Summary John Chapter 10x

It’s often hard to judge the length of a post before I start writing; there are numerous factors. The chief is whether or not I have a burst of insight as the words come off my fingertips.

First it needs to be stated that this first part of Chapter 10 is actually a continuation of Chapter 9, wherein Jesus gave sight to the man blind from birth. Let us note that the division into chapters ad verses did not occur until long after they were written; by “long after, we mean centuries. As such, it’s important to keep in mind that a later–much later–editor was not working from the same basic assumptions as the original writer(s). In the long run, or the final analysis, the message contained in the words is the same regardless of where the lines for chapter breaks are artificially inserted. It’s the words themselves that matter. The point remains, however, that we need to recognize this for what it is. And by “we”, I mean “me”. Many of you reading this have much more experience with the NT than I do; experience is not what I bring to the table. My contribution is background and perspective, both of which are derived in the pagan context of the world being described in the NT. Background and perspective include history, cultural, language, and the sense of development of these ideas outside the standard Christian framework. Many of the ideas expressed in the NT neither began nor ended with Christianity. There was a prehistory, and there was a non-Christian development of these concepts. The latter was the result of the cross-fertilization of NT thought with pagan thought; each influenced the other over the course of several centuries in which practitioners and believers interacted with each other, talked to each other, and argued with each other. The result is, consciously or not, practitioners on both sides walked away with ideas that they probably did not have when they began the conversation, debate, or argument.

If we look back over the gospel in toto, a certain pattern has emerged since the last part of Chapter 4. For the most part, Jesus delivers some indication that he is, indeed, a divine personage. Sometimes a sign is performed which is not believed fully by “The Jews”; other times, the message is verbal, to which “The Jews” also take exception. Giving the man blind from birth his sight is an example of the former, and Chapter 10 has provided an example of the latter. We should note that the action in this chapter takes place n the environs of the Temple; the fact is, most of the action of the entire gospel takes in and around Jerusalem, if not always within the Temple precinct itself. The chapter as a whole consists of two different messages of Jesus as he addresses the assembled crowd.

I stated in the last post of this chapter, we didn’t particularly break much new ground from a theological or a message standpoint, but there is a very significant exception. While Jesus has taken pains to distinguish his message from that of “The Jews”, in the opening verses of this chapter he is more or less condemning Judaism as a whole. He does this with the metaphor of the gate to the sheep. The premise is that the sheep are in the sheep fold, more or less a pen into which they are herded, likely for protection and to keep them from wandering off. For the parable to work, we have to assume that it was common practice for the members of a community, say a village, all to drive their sheep into one large fold. This is the situation that Jesus steps into; the sheep, people, specifically the Jewish community as a whole, are in the pen. There are two ways to enter the pen: through the gate, or by climbing over the wall. The legitimate shepherd does the former, entering the fold, he calls his sheep and they respond to him because they recognize his voice and they follow him. While his sheep follow him, the others do not, presumably because they respond to another voice. So far, this is fairly neutral. The gate keeper has let the shepherd in because he is legitimate; the gate keeper does not allow others to enter because they are not legitimate. These shepherd wannabes are, after all, thieves, who have gained entry only by climbing over the wall and breaking into the fold by criminal means. The sheep who remain in the pen do not follow Jesus because they have listened to a voice that came before him, the voice of one of these thieves.

That’s where this gets sticky. Up to this point, Jesus has been contending with “The Jews”, who seem to be the leading members of the community. In previous gospels these leaders would have been labeled as the Pharisees. In both cases, they are somehow distinguished from the rest of the Jewish community as a whole. We said that those in the pen do not recognize Jesus’ voice because they have been trained to follow voices that came before Jesus. Those sheep that belong to Jesus have not, did not listen to these previous voices. And why should they? These voices were those of criminals who broke in and entered the fold illegally.

But who are these voices? Think about it: How can they be the anything but the voices of the prophets and teachers of established Judaism? Jesus is teaching in the Temple. This is the physical and spiritual center of Judaism. In this location Jesus is speaking to Jews, all Jews, about Jews, and he is stating, or at the very least, strongly implying that the prophets and the Patriarchs were  criminals. It’s not that the current leaders have gone off the rails and are leading the people astray, it’s that the entire edifice is illegitimate.

Am I going too far with this? Perhaps. He is a step or two away from crossing the line into an overt and explicit charge or condemnation of Judaism as a whole, but the steps are small ones. JD Crossan has written a book called Who Killed Jesus? The book is not so much an actual examination of the situation as it is an examination of the role of the gospels in creating an environment in which Anti-Semitism has been able to flourish. Christ killers. Crossan ultimately places the blame primarily on the Romans and I fully agree with that assessment. I’m pretty well convinced that is was the Romans, who were not about to be bullied or pushed into something they didn’t want to do by subject people. The Romans killed Jesus because the Romans wanted to kill Jesus. The man is a problem? Crucify him and get him out of our hair. He’s not a citizen, so who cares? But if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that Christians have, all too often and for far too long, been willing to foster beliefs that have contributed to Anti-Semitism. Crosssan recognizes that the Gospel of John may be especially guilty of this, and this passage is a prime example.

The point is that, by the time John wrote, Christians and Jews had severed whatever links existed between them on a corporate level. For the most part, Christians no longer considered themselves Jews. Some of this is simple geography; as the nascent church spread, it moved into areas where the Jewish population was much smaller than in the Near East. Large cities had substantial Jewish populations, but that percentage dwindled as one moved away from urban centers like Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome. There was certainly friction, and John’s gospel reflects this to varying degrees. This half ends with “The Jews” reviling Jesus, while others marvel: Could a demon do what Jesus did?

The story shifts in time, but not in space. We are now celebrating what we now call Hanukkah, so the story has progressed to December whereas the story of Jesus giving sight was in the autumn. John provides the detail that he was in Solomon’s Portico/Porch/Colonnade. This was supposedly a remnant from the first temple supposedly built by Solomon and so bearing his name. This architectural detail is mentioned in a couple of other places in the NT as well as by Josephus. Here’s the thing: this portico would have been destroyed in 70, and the Temple was never rebuilt. That means John, writing perhaps as much as 50 years after its destruction may not ever have seen the Second Temple. It’s hardly of the question; he could have been a boy of ten in 70, which would make him 60 or so when he wrote. Now, there are a couple of variables here; John traditionally wrote around 100, whereas the theory now is that it was closer to 120. Regardless, it is wholly conceivable that he could have seen the Temple himself and remembered at least some of the details. It’s also possible that John read about this portico from Josephus, whom we know for certain saw the Temple. He wrote in the 90s, and the other references to the portico could be derived from him. I have a personal suspicion that Luke and Josephus wrote at a time when one would have been able to use the other as a source; but, as I suspect that Josephus got his Christian information from Luke–it would have been the new bestseller when Josephus was writing. At first blush, we might take this to mean that Luke could not have mentioned the portico in Acts given that Josephus wrote after Luke. Well, that conclusion rests on one of two assumptions. That Luke wrote–and published–his gospel and Acts at the same time. There is no evidence to support this. A hiatus of a year or two have allowed Josephus to hit the market in the interim and so be available as a source for the evangelist. And this timeline of Josephus-after-Luke also assumes that Luke and Acts were, indeed, written by the same person. There is reason to suspect that there may have been two separate authors, so the gap between the gospel and Acts could have been greater still. This would allow plenty of time for the author of Acts to use Josephus for the detail of the portico. Just to be thorough, it’s also eminently possible that an older contemporary of John who had seen the Second Temple and described it to the evangelist. So there are any number of ways that John could have come by his information about the Portico of Solomon.

Jesus gets into trouble when he engages with the crowd. His audience wants to know, plainly, once for all, if he is the Messiah. His answer does not satisfy them so they consider stoning him again. Yeah, sure, “The Jews”, yadda-yadda-yadda. The answer is very much of a piece with the things he’s been saying throughout the gospel when he is questioned. Given that, to us, our reaction is “How thick are these people? What more do they want?” This is…accurate, to some degree, but it’s looking at the situation as a whole and the question in particular from our point of view. That is to say, our assessment is filtered through a Christian lens. Of course it is. But let’s stop a moment and consider it from the perspective of those asking it. That is, let’s consider it from a Jewish perspective, from the perspective of the First Century.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know the sort of religious education I got as a child from the nuns at Maple Grove St Michaels. That they were nuns is probably relevant, to some degree, but it’s also got something to do with being a Christian in a Christian environment. I’ve read a lot of Mediaeval History; it’s probably the area I should have specialize in rather than Classics. I very distinctly remember reading Norman Cantor’s Mediaeval History* (the first edition, and that matters).  I remember how it occurred to me that the history of Mediaeval Europe is in no small part a history of the Catholic Church. Having been raised Catholic, this presented no real problem since a lot of the theology was familiar. But, I recall thinking, what if I wasn’t Catholic? That would have created more difficulty. Just so, for us as Christians, it takes an act of will to get ourselves out of our Christian point of view and realize that Christians and Jews are largely speaking two different languages when we discuss some of these concepts. One big one is “salvation”; what we mean and what Jews meant in the First Century are only barely-related concepts. The idea of salvation as Christians understand the concept had not been, or was in the process of being, invented. More so with the term Messiah. Jews were expecting a political figure, not a spiritual one. Various members of the Ptolemaic and especially the Seleucid dynasties carried the surname “Savior”. The concept was obviously of this world and largely political; these kings were saving their kingdoms, the ones here on earth. And this is what the Jews expected, and they expected Jesus to answer the question in those terms. He did not, neither here nor elsewhere. This evoked a certain amount of frustration on the part of “The Jews”. They wanted a straight answer to the question: Are you the guy that’s going to restore the kingdom of David?” Instead, Jesus starts rambling about the actions of God and his own and, to his audience, they’re getting nowhere. Again. Just like the last time they asked.

But wait, it gets worse. In Jewish understanding, the Messiah was not a divine figure. Jews and Muslims are very strict monotheists; only God is God. So for Jesus to try to answer their question by starting to talk about his relationship–verging on identity–with the father, this is not only irrelevant, but it’s blasphemous. Yes, we have become inured to that term to some extent, to the point that we–or at least I–don’t feel full impact of what the term means. I do not understand fully the horror a blasphemous statement would evoke. And I think “horror” is the proper and correct term. This was a world, after all, in which God could intervene at any moment in some very horrific manner, like to the point of thinking “Stand back so you don’t get hit by the lightning!” Yes, we know better, but if you can put yourself in their place for a moment, there reaction would perhaps makes a bit more sense. This is not to say it’s not extreme, or an overreaction, but I think, maybe, we can put ourselves in the ballpark of how the might have felt. This perhaps is especially true when he does answer their question in a manner that is wholly unsatisfying to them as he tries to convince them that his deeds are warranted because they are the deeds of the father, and he’s a little miffed that they don’t–won’t–accept this as some sort of..something. If not actual proof, then as some sort of implication. Perhaps as a sign, if you will. Their response is to state explicitly that are not interested in his deeds. What bothers them, they say is his words, which are blasphemous. 

In short, Jesus saying his deeds demonstrate who he is; “The Jews” are saying his speech demonstrates he is a blasphemer.

So reading this, my question is this: Is this the only place in the NT when this statement is made so bluntly? It feels like I’ve been trying so tease out some of this stuff, trying to disentangle it from the thicket of prickles in which it’s embedded. And now Poof! here it is, all spelled out so nicely. Actually, the real question is why John tells us this here and now rather than earlier or later? I suppose not earlier for the dramatic tension of Jesus leading them along to pop this on them now. Perhaps it’s positioned here due to the upcoming raising of Lazarus, which is more or less the culmination of the signs he performs. It is interesting that they don’t hold the deeds against him; is this because they all lived in a world in which there were many wonder workers? I suspect that may have something to do with it, and that it may be debated for a long time.