But he spoke of the temple of his body.
"The misunderstandings seem to function to highlight the two levels of understanding that take place in the Gospel. On the one hand is the spiritual or heavenly level that Jesus came bringing, to teach the true way to eternal life. On the other hand is the temporal or earthly level that most people operate at, including most of Christ’s professed disciples, which leads to darkness and loss of eternal life. John wants to show that one must cross over from the earthly to the heavenly, from darkness into light, from death into life. By his careful construction of the narratives, John leads his readers to see and understand what the original participants could or did not, and thus to believe the claims of Jesus and avoid the ignorance displayed by the original characters in the drama." [Note: Edwin E. Reynolds, "The Role of Misunderstanding in the Fourth Gospel," Journal of the Adventist Theological Society 9:1-2 (1998):158-59.] 