' inability to transcend literal chronology blinds them to the deeper reality.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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