77 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN book’s end (indeed, likely enough in the final verse of the Gospel’s original form) that John employs the same device: Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you [pl.] may come to believe 22 that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20,30-31; emphasis added) It is surely no accident that these words follow immediately on an only slightly more indirect appeal to the future reader from within the community of faith, as Jesus tells Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20,29). Further, while both books explicitly reach forward to future members of the faith communities whose creation the books describe, they also include the converse dynamic: a call to believers (present and future) to view remembrance as the key to spiritual insight. Even at a lexical level, the verb ‫ ,זכר‬especially in its second-person forms, is found in Deuteronomy with a frequency exceeded only in the Psalms and rivaled only in Second Isaiah 23. B.S. Childs notes that ‫זכר‬ often occurs in parallel with ‫“( בין‬to understand”), as in Deut 32,7, and he summarizes Deuteronomic usage of remembrance as follows: [Israel’s] history continues only as present Israel established her continuity with the past through memory. The divine commands as event meet each successive generation through her tradition call- ing forth a decision, and in obedience Israel shares in the same re- demption as her forefathers 24. 22 There is, to be sure, a significant textual variant here: some authorities read the aorist subjunctive (cf. NRSV “so that you may come to believe”, above); others read the present subjunctive (cf. RSV “so that you may be- lieve”). The former might well suggest a missionary intent, while the latter could be a call to perseverance among those who already believe. If R. BROWN, The Gospel according to John (xiii-xxi) (AB 29A; Garden City, NY 1970) 1056, is correct in his preference for the latter, this summative verse would represent one more parallel with Deuteronomy, in that both would be directed to those already in the community of faith (“you”), both now and in the future. 23 S. MANDELKERN, Concordantiae Veteris Testamenti Hebraicae atque Chaldaicae (Leipzig 1896) 353-355. 24 B.S. CHILDS, Memory and Tradition in Israel (SBT 37; Naperville, IL 1962) 53, 56.