Category Archives: gospels

John Chapter 10:19-31

There are a few verses that perhaps should have been included with the previous post, but that had gotten to be too long as it was. We start with Verse 19, which was included, but I’ve come to like overlapping the last/first verse.

Text

19 Σχίσμα πάλιν ἐγένετο ἐν τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις διὰ τοὺς λόγους τούτους.

20 ἔλεγον δὲ πολλοὶ ἐξ αὐτῶν, Δαιμόνιον ἔχει καὶ μαίνεται: τί αὐτοῦ ἀκούετε;

21 ἄλλοι ἔλεγον, Ταῦτα τὰ ῥήματα οὐκ ἔστιν δαιμονιζομένου: μὴ δαιμόνιον δύναται τυφλῶν ὀφθαλμοὺς ἀνοῖξαι;

There was again a schism amongst “The Jews” on account of his words. (20) Many spoke about him, “He has a little demon and he is raging/mad with wine! Did you hear what he said?” (21) Others said, “These words are not those of one demonite-possessed. One under the power of a little daimon cannot open the eyes of the blind.”

These verses should have gone with the previous post. My apologies. However, what’s done is done, and if it were done when ’tis done then ’twere well it were done quickly.

Thus is actually the third tim John has used the word “schism”. I transliterate rather than translate because this is another instance of a word that has come to have a specific, and specifically religious meaning in English. The Western and Eastern Churches suffered an irreparable schism in 1054, one that has left us with a Roman Catholic and a Greek Orthodox Church. The stretch of years in the 14th Century when the papacy relocated to Avignon and a second pope was ruling in Rome has been termed the Western Schism. That one was healed. The word in Greek simply means “division” or something such. Such a division arose in Chapter 9, and prior to that in Chapter 7. The one we encounter here is perhaps best seen as a continuation of the one in that cropped up in Chapter 9. Back then it was put out that he cannot be a man of God because he healed someone on the Sabbath, and one suspects this is largely the same crew saying that he has a demon and he is mad with wine (more on that in a moment). Interestingly, back in Chapter 4, when he healed a man at the Sheep Gate on the Sabbath, John does not use the word “schism” to describe what is a very similar situation.

“Mad with wine”. This is an interesting bit of etymology. The modern translations I’m using all render this as some version of “he is mad/insane”. The NT dictionary attached to the Bible.org site shows it simple as ‘mad’, or to ‘rage, be furious’. In pagan usage the base meaning is the latter, ‘rage, be furious’, the implication being simple anger. Being mad does come in, and it particularly implies madness as a result of wine. There is a fair bit of Greek literature that deals with the madness of wine. We call it drunk, but the Greeks saw it as a bit more sinister, at least potentially so. So the use of this word is not entirely moral, as in getting drunk is a sign of low character. It has the implication of something like being demon-possessed as in the sense of being not in one’s proper mind; which is to say, mad. Interestingly, check out the Latin word bolded below: insanit. I heard it said once (TV show?) that “insane” is not a medical term, but a legal one. (Not sure the point of that…) The Latin sanus, negative being insanus, means “healthy /unhealthy”, but “sound/unsound” is perhaps a better rendering of the word. So you get the point. They are declaring Jesus to be mad, whether demon-possessed or with wine, which to some writing Greek was more or less the same thing.

I did some funky things with daimon/daimonion. The latter is a diminutive form of the former, so “little daimon”. What is a “little daimon? Or what is a daimon for that matter? What is a daimonion? Actually, I know the answers to those questions. What concerns me–us–here is what does John mean when he uses the word? That is really difficult to answer. Or is it? How Greek was John in his thinking? We know that the transition from the neutral, or at rather ambiguous–they could be either good or bad–daimon to the specifically malevolent demon was a Christian phenomenon that was mostly complete by the 5th Century as the Christian writers took over. When did this transition truly start? Did it start all at once and across the board? Or was it a gradual process? A text here, a text there, expanding out in concentric circles? NT Greek tends to assume that this transition to demon happened very quickly, so lexica of NT Greek give the word as “demon” with all its attendant baggage. Here the context makes the “little daimon” seem not to be a good thing, and since its moral character has been specified, I suppose it’s acceptable to leave it as “demon” and get on with our lives. However, do not get into the habit of taking the word “daimon”, and especially not “demon”, at face value. But that’s true with baptize, angel, apostle, and a bunch of others.

19 Dissensio iterum facta est inter Iudaeos propter sermones hos.
20 Dicebant autem multi ex ipsis: “ Daemonium habet et insanit! Quid eum auditis? ”.
21 Alii dicebant: “ Haec verba non sunt daemonium habentis! Numquid daemonium potest caecorum oculos aperire? ”.

22 Ἐγένετο τότε τὰ ἐγκαίνια ἐν τοῖς Ἱεροσολύμοις: χειμὼν ἦν,

23 καὶ περιεπάτει ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ ἐν τῇ στοᾷ τοῦ Σολομῶνος.

24 ἐκύκλωσαν οὖν αὐτὸν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι καὶ ἔλεγον αὐτῷ, Εως πότε τὴν ψυχὴν ἡμῶν αἴρεις; εἰ σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστός, εἰπὲ ἡμῖν παρρησίᾳ.

It was the Feast of the Dedication amongst the Jerusalemites; it was winter. (23) And Jesus was walking about in the porch of the Temple of Solomon. (24) The Jews encircled him and said to him, “Until when do you lift up/take hold of the soul/life? If you are the anointed tell us frankly.”

This is not a ideal place for a break, but once Jesus launches into his answer, it will be even more difficult to find a logical break point.

The Dedication, or Rededication. AKA Hannukah. This festival commemorates the rededication of the Temple by the Maccabaeans after the successful revolt from the Kingdom of the Seleucidai, the Macedonian kingdom of Syria. One commentator points out that an interval of months has elapsed since Chapter 9, since that was set during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), which is usually October-ish. Here John tells us it’s winter, and Hannukah falls in December. John is very consistent to provide the time of year, or when the action described falls during a festival. In no small part this seems to be a literary device to give Jesus a chance to be in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee or elsewhere. I’m not entirely certain why this is so important to John, but one suspects it has to do with the community’s formal rupture with Judaism. John is giving us this information as a means of demonstrating that he and his group were, in fact, observant Jews. Or, contrariwise–as Tweedledee would say–it was done to show that, yes, “The Jews” had their festivals, and yes they diligently observed them, but the obervance was an outward show that did not provide them with insight into who Jesus was; that is to say, they missed the point about Judaism. It was about the Messiah, the Messiah came, and they didn’t get on board with it. Take your pick. I was in the first camp, but now I think I’ve moved to the second.

This is really picking nits, but this was not the Temple of Solomon. That was destroyed by the Babylonians when they defeated Judah, sacked and burned Jerusalem, and deported the Judahites to Babylon until Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Judah and re-build the Temple. Strictly speaking, this was the Second Temple. This matters. I’m not sure how, but it does. It has been suggested that this was an actual relic of of the First Temple, the chances of this being accurate are slim at best.

So tell us, for Pete’s sake! That was a bit of a…pun, since the “Pete” is St Peter”. But regardless, I do not recall another instance where Jesus was questioned with such insistence, whether in this gospel or any of the others. Let’s get to Jesus’ response.

22 Facta sunt tunc Encaenia in Hierosolymis. Hiems erat;
23 et ambulabat Iesus in templo in porticu Salomonis.
24 Circumdederunt ergo eum Iudaei et dicebant ei: “ Quousque animam nostram tollis? Si tu es Christus, dic nobis palam! ”.

25 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Εἶπον ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ πιστεύετε: τὰ ἔργα ἃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ πατρός μου ταῦτα μαρτυρεῖ περὶ ἐμοῦ:

26 ἀλλὰ ὑμεῖς οὐ πιστεύετε, ὅτι οὐκ ἐστὲ ἐκ τῶν προβάτων τῶν ἐμῶν.

27 τὰ πρόβατα τὰ ἐμὰ τῆς φωνῆς μου ἀκούουσιν, κἀγὼ γινώσκω αὐτά, καὶ ἀκολουθοῦσίν μοι,

28 κἀγὼ δίδωμι αὐτοῖς ζωὴν αἰώνιον, καὶ οὐ μὴ ἀπόλωνται εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, καὶ οὐχ ἁρπάσει τις αὐτὰ ἐκ τῆς χειρός μου.

29 ὁ πατήρ μου ὃ δέδωκέν μοι πάντων μεῖζόν ἐστιν, καὶ οὐδεὶς δύναται ἁρπάζειν ἐκ τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ πατρός.

30 ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἕν ἐσμεν.

31 Ἐβάστασαν πάλιν λίθους οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἵνα λιθάσωσιν αὐτόν.

Jesus answered them, “I told you and you did not believe. The works that I do in the name of my father, they give witness about me. (26) But you do not believe, since you are not from my sheep. (27) My sheep hear/listen to my voice, and I know them and they follow me, (28) and I give to them eternal life, and they may not have been destroyed forever, and no one will wrest them from my hand. (29) My father who has given [them] to me, is greater of all, and no one is able to steal them from the hand of my father. (30) I and the father are one. (31) “The Jews” picked up rocks again to stone him.

So once again Jesus provides a circumlocution rather than an answer. Or maybe he just evades the question. I suppose this is one of those situations in which both sides have a legitimate case. “The Jews” want Jesus to come out and say, “I am the Messiah”, which he won’t do. Jesus’ point is that while, no, he has not made that simple declarative sentence, he’s shown them. Over and over. What more evidence do we need? Twice in Chapterr 9 & 10 the comment has been made that demons, or demon-possessed people can’t give a man his sight. There is a legitimate question to be asked whether or not this statement is true; that is, whether or not demonaics or demons could perform such wonders, did people believe they could? The answer is a qualified “yes, they can”, at least in certain circumstances or in the minds of certain individuals. This qualification is necessary because what we would call magic, or wonder-working, had various layers. We have a trove of what are called the “Greek Magical Papyri” (abbr = PGM from the Latin initials). These are mostly low-level things: make so-and-so fall in love with me; let my team win the upcoming chariot race; make so-and-so’s tongue swell up so he can’t press his lawsuit when comes up next week. These are the things of ordinary people with ordinary concerns. That we have so many from across the Empire is a pretty good indication that a lot of people believed that some form of magic was efficacious. Then the debate turns to whether or not the magician casting the spell had sufficient power to effect these outcomes on his/her own authority, or was the intervention of a spirit–a daimon–necessary. To some extent this also requires an answer of “it depends”. As time passed and Christians became more numerous, more educated, and more power the answer became “yes”: some form of supernatural intervention was needed to bring about the desired result. From there the next step was to condemn all daimones as necessarily evil. There were no good daimones–although later Christian saints took on such powers to suspend the laws of nature and perform what by then were called miracles. But that position is several centuries forward from John’s gospel. It is to be noted that one of the entities invoked in such spells was Jesus; he carried an aura of having been a particularly powerful magician in some circles, and this belief carried forward for no short span of time, upwards of a century or more. In fact, several Christian authors wrote apologetic works defending against this charge into the Third Century.

There is also a strain of what we can call “intellectual magic”. These practitioners were learned men who studied various forms of what we would call “occult”–in the modern sense of the word–learning, but this learning also involved studying Plato, Aristotle, Babylonian astrology, and other such pursuits. They ended up producing things like the Corpus Hermeticum, a series of tracts that discussed the non-material world. These men surely believed that the learned magician could do all sorts of incredible things. One tract actually suggests that a human can become more or less a god and so do all sorts of things. In such circles the invocation of help from a non-material entity was not always seen as needed to work a wonder. That is also a century or two later than John.

But let’s bear in mind that John was writing for rather a specific audience. Thus the question is: what did they believe? If they were former Jews, I suspect the answer is probably aligned with the speakers who said that such things could not be done by demons. While making generalizations is always fraught with difficulty, I believe it is reasonably safe to say that Jews were at least somewhat less inclined to give credit to spirits than their pagan neighbors. The Jews, again very broadly, were not big on the non-material world. As we’ve gone along, I’ve been pointing out that the Jewish notion of eternal life more or less presupposed the continued existence of the body, rather than that of an immaterial soul. The HS is not without references to non-material entities; the Witch of Endor calling up the ghost (?) of Samuel comes foremost to mind; however, she is more of a diviner than a what we would consider a witch. As for the injunction in Exodus that you shall not suffer a witch to live, the word there is highly ambiguous and can simply mean “poisoner”; the root is pharmakos, obviously the origin of our “pharmacy” or “pharmacist” and the Greek word is broad enough to cover our concept. As with daimon, the term is not necessarily malevolent, just as or word “drug” can refer to something beneficial like aspirin or it can refer to heroin.

Given that the entire corpus of the Hebrew Scriptures yield two rather oblique references to a supernatural world, it would seem the conclusion to be drawn is that John’s audience would most likely have agreed with the assessment that demons could not perform such works. For again, one of the few instances of a wonder worked by someone other than God or one of his agents–Elijah/Elisha raising the dry bones–was the priest of Pharaoh tossing his staff and seeing it turn into two snakes. So yes, the conclusion is that the supernatural did not impinge on the workaday world unless it was God performing the wonder. Of course, this assumes that the audience, the assembly John was addressing, had a Jewish background, rather than a pagan one like the authors of the Synoptics faced. This seems very likely. WE commented that John is constantly telling us which feast is being celebrated; this one is Hanukkah, previously we were told it was Sukkoth. These temporal markers would not have been terribly meaningful to pagans, so it’s not unreasonable to infer that the audience was largely Jewish. Taking all this together, the audience would haave concluded that demons cannot give a person sight, but the Messiah can. Jesus did all these things. Ergo, Jesus is the Messiah. Q.E.D.

The remaining verses are more extended metaphor/parable about the Good Shepherd. Oddly, although both Matthew and Luke relate the parable of the one lost sheep out of a hundred, but neither of them has Jesus referring to himself as the Good Shepherd as he does in this chapter. A Google search of “good shepherd” will take you both to the Parable of the Lost Sheep and this part of John, but the Lost Sheep is the first result. Raising sheep was an integral part of the economy in the Near East, and had been for a long time, so the analogy would have been familiar to audiences. But it is conspicuously absent from Mark. Why? The tradition suggests that Mark was written somewhere outside the Near East, with Rome being the leading candidate. However, the choice of Rome is tied up in the idea that Mark was John Mark who was mentioned in Acts as the companion of Peter. Since Peter supposedly went to Rome to become the first bishop, it’s more or less assumed that (John) Mark would have been with him there, and wrote the gospel per Peter’s recollections. However, since there is no evidence that either Peter or Paul was ever in Rome, I find this dubious at best. But that’s a debate for another time. The point here is that Matthew was the first to add material based on sheep herding, introducing the 99/1 sheep pericope. Luke includes this, but doesn’t add much. I won’t speculate on where Luke was written. Johm continues the tradition of Matthew, and adds to it by positing Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

The sheep are from the Father. I suppose there is nothing really extraordinary about this on face value. Of course all flows from the Father in Jesus’ worldview. Even so, this is not a passage that gets a lot of discussion in gospel readings. I don’t find it familiar, but I’m hardly a biblical scholar. The more interesting aspect is that no one can snatch the sheep from the father’s hand. This is bordering on a one-and-done process of attaining eternal life: once you’re in the fold, you don’t–can’t?–leave it. That is an extreme position, but it’s the sort of vague-ish sentiment that can lead to oodles of controversy over the course of centuries. The whole Predestination debate revolves around what may be extreme interpretations of a select number of verses; however, over time, someone is going to put forth that extreme interpretation and cause a hubbub in the flock of believers. This is prefaced by Jesus saying that the father is greater than all, which is an implication of divine omnipotence, so what the Father has determined cannot be undone. Editor’s note: Note that the word meizon is the comparative form, not the superlative form. So it’s “greater” rather than “greatest”; however, if something is “greater than all”, it’s the functional equivalent of “greatest of all”. So why didn’t John simply use the superlative? Anyone? Bueller?

Now what about the context? This comes directly before “I and the father are one”. These two verses are, if not actually contradictory, don’t sit well together. Upon first reading my reaction to Verse 30 was “Where did that come from?” At the very least, it does not flow naturally from the previous verse wherein things flow from the father, which implies a logical distinction between son and father. This renders the assertion that “I and the Father are one” a bit of a problem. Is it like the greater/greatest in Verse 29? Two ways of saying the same thing? The end result is that the identity is posited in Verse 30, but the apparent distinction raised my eyebrow. And this is not the only time Jesus has implied a distinction between son & father, but it’s also not the only time that he has followed this up by asserting the logical identity, a = b. I suppose we can suggest a certain amount of rhetorical flourish; saying a = a is a bald tautology, and that is boring. OTOH, a = b has a bit more flavor to it. But individual uses of such rhetorical devices accumulate, and this creates a certain amount of doubt amongst logical considerations. Of course, the NT is not a discourse on or in logic, so such considerations may, in fact, be moot*.

Finally, the last verse. “The Jews” started collecting rocks to stone Jesus. We are told no more, so Jesus presumably was able to make his escape without much further ado. He does not pass through their midst as he did in Luke. The point is simply that “The Jews” had grown exasperated with his arrogance and blasphemy.

*Moot: pronounced to rhyme with “boot”. Something that is irrelevant, or that really doesn’t affect the sitution is a moot point, not a mute point.

25 Respondit eis Iesus: “Dixi vobis, et non creditis; opera, quae ego facio in nomine Patris mei, haec testimonium perhibent de me.
26 Sed vos non creditis, quia non estis ex ovibus meis.
27 Oves meae vocem meam audiunt, et ego cognosco eas, et sequuntur me;
28 et ego vitam aeternam do eis, et non peribunt in aeternum, et non rapiet eas quisquam de manu mea.
29 Pater meus quod dedit mihi, maius omnibus est, et nemo potest rapere de manu Patris.
30 Ego et Pater unum sumus”.
31 Sustulerunt iterum lapides Iudaei, ut lapidarent eum.

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John Chapter 10:1-19

Apr 7

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

Well, here’s a place where reading ahead would have been a good idea. As it turns out, Chapter 10 is a direct continuqtion of Chapter 9. If you recall (despite the length of time since posting the final commentary to the previous chapter), Jesus was interacting with “The Jews”, who have been identified as Pharisees are still in a hubbub about the curing of the Man Born Blind. They are in a snit because Jesus implies they are blind. Recall, this would indicate that they were sinful, since the Man was declared sinful because of his condition. The interaction continues, with Jesus speaking.

Text

1 Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὁ μὴ εἰσερχόμενος διὰ τῆς θύρας εἰς τὴν αὐλὴν τῶν προβάτων ἀλλὰ ἀναβαίνων ἀλλαχόθεν ἐκεῖνος κλέπτης ἐστὶν καὶ λῃστής:

2 ὁ δὲ εἰσερχόμενος διὰ τῆς θύρας ποιμήν ἐστιν τῶν προβάτων.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, the one not entering through the door to the courtyard/pasture of the sheep but climbing from another place, he is a thief and a robber. (2) But the one entering thru the door is a shepherd of the sheep.

Two quick points regarding the bolded words. The first is ἀναβαίνων, which I have translated as “climbed”. In another form, the verb becomes anabasis, which is the Greek title of the work by Xenophon, which II have seen entitled in English as The March of the Ten Thousand, or The March Upcountry. It’s the story of ten thousand Greek mercenaries who had been hired by Cyrus, the brother of the Persian King Artaxerxes II, to help Cyrus overthrow his brother and so take the crown. Well, Cyrus was killed, and these mercenaries found themselves in the awkward position of being in the middle of the Persian Empire without a Persian sponsor. Since they had fought against him, Artaxerxes was ill-disposed to this formidable army in his midst. But it speaks volumes that he did not attack and obliterate the Greek, such was the fear and respect the Persians had for Greek soldiers after they had fought off two invasions of Greece by Persia. So the Greeks organized themselves, chose leaders–one of them being Xenophon–and determined to march over the mountains of central Anatolia. That is, they marched upcountry, to the north, and ascended the mountains on their way. And they were successful in doing so. The plot always sounded a bit like a boys’ adventure story, so I avoided it until about ten years ago. It’s absolutely fascinating, and offers a great insight into the way the Greeks thought and looked at the world.

The second is λῃστής, which transliterates as lēstēs. You may recall that this is the word that Reza Aslan wants us to believe actually means “rebel”, or even “revolutionary” in his book Zealot: The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth. The thesis of the work is that Jesus was crucified because crucifixion was a punishment reserved for revolutionaries, and Aslan noting that this was the term to describe the two men crucified with Jesus. I find this argument especially pernicious; first, it is just plain wrong–on both counts. Crucifixion was not reserved for revolutionaries and lēstēs does not mean “revolutionary”. I did read the book, but can’t say I recall the details, but even a cursory glance at Strong’s Words would show that lēstēs is never used as revolutionary in the NT. The most incongruous situation was Jesus clearing the Temple, saying it had become a “den of revolutionaries”. But my real gripe with Aslan’s thesis is that it has crept into the scholarship. I have seen casual references to Jesus as a revolutionary, made as if this was settled fact. It’s not. It’s flat wrong. Scholarship is usually a game of nuance, but there really is none in this case.

1 “Amen, amen dico vobis: Qui non intrat per ostium in ovile ovium, sed ascendit aliunde, ille fur est et latro;

2 qui autem intrat per ostium, pastor est ovium.

3 τούτῳ ὁ θυρωρὸς ἀνοίγει, καὶ τὰ πρόβατα τῆς φωνῆς αὐτοῦ ἀκούει, καὶ τὰ ἴδια πρόβατα φωνεῖ κατ’ ὄνομα καὶ ἐξάγει αὐτά.

4 ὅταν τὰ ἴδια πάντα ἐκβάλῃ, ἔμπροσθεν αὐτῶν πορεύεται, καὶ τὰ πρόβατα αὐτῷ ἀκολουθεῖ, ὅτι οἴδασιν τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ:

5 ἀλλοτρίῳ δὲ οὐ μὴ ἀκολουθήσουσιν ἀλλὰ φεύξονται ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι οὐκ οἴδασιν τῶν ἀλλοτρίων τὴν φωνήν.

“For this one (who comes through the door) the door-keeper admits, and the sheep hear his voice, and he speaks the names (= calls) (of) his own sheep and they follow him. (4) When he expelled all of his (sheep), he proceeds before them, and his sheep follow him, as they know his voice. (5) Nor do they follow another, but flee from him, since they do not know the voice of the other.”

Had to juggle the grammar a bit. And the Greek word used to describe him leading out his sheep is “to cast out”, which is what Jesus usually does to demons. Rather an odd choice of word. It has overtones of an unwilling departure, which is pretty much the opposite of what we have here. And back in Verse 1, the word behind “courtyard/pasture” refers to both. At its root it’s an open rectangle before the house, without a roof, with colonnades around the sides. It can be seen as a reception area, or it can be a place to enclose livestock, as it is here. This double-duty term provides some insight into the lifestyle of the era, when livestock and people often lived in close proximity.

3 Huic ostiarius aperit, et oves vocem eius audiunt, et proprias oves vocat nominatim et educit eas.

4 Cum proprias omnes emiserit, ante eas vadit, et oves illum sequuntur, quia sciunt vocem eius;

5 alienum autem non sequentur, sed fugient ab eo, quia non noverunt vocem alienorum ”.

⁶ Ταύτην τὴν παροιμίαν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς· ἐκεῖνοι δὲ οὐκ ἔγνωσαν τίνα ἦν ἃ ἐλάλει αὐτοῖς.

⁷ Εἶπεν οὖν πάλιν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα τῶν προβάτων.

⁸ πάντες ὅσοι ἦλθον [πρὸ ἐμοῦ] κλέπται εἰσὶν καὶ λῃσταί· ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἤκουσαν αὐτῶν τὰ πρόβατα.

⁹ ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα· δι’ ἐμοῦ ἐάν τις εἰσέλθῃ σωθήσεται καὶ εἰσελεύσεται καὶ ἐξελεύσεται καὶ νομὴν εὑρήσει.

¹⁰ ὁ κλέπτης οὐκ ἔρχεται εἰ μὴ ἵνα κλέψῃ καὶ θύσῃ καὶ ἀπολέσῃ· ἐγὼ ἦλθον ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχωσιν καὶ περισσὸν ἔχωσιν.

¹¹ Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός· ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων·

¹² ὁ μισθωτὸς καὶ οὐκ ὢν ποιμήν, οὗ οὐκ ἔστιν τὰ πρόβατα ἴδια, θεωρεῖ τὸν λύκον ἐρχόμενον καὶ ἀφίησιν τὰ πρόβατα καὶ φεύγει καὶ ὁ λύκος ἁρπάζει αὐτὰ καὶ σκορπίζει

¹³ ὅτι μισθωτός ἐστιν καὶ οὐ μέλει αὐτῷ περὶ τῶν προβάτων.

¹⁴ Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός, καὶ γινώσκω τὰ ἐμὰ καὶ γινώσκουσί με τὰ ἐμά,

¹⁵ καθὼς γινώσκει με ὁ πατὴρ κἀγὼ γινώσκω τὸν πατέρα· καὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου τίθημι ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων

Jesus related this maxim/proverb (figure of speech, or something such, but it is not the word for “parable”), ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, they do not know the someone who spoke to them.” (7) So Jesus spoke again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, that I am the door of the sheep. (8) All so many who came before me are thieves and robbers; but the sheep do not hear their voices, (9) I am the door. Through me If someone may wish to be saved and enter and leave and he will discover the law. (10) The thief will not come except in order that he may steal and burn and destroy; I came in order to that he may have life and he may have beyond the standard number. (I.E., that he may have life that exceeds the normal extent.) (11) I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd places his life (soul) over the sheep. (12) The hired shepherd, of whom the sheep are not his privately, beholds the wolf coming and deserts the sheep and flees and the wolf attacks them and scatters them (13) as he is the hired shepherd does not care about the sheep. (14) I am the good shepherd, and I know those of me (my sheep) and my own know me. (15 Accordingly my father knows me and I know my father. And I will lay down my life for my sheep.

Quickly, some vocabulary: παροιμίαν, paroimian. I’ve never encountered the word because it’s unusual and seldom used by pagan authors. It’s interesting because Jihn chose to use something other than a word from the parabolē stem; that is, something other than what is usually translated as “parable” (which is also the root of the mathematical term “parabola”). So it’s maybe closest to “analogy”, but not really. Doubtless, it goes without say that “door of the sheep” is literal; figuratively, this would be the rampart, the defensive wall, the protection of the sheep.

Then there is the line about “those who came before me”. At first–or second, or third–reading I must admit that I wasn’t sure how to take this. Truth be told, I’m still not. A bunch of standard commentators are quick to point out that Jesus does not mean his predecessors in the Jewish tradition, meaning Abraham, Moses, the prophets, etc. When I get a herd reaction like this, my reaction tends to take it as a signal that this is exactly whom Jesus meant. But several commentators point to previous passages in John where it can be said that Jesus seeks to connect himself to Moses and the Baptist. It’s a close call, but I think this is correct. While Jesus has been striving mightily to dissociate himself from “The Jews”–Temple figures and Pharisees, as here–it would seem to go too far to say he is condemning the heritage of Judaism rather than the actions of the specific Jews of his lifetime. One commentator suggested that the present tense of “the ones who came before me are thieves and robbers” is meant to stress that he is, indeed, speaking of contemporaries; however, there is a two problem with this. After all, there is a certain inherent contradiction between “those who came before me” with its aorist tense of once-and-done completed action with present-tense “are”. To some extent this is the non-linearity of time in Greek, which is not nearly as clearly-cut as in English. The very existence of the aorist subjunctive is a case in point. That being said, the “historical present” is very common in all Greek authors who very, very frequently use a present tense to describe what is very obviously a past and completed action. Now, again having said this, I’m not entirely clear whether I’ve supported or undercut my point.

Another commentator suggested that the false messiahs are a phenomenon of history after Jesus, but there was a largely continuous stream of such pretenders, so that is no help. For all that, there is no reason this couldn’t be a reference to groups like the Gnostics, who came into existence in the late First Century. We have to bear in mind that John may have written a full three generations after Jesus which provides ample time for various sects of Jesus followers that were later deemed to have drifted into non-orthodox beliefs. Honestly, given the context, it seems easy enough to believe that he was talking about the very crowd with which he was having this current discussion. The support for this comes from the fact that the sheep did not believe these thieves and robbers. The sheep are the assembly that produced this gospel; they spurned “The Jews” and chose to follow Jesus in the way John did. From the perspective of John’s assembly, these were people–“The Jews”–who, it could be said, burned and stole and killed.

We need to say just a quick word about Jesus as the gate keeper. It is through him that one gains life. This continues the message that John has been preaching consistently throughout the gospel. This just adds another metaphor, that of The Good Shepherd, and this analogy or parable of The Good Shepherd does not, I think, require too much analysis or comment. Or does it? The flock, for whom Jesus acts as gate-keeper and protector, knows his voice and follows him, but not the stranger. Why, and why not? Maybe this won’t be a “quick word” after all.

Let’s go back to a question that I used to ask in this forum regularly, if not frequently: Why does someone choose to write a gospel? Assuming it’s not from divine inspiration–a question far outside scope of this blog, and of history in general–there has to be a compelling compulsion to undertake such a bizarre and arduous task. All good writing is re-writing (not sure what that says about this blog…?), so we’re talking about an effort that will take months, if not years. Not sure where I read it–Ehrman, most likely–but the suggestion was that John represented a community that had made its final break from Judaism, and that this gospel was sort of a manifesto of what this community believed and how they saw Jesus. To strike out on my own here, it’s not difficult to see that this gospel was perhaps intended to be something of a dialogue. This was a very common literary format in the ancient world, introduced and perfected by Plato, something like 500 years before John wrote this gospel we are discussing. And this is a good place to raise this possibility, since Chapter 10 is a continuation of a dialogue that was begun in Chapter 9. Much of the gospel has been a series of dialogues between Jesus and some other group, mostly representatives in some way of “The Jews”. Jesus and “The Jews” hold an ongoing dialogue that mostly fills the entire chapter. And here the dialogue has run into the second. Given this, does it not make sense that Jesus is “talking” to the representatives du jour? In which case, in this passage Jesus setting out the reasons why his followers have broken with “The Jews”. This latter group are the “thieves and robbers”, the “others” that his flock does not know and so does not follow. This all a way of saying that the people Jesus refers to are the same people he’s speaking to at this very moment in the gospel.

In turn, this helps explain the mission statement Jesus delineates here. In the Synoptics, Jesus warns his followers that he will suffer and die, but the warning, or the prophesy is couched in terms of dire times, perhaps end times, times of tribulation. Oddly, all that is missing. Jesus tells us he will lay down his psyche for his sheep–more on psyche in a minute–but there is no context. What this says to me is that the times of tribulation in the decade or two either side of the Destruction of the Temple were by the time John wrote something of an unpleasant but distant memory rather than a recent experience that still instilled fear into Jesus’ followers. This sort of blurring of the apocalyptic rhetoric tells me two things: First, it’s another good indication that John did indeed write further into the 2nd Century than has generally been suggested. Even at the turn of the century, such persecution as had occurred under Domitian was barely a decade old and lots of people would have recalled those awful years. Second, that it faded after 20 years may be an indication that the times had not been quite as dire as patristic writers would have us believe.

As for psyche, we have discussed previously that “soul” is not the only way this word can be translated. Indeed, there are times when it should be translated simply as “life”, and this is clearly one of them. A number of religious/philosophical thinkers envisioned a tripartite division of the kosmos: there was matter, psyche, and pneuma or spirit. Matter was just that: physical matter that was essentially dead unless vivified by the spirit. Matter was the lowest form of existence, spirit was the highest, something completely non-material and non-corporeal; it was just spirit. In between was psyche. To put it in simplest (which means somewhat distorted) terms, psyche was the in-between, partaking of, or composed of both dead matter and vivifying spirit. As such, its meaning shifted depending on emphasis. Homer talks about the psyches of heroes sent tittering down to Hades as a result of the baneful wrath of Achilles. By the 1st Century, however, the third division had been incorporated into the world view of a number of groups, the Gnostics being one of them. Categories were a big thing for at least some of the Gnostics, and so here the body/soul, matter/spirit absolutely dualistic dichotomy underwent some modification. That is why I’m not sure Gnostics were truly dualistic thinkers, at least not in the way that the radical dualists like some adherents of Zoroaster and the later Manichaeans were. So once again, if you do learn to read enough Greek to tackle the NT, realize that the definition of psyche is not fixed.

6 Hoc proverbium dixit eis Iesus; illi autem non cognoverunt quid esset, quod loquebatur eis.
7 Dixit ergo iterum Iesus: “ Amen, amen dico vobis: Ego sum ostium ovium.
8 Omnes, quotquot venerunt ante me, fures sunt et latrones, sed non audierunt eos oves.
9 Ego sum ostium; per me, si quis introierit, salvabitur et ingredietur et egredietur et pascua inveniet.
10 Fur non venit, nisi ut furetur et mactet et perdat; ego veni, ut vitam habeant et abundantius habeant.
11 Ego sum pastor bonus; bonus pastor animam suam ponit pro ovibus;
12 mercennarius et, qui non est pastor, cuius non sunt oves propriae, videt lupum venientem et dimittit oves et fugit — et lupus rapit eas et dispergit —
13 quia mercennarius est et non pertinet ad eum de ovibus.
14 Ego sum pastor bonus et cognosco meas, et cognoscunt me meae,
15 sicut cognoscit me Pater, et ego cognosco Patrem; et animam meam pono pro ovibus.

16 καὶ ἄλλα πρόβατα ἔχω ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης: κἀκεῖνα δεῖ με ἀγαγεῖν, καὶ τῆς φωνῆς μου ἀκούσουσιν, καὶ γενήσονται μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν.

17 διὰ τοῦτό με ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ ὅτι ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχήν μου, ἵνα πάλιν λάβω αὐτήν.

18 οὐδεὶς αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ. ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτήν, καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν: ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔλαβον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου.

19 Σχίσμα πάλιν ἐγένετο ἐν τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις διὰ τοὺς λόγους τούτους.

“And I have other sheep which are not from this sheep pen; and it is necessary that I lead them, and that they listen to my voice, and there will be a single flock, one shepherd. (17) On this account my father <loves> me since I place my life, in order that again I may take it (my life) up. (18) No one takes this from me, but I place it on my own, I hold it worthy to have (so) placed it, and I hold it worthy again that I have taken it up again. I received this command from my father.” (19) Again there was a schism amongst “The Jews” on account of his words.

The most interesting–IMO, anyway–part of this group of verses has to do with verb tenses and moods. If I haven’t done so already, I need to explain that when we talk about verbs and moods, we are almost certainly talking about the subjunctive. Again, if I haven’t made it clear, strictly speaking the subjunctive is not a tense, like the aorist or the perfect, but a mood. And by mood we mean it takes us out of the concrete do/did/done into the less concrete realm of wishes, conditionals, commands, and maybe most especially into the realm of possibility and potential. So when you see a subjunctive, take note. I remember my first encounter with this mood back in HS Spanish, and how difficult it is for native monolingual English speakers to grasp the concept. English does–more or less–have a subjunctive mood, but it’s never really taught as such. By the time I had my fourth or fifth encounter in German, it was pretty much clear.

Here’s the thing: note in Verse 17, the word translated as <loves>. I put the scare quotes <> there for a particular reason. Note the terminal letter, an alpha: ἀγαπᾷ. You will probably have to blow up your screen to see it, but note how there is a little squiggle attached to the bottom, like a backwards comma. That is known as a subscript, and this particular flavor of the subscript indicates that there is an iota not showing. It’s the same as the circumflex in French, as in hôpital; this indicates that there used to be a “s” following the “o”, so the word used to be spelled hospital. In Greek, the iota subscript means that it is to be understood that there is an iota there. What that does is change the mood of the verb from standard indicative “my father loves me” as a simple declarative sentence, into the subjunctive mood. So we have entered into that Twilight Zone of uncertainty, or possibility, or potential. A standard translation of this would be “my father may love me”, at some point in the future, usually if a certain as-yet unreal condition were to be met. So the Greek does not say “my father loves me”. But here’s the real kicker. I have two online resources that provide a parse of the verb, giving number, tense, mood, etc. Both of them parse this as an indicative rather than as a subjunctive. The text includes the subscript, so it’s not like they’re saying that the subscript may be the result of different mss traditions. They simply pretend it’s not there.

Now, to some degree I can understand why they do it: acknowledging the subjunctive puts the father’s love into a potential rather than a given, but making the declaration “he loves me” as a definitive statement rather than as a condition that is contingent, or conditional, or not quite certain changes the tenor, if not the meaning of the verse. Meanwhile, the rest of the passage is chock-a-block full of verbs in the subjunctive mood, some of them in the notorious aorist subjunctive.

16 Et alias oves habeo, quae non sunt ex hoc ovili, et illas oportet me adducere, et vocem meam audient et fient unus grex, unus pastor.
17 Propterea me Pater diligit, quia ego pono animam meam, ut iterum sumam eam.
18 Nemo tollit eam a me, sed ego pono eam a meipso. Potestatem habeo ponendi eam et potestatem habeo iterum sumendi eam. Hoc mandatum accepi a Patre meo ”.
19 Dissensio iterum facta est inter Iudaeos propter sermones hos.

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Summary John Chapter 9

Mar 29

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

This is being published on Good Friday, 2024, at 3:15, a quarter-hour after the traditional time of Jesus’ death. The tradition I was taught as a lad at Maple Grove St Michaels is that he was on the cross from noon until 3:00.

According to my records, I have not posted since late January, a full two months ago. Since I’m no longer working for the man–or anyone–I should theoretically have a plethora of time. Theoretically. But let’s also be honest: I got involved in reading piece of theology written in Latin by St Bonaventure, who went on to found a university in Olean, NY. Naturally, doing the translating took longer than expected, but I cannot stress enough the importance of reading other primary sources in their original Greek or Latin if one wishes to have a reasonable understanding of how other languages work. Bonaventure wrote in the 12th century so he uses a bunch of “standard” words rather differently than Classical authors. This is good practice to help broaden one’s approach: if you’re paying attention, you will become aware of alternative nuances which may color your understanding of what the text could mean. If you approach a work like the NT with this more open understanding, you will realize that some passages can be read in different ways. My latest is paradidomai, “to hand down or hand over”. In that crucial passage of 1 Cor 11:23-29, Paul uses the word at least twice. Once it is translated, pretty much universally, as he “handed down” the word that have become the words of the consecration of the bread in Catholic & Episcopalian (and other?) masses. The other time it is translated as “betrayed”. Both are valid. But–a key aspect of the Passion Narrative is based on that reading of “betrayed”. This is the closest piece we have approaching a primary source for the Lord’s Supper and what happened. If that is not “betrayed”, then the whole Judas thing disappears. Think about that.

Anyway, the point here is that learning “NT Greek” is good, but, by itself, it won’t give you a real grasp of how the Greek works and how reading the original will provide new insights. Of course, I am a Classicist, and we are known to be snobs, and with justification. We are snobbish and pompous and those are our good qualities.

To the text.

The chapter tells the story of how Jesus gives sight to a man blind from birth. Since this was congenital, we cannot say that Jesus “restored” the man’s sight since he had never had it. This detail is meant to emphasize the wonder and power of the mighty work–remember, there are no ‘miracles’ in the NT. Restoration is more readily effected since the apparatus was in place and operational at some point. Jesus is, in effect, creating the man’s sight from scratch, if not quite ex nihilo. And it appears that this is the only instance where Jesus actually gave someone sight for the first time; in other instances, Jesus restored a faculty that had been lost. In fact, John stresses the point in Verse 32 where the healed man says that it has never been heard that someone born blind has had sight given to them. This does help explain why the authorities drag his parents into the discussion. This emphasis explains why the newly-sighted man suggests that this is a sign. More on that later.

The most pertinent passage of this chapter, IMO, starts with Verse 6. This is where Jesus spits on dirt to make mud. As we mentioned in the commentary, this detailed description–or prescription– for restoring or initiating a man’s sight appeared in Mark, but was scrubbed from Matthew and Luke for reasons we can only guess. The process described can only be called a “magical practice”, as I have named it; that is to say it’s the sort of thing one might expect to find in a grimoire. For those who may not know, a grimoire is a book of how to cast spells; sort of a magician’s cookbook, as it were. I’ve read excerpts from a few different ones. I’m about halfway through translating Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy from the original Latin. First, “occult” is misleading. The Latin is de Occulta Philosophia, so the root is obvious, but the meaning is not. This is one of those words where the meaning has shifted over time; occulta, simply means “hidden”, but the meaning can be completely non-sinister. For example, kids might play a game of occulta-and-go-seek. It can simply mean not obvious to the naked eye. Like magnetism. Or gravity. Both could be understood to be “occult” phenomena, or powers, according to the Latin meaning of the term. But in any case, Agrippa has hundreds of little “cures” or “prescriptions” involving body parts of various animals or stones to cure ailments or afflictions. It’s where the “Eye of newt/and toe of frog” came from in Macbeth, IV.1. The description of Jesus’ actions here–and in Mark–are fully consistent with the sort of thing that Agrippa would discuss a millennium-and-a-half later,

And that is very interesting. Magic, as in the real thing with hocus-pocus and wands went in and out of favor amongst the Roman elite over the course of the first century. Tiberius was dead-set against it, and the records indicate that he executed a large number of magicians during his reign. Interestingly, Jesus was executed during the reign of Tiberius. Coincidence? I am increasingly of the opinion that it may not have been. I have come to suspect that Jesus was executed precisely because he was considered a magician. Pilate could easily have had Jesus arrested and executed as a magician and his boss Tiberius would have applauded the effort. Two points: First, there is solid and a not-insignificant amount of evidence that later pagans, into the second century and beyond, considered Jesus to have been a powerful magician, to the point that pagan magicians invoke Jesus as a power that can help cast an effective spell. His name appears on gemstones used as amulets, on lead tablets that were used to cast spells, and he is mentioned in pagan texts on magic. Second, Apollonius of Tyana–who has been called the “Pagan Jesus/Christ”, and whose name still gives the Vatican the willies–also had to fend off charges of being a magician. He, too, lived an ascetic life as a wandering teacher who cured people, and there were those who said he did it by magic. And “magic” at the time, carried heavy connotations of the invocation of spirits, who were not always benign.

So there was good reason for Matthew and Luke to scrub such magical practices from their versions of the gospel. It was a safe thing to do; it removed the possibility of misunderstandings and helped prevent Jesus’ name from falling into disrepute. It helped keep him respectable. This being the case, we have to ask why John put this back into his gospel? Of course, that brings up the question of whether or not John was aware of his predecessors. Personally, I find the idea that he was not to be rather ludicrous. There was an entity that can justifiably be called a “Church” by the time John wrote, and this Church kept things moving. I think that people don’t realize how much travel occurred within the Roman Empire in the First and Second Centuries. These were the years of the Pax Romana, the Roman peace, and trade and commerce were thriving, and all sorts of people were traveling for all sorts of reasons. In fact, in the Second Century a chap named Pausanias wrote a what can only be described as a guidebook for tourists visiting Greece. The Christian communities communicated with each other. The Didache, written somewhere in the early-mid Second Century describes how communities should treat visiting preachers. These various communities were not isolated islands, but part of a network of believers. The aforementioned Apollonius of Tyana and Philipp the Apostle both supposedly traveled to India. Part of the reason people want to believe that John was not aware of the Synoptics is that this keeps John as an independent source, which bolsters the credibility of the records preserved in the gospels. But, as with Q, wishing it true don’t make it so.

The description of the process by which Jesus made the man whole is, while not verbatim, identical. The closeness of the details of the account can only have come about in two different ways. The first is that John read Mark. Otherwise, we almost have to posit that the early Christian communities continued a tradition of restoring sight by using saliva to make mud which is then applied to the eyes of the sufferer. Honestly, this argument would be easier to make, and make coherent, than the “argument” for Q. The ritual was described in the 70s, and then again 30-50 years later.

So why does John bring this back? Because it was omitted by Matthew and Luke? We have seen how ofttimes Luke restored things that had been in Mark that Matthew omitted. The Gerasene Demonaic is a good example of Luke restoring detail to the account that Matthew cut from his. Of course, it’s difficult not to suggest that the overall opinion of magic had changed since the times Matthew and Luke wrote. What had been scandalous, perhaps to the point of dangerous, for them had become benign in the subsequent generation.

Was Jesus a magician? Some people thought so. Josephus has an unusual term for Jesus: a man who performed paradoxōn ergōn, a man who did unexpected or extraordinary things, deeds one normally wouldn’t expect. The word itself is rather unusual, rarely used by pagan writers and appearing less than a dozen times in the NT, and in most of these instances it is used to indicate someone (usually Jesus) who was not acting as one would expect a practicing Jew to act. Often this meant transgressions against the Sabbath. It’s difficult to tell what Josephus means by using the word; a single instance by an author is not really sufficient to get a sense of what s/he means by the word. It generally gets translated as “wonderful” as in the sense of a “wonder-worker”, but given the usage in the NT, one has to wonder what Josephus is saying about Jesus. Was he calling him a wonder worker? Or was he calling Jesus someone who did not behave as a pious Jew might be expected to behave? That’s how it’s used in the NT for the most part, and Josephus was a rough contemporary of Matthew and Luke.

That discussion ran longer than expected. Much longer, in fact. But in the final analysis it’s the most unusual aspect of the whole chapter. Most of the rest is something of a recapitulation of the themes that we have encountered to this point. Jesus is in contention with “The Jews”, the leading citizens and/or prominent members of the synagogue or the community. If you’ll recall, it’s not entirely clear where exactly Jesus is, and where this action unfolded. He was “passing by” and saw the man born blind. Not that the end of Chapter 8 is necessarily going to provide reasonable information on this, but he was in the Temple last chapter. If we are to assume, or infer, or surmise that he still is, that would make the authorities truly “The Jews”, the religious and more or less (puppet) secular leaders of the population of Jerusalem. With one exception, it’s interesting to note that the name of Caiaphas, who was supposedly the High Priest, does not occur in any of the gospels until we get to the Passion Narrative. That exception will crop up in Chapter 11 of John. I will have more to say on that when we get to it.

Regardless of where this occurred, we have the authorities refusing to accept that Jesus is an agent of God. The Man Born Blind is incredulous about this; surely, he said, Jesus has performed a Sign, and yet the authorities question whether he is from God? How can that be? This is largely a recapitulation of the interactions Jesus had with “The Jews” in most of the other chapters we’ve read. In some ways this is analogous to the “Messianic Secret” encountered in Mark. To underscore, we get the loaded question at the very end of the chapter when some of the Pharisees ask “are we blind?” I referred to this as a loaded question; perhaps “rhetorical question” is more accurate. Of course they are blind. That is why John is writing this gospel: to show the world just how blind “The Jews” were. After all, in this chapter Jesus performs an actual Sign and they ask how he can be from God if he doesn’t observe the Sabbath? How much more blind can one be? Recall that the crowed asked for–demanded?–a sign in Mark 10, and earlier in this gospel when Jesus crossed back to Caphernaum from feeding the 5,000. I guess they wanted it hand-delivered with a bow and an instruction manual and “SIGN” written in big red letters.

Really though, the insistence that this was, indeed, a sign just makes the inclusion of, and description of, the magical practice all that more curious. Why does God need to make a plaster? God made the eyes to begin with; surely he can retrofit an operational pair of them into a factory reject? The biggest problem that people had with magic was that it usually involved the invocation of a spirit, or daimon, or some lesser superhuman entity, and that these entities were often not to be trusted. God created the kosmos in six days ex nihilo, from nothing. And if Jesus is one with the father, the mere thought or intent should have been enough to give the man his sight.

Curious, indeed.

Posted in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 9, gospel commentary, gospels, Historical Jesus, John's Gospel, passion story, Summary

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John Chapter 9:22-34

Jan 23

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

As with previous chapters, this one is a continuation, to some extent the entire chapter is a single story, or pericope, or–wait for it–logos. Note that “story” and “pericope” are not synonyms for “word”; one could, however, attempt to stretch and say that those two words could fit into verbum. This is the Man Born Blind logos. [Note: just because I can use logos in this way doesn’t mean I should, or that it’s the best translation, but it’s not wrong. And the computer keyboard has shown me how much I like italics for emphasis.]

This is actually fairly short.

Text

22 ταῦτα εἶπαν οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ ὅτι ἐφοβοῦντο τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, ἤδη γὰρ συνετέθειντο οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἵνα ἐάν τις αὐτὸν ὁμολογήσῃ Χριστόν, ἀποσυνάγωγος γένηται.

23 διὰ τοῦτο οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ εἶπαν ὅτι Ἡλικίαν ἔχει, αὐτὸν ἐπερωτήσατε.

His parents said these things because/due to fearing “The Jews”, for indeed, “The Jews” came to a conclusion so that if someone should have agreed (that he was) the messiah, that person would have become (someone having been) expelled from the synagogue. (23) It was on account of this that they said, “He is of age, ask him”.

First, this verse really should have been included with the previous post. This line comes after the parents tell ‘the Jews” that their son is of age and can speak for himself. Verse 22 explains why they were less than direct in answering. Second, the verb for “to fear” is passive in Greek, but I can’t think of a way to twist my translation to account for both that and that “The Jews” is in the accusative as a direct object. Call me lazy, but close enough. Third, the last two verbs, should have agreed and would have become are two more examples of aorist subjunctive; that is, a past tense indicating uncertainty of some sort. In English, this really doesn’t work all that well since the uncertainty has usually been resolved by the time we’re talking about past tense. Fourth, note that the someone having been expelled from the synagogue is all included in one word, the adjective, ἀποσυνάγωγος; i.e., apo-synagogus, the prefix apo- indicating motion away from, so “from the synagogue”, the part about expelled from being understood from apo-. And note that, while technically an adjective–even Liddell & Scott categorize it as such–at base the word, or the form is that of a participle, that is, a verb. Fifth, this is the only known use of this word in all of the literature of ancient Greek. John may have coined the word, but it quite possibly existed in Jewish writings of the time.

But it’s Verse 23 that is telling, because it explicitly states that the parents were afraid of “The Jews” who could negatively affect their standing in the synagogue.

22 Haec dixerunt parentes eius, quia timebant Iudaeos; iam enim conspiraverant Iudaei, ut, si quis eum confiteretur Christum, extra synagogam fieret.
23 Propterea parentes eius dixerunt: “Aetatem habet; ipsum interrogate!”.

24 Ἐφώνησαν οὖν τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἐκ δευτέρου ὃς ἦν τυφλὸς καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ, Δὸς δόξαν τῷ θεῷ: ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος ἁμαρτωλός ἐστιν.

25 ἀπεκρίθη οὖν ἐκεῖνος, Εἰ ἁμαρτωλός ἐστιν οὐκ οἶδα: ἓν οἶδα, ὅτι τυφλὸς ὢν ἄρτι βλέπω.

26 εἶπον οὖν αὐτῷ, Τί ἐποίησέν σοι; πῶς ἤνοιξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς;

27 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς, Εἶπον ὑμῖν ἤδη καὶ οὐκ ἠκούσατε: τί πάλιν θέλετε ἀκούειν; μὴ καὶ ὑμεῖς θέλετε αὐτοῦ μαθηταὶ γενέσθαι;

So they called the man a second time, the one who was blind, and said to him, “Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner.” (25) So he answered, “If he is a sinner I do not know. I know one (thing), that being blind I see again.” (26) They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” (27) He answered them, “Indeed I told you already and you did not hear. Why do you wish to hear again? Unless you also wish to become his disciples?“

This is strictly a literary observation: There is an awful lot of repetition. This is, I believe, pretty clear indication that the gospel was meant to be heard rather than read. These sorts of almost call-and-response exchanges are the sort of mnemonics that help a listening audience keep up with the story line. When I did corporate training, the instruction for was: in your intro, tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em, then tell them, then in the conclusion tell ’em what you told ’em. That’s kind of how John is approaching this. I’m not sure what, if any, the implications of this might be; as far as teachings and beliefs, there are none, but they are significant as far as how the teachings and beliefs spread. That’s good historical information. It is, however, interesting to note that this did not launch John to be the most popular of the gospels; that honor likely falls to Matthew, with the birth narrative of Luke taking precedence. After all, the early church considered Matthew to be the primary gospel, which is why the NT is organized the way it is: Matthew-Mark rather than the proper chronological order.

As for the contention between “The Jews” and the Man Born Blind, this falls into the category of additional emphasis that “The Jews” are at best clueless, at worst malign. Take your pick here; it’s a judgement call in the final analysis. The Man manages to disagree with his interlocutors without contradicting them–which is no mean feat–even if his reply is a bit snarky. “I told you already…” The zinger about them wanting to become Jesus’ disciples induces a wry smile as well.

24 Vocaverunt ergo rursum hominem, qui fuerat caecus, et dixerunt ei: “Da gloriam Deo! Nos scimus quia hic homo peccator est”.
25 Respondit ergo ille: “Si peccator est nescio; unum scio quia, caecus cum essem, modo video”.
26 Dixerunt ergo illi: “Quid fecit tibi? Quomodo aperuit oculos tuos?”.
27 Respondit eis: “Dixi vobis iam, et non audistis; quid iterum vultis audire? Numquid et vos vultis discipuli eius fieri?”.

28 καὶ ἐλοιδόρησαν αὐτὸν καὶ εἶπον, Σὺ μαθητὴς εἶ ἐκείνου, ἡμεῖς δὲ τοῦ Μωϋσέως ἐσμὲν μαθηταί:

29 ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι Μωϋσεῖ λελάληκεν ὁ θεός, τοῦτον δὲ οὐκ οἴδαμεν πόθεν ἐστίν.

30 ἀπεκρίθη ὁ ἄνθρωπος καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἐν τούτῳ γὰρ τὸ θαυμαστόν ἐστιν ὅτι ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε πόθεν ἐστίν, καὶ ἤνοιξέν μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς.

31 οἴδαμεν ὅτι ἁμαρτωλῶν ὁ θεὸς οὐκ ἀκούει, ἀλλ’ ἐάν τις θεοσεβὴς ᾖ καὶ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ποιῇ τούτου ἀκούει.

32 ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος οὐκ ἠκούσθη ὅτι ἠνέῳξέν τις ὀφθαλμοὺς τυφλοῦ γεγεννημένου:

33 εἰ μὴ ἦν οὗτος παρὰ θεοῦ, οὐκ ἠδύνατο ποιεῖν οὐδέν.

34 ἀπεκρίθησαν καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ, Ἐν ἁμαρτίαις σὺ ἐγεννήθης ὅλος, καὶ σὺ διδάσκεις ἡμᾶς; καὶ ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω.

And they reviled him and said, “If you are a disciple of his, we are disciples of Moses. (29) We know that God spoke to Moses, but we do not know whence (comes) this one.” (30) The man answered and said to them, “For in this is the wonder that you do not know whence (he came) and he opened my eyes. (31) We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if someone may be a servant of God and may do his will, to this one (God) listens. (32) From the aions (eons, since forever) he did not hear that someone opened the eyes of one born blind. (33) If he is not with/from/(lit = beside) God, he is not able to do nothing” (double negative for emphasis). (34) They answered and said to him, “You were completely born in sin, and you teach us?” And they threw him out.

Well, we know whose eyes were, and whose eyes were not opened. Of course this is an extended metaphor for the new…covenant, I suppose. “The Jews” cling to Moses and the old ways, having been born into them and they do not–cannot–see things differently because their eyes are not, or have not been opened. The Man was also born in the old ways; that is he was born in sin, as Jesus said back in Chapter 6, just as “The Jews” were, but his eyes have been opened, so he will not die in sin as “The Jews” will, according to that pronouncement back in Chapter 6. This is all very well done as an example of literary writing; however, perhaps the pièce de résistance comes in Verse 32, “from the aions/since forever” the eyes of no one born born blind have been opened. This hearkens back to the reference to Matthew/Luke and Isaiah that we mentioned in the previous post, that the blind see, the lame walk, etc. By stating that no one born blind has ever had their sight, John is declaring that Now Is The Time. This is John putting forth another reason, or perhaps the reason why “The Jews” got it wrong in his opinion.

28 Et maledixerunt ei et dixerunt: “Tu discipulus illius es, nos autem Moysis discipuli sumus.
29 Nos scimus quia Moysi locutus est Deus; hunc autem nescimus unde sit”.
30 Respondit homo et dixit eis: “In hoc enim mirabile est, quia vos nescitis unde sit, et aperuit meos oculos!
31 Scimus quia peccatores Deus non audit; sed, si quis Dei cultor est et voluntatem eius facit, hunc exaudit.
32 A saeculo non est auditum quia aperuit quis oculos caeci nati;
33 nisi esset hic a Deo, non poterat facere quidquam”.
34 Responderunt et dixerunt ei: “In peccatis tu natus es totus et tu doces nos?”. Et eiecerunt eum foras.

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John Chapter 9:1-7

Jan 4

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

A thousand pardons for the length of time between posts. John is proving to be by far the most difficult of the gospels to provide commentary. Not only are there few logical breaks in the chapters themselves, but as I hope I pointed out in the summary to Chapter 8, the themes carry on between the chapters. A cursory glance ahead shows that we might be entering into a phase in which the topics are more episodic, but time will tell. We begin with a story about a Sign. As we do so, please remember that the word miracle* does not appear in the NT as written. Jesus is about to perform a sign.

Text

1 Καὶ παράγων εἶδεν ἄνθρωπον τυφλὸν ἐκ γενετῆς.

2 καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες, Ῥαββί, τίς ἥμαρτεν, οὗτος ἢ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἵνα τυφλὸς γεννηθῇ;

And proceeding along, he saw a man blind from birth. (2) And his disciples asked him saying about (the man), “Rabbi, who sinned? Was it he, or his parents, so that he was born blind?”

Let’s start with the most obvious point here; it’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook. “And (they were) proceeding along”. “Proceeding along…” where? At the end of the last chapter Jesus was going on the lam to escape the wrath of “The Jews” in the Temple. Is this part of that flight from justice–as imposed by Temple authorities? Are they still in Jerusalem? We don’t know. To call this intro “abrupt” is rather an understatement.

However, that’s all beside the real point. To some degree, the question about sinning seems a bit off. It has the feel, almost, of an anachronism, as if this attitude that illness/disability = sin has become outdated by this time. But then, in the wider world, there are several pagan temples that functioned as sort of a combination of hospital and Lourdes, where the sick and afflicted gathered and prayed for a cure, often delivered in the form of a dream and taking the form of a sacrifice. So, while there is a very real difference between an illness/affliction being caused by sin, and offering a sacrifice in thanksgiving for a cure. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the idea of a physical affliction being caused by sin is hardly an odd one in the ancient world. BUT, this just feels a bit too…perfect. It’s a set-up for what comes next. In addition, if the man was blind from birth, how could the sin have been his? IIRC, the idea of the sins of the father being visited on the sons, or children, is part of Hebrew/Jewish/Canaanite tradition, so again this question is not surprising in any generalized cultural sense, but it does seem a bit…odd.

But now let us circle back to the first point, about the abrupt opening. The combination of that opening with the too-perfect question leads me to suspect that John encountered this story as a complete unit in one of his oral sources. Like Luke’s story of the Widow of Nain, it had developed amongst one or some of the groups that followed, or at least paid attention to Jesus. That is how the legends of Jesus developed, and it is how legends in general develop: stories sort of spring up organically. To say that they are concocted, or made up, or fictional is rather to miss the point. No, the stories did not occur in anything resembling factual reality, but that was not necessarily seen as a problem. Again, we’re talking Truth, not factual accuracy. The latter has nothing to do with the former. It was believed that it could have been accurate as well as True, and that was what mattered in the long run; it was the sort of thing that could have been True, just as Thucydides wrote speeches that were the sort of thing that woulda/coulda been said at the time and place and by the speaker in question. At the risk of offending, the word we’re looking for here is myth. If you read Joseph Campbell–which I cannot recommend highly enough–you will understand that myth does not mean “fairy tale”, or deliberate lie. It’s a story that illustrates a very essential aspect of our lived reality. So this is the sort of thing Jesus would have done, so it becomes True.

1 Et praeteriens vidit hominem caecum a nativitate.
2 Et interro gaverunt eum discipuli sui dicentes: “Rabbi, quis peccavit, hic aut parentes eius, ut caecus nasceretur?”.

3 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς, Οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἵνα φανερωθῇ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ.

4 ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντός με ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστίν: ἔρχεται νὺξ ὅτε οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι.

5 ὅταν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὦ, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου.

Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned, but (he was blind) so that the works of God may have been made manifest in/through him. (4) You must do the works of the one having sent me until it is day. Night comes that no one is able to work. (5) Whenever I may be in the kosmos, I am the light of the kosmos.

Here is the real proof that we are in the realm of myth. The man is not blind due to sin, but so that he may make manifest the works of God. Think about that for a moment. It sort of takes us into the outer ambit of the moral realm of Predestination. This man was not born only to be damned upon his death, but he still spent a chunk of his life blind so that God could show mercy by making him whole. Now, the attitude I’ve just expressed is very much the attitude of an era much later than the time of Jesus. The horrors of life were much more obvious back then. As proof I offer the tombstones of 17th Century Boston. In the burying ground next to Old South Church on Tremont street are very grim tombstones, with carvings of skulls and skeletons that are depicted snuffing out the candle of life. As time progressed and some of the grim aspect of life had been ameliorated the skulls grew wings and morphed into angels, a much more positive image. So I suspect we feel the grim aspect of this man’s fate more keenly than he did. And even if this particular man is “fictional”, there were scores of others in the same or worse condition scattered throughout the towns of Judea. So here is where the myth aspect really comes into play: I doubt anyone hearing this story at any point prior to the Reformation thought of the man’s circumstances as I have. It was a story that imparted a Truth about life. People were born blind. But this man was actually fortunate to have encountered Jesus who (spoiler alert!) will restore his sight. He is one of the lucky ones, and we should rejoice in his good fortune. But these sorts of implications, many of them probably unforeseen by the authors of the NT, raised the sorts of questions that led to the development of theology as something apart from philosophy. Stories like this led to debates among churchmen, starting in the Second Century, proceeding through Augustine in the 4/5th Century and raging throughout the Middle Ages. And the questions that cropped up are still valid, even if we have come to some sort of consensus about them.

Finally there is Jesus’ pronouncement in Verse 6. “I am the light of the kosmos/world”. Having even rudimentary background in astronomy and Hermeticism and Gnosticism that I do, the choice of “world” really matters, and I wonder how someone in the Second Century would have understood the term kosmos, which is the word John used here. When we hear “light of the world” we think of our terrestrial home and its daystar, AKA the sun. And really, that is the image John means to evoke as he compares and contrasts against night, when no one is able to work since it is dark. Here is where one wonders how familiar John was with Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount. In particular I think of Mt 5:14 & 16, and 6:23. In Verse 5:14 Jesus tells his audience that “you are the light of the world”; in 5:16, they are admonished to let their light shine before men through their good example. Finally in 6:23 he says that if one’s eyes are evil their body will be full of darkness. Similar sorts of implications, but still distinct. Did John sort of remember his Matthew, more or less, but not quite get the nuances right? Or did he remember his Matthew and adapt to different circumstances? Did John develop the theme of light from the ideas of one of his predecessors?

It’s impossible to answer that question. Of course the light/dark dichotomy can be traced back to Paul in the NT, and all the way back to Zoroaster in Near Eastern thought. I mentioned Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Paul; light/dark was prominent in Gnostic belief, and I will suggest that the rise in the popularity of Gnosticism would have led to this theme to spill into the culture as a whole. It would have been something of a commonplace, at least in some circles. These circles would have been comprised of educated individuals, since this is the prime market for beliefs that value knowledge of any sort. John was educated, as is demonstrated by the fact that he could write. As such, I would suggest that John conceived the idea of the light of the world in some sort of semi-Gnostic understanding. Now, I have just unloaded a whole pile of unsubstantiated speculation, so don’t be too eager to quote me. With that caveat in mind, however, I believe my suggestion is eminently plausible given a certain amount of diffusion of Gnostic thinking and belief. In such a system, the idea of the Light of the Kosmos–not “the world” as we understand it–is well in keeping with the high claims John has made about who Jesus is. I am suggesting that if John is writing under Gnostic influence, he is likely not talking about the mundane, physical world of our common understanding. He is more concerned about the kosmos, the cosmic realm of all creation. Can I prove that? Of course not. All I can do is make the suggestion as a reminder that this gospel that we have been reading an commenting on for a couple of millennia is not a settled fact. It is a consensus–at best. We need always to bear in mind that the NT was part of a much larger milieu, which is why I so vehemently insist that there is no such thing as “NT Greek”. It’s an artificial creation, a circumscribing, or a cordoning off of the authors of the NT from the wider world around them, and this will lead to an overly narrow understanding of the words they wrote. As such I fully believe that John could easily have had something well beyond what shows up on a globe when he had Jesus say, “I am the light of the world”.

But let’s reel this back in a bit. Or a lot. Even to be the “light of the world” as it fits on a globe is one heckuva claim to make. Jesus is the light that shines to show us eternal life, and this clim is the culmination of the train of thought first put forth in Matthew. We all know Matthew’s birth narrative; many of us probably heard it read in church in the past week or two (I write this on 1/2/24) We are all familiar with the Star of Bethlehem that was observed by astrologers in the East who came to pay homage to the Infant King. We call them “Three Kings of Orient”, but “kings” covers up the term “magi”, which is the Latinized form of magoi, which is the Greek word borrowed from the Persians that meant, among other things, “astrologer”, and is the root of “magic” and “magician”. They observed a star, a new star that announced the birth of the new King. Having had an interest in astronomy as a lad, I can assure you that a new star is A Big Deal. A Very Big Deal. In 1054 the light of a stellar explosion in the constellation Taurus reached the earth, and was recorded by Chinese astronomers and other observers. This was a “new star”, something that appeared in the sky where there had never been a star. Technically, this wasn’t a star, but a supernova, one of the most spectacular events in the heavens. The star appeared in July of 1054 and then disappeared from view by the naked eye in April 1056; however, it is still visible with the aid of a smallish telescope as the Crab Nebula. It is the first object in the Messier Catalogue, a listing of non-cometary celestial objects such as galaxies or nebulae. The French astronomer Charles Messier found it while looking for Halley’s Comet, and he mistook the nebula for the comet. To avoid confusion in the future, M Messier created the catalogue of such objects, and this catalogue–greatly expanded–is still used by astronomers. The objects are listed in the catalogue with the letter M (for Messier) and a number, which are sequential in order of discovery. The Crab Nebula is M 1 in the catalogue.

All of this is meant to demonstrate just how much of a Big Deal a new star is. We have seen nothing of the sort since 1054, and I will let you do the math on that. Given that Jesus’ birth was marked by a new star, we can understand that Matthew saw this birth as an event of cosmic significance. That is the term I used when we read Matthew, but I did not fully understand the implications of what I said at the time. By introducing a New Star, Matthew was beating us over the head with implications of just how big a deal the birth of Jesus was; however, at this point, the Star of Bethlehem is just part of the wallpaper of Christmas, something mentioned in a song, or that decorates a creche. So when John says Jesus claimed to be the “light of the kosmos”, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου, I think we need to sit back and take notice that John had something in mind that goes way beyond our humdrum earth, our globe. Betcha don’t find that in another commentary.

3 Respondit Iesus: “ Neque hic peccavit neque parentes eius, sed ut manifestentur opera Dei in illo.
4 Nos oportet operari opera eius, qui misit me, donec dies est; venit nox, quando nemo potest operari.
5 Quamdiu in mundo sum, lux sum mundi”.

6 ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἔπτυσεν χαμαὶ καὶ ἐποίησεν πηλὸν ἐκ τοῦ πτύσματος, καὶ ἐπέχρισεν αὐτοῦ τὸν πηλὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς

7 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Υπαγε νίψαι εἰς τὴν κολυμβήθραν τοῦ Σιλωάμ {ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται Ἀπεσταλμένος}. ἀπῆλθεν οὖν καὶ ἐνίψατο, καὶ ἦλθεν βλέπων.

Saying this Jesus spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle, and smeared mud upon his eyes. (7) And Jesus said to him (the blind man). “Withdraw, wash to the pool of Siloam {which translates as “Sent”}. So he went away and washed, and he came seeing. [Usually rendered as “he came back seeing”.]

OK. A couple of things to get us started. First, the construction “he came seeing” is odd. Changing this to “came back seeing” makes sense in English, but it is not what the Greek–nor the Latin, for that matter–says. This doesn’t really affect the narrative, but one wonders at the clumsy nature of this. Second, the words in the {brackets} are almost certainly interpolated. Mark has a number of Aramaic expressions that he translates into Greek, but they are translated much more smoothly than what we get here. This just screams “Marginal Note!” In fact, it screams it so loudly that I wonder if the “he came back seeing” is not also an interpolation. After all, without it, we are not exactly informed that the cure occurred. But, in the grand scheme, the insertion of a couple of phrases is not a big deal one way or another.

What is a big deal, in my opinion, is how we are thrown back into Mark, and the way Mark described what I termed the magical practices of Jesus. Twice in Mark we are told that Jesus used his saliva to cure people; the first time in 7:31-37, it was a man who could not hear or speak, the second time in 8:23-25 it was a man who was blind. These are the only three instances where the Greek word ptuō, “to spit” is used. (Ptuō is a wonderful example of onomatopoeia, IMO.) I have been paying attention to such things because I have a theory that Jesus may have been executed for practicing magic. This position is not a common one, but it’s not entirely unusual, either. It crops up more in discussions of pagan magical practice than in Christian writing, and it has been suggested more than once. It bears mention that Jesus’ name occurs in incantations of pagan magicians; Jesus is invoked as a magician of some power. And then Jesus’ later contemporary, Apollonius of Tyana, was also accused of sorcery. The comparison of the biographies of the two men provide some really interesting parallels, to the point that Christian writers up until, say, Augustine, would go apoplectic at the mention of Apollonius. If you have never heard of him, then you can appreciate how successful the Christians between John and Augustine were in extirpating the memory of Apollonius, but the latter’s memory survived in no small part to imperial patronage of his status. Back when we discussed Matthew and Luke, I made sure to point out how these two evangelists neatly omitted those parts of Mark in which these magical practices of Jesus were described.

We will discuss this further as the chapter progresses. I would like to close this section with two comments. First, it’s amazing how long some of these can drag out. Until I got to it, the idea of explaining about the Crab Nebula had never occurred to me. Now, one hopes that this sort of context adds value. There are a lot of cross-currents swirling about in the First Century, just as there are in any period. And I do suspect that you will not run into this sort of explanation elsewhere. Or maybe you will. Second, this whole magic bit is curious, to say the least. Third, it appears that there is no mention of a “sign” in this chapter. That is also curious.

6 Haec cum dixisset, exspuit in terram et fecit lutum ex sputo et linivit lutum super oculos eius
7 et dixit ei: “ Vade, lava in natatoria Siloae! ” — quod interpretatur Missus —. Abiit ergo et lavit et venit videns.

*I published a post called Miracles back at the end of June explaining the etymology of “miracle”, which is a Latin word. As such, it does not appear in the Greek original; nor in the Vulgate, for that matter. The term was coined by later Christian writers.

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John Chapter 8:30-38

Nov 11

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

We’ve got another segment of the same extended conversation between Jesus and his audience. It’s the continuation of the last section, and it appears to run until the end of the chapter. As a result, there are few natural places for these sections to be broken into clean and discreet chunks. Jesus has been talking to the group about his relationship with the father.

I have overlapped Verse 30 from the previous post because I noticed I gave short shrift to the implications of the verse.

Text

30 Ταῦτα αὐτοῦ λαλοῦντος πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτόν.

Having said these things, many believed in him.

One suspects that “the many” do not include those considered to be “The Jews” since Jesus dialogue with them continues into the chapter. Ergo, the sentiment expressed in this verse feels a little awkward or out of place. In the last post we alluded to the image of the Temple courtyard as sort of a Hyde Park, where speakers held forth and people either gathered to listen or not. Or, this image could be from The Life Of Brian, which has a scene with various orators orating in what memory glosses as the marketplace. So people hearing Jesus in the Temple nodded in agreement. This leads to the question that necessarily arises in every discussion of the Passion Narrative: how did we go from the alleged rapturous acceptance of Palm Sunday to mob screaming for his blood on Friday? One commentator notes that the belief here expressed was a shallow and ephemeral thing since these believers were the same persons who would be in th mob on Good Friday morning. So it may be. And here is where John’s Jerusalem-centric narrative presents a special–unique, really–set of problems for commentary. As always keep in the front of your mind that the gospels had one task that is under-appreciated by modern scholars: They had to explain to their new pagan converts, or those they wished to convert, why there were still Jews. Mark’s solution was the Messianic Secret wherein Jesus didn’t tell the crowds who he was. With or without that the problem is not so acute for the Synoptics; since Jesus did not go to Jerusalem until the last week of his life (?) Jerusalem would have been full of Jews who had never heard Jesus preach and so would have been unlikely to become followers. In John, this doesn’t quite work as well. The “fickleness” explanation actually works better if the transition took place within a few days. If it was of some standing, then it becomes rather more difficult to wave it away. But then the Synoptics say that Jesus taught in the Temple daily, implying this happened more than a few times in a single week. This is why there needs to be a discussion about this inconsistency.

That we encounter the attitude of sneering at mobs, one point needs to be made. For the most part, educated persons in the ancient world were wont to do just that: sneer at mobs. The crowd of the people was considered to be fickle, emotional, inconstant, and violent. Hence the abhorrence of democracy as a form of government. This attitude goes back as far as we have writers who wrote about forms of government–usually within the various poleis, the term translated as “city-states”. Thucydides adds fuel to the fire with his reporting on the Athenian assembly and its prosecution of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Plato was not a fan of democracy since it was the Athenian assembly–AKA “mob”–that voted to execute Socrates. In Book II of his History of Rome—Ab Urbe Condita— Livy describes the rationale for the Republican–not democratic–form of government instituted after throwing off the yoke of the Etruscan kings. Then in Book VI of his history, the Greek Polybios* describes and praises the republican government as a major factor for Rome’s defeat of Hannibal; the Founders of the US, being members in good standing of Enlightenment principles who were well-schooled in their Classical literature, consciously modeled the US government on the description of Rome. This is why the Constitution institutes Congress in Article I and does not establish the President until Article II. Congress was meant to be the leading organ of government since the President was elected by popular vote. Sort of. So when we get commentators sneering at the mob for being fickle, these commentators stand in a long tradition of such sneering.

However…

This almost feels like quite the opposite. It feels more like John is holding up these individuals who accepted Jesus as the Good Guys who are opposed to the elitist rulers/leaders of “The Jews” who want to kill Jesus. This is why this topic needs some in-depth analysis.

30 Haec illo loquente, multi crediderunt in eum.

31 Ἔλεγεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς πρὸς τοὺς πεπιστευκότας αὐτῷ Ἰουδαίους, Ἐὰν ὑμεῖς μείνητε ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τῷ ἐμῷ, ἀληθῶς μαθηταί μού ἐστε,

32 καὶ γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν, καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς.

So Jesus said to those Jews having come to believe him, “If you will remain in my word, truly you will be my disciples, (32) and you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

One commentator points out a subtle (?) difference in Jesus’ wording between Verse 30 and 31. In Verse 30, the Greek is they believe εἰς αὐτόν, while in Verse 31 they simply “believe him”. Verse 30 literally translates as “believe into/unto him”. The KJV renders this as “on him”, while most modern translations, mine included, render this as “in him”; to be frank, the KJV version is not exactly what I would call correct, and it does not particularly make sense in English. Honestly, I don’t even like “in him”. In Greek and Latin both the <preposition + accusative> formation, which is what we have here, generally signifies “motion towards/motion to/motion into”, as in “I go to/in/into the house”. The most common preposition for “on” is different, and takes a dative in Greek. The other thing is that “believe in him” in English is not quite the same nuance as the Greek use of the preposition. “Believe in him” does not have the sense of movement towards, which is the key aspect of the preposition in Greek and the corresponding preposition in Latin. So the translation here would imply something like “they moved into belief in him”, or “they moved into believing him”. This last would scarcely be different from the “believing him” we find in Verse 31.

If my last statement is anywhere close to accurate, it is proper to ask how significant is the change. I’m not sure it is. One commentator says that the more perfect acceptance is shown in the first expression whereas the second is more transitory. I’m not sure about that. The same commentator opines that “so careful a writer” would not have made an accidental mistake. I might beg to differ. We’ve perhaps seen a couple in this chapter alone. We must always remember that John probably wasn’t a native speaker of Greek, that writing Greek was an accomplishment of scholarship, so he was bound to make mistakes. They all were. Although, this does make me wonder about how the process of copy-editing, and regular editing, and copying gospel manuscripts. What happened when John was finished? Did he revise? Did he simply hand it over to secretaries to start cranking out copies? I’ve never seen this discussed, but, once again, it should be.

Of course the real payoff is the last part of Verse 31 and Verse 32. Believe, and remain in one’s belief and the truth shall set you free. Of course Jesus is talking about freedom from sin, so people don’t have to die in their sin(s). This is obviously of critical importance to the overall message, but the import and implications seem so pellucid that I don’t know what else needs to be said about this. There are potential implications when we get to the matter of salvation–a word John rarely uses–whether the key is faith or right behaviour/works, assuming there is a difference; in the 16th Century, a whole lotta Christians killed a whole lotta Christians over this basic question. I grew up in the Roman Rite and the RR of my youth was heavily invested in the latter, but we shan’t go into that. I’m not sure what you may think of the notion of being set free by the truth, the idea was several centuries old by the time John set this to paper. It is the fundamental belief of Platonism, or perhaps the fundamental flaw of Plato. He believed that it is necessary to know what is good before one can act in a good or just or appropriate manner. Nay, it goes beyond that. He believed that if one knows the good, one will act in a good or just or appropriate matter. If only. Needless to say, this is a hopelessly naïve attitude. Plenty of people know how to behave properly but choose to act in a most wicked and reprehensible fashion. This is part of the problem of evil.

Now, I grant that this is a slightly different take on Plato and Platonism, but only slightly. Jesus’ statement is not an effort to teach us, at least not in the way that Plato tried to teach through his Dialogues. Rather than learn per se, it’s a question of recognition. We must recognize, and so understand who and what Jesus is. The distinction I’m suggesting between knowing and recognizing is subtle; knowledge is not possible without recognizing that it is accurate. Rather, as Jesus puts it, the wrinkle, or maybe the implement or process required is faith rather a syllogism. Faith in Jesus allows the epiphany that comes in a flash, as it were, although the same could be said for a revelation of knowledge. Truly, it is impossible to completely sever the idea of recognition from that of learning unless we get down into some heavy-duty logic chopping. It is always possible to create distinctions where none is obvious, but that path was abandoned in the 15th Century by the Humanists. They rejected the hyper-logical, and ultimately sterile arguments of the so-called Scholastics who quibbled about angels dancing on heads of pins*, a rather took a meat-cleaver to the Gordian Knot** of hyper-logic.

Regardless, Jesus’ take on Plato is a wrinkle. The question then becomes: What does this say about John’s outlook on the world, or about his philosophical inclinations? Has anyone done that? In two millennia of scholarship, we would think someone had gone into this, but one never can be certain. It requires a certain warped perspective to raise the question, no?

*It pains me to resort to using this rather inaccurate example. There was a purpose to the debate, and angels on pinheads was metaphorical. Still, at the most obvious level, the degree of absurdity is patent and easily recognized and understood as an exercise in futility, no matter how learned the arguments presented.

**Google it.

31 Dicebat ergo Iesus ad eos, qui crediderunt ei, Iudaeos: “Si vos manseritis in sermone meo, vere discipuli mei estis

32 et cognoscetis veritatem, et veritas liberabit vos”.

33 ἀπεκρίθησαν πρὸς αὐτόν, Σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ ἐσμεν καὶ οὐδενὶ δεδουλεύκαμεν πώποτε: πῶς σὺ λέγεις ὅτι Ἐλεύθεροι γενήσεσθε;

34 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν δοῦλός ἐστιν τῆς ἁμαρτίας.

35 ὁ δὲ δοῦλος οὐ μένει ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα: ὁ υἱὸς μένει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

They answered towards him, “We are the seed of Abraham, and we were never enslaved to no one (double negative = force modifier). How do you say that we will become free?” (34) Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen I say yo you that all committing sin is the slave of sin. (35) And the slave does not remain in the dwelling to the extent of eternity; the son remains forever.

As with most languages that are not English, the double negative in Verse 33 reinforces rather than negates the negative. Even so, I found this statement that they are enslaved to no one due to their heritage from Abraham a bit odd considering that the Exodus was such a significant part of their national/religious identity. And really, what makes it odd is the citation of Abraham, harkening back to their ancient past. But this is one of those cases where the author is rather boxed in by circumstances and so ends up overstating, or sliding down that slippery slope into conditions that may not be exactly accurate. Then, of course, there is the question of the *cough* Roman occupation *cough*. Which followed a couple of centuries of Greek occupation.

The point Jesus makes is metaphorical as we all understand. Or is it? This notion of bondage to sin will have a long, very long history in Christian thought and imagery. It is probably part of the reason why the “paying off the pawn ticket and getting us out of hock to sin” has proven so popular. And now thinking about the topic, this “redemption (from hock)” analogy is the most common explanation of the reason for Jesus’ death. It crops up early and often, starting right off the bat with Paul. Certainly Augustine and the Mediaeval thinkers would take this and run with it; I think of Advent songs, like my favorite:

O come O come Emmanuel / And ransom captive Israel

The concepts of ransoming a hostage to sin is not entirely different from redeeming us by paying off the pawn ticket. I really don’t have the theological chops to question whether the notion makes sense, so let’s leave it at that. Jesus died for a reason. He died for our sins. And here Jesus is pretty much telling his audience that believing in him is the key to redemption, that it’s a matter of faith rather than works. The two are not mutually exclusive to our mind, but these conflicting notions caused a lot of grief back in the day.

More than that, however, Jesus is telling the audience that the corporate redemption of the Jewish people as a whole has been superseded by an individualistic redemption. As the descendants of Abraham the Jews were the Chosen People by blood; redemption of the race was a birthright for each Jew. It was inherited. Now Jesus is saying, it must be merited by believing in who Jesus is/was. Again, I don’t want to get into the debate about whether we can or can’t merit salvation, or even help ourselves; that one caused a lot of grief, too, starting with the Pelagians and leading eventually to Calvin and his doctrine of double predestination. Here Jesus seems to be, or could be taken to be, saying that the first act of attaining redemption starts with us. We choose, or we seem to have the capacity to choose whether we believe what Jesus tells us about his relationship to the father. One interesting and (perhaps?) unique take on eternal life that we get here is the idea of remaining in eternal life. Now I would put “eternal life” in the same category as being “unique”. The word unique cannot be qualified, it means “one of a kind” so something either is, or it is not, unique. In the same way, is it possible to qualify “eternal”? Doesn’t seem like it offhand. “Eternal” means eternal, as in forever. Anything else may be a very, very long time, but it’s not eternal. My suspicion is that the word got away from John; I’m not sure he intended to write “remain”. Another strike against the careful writer hypothesis.

33 Responderunt ei: “Semen Abrahae sumus et nemini servivimus umquam! Quomodo tu dicis: “Liberi fietis”? ”.

34 Respondit eis Iesus: “Amen, amen dico vobis: Omnis, qui facit peccatum, servus est peccati.

35 Servus autem non manet in domo in aeternum; filius manet in aeternum.

36 ἐὰν οὖν ὁ υἱὸς ὑμᾶς ἐλευθερώσῃ, ὄντως ἐλεύθεροι ἔσεσθε.

37 οἶδα ὅτι σπέρμα Ἀβραάμ ἐστε: ἀλλὰ ζητεῖτέ με ἀποκτεῖναι, ὅτι ὁ λόγος ὁ ἐμὸς οὐ χωρεῖ ἐν ὑμῖν.

38 ἃ ἐγὼ ἑώρακα παρὰ τῷ πατρὶ λαλῶ: καὶ ὑμεῖς οὖν ἃ ἠκούσατε παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς ποιεῖτε.

“So if the son may set you free, you will be truly free. (37) I know you are the seed of Abraham, but you seek to kill me, because my logos (my message, the account I am giving,) does not remain in you. (38) I have seen the things beside my father, (and) I speak: and so you did the things of my father which you have heard.”

Grammar points. The word bolded & highlighted in blue in Verse 37 of both the Greek above, and the Latin below, as well as the “because” that is bolded & black font in the translation all refer to the same word. The Greek is actually the original. Now, while it can be used as “because”, but it almost never is. In Greek, it means “that/so that”, implying that the action occurring in the coming clause is the effect of what happened in the preceding clause. “I did X so that Y would happen after doing X”. Rendering as “because” reverses the temporal and so the causal chain: “I did X because Y, which happened before X”. Now, “because” is a legitimate use of the Greek ὅτι, but it’s Definition B, well down the list, after Definition A, Ex I, II, III, IV, & V. The Latin is clear, the standard word for “because” in the sense used here. My question is “why?” what was John thinking? Was he trying to be confusing? Or was he confused? The Greek word is pretty common, occurring in the NT scores of times, a few dozen in John alone. To be fair, it appears that it is used for “because” at least twice before this in John; apparently, I was able to twist myself enough in those instances that it didn’t phase me too much. But it does here. So again, why? Why be deliberately obfuscatory, or even difficult? Was he showing off his detailed grasp of the finer points of Greek prose?

Really, these are actually vocabulary points, but regardless, there is another one. Of course it concerns logos, a couple of words after “because” in the translation. Of course, the Vulgate chose to render as sermo, “word”, a in John 1:1. And, to be fair, logos here is singular as is sermo, and “word” is a perfectly legitimate translation. I realize (finally! finally?) that I may be missing something. I understand the thought behind “the word of God”, but what Jesus is teaching goes well beyond a single word. Doesn’t it? That’s what I may be missing. I understand Jesus to be teaching about a means of attaining eternal life; that seems to require more than a word, no? Don’t we need a more complete text? Again perhaps I’m being to literal about a word, If so, my apologies.

As for the actual meaning of the text, it’s pretty straightforward: believe in Jesus and do the things of the father as Jesus has instructed. This actually does put some weight oh the side of works and not just faith. We are essentially getting a foreshadow of “I am the Way…”

36 Si ergo Filius vos liberaverit, vere liberi eritis.

37 Scio quia semen Abrahae estis; sed quaeritis me interficere, quia sermo meus non capit in vobis.

38 Ego, quae vidi apud Patrem, loquor; et vos ergo, quae audivistis a patre, facitis”.

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John Chapter 5:37-47

May 21

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

We continue with Jesus’ discourse. It is a very long set-piece of Jesus teaching his audience (and us), the direct speech having begun back in Verse 19. If you recall, the audience are “the Jews” who pursued him after he healed the paralytic. “The Jews” were upset/incensed that Jesus had done this on the Sabbath. This is a great example of the standard criticism of Judaism that I heard repeatedly in my Catholic school: more concerned about the letter of the law–that the healing occurred on the Sabbath–rather than being happy that the paralytic was able to rejoin the community and become a productive member of society.

Text

37 καὶ ὁ πέμψας με πατὴρ ἐκεῖνος μεμαρτύρηκεν περὶ ἐμοῦ. οὔτε φωνὴν αὐτοῦ πώποτε ἀκηκόατε οὔτε εἶδος αὐτοῦ ἑωράκατε,

38 καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔχετε ἐν ὑμῖν μένοντα, ὅτι ὃν ἀπέστειλεν ἐκεῖνος τούτῳ ὑμεῖς οὐ πιστεύετε.

39 ἐραυνᾶτε τὰς γραφάς, ὅτι ὑμεῖς δοκεῖτε ἐν αὐταῖς ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἔχειν: καὶ ἐκεῖναί εἰσιν αἱ μαρτυροῦσαι περὶ ἐμοῦ:

40 καὶ οὐ θέλετε ἐλθεῖν πρός με ἵνα ζωὴν ἔχητε.

(Jesus continues to speak:) “And my father who sent me has provided evidence about me. Neither his voice has anyone heard, nor seen his image, (38) and his logos*/word you do not have remaining amongst you, (so) that the one he sent you do not believe. (39) You search the scriptures so that you seem to have eternal life in them; but they are the evidences about me; (40) and you do not wish to come to me in order that you may have eternal life.

The logic is a bit convoluted here. The father, Jesus said, has provided evidence for Jesus, but the audience has never heard the father’s voice, etc, and do not believe the one who was sent because they had never heard the father’s voice. Rather, the audience scours scripture looking for eternal life but they won’t come to Jesus to find the life even though the scriptures are the witness for Jesus that the father provided. I guess that makes sense, despite the certain level of circularity in the reasoning. Essentially, Jesus is putting the blame on “the Jews” for missing the boat. The evidence is directly before their eyes, exactly where they were looking, but their blindness prevents them seeing because the blindness is willful to a large extent. There is none so blind as one who will not see. Interesting to note how that aphorism was internalized and then brought forth as the understood basis for what Jesus is saying. Here is where the interconnection between the gospels, and John’s dependence on the Synoptics becomes most obvious. There is too much focus on the individual words, the verb tenses, the kai/de decisions, and the redactional choices that are impossible to discern, and not nearly enough on the contents, and intent, of the words themselves. What was the message of the words? What did they convey? What was the sense of the words and was that sense carried through in subsequent gospels? Here I think they were. Now, let’s be honest: there are probably two centuries of commentary of which I’m not aware which may indeed address a point such as this, or this very point; however, given the sorry state of the Q debate, somehow I doubt that. As with the chimera of
“NT Greek”, so NT scholarship has become a bit too closed and self-referential. Or not. Change my mind.

It should be pointed out that, in Verse 40, Jesus has set up some sort of either/or circumstance, even if it’s only rhetorical: They are willing to search scriptures which are about Jesus, but they are not willing to come to Jesus. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but my gut reaction is that this is John’s way of telling us that “the Jews” have written off Jesus; that is, they are not willing to consider him as a legitimate messenger from God. That’s not quite the nuance that I want, but it gets some of it across. They are not interested in hearing what Jesus says because they don’t believe that Jesus offers a real hope of eternal life. Whether this life comes about because Jesus is the Messiah who has come to return Israel to past political glory thereby ushering in Heaven on earth, or whether it was a spiritual afterlife as Christians came to understand the concept. Actually, I would consider this latter to be anachronistic, because I don’t believe Christians at this time believed in the sort of spiritual afterlife that became the standard of Christian doctrine as we know it. As proof of this I offer the Apocalypse of John; in the end, the desired result is that Heaven occurs here on earth as the New Jerusalem descends from the sky. [ Give or take; now is neither the time nor the place to have that discussion of the End of Time. ]

37 et, qui misit me, Pater, ipse testimonium perhibuit de me. Neque vocem eius umquam audistis neque speciem eius vidistis;
38 et verbum eius non habetis in vobis manens, quia, quem misit ille, huic vos non creditis.
39 Scrutamini Scripturas, quia vos putatis in ipsis vitam aeternam habere; et illae sunt, quae testimonium perhibent de me.
40 Et non vultis venire ad me, ut vitam habeatis.

41 Δόξαν παρὰ ἀνθρώπων οὐ λαμβάνω,

42 ἀλλὰ ἔγνωκα ὑμᾶς ὅτι τὴν ἀγάπην τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἔχετε ἐν ἑαυτοῖς.

43 ἐγὼ ἐλήλυθα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ πατρός μου καὶ οὐ λαμβάνετέ με: ἐὰν ἄλλος ἔλθῃ ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι τῷ ἰδίῳ, ἐκεῖνον λήμψεσθε.

44 πῶς δύνασθε ὑμεῖς πιστεῦσαι, δόξαν παρὰ ἀλλήλων λαμβάνοντες καὶ τὴν δόξαν τὴν παρὰ τοῦ μόνου θεοῦ οὐ ζητεῖτε;

45 μὴ δοκεῖτε ὅτι ἐγὼ κατηγορήσω ὑμῶν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα: ἔστιν ὁ κατηγορῶν ὑμῶν Μωϋσῆς, εἰς ὃν ὑμεῖς ἠλπίκατε.

46 εἰ γὰρ ἐπιστεύετε Μωϋσεῖ, ἐπιστεύετε ἂν ἐμοί, περὶ γὰρ ἐμοῦ ἐκεῖνος ἔγραψεν.

47 εἰ δὲ τοῖς ἐκείνου γράμμασιν οὐ πιστεύετε, πῶς τοῖς ἐμοῖς ῥήμασιν πιστεύσετε;

“Glory from men I do not accept, (42) but I have known you that the love of God you do not have amongst yourselves. (43) I have come in the name of my father and you do not accept me; if another should come in his own name, him you will accept. (43) How are you able to have believed, accepting the glory from men and you do not seek the glory from the only God? (45) For do not expect that I will redeem you before the father; for your redeemer was Moses, towards whom you have hoped. (46) For if you have believed in Moses, you have believed in me, for I am he about whim Moses wrote. (47) And if by his writing you do not believe, how will you believe my words?”

The phrase “glory from men” is straight out of Paul. This is not to say its use proves that John was familiar with Paul; the only real proof of that would be for John to cite Paul by name. This never happens. It occurs to me that it never happens in any of the gospels; the gospel authors quote the HS but never one of the other gospels or epistles. Please, let me know if I’m wrong about this. Why is that? Greek historians dating back to Herodotus cited the works of predecessors, if only to disparage them. In a more contemporary setting, Livy, who was an older contemporary of Jesus, cites numerous older sources and also conducts a degree of source criticism, weighing which of the variant stories is more likely to be correct. But each gospel is written as if in a vacuum, which has allowed the rank speculation about Q to roll merrily along, virtually unchecked, for a century and more. Seriously, though, why did the gospel authors choose to write as if in vacuum-like conditions? The simplest answer, of course, is that they were completely unaware of each other; and while some will argue that Matthew wrote first and Mark wrote and abridged version of the “First Gospel”, to the best of my knowledge no one suggests that Mark and Matthew–and Luke–were utterly unaware of each other. Even so, despite the wholesale appropriation–which truly comes close to plagiarism–neither Matthew nor Luke acknowledge Mark. This is a point that should be raised and addressed by those who claim Luke was not aware of Matthew: Matthew does not mention Mark, so why is it significant that Luke does not credit Matthew, or Mark? I’m not sure I’ve encountered anyone actually suggesting Luke’s independence because he doesn’t specifically cite Matthew, but it’s another of those questions that should be asked so that some kind of explanation can be debated. Assuming that at least some of the evangelists were aware of previous gospels, not making reference has to be a stylistic choice, or at least a deliberate choice on some level, but why?

I do believe this may be an important, or at least significant, question.

The comment about the audience accepting others, someone other than Jesus, is interesting. Supposedly, this gospel was written around the turn of the century, so this is likely not a reference to the bar Kochba rebellion of the early 130s. Of course, we have to remember that NT scholars are desperate to push all the relevant texts back as far as possible; for example, trying to date the Gospel of Thomas to the 50s, which is flat-out ludicrous. This need is aspirational, and one text is pushed back in time to allow others–e.g. the Didache?–to be pushed back as well. This removes what it otherwise a very uncomfortable lapse of time between Jesus’ life and the writings purporting to record his life. There is a pretty solid consensus that Paul’s genuine letters date to the 50s, the later 50s, and there is no good reason to doubt that chronology. Frankly, I’m not aware of the arguments pro-and-con for the dates of the other books of the NT. The lion’s share of such arguments in support of most dates derive from references to the books in the writings of the early Christian writers who can be more or less firmly dated, with maybe a decade’s leeway. But then, I am unaware of the reliability of the date for Clement, Bishop of Rome, whom Tertullian and Ireneaeus date to the very end of the First Century. IOW, the earliest evidence comes from a century or more after he supposedly died. Hmmm. But, this date makes it–just–possible to state that he was consecrated by no less than Peter. Yes, that Peter. Color me skeptical. I have read chunks of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius, and much of what I read raised all sorts of red flags about its accuracy. So, once again, to no one’s surprise (I’m sure) at this point, I am very leery about any dates put forward in support of any document dealing with the early church.

Regardless, my impulse is to doubt that John here refers to bar Kochba. That doubt, however, may be the result of passively accepting a date for the gospel of circa 100. That date may just be a convenience derived from simple arithmetic: what is the latest date that can be sustained that allows us to accept the author as John the Apostle? If John the Apostle was , say 20 when Jesus died in 33, he would, have been 87 years old in 100 CE. It’s not impossible. Regardless, IMO this most likely refers to incidents described by Josephus, who catalogues a series of Messiah-Wannabes who appeared in the First Century. These various leaders appeared, gathered a certain following, disrupted the affairs of Judea to varying degrees (depending on the particular leader), were crushed by the authorities, possibly Jewish, more probably Roman, and were executed in horrible fashion as was the Roman custom. Barabbas of Passion Narrative fame was a participant in one of these “rebellions”. Thus John can say that members of the audience would turn to these pretenders for salvation because some Jews had followed these wannabe Messiahs. The important thing to be taken from this is that the salvation was of this world; it was to be a political restoration of the historic Kingdom of Israel, the maximalist territorial claims of the ancient Israelite state, from Dan to Beersheeba or something such. It was an article of (Catholic) faith that Jesus was rejected by his co-religionists because he did not come as a political figure. (Crikey, I would love, no LOVE to delve into the pre-history of Christianity, into the time between Jesus’ death and Paul to get some sense of what the Jerusalem Ekklesia, under the leadership of James, brother of Jesus, believed and taught about their famous founder, but that would be largely an exercise in futility given the pretty-much absolute lack of any source material for the period. We have Galatians and a brief mention in Josephus and not much else.) However, given the number of rebellions that did occur from the death of Herod the Great in 4 BCE to bar Kochba in ca 130 CE, John’s assessment here is not unreasonable. Collections of Jews did believe in and follow self-proclaimed anointed ones.

At the end of the segment Jesus begins to argue a bit like Socrates. The audience revers Moses, who was credited with writing the Pentateuch, which Jesus says was about him. But they don’t believe Moses as is proven by their rejection of him, so why should/would they believe him? Rather a thorny question. Of course, it turns on the two premises that 1) taken as given that the HS is about Jesus; and 2) that it’s apparent, or easily deduced that this is the message of the HS. Of course, the message of the coming anointed one is hardly controversial, so I suppose Premise #2 rests on how obvious it is that Jesus is that anointed one. Naturally the author of this gospel believes it’s blindingly obvious and, I think, is rather askance that not all Jews, or even perhaps most Jews did not make the connexion and accept Jesus as the Messiah. Incidentally, in this attitude is the sort of clue that betrays the age of the document. This is not the “Messianic secret” of Mark, wherein Jesus hid his identity so it’s understandable, to some extent, why more Jews did not discover Jesus’ identity. I would argue that the author here sees no excuse. He is writing at a time when the identity of Jesus has been an “established fact” in the Christian community for several decades, a couple of generations have been born, raised, and died in the Christian faith. Of course this is an interpretation of the words on my part, one subject to debate; however, once again, these are the sorts of discussions that I find missing from the debates on the dating of the various books. The Gospel of Thomas is the most egregious example of this: the content portrays a developed Gnostic attitude that is anachronistic for the mid-First Century. OTOH, I would accept an earlier date for the Didache, at least until I considered the matter more diligently. It is hardly a revelation that John was written later; after all, the traditional date is 100 CE, so if that is pushed back to 110 or 120, there is no great adjustment required. As we have stated, the date of 100 has been argued backwards: how late can we push it and still claim authorship by one of Jesus’s immediate disciples? That, rather than any external links or references are the basis for the date; yes, this is oversimplifying but the general argument holds. And yes, there are the references from people like Clement the Bishop of Rome, but how well fixed are his dates? The sad truth is that our sources for Jesus are at least a couple of generations after Jesus died; giving authorship to this gospel as John the disciple is yet another attempt to establish source material that is contemporary to Jesus, or at least to those who walked with Jesus. This is why Q is so necessary; without it, how can we be sure that Jesus actually delivered the Sermon on the Mount? The answer is: not very.

41 Gloriam ab hominibus non accipio,

42 sed cognovi vos, quia dilectionem Dei non habetis in vobis.

43 Ego veni in nomine Patris mei, et non accipitis me; si alius venerit in nomine suo, illum accipietis.

44 Quomodo potestis vos credere, qui gloriam ab invicem accipitis, et gloriam, quae a solo est Deo, non quaeritis?
45 Nolite putare quia ego accusaturus sim vos apud Patrem; est qui accuset vos: Moyses, in quo vos speratis.
46 Si enim crederetis Moysi, crederetis forsitan et mihi; de me enim ille scripsit.
47 Si autem illius litteris non creditis, quomodo meis verbis credetis?”.

Posted in Chapter 5, gospels, John's Gospel

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Summary Luke, in toto. Some last words. Really.

Mar 13

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

There are a few more words to say about Luke as a whole. To this point, all we’ve really examined is how he relates to Mark and Matthew, and how the whole Q debate is formulated. What about his theology? and Christology? There are other such topics, all of which will cast some light on the development of Christian thinking and belief and, possibly, dogma by the time Luke wrote.

First and foremost, Luke’s conception of Jesus is fairly close to that of Matthew. That may sound unremarkable, but recall that Mark’s Jesus was very different, and John’s Jesus will be different again. In Mark, Jesus is sort of a hybrid; adopted by God at his baptism, a potent wonder-worker whose name will be invoked against demons for centuries by pagans, who eventually becomes the Christ in the last half or so of the gospel. In Matthew and Luke Jesus is decidedly divine from before he was born, as the two remarkably similar birth narratives convey. Yes, the narratives differ wildly in their details and even their overall setting, but the underlying message is theologically and Christologically identical in both. This is not to be devalued, but it is virtually ignored when comparing Matthew and Luke. Then in John Jesus is the pre-existent Logos, who is identical with the Father. That is a significant change. And John opens with this: In the beginning was the Logos. No, it’s not sufficient that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, that he was a more or less a demigod in a manner that would be immediately comprehensible to a someone with an understanding of Greek and Roman mythology, which was replete with such god-begotten Heroes. Were we to go through a line-by-line comparison of the way the two evangelists describe Jesus, it would not be shocking to come up with some minor differences in conception. But they would be minor. Both Matthew and Luke take pains to let us know that Jesus was not adopted, he did not become the Christ, and that he was, in fact, both divine and the Christ from the moment of conception by the Divine Breath. John then takes Jesus’ identity to its logical conclusion: he the same as, but distinct from, God the Father.

Secondly, while Jesus still performs many miracles, the aura of the wonder-worker has been toned down significantly. On the whole, most biblical scholars do not pay much attention to the many, many other wonder-workers who were more or less the contemporaries of Jesus. The most famous is Apollonius of Tyana, who was born within a few years of Jesus, but who lived into the reigns of Domitian and Nerva, almost making to the Second Century. Traditional dates are 3 – 97 CE; however, while both dates are a bit sketchy, the date of birth especially has to be looked at with a semi-jaundiced eye. They didn’t issue birth certificates, and when these people became famous, it was a bit of a scramble to come up with a date of birth. Regardless, he could easily be called the Pagan Jesus; in fact when the followers of Jesus became The Church, Apollonius was their particular bête noir; the Church founders loathed and detested all heretics, individuals like Marcion or even Simon Magus, but they held an especially vicious animosity for Apollonius because his life, in so many ways, resembled that of Jesus. His followers claimed he was the son of a god, he lived a life of an ascetic, wandering preacher who traveled about the Eastern Mediterranean with his followers, teaching and working wonders. When he died, his followers said that he rose from the dead–if he actually died at all.

Any of this sound familiar?

It was likely the similarities between the lives of the two men–or Divine Entities, if you will–that particularly alarmed the founders of The Church. So much similarity made it seem, to the casual outside viewer, that perhaps Jesus hadn’t been so special after all. The two men also shared one other common experience: both were put on trial. We “know all about” the trial of Jesus. Philostratus describes the trial of Apollonius in the biography he wrote; there are questions, of course. about how far we can trust this account. As was the case with Jesus, the followers of Apollonius are quite concerned to claim that he was accused falsely. The charge against Apollonius was that he was a magician. This can mean so many things in the First Century, anything from being a poisoner, to being an astrologer, to being someone who actually practiced–or attempted to–what we would call sorcery, or witchcraft, or such, like turning someone into a donkey. Or a newt. Different emperors had different attitudes towards “magic”. Per the sources, most of them relied on astrologers, but astrologers were also periodically expelled from Rome. One emperor who was particularly anti-magic was Tiberius. In his reign some 30-40 people were executed for magic. I have suspected that one of them may have been Jesus.

Mark wrote during the reign of Vespasian, who was a bit less stringent about such things. Matthew and Luke, however, were likely writing under Domitian, who was much less tolerant–of magic, of Christians, and other things. The Persecutions of Domitian are more or less an accepted fact by most NT people, but I am not familiar with the source material on which this judgement is based. Overall, it would seem that the tales of persecution of Christians were a bit (?) exaggerated, sporadic, episodic, unpredictable if often brutal. The Romans were brutal people when it suited their needs. And we are told that the trial of Apollonius was held during Domitian’s reign. So if the imperial mood was anti-magic, then this would be a great reason for Matthew and Luke to tone down the wonder-worker aspect of Jesus, especially if he had been executed as a magician. This matters to some extent because even in the Second and Third Centuries, Christians were defending Jesus and denying charges made by pagans that he had been a magician. If the rumours about Jesus persisted that long, that has to make us stop and wonder. Not all of it was fictitious slander, either. There are amulets and spells that invoke pagan gods and daimons and Jesus to perform some sort of magic, and all in the names are in same text, sequentially. Jesus was considered particularly effective as an exorcist. Which is precisely what Matthew eliminated from Chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel, the episode that Luke restored after he provided his version of the Prophet in his Own Land story at the beginning of Chapter 4; in both Mark and Luke, we saw, used this as the first wonder of Jesus’ public career. Is this mere coincidence?

It matters to some degree because, offhand, I would find it odd that both Matthew and Luke chose to remove all of the descriptions of magical practices set out in Mark. That Luke agreed with Matthew on this against Mark (which, recall, never happens) so consistently and thoroughly would actually provide pretty good evidence that Luke certainly was aware of Matthew. I would dearly wish to use this as an argument against Q. You mean the two of them came to this decision independently? Well, given the imperial dislike of such things, we have a reason why Matthew and Luke could have come to this decision independently. Since Domitian took a dim view of magical practice, it would be prudent for anyone writing about Jesus to tone down that aspect of his career. This, unfortunately undercuts this as an argument against Q; however, it will still be fun to throw this into the mix and see what the pQ people think. There is one reason, however, that may demonstrate that Luke did get the idea from Matthew: Luke took it a step further. One of the points raised by Kloppenborg is to ask why Luke omitted the visit of the Magi. Luke, he says, was very interested in how pagans reacted and were involved, so it makes no sense to eliminate the Magi from the birth narrative. Or does it? If Luke wants to remove the references to magic, getting rid of the Magi makes a lot of sense. After all, the root of the Latin word magia is magus, or magos, magi/magoi in Latin and Greek respectively. That would be on the order of excising references to Marxism from a text in the USA during the McCarthy craze of the 1950s, but leaving in a favorable mention of Karl Marx. As a final note to this, Josephus tells us about a wonder-working teacher named Eleazar who lived about the time the gospels were being written. And, indeed, Roman Emperors got in on the act, including Vespasian and Hadrian. In fact in Tacitus and Suetonius, Vespasian is credited with a miraculous cure of a man who was lame, and of a blind man. This latter is of especial interest since Tacitus tells us he used a method rather similar to that of Mark in 8:22-25. This is where Jesus applies saliva to the man’s eyes to effect the cure.

In any case, this is something that needs to be discussed by persons more learnèd in the NT than I am. The Q debate is almost entirely textual; it needs to be more contextual. This is to say, it needs to consider the history as well as the text itself.

And as a final word about Apollonius, the biography by Philostratus makes an interesting comparison to the gospels. First of all, it’s very long; it requires two volumes in the Loeb Classical Series, so it’s longer–by about twice–than the entire NT. And it is clearly and obviously what we would call a biography. This demonstrates decisively that, whatever the literary form the gospels fall into, they are not to be classified as biographies of Jesus. There was a website I used to visit of a grad student working in Mark. One of his aims was trying to identify the literary form of the gospels. I don’t recall what his conclusion was, but IMO the gospels really do not fit any of the standard literary forms known in the ancient world, which should make us very reluctant to accept then as factual about anything. And Apollonius is said to have traveled widely, from Spain to India, where he spent considerable time.

So what is peculiar to Luke? We have the stories of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. These are powerful stories that describe our interactions with each other. It’s not like the Parable of the Tares, or of The Talents, or the ten Virgins which are unique to Matthew. Those speak more to a person’s relationship with God; the good and bad will be sorted out, but there is no sense of what it means to be good or bad. In the second, we are to use our talents, but there is nothing specific about what we should do with them. In the final one we are to be on our watch because the day is coming, but we know not when. This is not to say that Matthew has nothing about how individuals should act and interact with other persons, but it seems not to get the emphasis it does in Luke. Or, is it just that the Good Samaritan and Prodigal Son are so overwhelming that their weight is outsized? After all, both terms are deeply ingrained into Western/European culture, to the point that they are understood just by their names by the vast majority of those of European descent regardless of how religious they are or are not. It is easy to overstate this, but if you tell a dozen people that someone was a good Samaritan, chances are eleven of them will understand the allusion. The shining hallmark of Matthew’s gospel is the Sermon on the Mount, but really, not all of it. I daresay a lot of people have no idea how long it goes on. I didn’t. Generally Christians get snippets here and there, and probably not the whole thing. Then let’s talk about the Birth Narrative. All people usually know about Matthew, or what comes to mind about Matthew’s narrative are the Star and the Magi. When we go to church on Christmas Eve, or Christmas Day, we get Luke with the no room at the inn, the stable and the manger, all topped off with Hark the Herald Angels Sing, or Angels We Have Heard On High. Those are the details we think of about Jesus’ birth. After all, the countless creches that are erected in churches and homes (and not so much in public spaces any more, but that is actually a good thing) are giving us the Story of Jesus’ Birth as told by Luke.

What does all this mean? It means that I’ve just completed Luke, so his material is fresher in my mind. When I think back to Matthew, I think of the very long slog it took to get to the end. Yes, I am giving value judgements and not historical judgements, but these values, I think, are precisely the point. I think Luke read Mark. I think he read Matthew. What he saw was a gospel that was, perhaps, too short and another that was, equally perhaps, too long. So Luke endeavored to give us one that was just right. He did this by eliminating much of the material where Mark and Matthew provided all the information we need. He cut down on the arrest of the Baptist, he got rid of the storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walking on water. He condensed significant portions even of the Passion Narrative. And he edited out rather lengthy passages that constitute the so-called “M” material, the wording that is unique to Matthew. (Of course, he included a lot of what Matthew added to Mark, except that gets called Q.) Then, instead of the stuff that was already covered, we got the two mentioned plus the Widow of Nain, Zacchaeus, and more. Looking at the gospel as a whole, and in comparison to Matthew, I see a deliberate and calculated attempt to rework Matthew’s narrative, to eliminate what could be, and to replace the cuts with other, new stories. I have asked the question countless times: Why does someone sit down to write a gospel? Answer, because that person believes they have something to say. Luke retained a lot of Matthew’s new material, but not all of it, just as Matthew retained most of Mark, but not all of it.

In short, I think that Luke humanized the story in a way that made it accessible. Or something like that. Just think about it.

Sorry can’t resist. This from Wikipedia, on Apollonius of Tyana:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana

Historical facts [edit]

With the exception of the Adana Inscription from 3rd or 4th century CE, little can be derived from sources other than Philostratus (about the life of Apollonius).

The Adana Inscription has been translated by C.P. Jones as: ” ‘This man, named after Apollo, and shining forth from Tyana, extinguished the faults of men. The tomb in Tyana (received) his body, but in truth heaven received him so that he might drive out the pains of men’.”

The C.P. Jones whose name is highlighted was one of my professors at the University of Toronto. I had him twice, once in second year for a class on Suetonius’ Divus Iulius, and in fourth year for a class on Tacitus’ Annales, of which we read up through Gaius. The Suetonius lasted a semester, and had something like five or six people (in a second year class) and Tacitus lasted a full year and consisted of me, Prof Jones, and another student named Charles, whose last name I can’t recall. I think it was Keefe. Prof Jones decamped for a spot at Harvard shortly after I left (one could say he followed me to Boston) and there he recently translated Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius for the Loeb Classical Series, which is published by Harvard University Press. The citation above is from that work. Yes, I am bragging. The Classics Dept at the University of Toronto was an intense place. There were maybe 30-40 undergrads, and we had access to full professors on a regular basis. Due to the small number of students, all classes were essentially conducted as seminars. I think the largest class I had was the 300-level Herodotus, which had perhaps a dozen at most, and probably a few less.

Also, check out this paragraph by Bart Ehrman that’s under the rubric Comparisons to Jesus.

Even before he was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A supernatural being informed his mother that the child she was to conceive would not be a mere mortal but would be divine. He was born miraculously, and he became an unusually precocious young man. As an adult he left home and went on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners to live, not for the material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of disciples around him, who became convinced that his teachings were divinely inspired, in no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead. But at the end of his life he roused opposition, and his enemies delivered him over to the Roman authorities for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. Later some of his followers wrote books about him.

He is, of course, describing Apollonius.

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Luke Summary in toto, Part 5

Feb 14

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

As mentioned at the end of Part 4, I had considered ending on that note. However, the way Luke treats balance between Mark and Matthew is the most important aspect of the third gospel, IMO. It especially has ramifications for the Q debate, and we all know how much that interests me. So we continue. But before we go on, there are a couple more minor discrepancies between Matthew and Luke the early parts of Jesus’ ministry that bear mentioning.

The first occurs in the Temptations of Jesus. The order is different. Both start with changing rocks into bread, but then Matthew moves on to the pinnacle of the Temple and finishes by offering Jesus the kingdoms of the world. Luke reverses these last two. Why? And, which is he “correct” order? That is to say, what is the order of these in Q?

Now, since Kloppenborg, the biggest advocate of Q as far as I can tell, has produced a volume that he and his colleagues claim to be the most likely version of Q, we can check for the “official” word. This volume, the Q-Thomas Reader agrees with Matthew, and puts the kingdoms of the world at the end. And I tend to agree that this order seems to make more sense, as it provides ever-increasing offers. Why go from the kingdoms of the world to casting himself from the top of the Temple? Surely putting the kingdoms of the world is the logical progression. So why did Luke take them out of order? Seriously, why? I have not seen much in the way of discussion about this; in fact, I have seen none, but that may just be because I need to get out more. But let’s think about this for a moment. Which of the two choices for the third temptation represents a step up from the previous one? Is the offer of the kingdoms of the world really a superior temptation? At first glance, it may seem so, but perhaps the second look may provide a different insight.

For Jesus to cast himself from the temple and have angels catch him is not just worldly power, but a defiance of natural law. And in Jesus’ day world conquest was not idle speculation, but a reality. After all, Rome had attained worldly (more less) dominion, but no emperor (or private citizen–at least theoretically) had ever defied the laws of nature to such degree. This is to say that the third temptation in Luke actually demonstrates more of a step up from the second than is the case with Matthew’s arrangement. In Luke, we move from the mere physical need of food, to dominion of the physical world–no small feat, but it had been done– to defiance of what was not-yet called gravity. The conclusion to be drawn is that Luke changed the order of either Matthew or Q. This carries a certain amount of implication, since Luke is generally held to be the more “primitive” of the two gospels, meaning that Luke is closer to Q than Matthew. Of course, this assertion relies heavily on the difference between “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. However, the two gospels are said to be alternatively primitive, which means that neither one can actually be said to be the “more primitive”; however, it’s not considered polite to say that out loud when others might hear. In the end, though, whether Luke changed Q or he changed Matthew because Q did not exist, does not really matter. The point is that he obviously made the change, which means the question is not which did he change, but why? The glib non-answer is that Luke made the re-arrangement because it it made redactional sense to him, but this verges on circularity and does not answer the question for we are then compelled to ask: why did it make redactional sense?

IMO, the simplest and most obvious reason is that he thought it told a better story, that it made for a more dramatic impact, that the lesson of the story would run deeper and so be more meaningful for his audience. That is, it was an editorial choice based on what would sell, so to speak. Now, before this explanation is dismissed out of hand as facetious, stop and think about the birth narrative. A stable? A manger? Really? If those are not dramatic devices, I’m not sure what would be. The mighty-king-born-in-a-humble-stable is perhaps the greatest rags-to-riches (to-rags-again–perhaps) story in the history of Western Literature. It has resonated for the past two millennia, more or less having become THE official birth narrative, despite borrowing the Star and the Magi-and pretty much only those tropes–from Matthew. And let’s not forget the Road to Damascus. If you read Paul’s version of his conversion, one is immediately struck by how little it resembles the more famous version in Acts. But is it so different? The version in Acts is much more dramatic, to be sure, but it tells much the same story: Paul’s conversion was sudden, a revelation rather than a steady movement, like the conversion experienced by Augustine. The final leap to full conversion may have been an abrupt break for Augustine, but he was consciously considering its belief system prior to the final jump. I have mentioned that Luke has the sensibilities of a novelist, and I think his search for the dramatic plays a consistent role in his editorial decisions; IOW, he is redactionally consistent.

In and of itself, the decision to change either Matthew or Q (or both, really) has no real impact on the Q debate. We absolutely know he changed Matthew because the evidence is in front of us. In this, he made a conscious decision to make this change. That statement borders on tautology. And very shortly after, he moves the story of the Rejection in Nazareth from it’s Markan location later in the narrative, and puts it right up front, turning this into the first public action of Jesus’ ministry. In other words, Luke shows us that he has no qualms about rearranging content. But if he’s willing to rearrange this content, how does that reflect on his willingness to change or rearrange other content of Q? Or of Matthew. Luke was not afraid to rearrange Mark, so why should he feel differently about his other predecessor, whether it be Q or Matthew? The answer, he probably did not. I bring all of this up because this does have some import for the Q debate. It may be oblique, but it’s no less real for that. As I’ve stated a thousand times, it seems that the chief argument in favour of Q is Matthew’s masterful arrangement of the material in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s so good that only a fool or madman would change it. Coupled to this is a corollary point. We must show that Luke had a redactionally consistent reason for every change he makes from Matthew. As far as arguments and case-building go, neither of these carry much weight. Luke changed stuff because he wanted to change stuff, and because there was no point in writing a new gospel if all he was going to do is parrot Matthew. Or Q. I mean, what is the point? Matthew already existed so why write Matthew-dot-2? Someone decides to write a second or third gospel because one believes one has something to add. This is, after all, why Matthew wrote. He wanted–one would guess–to tell us more about the things Jesus said. Whether Matthew created these teachings himself, or whether Q was somehow discovered after Mark had written, Matthew had something–a lot of something–to add to the story.

A large part of the problem here is that biblical scholars believe that all of the teachings in the gospels all trace back to the time of Jesus. It may not be literally all of them–there are usually exceptions–but the number who don’t believe this are likely to be statistically insignificant. IOW, they are so few as to be effectively meaningless. Scholars talk about the sources used by John that had eluded all previous evangelists, in the way that Q eluded Mark. The problem is that this belief rests on no solid evidence. There is nothing to show that Jesus said or did half the things in the last three gospels. Mark is the most likely to contain material going back to Jesus, but that is a very double-edged sword for NT scholarship since the Jesus portrayed in Mark does not necessarily resemble the one of the other three gospels. Yes, the Christ appears at the end, but only at the end. Most of the gospel concerns Jesus as a wonder-worker; or, if we dare use the term, a magician. This version of Jesus, apparently, did not actually do much teaching. He told parables, The Sower, The Mustard Seed, a few others, but the sophisticated theology of the subsequent gospels is largely absent. Now, there will be vehement blowback against what I am saying, and there will be impassioned attempts to show that “largely absent” is horribly mistaken, or is at least overstated. What there won’t be is evidence to show that Jesus actually gave the Sermon on the Mount, that he told the story of the Prodigal Son, or that he cleansed the Temple twice. That lack should give us pause, but it hasn’t. As for Jesus the Magician, I have gotten on a distribution list for papers that discuss a lot of magical practice among pagans, and a certain amount deals with the period starting perhaps in the Second, but definitely in the Third Century. What is very clear is that Jesus retained or maintained a reputation as a powerful magician even among pagan magicians. In particular, his name was considered especially efficacious for exorcising demons. IOW, for doing exactly what Mark provided as the first action of Jesus’ public ministry.

So as for what Matthew had to say that needed to be added to the Legend of Jesus, we have to ask where it came from. Naturally, the official answer is that Matthew came across a volume of Q that was in circulation and realized that this material had to be worked into the gospel narrative. And Luke, being unaware of Matthew, did essentially the same thing. Except Matthew added things that appear only in his gospel, like the Parable of the Talents, and so did Luke, like the Good Samaritan. These additions that are not part of Q are attributed to other unknown and undetected sources, the M source and the L source respectively. So it is not just Q, but there are numerous other subterranean sources that flowed underground to reach later evangelists; some of them did not surface until John. And then they mysteriously disappear, just as they mysteriously appeared for the individual authors. In all cases, however, it is taken as gospel (pun intended) that the stories trace back, in a straight line, to the time of Jesus, if maybe not Jesus himself. Indeed, this provenance is never explored; it is simply assumed as self-evident.

There are two points in all this. The first is this should make us all look much more critically–which is to say, skeptically–at Q than we do. The second is that, if we weaken the support for Q, we have to consider Luke’s redactional decisions in a new light. Let’s take the example here, of Luke switching the order of the last two temptations. If Kloppenborg is correct and Matthew has the correct version of Q, then Luke decided to change Q. If he does it here–without explanation–he can do it elsewhere. The Q proponents conveniently overlook things like this when discussing editorial decisions, just as they brush off the “minor agreements” which are not exactly minor when word choice is almost identical. I believe that “why” Luke made the change could have big implications. I believe that, to no small extent, Luke’s intention was to “correct” Matthew, or at least to “set the record straight” in some meaningful way. He believed that his version was an improvement on Matthew as a means of emphasizing Jesus’ identity as the Divine Messiah. Thus the temptation to hurl himself off the Temple to be caught by angels is the temptation to reveal his divinity for all to see. Being king of the world is certainly impressive, but it’s still a human accomplishment. Being caught by angels in mid-air, however, most certainly is not.

Along with this we get another, similar correction to Matthew. It concerns Jesus presence in Caphernaum. I firmly believe that Jesus was raised in Caphernaum rather than Nazareth, or that he at least spent much of his life there prior to taking his act on the road around Galilee. Mark is vague, due to compression, but I believe Mark strongly implies that Jesus either lived in, or had relocated to, Caphernaum in the story of the paralytic borne by four. We are told that word got out that he was home, or in the house, or something such, the phrase strongly implying that it was in his house. The Greek is “en oikō”, literally in the house, but with the strong implication of in his house. Matthew is explicit that Jesus moved to Caphernaum. In addition, in Mark’s version of the rejection at Nazareth, Mark never specifies the name of his home town. We all assume it was Nazareth, but who’s to say? These stories grow up organically and details such as the name of the town are often not added until later. It is noteworthy, IMO, that Matthew does not name the town, either. Both use the term “patrida autou”, his homeland (more technically, the land of his fathers, from “patēr”, father.) Luke, OTOH, is not shy about this. He asserts that Jesus was rejected specifically in Nazareth, and he states that Jesus only traveled to Caphernaum, giving no implication of a relocation. The result is that Luke clarifies the ambiguities of Mark and Matthew. In short, he has set the record straight. Jesus was rejected in his home town, which was Nazareth. He did not move to Caphernaum.

I considered it important to dwell on these two bits, minor as they are. It is precisely that they are minor that they have such importance. I mean, why bother? Who would have noticed? Well, Luke did, and apparently this sort of slipshod storytelling with ambiguities and a lack of clarity bothered him. So he did something about it by removing the ambiguities and providing clarity. This is an editorial policy that will carry through the rest of the gospel. We will examine a sample of those incidents in what will, with luck, be the final installment of the Summary of Luke, in toto.

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Summary Luke in toto Part 4

Feb 2

Posted by James, brother of Jesus

Now it’s time to get specific about how Luke stacks up with both his predecessors. Up to this point, with the exceptions of the ministry of the Baptist and the Temptations, the comparison has only been between Matthew and Luke because the first few chapters of each contain material that is not found in Mark in any form. I realize that has been the topic of the discussion through the first three parts of this Summary in toto. Still, let it sink in.

Truly, the first point of divergence between the three is the baptism of Jesus itself. While all three have the Voice of God coming down when Jesus is raised from the water (Luke), the actual baptism is handled differently by all three. In Mark, John baptises Jesus without demur; in Matthew, John demurs, but Jesus tells him to proceed. These are not necessarily contradictory stories, since Mark could have omitted the demurral, or, more likely IMO, Matthew added it to indicate the actual disparity in rank between the two. Luke chose a third course, and omitted the actual act of the baptism altogether. Luke’s account is problematic, as has been pointed out numerous times as this is supposedly support for the existence of Q. In Luke, John has been arrested by the time Jesus gets baptized, so it’s really not clear who actually performed the baptism; all we know is that Jesus was baptised, at which point came the Voice from Heaven. The Q proponents claim that since Matthew had so effectively solved the problem of Jesus being baptised by an “inferior”, that Luke’s refusal to follow is clear proof that Luke was unaware of Matthew. Admittedly, this carries a certain amount of weight and, in and of itself, may seem convincing. But we need to look at the overall picture because here we have a microcosm of the redactional approach of Luke that the Q people demand so vociferously.

In Mark and Matthew, the arrest and execution of John form what is more or less a stand-alone story that, honestly, could be inserted almost anywhere. More, the story is consistent with what Josephus relates about the execution of John. It is not impossible that Josephus got the story from the gospels; this possibility is never discussed in the literature for reasons beyond my ken; but I do have suspicions. By maintaining Josephus’ independence from the gospels, he can be shown off as an “independent” source. Realize, though, that Josephus wrote more or less the same time as Luke; by this point, the Christians were the ones who were most concerned with Judea in the 30s; they had been telling the story of Jesus for thirty (or more) years by the time Josephus wrote. Philo, who wrote about the period in discussing the relations between Jews and Gaius Caligula (reigned 37-41 CE), does not mention John, but there was no reason for him to do so. Assuming Luke is correct that Jesus was executed under Tiberius*, Caligula’s reign was still years in the future. So we have Josephus and no one else. The point is that a stand-alone story could easily represent a summarised version of how the episode was remembered in the popular culture. In a sense, it’s similar to the story of the Gerasene Demoniac. It’s perhaps difficult to come up with a modern analogy for such a block of legend. In our written culture, the closest analogy would be some of the folk songs sung about legendary figures such as John Henry (who? Well, he had a hammer) or Jesse James.

*Whether this is a reasonable assumption or not depends on a skein of arguments that are outside of scope at this particular juncture.

However, Luke basically ignores the pre-fabricated block. In fact, he eschews the entire story mentioning John’s arrest in passing, as it were. So we have sort of a curious situation. This represents something like a double abridgement. Following the order as presented in Luke, the first is the extremely shortened mention of John’s arrest, followed very quickly by the self-administering baptism. How do we interpret this? All along, I’ve been saying that Luke often will shorten a story that has been adequately covered by both Mark and Matthew. Both of them provide the full story of John’s arrest and execution (if a bit later in the narrative), and they also fully present the story of the baptism. Why doesn’t Luke tell us about John’s arrest, or who baptised Jesus? He didn’t feel the need. The audience is fully aware of the story of John, and they know that John baptised Jesus. There is no need to repeat either of these. But then it’s important to notice, and to note, what follows. After the baptism, Luke provides the whole story of the Temptation of Jesus, including the dialogue between Jesus and Satan as added to Mark by Matthew. IOW, we have the inverse of the previous situations: the dialogue was only presented by Matthew, so Luke doesn’t feel he’s being redundant to include it. This abridgement/inclusion is a pattern that will repeat itself throughout the rest of the gospel.

Much of the rest of Chapter 4 consists of two stories. The first is found in Mark Chapter 6, which is much further along in the gospel due to Mark’s shorter length. Here we come to the story wherein Jesus returns to his home town only to be rejected by those who had known him. Mark and Matthew merely state that Jesus had returned to his “home town” (patrida, in Greek), both using the same word and neither naming the town. Luke breaks ranks; he both specifies that Jesus has come to Nazareth, and that this was where he had been raised. But Luke does not recite the list of Jesus’ siblings as do the other gospels; once again, that topic has been covered. But then Luke inserts an entirely new bit of information. In all three versions, Jesus goes to the synagogue where he preaches, thereby causing an uproar because no one will credit him with insight, having known him since he was a kid. Luke alone, however, tells us what Jesus preached about. It was a section of Isaiah which could be interpreted to refer to the coming of the anointed one. Jesus then proclaims that the scripture has been fulfilled, since this refers to him.

It’s not difficult to understand why this upset his audience. Jesus declared himself to be the messiah in front of a synagogue full of people. One has to suspect that the Jews were darn tired of waiting for the promised messiah, but also apt to be very skeptical of anyone claiming to be the one. There is that phenomenon wherein after waiting for a long time for something, one has come to accept that it’s not going to happen. And then it does and everyone is unprepared and so is not usually on board with the idea. This is exactly the message of the analogy of the slave waiting for his master to return, but then gets lackadaisical about it and the master catches him unawares. And the synagogue full of people was upset, indeed, to the point that they were going to hurl him off the top of the hill on which the town was built. The purposes behind these two related incidents, or both halves of the single incident, is plain enough. And purposes is plural; Jesus making the announcement is the bold, definitive declaration that Jesus made so there can be no doubt among Luke’s audience of who Jesus is. And the announcement was obviously not made for the benefit of the people in the synagogue; they had missed the boat decades before. No, the proclamation is for the edification of Luke’s audience.

Here’s a peculiarity of the circumstances in which Luke was writing. If you’ll recall, in Mark, Jesus went out of his way to keep his identity secret. In the 70s, Mark had to explain to any non-Jews how it was possible that the Jews rejected Jesus. After all, he was the long-awaited and much-anticipated messiah, so why weren’t they behind Jesus? Well, because Jesus kept all this under wraps, to the point that even his disciples didn’t fully catch on. But Luke was writing in the 90s; by Luke’s time the term “Christian” was common. There were enough of them that they came to the attention of Pliny the Younger in his role of governor of Bythinia-Pontus (modern Turkey). Even so, Luke still had to explain to the pagan world how it was that the Jews missed the event they’d been anticipating for so long, but he had to answer it from a slightly different perspective, or provide the answer to a somewhat different question. Here Luke is saying that, goodness gracious boy howdy, how dense could they be? He flat-out told them and they still didn’t believe him. And the fact that they got so agitated about the declaration was indicative of their degree of resistance to the idea. As such, it foreshadows Jesus’ eventual fate, wherein he was crucified by these same Jews who did not, or could not, accept who he was, but the audience hearing Luke was fully informed. This proclamation of Jesus is sort of the exclamation point at the end of the birth narrative. It signals the true opening of Jesus’ ministry. As such, there is no surprise that Luke pulled this passage out of its “Markan” context. That Luke was willing to move pericopes (!) of Mark from one place to another should remove the stigma that Q proponents try to attach to those instances when Luke re-arranges the order and/or context of the stuff in Matthew. No one disputes Luke’s awareness of Mark; so if Luke is willing to rearrange Mark, why should it be so distressing that he does the same thing with Matthew? Luke puts things where they need to be to make the most impact.

But wait, there’s more. Following the Rejection at Nazareth in which Jesus proclaims his identity, we have Jesus following up with an action that proves what he says. And he does this by putting back one of the few stories in Mark that Matthew did not include in his gospel, the driving out of an unclean spirit from a man in Caphernaum. Offhand, I am not aware of any discussion of why Matthew omitted this story. It was, after all, the first wonder Jesus had worked, so it would seem rather important. And Matthew doesn’t just move the story elsewhere, as we saw with Luke moving the rejection in Nazareth; the story is simply not included. Why? As I said, I am not aware of the literature on this, so shame on me. No doubt there are many wise and insightful reasons suggested for this, and all of them are no doubt as convincing as the argument for Q. Of course, I have my own opinion. It has to do with who Jesus was at this point in the narrative of Mark and Matthew respectively. This occurs very early in Mark, when Jesus is a wonder-worker rather than the Christ. In fact, aside from the use of Christ in Mark 1:1, and a questionable use in 1:34, the term christos does not occur in Mark before Chapter 8, when the transition to the Christ-Narrative has begun. Think about that for a moment. But then, upon looking at the occurrence of the word in Matthew, it occurs five times before Chapter 11, and three of them are in the genealogy. This is a good indication of how deeply set in the tradition the wonder-worker narrative was; whether consciously or not, Matthew follows Mark on this. Mark did not use the word, and neither did Matthew. OTOH, Luke uses it early and often.

To some degree, the non-use of the term in Matthew undercuts my theory on why Matthew left out the story of expelling the unclean spirit. My suggestion is that Matthew eliminated the story so that the first true public act of Jesus is the Sermon on the Mount. The first four chapters of Matthew were, more or less, setting up the very long passage that is the Sermon. It begins at the outset of Chapter 5 and runs through to the end of Chapter 7. As such, this serves as Jesus’ notice to the world; it is Jesus’ proclamation of Jesus’ message which is more or less synonymous with who Jesus is. Matthew’s gospel is about Jesus the Teacher, the Wise Sage with a message of love and redemption and the kingdom, interlaced with trenchant aphorisms. This is an editorial choice, or the choice an author makes when he’s setting up the scene for the story he’s about to tell. The teachings presented under the rubric The Sermon on the Mount are, arguably, the most important aspect of Jesus in the opinion of Matthew. That statement is, IMO, incontrovertible. So by removing the story of the Unclean Spirit, Matthew has seriously de-emphasized Jesus as the wonder-worker, at least for the time being. In his place, he has set up Jesus the Teacher, who seeks to convert the hearts of his listeners with a message of love rather than to wow and dazzle them with his extraordinary power. As an aside, I’m not at all saying that this element is not lacking in Matthew: Jesus’ first action coming down the mount was to heal a leper. Rather, it’s a matter of emphasis.

The arrangement of Matthew and the subsequent arrangement of Luke is a big part of the reason I firmly believe that Luke was completely aware of Matthew. We are told, ad nauseam, that Matthew’s arrangement of the Q material–as demonstrated by the Sermon on the Mount–was “masterful”, to the point that only a fool or a madman would alter it after reading it. Since Luke was neither, then Luke was not aware of Matthew.* This is tendentious in the extreme, largely because it’s based not on fact or argumentation, but on a subjective appraisal of the literary quality of Matthew’s Sermon. Rather, I see the arrangement of Luke as masterful, and I believe I have an argument to support.

*This is a good example of the Modus Tollens theoren: p ⊃ q; ~q; therefore ~p. (translated: If p then q; not q; therefore not p). Except here it would be ; p ⊃ (q v r); ~(q v r); therefore ~p. (translated: if p then q or r. not (p or r–neither of these is correct]; therefore not p.

Mark started Jesus’ public career with the story of the Unclean Spirit. This introduces Jesus as a wonder-worker, with powers over the realm of kakodaimones, what we can call evil spirits. Really, in modern English, we can refer to them as demons. This is the introduction Jesus gives to the world, as related by Mark. We saw that one of the key features of Matthew was to de-emphasize the wonders and put the focus on the teachings and on Jesus as Christ. So Luke had two different approaches to choose from; mostly, he follows Matthew and by choosing the Christ over the wonder-worker. Luke uses the term christos more often in the early part of his gospel, and again in Acts, but the difference between him and Matthew is not overwhelming. There is a lesson to be drawn from this, but I’m not sure what it might be, and I cannot quite come up with an interesting theory. I suspect it involves some continuation of the precedent set by Mark, where only certain pericopes are to be associated with the Christ. This would require more study than is practicable for this format. I do suggest some connexion with Mark because the two places where some form of christos is used a lot are in John and in Paul. IOW, the Christ brackets the Synoptic Gospels; it is used before and after Mark, Matthew, and Luke (the chronological order of the three) and then it becomes a major theme throughout John, which was written after. I was prepared to argue that the increased use of christos by Luke was the result of the influence of Paul, but that really doesn’t hold up given the only minimal increase in the use of the term in the early stages of Luke.

Let us, however, return to the actual topic at hand, which is the story of the Unclean Spirit, because I believe this provides some excellent insight into the Q question. Mark begins with Jesus the wonder-worker; Matthew begins with Jesus the Teacher. Luke steers closer to Matthew than Mark, but he still charts his own course that is more or less independent of the two, but that contains elements of both. In Luke’s introduction of Jesus, we really get neither teacher nor wonder-worker; instead, we get Jesus the Christ as he reads the passage of Isaiah promising the Messiah and then proclaims to all and sundry that he has fulfilled the prophecy. That is, Jesus says that he is the Christ. So, like in Matthew, Jesus does not begin his public ministry with a wonder, but rather with teaching, or at least the interpretation of Scripture, which is, after all, teaching. But–and here’s where it gets interesting–we get this announcement twice, sandwiched around a wonder. In Mark the first entity to call Jesus the Holy One of God is the unclean spirit, and we get that in Luke as well. So Jesus tells us who he is, drives out a demon, then has the demon tell us who Jesus is. As did Matthew, Luke tones down the magical aspect of Jesus’ career, leaving out all of the magical practices described by Mark, partly by not making the exorcism Jesus’ opening act. But, at the same time, we get Luke “correcting” Matthew by restoring this story. It does seem important to do so because of the demon’s acknowledgement of Jesus’ identity. Jesus tells us, the demon tells us, thereby corroborating Jesus’ statement rather than being the entity who is first to break the news. So this is why Luke Chapter 4 has such implications for a lot of things.

I’ve heard it said that the use of wonders in the gospels were supposedly to demonstrate the arrival of the Kingdom. Sure. Here’s the thing. Christians and biblical scholars like to ignore this, but the reality is that Jesus was considered a very powerful magician, a reputation that stuck with him–even among pagans–for centuries. I’ve been reading this series of papers that discuss magical amulets, curse tablets, and other magical paraphernalia, mostly of pagan provenance, and the name of Jesus features very prominently among a number of them. These are artifacts dug up from wells, found inside walls, and extracted from other places where it was customary to secrete such things. Even more, it seems like one of the functions in which the name of Jesus was considered particularly efficacious was in the exorcising of demons, or unclean spirits, or what the pagans would have termed kakodaimones. Was Matthew particularly concerned to shoot down this aspect of Jesus’ reputation? After all, Christian apologists were denying that Jesus was a magician well into the 3rd, if not the 4th Century (which takes us into the Christian Empire). Whether being considered a magician was good or bad depended greatly upon the time one lived. It was a bad thing during Tiberius’ reign, when Jesus was supposedly executed, and there is no real good reason to dispute this chronology. It came and went depending on the outlook of the particular emperor. Most of them were not fond of seers of the future, or casters of horoscopes, the idea being that these talents would be, or could be used to foretell the death of the emperor which was problematic.

Writing in the 80s, under the first Flavian Emperors, one would think that Matthew would not need to be terribly concerned about imperial persecution, but we know that he was indeed concerned to play down the magical aspects of Jesus. All we have to do to confirm this is to note what parts of Mark that Matthew omitted. One very obvious thing Matthew excluded was all the descriptions of magical practices that Jesus used. Luke did the same. Here we have a very clear instance of a situation in which Luke agreed with Matthew against Mark. This is odd, really, because the Q proponents are quick to point out that this never happens. Except for the whole constellation of themes around the birth narratives such as Joseph and Bethlehem–and the very idea of a birth narrative, and a genealogy–and now here. And all the minor agreements which are meaningless. Oh, and all the Q material, but that doesn’t count because we’re using this material to prove the premise which also happens to be the conclusion. There is Q because of the stuff Matthew and Luke share. But Matthew and Luke never agree with each other against Mark. Except for the Q material. But that doesn’t count because this material is, by definition, the Q material. And this argument is, by definition, the fallacy of begging the question (in the actual meaning of the term), or a circular argument. Why is it the best? Because it’s the most popular. Why is it the most popular? Because it’s the best.

Anyway, the point here is that the fact that both Matthew and Luke are concerned to downplay Jesus the wonder-worker (i.e., magician) the fact that Luke puts the story back in carries a lot of weight. This is perhaps the most salient example of Luke adding back material that Matthew abridged, as Luke did with the Gerasene Demonaic. Yes, it’s possible that Luke simply included the story here because this is where Mark included it in his narrative. But at the outset of the chapter, Luke adds the Rejection in Nazareth, which is a drastic rearrangement of Markan material. Because the point here is that Luke restores the story, but only does so after introducing Jesus as the Christ before we get to the exorcism. It is this combination that is significant. Luke really went out of his way to rearrange the narrative; and, since we know he was neither a fool nor a madman, we can infer that Luke made this rearrangement for considered reasons.The main of these reasons is, IMO, to set up Jesus as the Christ before introducing Jesus the magician. As a divine Being, conceived by God and so the son of a god just as Hercules was, and by virtue of being the Christ Jesus would have authority over such unclean spirits, an authority that the spirit itself concedes by calling Jesus the “Holy One of God”.

There are numerous other instances like this in Luke, where he goes back over Matthew and “corrects” the record. Or he shortens stuff that has already been told in sufficient detail. I was thinking about calling it quits with this piece, but I think further examples will be useful. So,

To Be Continued…

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