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.

John Chapter 10:1-19

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.

Summary John Chapter 9

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.

John Chapter 9:35-41

In which we conclude the chapter. We have bee taught how it is “The Jews” whose eyes have yet to be opened.

Text

35 Ἤκουσεν Ἰησοῦς ὅτι ἐξέβαλον αὐτὸν ἔξω, καὶ εὑρὼν αὐτὸν εἶπεν, Σὺ πιστεύεις εἰς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;

36 ἀπεκρίθη ἐκεῖνος καὶ εἶπεν, Καὶ τίς ἐστιν, κύριε, ἵνα πιστεύσω εἰς αὐτόν;

37 εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Καὶ ἑώρακας αὐτὸν καὶ ὁ λαλῶν μετὰ σοῦ ἐκεῖνός ἐστιν.

38 ὁ δὲ ἔφη, Πιστεύω, κύριε: καὶ προσεκύνησεν αὐτῷ.

Jesus heard that they had out-thrown him out, and finding him (the man) he (Jesus) said, “Do you believe in the son of man?” (36) He answered and said, “And who is he, lord, in order that I may have begun to believe in him?” (37) Jesus said to him, “And you have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” (38) And (the other) said, “I believe, lord,” and he prostrated himself.  

First, verb used is exo-ballein, the verb to “throw” augmented by the prefix for “out”. The fact of “out” which is then emphasized by the stand-alone preposition “out”. So the very clumsy English of “out thrown him out”. The Latin verb does not have the prefix, so it pretty much follows the same rule as English, simply “to throw” + stand-alone preposition “out”. Secondly, the verb for “believe” in Verse 36 is once again in the aorist subjunctive, so I’ve more or less fallen into a convention of treating the aorist, a single action, like a perfect, repeated action. So, “that I may have begun” to believe. The “may” captures the uncertainty, and the “have begun” the fact that it’s past tense. Literally, it should be “may began” to believe, but that makes no sense in English. Most modern translations simply render this as “that I may believe”, catching the uncertainty while ignoring the past tense. That it’s an aorist does change the meaning by conveying the sense that the beginning of belief has occurred already, so it’s an action in the past tense.

Then we get to “son of man”. John uses this term the fewest times in the Gospels, and Matthew uses it the most. A Google search of the question will return slightly different numbers, which, I suspect, is a function of how you count. Does use of the term twice in one verse, or in consecutive verses, count as one instance or two? Regardless, the total for John is in low double digits, 10 or 12 or so. It occurs twice as much the HS as it does in the NT; this, I suspect, includes use of the term as “a son of man”, which is to say “a person”. The term is problematic, largely because it’s enigmatic, but that is perhaps the point. It has been suggested that the term means nothing other than “person”, and that is hardly a ridiculous position. However, since John uses it so seldom, one’s (well, my) first reaction is that he has reserved it for a special purpose; however, upon further review, perhaps not. When the term “son of man” has been used to this point, it very obviously does not simply mean “person” or “human”. It refers to a being that is more than human, on whom angels ascend and descend, or who is in heaven, or who provides eternal life. In fact, this is the first time the term has been used where it does not clearly refer to an entity that is more than human, although it can certainly be argued that “believing in the son of man” implies an elevated being. When compared to the term “son of God”, there does not seem to be too much difference in the insinuations. As such, by this point it would seem that the term is something of a tradition, that it’s used in all the gospels so John uses it too. 

But let’s come back to that and dispense with the word I translated as “prostrated”. We’ve discussed this before, but it’s been a while so it may deserve to be revisited. The word in Greek is pros-kynesis. Literally it means something along the lines of “roll over and show your belly like a dog”; the second half of the word, kynesis, literally means something like “canine”, “dog”. It is in fact directly related to the Latin canis, as in canis familiaris, the domesticated dog. So the whole word means something like, “act like a dog in front (prefix pros-) of someone”. What dogs do to show submission is lay on their back to expose their belly, which is a vulnerable part of their anatomy. In the kingdoms of the ancient Near East, the standard practice for a lesser being coming into the presence of the king was to fall on one’s face, largely because the lesser being was not worthy to look at the face of the king. Moses did something similar in the presence of the burning bush. Anyway, the Greeks first came into contact with Near Eastern monarchs in the late 6th or early 5th Century BCE, mostly in the form of the Persians. They were the successors of the Near Eastern empires stretching back through Babylon and Assyria and beyond, and the Persians very much insisted that the custom of groveling on one’s belly before the Great King be maintained. The Greeks, OTOH, had no such custom, largely because they did not consider any one man to be innately superior–in the sense of divinity–to another. They found this Persian custom of falling on one’s face repulsive, and gave it the derogatory term of “acting like a dog before someone”; which is to say pros-kynesis. That is what the man did before Jesus. Just remember that when you see the expression “worshipped him”. The Latin is adoravit; the Latin lyrics to the refrain of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” are “Venite adoremus…” “Come let us adore (him implied)” So, come, let us fall on our faces before him in worship; although, having said that, the Latin was written by an Englishman in the 1700s, so the idea of falling prostrate on one’s face was likely not intended.

Let’s get back to “son of man’ and the fuller implications of Jesus question. It has never occurred to me to ask what the term “son of man” would have meant to a First Century Jew. But that’s not entirely true, because I have read things in which possible interpretations of the phrase are discussed. The most common is the “human being” theory , based, I believe, on the passage in Daniel where someone is said to appear “as a son of man”; this to say your standard, garden-variety person. So why does the NT rely on it? And I should specify the gospels, since it apparently does not show up in Paul, although Romans 8:3 kinda sorta comes close. I came into this paragraph with the notion that I could or did have something to say, but it appears I was mistaken about this. The use of the term is very much an open question as far as I can tell. 

Regardless, however the man understood–if he did–the term, he was moved to worship Jesus. A quick look shows that the term appears a number of times; IOW, Jesus was worshipped numerous times. Upon arrival at Herod’s court, the Magoi want to worship the new king. The mother of the sons of Zebedee worships Jesus when she want to ask that her sons sit at Jesus’ right and left hand in the kingdom. I guess what we need to take from this is that the man had his eyes opened in more ways than one. There were his physical eyes, of course, but he also became aware of who Jesus was, so the eyes of his awareness were opened as well. This, also of course is in contrast to “The Jews” whose eyes remained closed. The Man Born Blind recognized that the healing was a sign, and this sign indicated that Jesus was a prophet (at least)–as he said in Verse 17. Actually, going back to the meaning or understanding of the phrase “son of man”, it’s worth noting that the man is a tad confused himself by the expression. While he recognized that Jesus performed a sign, he did not equate the performance as something that would be done by someone referred to as “the son of man”. That is, he did not recognize that “the son of man” was a prophet, let alone the anointed one. When this is pointed out to him, he accepts this readily. Again, in contrast to “The Jews”.

35 Audivit Iesus quia eiecerunt eum foras et, cum invenisset eum, dixit ei: “Tu credis in Filium hominis?”.
36 Respondit ille et dixit: “ Et quis est, Domine, ut credam in eum? ”.
37 Dixit ei Iesus: “ Et vidisti eum; et, qui loquitur tecum, ipse est ”.
38 At ille ait: “ Credo, Domine! ”; et adoravit eum.

39 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Εἰς κρίμα ἐγὼ εἰς τὸν κόσμον τοῦτον ἦλθον, ἵνα οἱ μὴ βλέποντες βλέπωσιν καὶ οἱ βλέποντες τυφλοὶ γένωνται.

40 Ἤκουσαν ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων ταῦτα οἱ μετ’ αὐτοῦ ὄντες, καὶ εἶπον αὐτῷ, Μὴ καὶ ἡμεῖς τυφλοί ἐσμεν;

41 εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Εἰ τυφλοὶ ἦτε, οὐκ ἂν εἴχετε ἁμαρτίαν: νῦν δὲ λέγετε ὅτι Βλέπομεν: ἡ ἁμαρτία ὑμῶν μένει.

And Jesus said, “I came to judge this kosmos, so that those not seeing may see, and those seeing may become blind. (40) Those of the Pharisees being with him heard, and said to him, “But (surely) we are not also blind?” (41) Jesus said to them, “If you had been blind, you had not had sin; but now you say that ‘We see’. Your sin remains.”  

The verb tenses are a little funky in Verse 41. Or, rather, one of them is. Most modern translations render this as “If you. had been blind, you would not have had sin”. This makes sense in English, or from our perspective. We would put the “have” into the subjunctive–or at least the conditional–to get across that this is an hypothetical, an unreal set of circumstances. In fact, the Latin also puts this into the subjunctive, you would have had no sin. However, the Greek sees this differently; both verbs are imperfect, which is often used for an action completed prior to the main verb. Consider: “When the introductions had been made, the show began“. “Had been made” is imperfect, and this action finished prior to the show beginning, which is simple past tense. So having both verbs in the imperfect is a bit awkward for English, and perhaps even for Latin, explaining why the Vulgate modified the tense/mood in the same way as the modern translations do. One actually wonders if John–or a copyist–maybe just made a mistake. I point these things out just in case anyone reading this is working on their Greek. No, you did not make a mistake; it truly does make no sense. 

With all that out of the way, we can consider the import of the passage. Basically, this is John’s way of expressing the sentiment that Jews have been superseded, or supplanted. This time I did not use the scare quotes around “The Jews” because I am referring to all adherents of the religion. We saw events in the other gospels indicating that followers of Jesus had jumped to the front of the line. My favorite example of this is the story of the Wedding Guests: those invited–aka “the Chosen People”–decline to come to the feast, so the king sends his slaves out to round up whomever he can find and have them attend in the stead of those actually invited. This what we have here: those with sight–the aforementioned “Chosen People”–become blind while those formerly blind–everyone else–gain their sight. Not sure there’s much to say beyond that.

So we have a quick wrap-up to the chapter.

39 Et dixit Iesus: “In iudicium ego in hunc mundum veni, ut, qui non vident, videant, et, qui vident, caeci fiant”.
40 Audierunt haec ex pharisaeis, qui cum ipso erant, et dixerunt ei: “Numquid et nos caeci sumus?”.
41 Dixit eis Iesus: “Si caeci essetis, non haberetis peccatum. Nunc vero dicitis: “Videmus!”; peccatum vestrum manet”.

John Chapter 9:22-34

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.

John chapter 9:8-21

Here we are going to run into another situation where there is no reasonable break for much of the chapter. As such, it will be necessary to create such a place in the narrative, which usually makes for an awkward transition that sacrifices continuity. My apologies in advance. We continue on with the story of the Man Born Blind.

Text

8 Οἱ οὖν γείτονες καὶ οἱ θεωροῦντες αὐτὸν τὸ πρότερον ὅτι προσαίτης ἦν ἔλεγον, Οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ καθήμενος καὶ προσαιτῶν;

9 ἄλλοι ἔλεγον ὅτι Οὗτός ἐστιν: ἄλλοι ἔλεγον, Οὐχί, ἀλλὰ ὅμοιος αὐτῷ ἐστιν. ἐκεῖνος ἔλεγεν ὅτι Ἐγώ εἰμι.

10 ἔλεγον οὖν αὐτῷ, Πῶς [οὖν] ἠνεῴχθησάν σου οἱ ὀφθαλμοί;

11 ἀπεκρίθη ἐκεῖνος, Ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ λεγόμενος Ἰησοῦς πηλὸν ἐποίησεν καὶ ἐπέχρισέν μου τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς καὶ εἶπέν μοι ὅτι Υπαγε εἰς τὸν Σιλωὰμ καὶ νίψαι: ἀπελθὼν οὖν καὶ νιψάμενος ἀνέβλεψα.

So his neighbors and those seeing him who was a beggar said, “Is he not the one being seated and begging?” (9) Others said that, “He is (that man, eg)”. Others said “Nay, he is another similar to him.” He said, “I am (he)”. (10) They said to him, “How were your eyes opened?” (11) He answered, “The man who is being called Jesus made mud and smeared my eyes and said to me, ‘Get yourself to the (Pool) of Siloam and wash.’ So I having gone and washed I recovered my sight”.

This was a planned break, but the timing worked out–no thanks to any planning on my part. The last word of Verse 11 is the compound verb ana (up) – blepō (look) >> “to look up”. However, it also has the special and specific meaning of “to recover sight”. Even better, it is used in this manner by a pagan, and even a Classical author named Herodotus. For those unfamiliar, Herodotus is known as the “Father of History” because he wrote a rather long history of the war(s) between Greece as a whole–if abstract–and the the Persian Empire, the most powerful empire in the world at the time. Of course, Herodotus is famous for his digressions, which can often consume many pages, so we get so much more than a simple narrative of what could have been the account of the first Persian amphibious attack in 490 BCE, and then the full-scale invasion launched and led by the Persian king Xerxes himself. There is actually an entire book just on Egypt. Historians are forever grateful for his prolix nature, because he provided so much incidental information. I think of him as the older guy who comes to have dinner and then sits up most of the night telling his stories, but the hosts do not mind in the least so they invite him back the next night. The book is fascinating. So, the point is that “to recover one’s sight” is a legitimate, Classical translation.

Honestly, aside from that, there isn’t a lot of actual information in these four verses. It’s really just narrative to set up the story as a whole. I would wonder, or perhaps I would suspect that these four verses were not part of the original story as it was first told. Rather, I would suspect that these verses were added as the story was re-told. This is exactly the sort of incidental information that gets appended to the main body of the story for dramatic purposes. We all know someone like that: he tells a story, but it takes five minutes of really unnecessary set-up until we get to the actual guts of the story. Then, Herodotus is kind of like that, except he’s entertaining because he’s talking about stuff we don’t–and wouldn’t–otherwise know. But, this is how the narratives of legends grow over time. John wants to establish beyond a doubt that those who witnessed the event have their input to verify the circumstances. 

8 Itaque vicini et, qui videbant eum prius quia mendicus erat, dicebant: “Nonne hic est, qui sedebat et mendicabat”;
9 alii dicebant: “ Hic est! ”; alii dicebant: “ Nequaquam, sed similis est eius!”. Ille dicebat: “ Ego sum!”.
10 Dicebant ergo ei: “Quomodo igitur aperti sunt oculi tibi?”.
11 Respondit ille: “Homo, qui dicitur Iesus, lutum fecit et unxit oculos meos et dixit mihi: “’ ‘Vade ad Siloam et lava!’. Abii ergo et lavi et vidi”.

12 καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ, Ποῦ ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος; λέγει, Οὐκ οἶδα.

13 Ἄγουσιν αὐτὸν πρὸς τοὺς Φαρισαίους τόν ποτε τυφλόν.

14 ἦν δὲ σάββατον ἐν ἧ ἡμέρᾳ τὸν πηλὸν ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἀνέῳξεν αὐτοῦ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς.

15 πάλιν οὖν ἠρώτων αὐτὸν καὶ οἱ Φαρισαῖοι πῶς ἀνέβλεψεν. ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Πηλὸν ἐπέθηκέν μου ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς, καὶ ἐνιψάμην, καὶ βλέπω.

16 ἔλεγον οὖν ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων τινές, Οὐκ ἔστιν οὗτος παρὰ θεοῦ ὁ ἄνθρωπος, ὅτι τὸ σάββατον οὐ τηρεῖ. ἄλλοι [δὲ] ἔλεγον, Πῶς δύναται ἄνθρωπος ἁμαρτωλὸς τοιαῦτα σημεῖα ποιεῖν; καὶ σχίσμα ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς.

17 λέγουσιν οὖν τῷ τυφλῷ πάλιν, Τί σὺ λέγεις περὶ αὐτοῦ, ὅτι ἠνέῳξέν σου τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν ὅτι Προφήτης ἐστίν.

And they said to him, “Where is he (Jesus)?” He (the man) said, “I don’t know.” (13) They led one previously blind to the Pharisees. (14) It was the Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and smeared it on his eyes. (15) So and again the Pharisees asked him how he saw. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed and I saw”. (16) Then some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not with God, that he does not keep the Sabbath”. [But] Others said, “How can a man make such a sign?” And there was a schism amongst them. (17) So they spoke again to the blind one, “Who is it you speak about, that opened your eyes?” And he said that “He is a prophet”. 

First, there is no verb in Verse 13 aside from “they led”. The sentence is rendered in various translations as “They led him/the one who was formerly blind”. It’s better English–I suppose– and it doesn’t affect the meaning of the text,  but it’s not in the Greek.

It is also interesting to note that the Pharisees do not play anywhere near the major role in John that they do in some of the other gospels. They get three one-off mentions in chapters 1-4 and they appear in a single story in Chapter 7, in which the word is used numerous times. There is another single usage in Chapter 8, they mentioned here appear here several times and, in another extended appearance in Chapter 11, twice in Chapter 12, and then they disappear until a single mention in Chapter 18. Why they have faded into the wallpaper here is a good question. It would seem most likely to indicate that the Pharisees themselves as a group had begun to fade from the scene at this point in the history of Judaism, but I would not take my word on that based on this inference of mine. I would not just accept this on my say-so, either. I want confirmation of this from someone who knows much more about the history of Judaism and/or of Judea/Palestine than I do. It’s rather a specialist’s field and not something amenable to speculation by a dilettante such as I.

Really though, there are two main things being put across here. The first is the repetition of the story about Jesus making mud. The magical practice is recounted in Verses 8-11 and then again here in 12-16. That is also worth asking why? As mentioned, I’ve been reading about magic in the Hellenistic world–which includes the history of Rome from about the 2nd Century BCE, after the conquest of the Greek east and its incorporation into the Empire before the beginning of the Common Era. While there were periods when it was generally ignored, it was always held somewhat in disrepute by the more respectable in society. If nothing else, it was low-class; it was common as the British would say with a sniff. It wasn’t something one wanted to emphasize. And yet here we have John repeating the story several times to remind us of Jesus’ reputation as a sorcerer. And Jesus did have this reputation, at least posthumously. We know that he was called such by the pagan Celsus, and that Eusebios disputed the charge and hurled it back at Apollonius of Tyana. I don’t have an answer. The Gnostics were not particularly fond of magic, so we can’t blame them. I just don’t know. 

The other thing is the keeping of the Sabbath. This charge against Jesus has cropped up a couple of times before. In fact, we could almost call it a recurring theme in the gospel at this point. Again we need to ask why this is important. Here I believe the answer is a bit more clear, or at least it’s easier to come up with what could pass for a reasonable explanation. In all instances, “The Jews”, or here The Pharisees condemn Jesus for performing beneficial acts of healing. The purpose here is pretty obvious, IMO. Having endured years of religious instruction at Maple Grove St Michael’s as a lad, I recognize that the teaching was meant to show Judaism at its worst. The Pharisees were more concerned about the Letter of the Law, and not at all with its spirit. John apparently sees the benefit of pointing this out repeatedly. Just as Jesus’ revelation of his identity, this seems to be a theme of the gospel.

I did not translate schism; I left it transliterated because this is another of those words that has taken on a very specific and almost exclusively religious connotation. I say “almost exclusively” because the word is encountered when discussing secular ideologies such as capitalism; in such discussions the term “heresy” also crops up from time to time, but the dichotomy of theology and ideology is largely a distinction without a difference. In English, there is a difference between a “schism” and a “division” outside of the religious/secular context. “Divisions” between opinions are mundane and a dime a dozen; a schism, OTOH, is much more serious, implying a degree of near permanence. So what about here? Should I have left the word untranslated? Or should I have followed suit with the professional translators? Being honest, leaving the term as “schism” in English probably paints too harsh a picture. There is a large-ish group of people and some of them disagree. There is no reason to assume this has hardened into an irreparable split between the groups. That being said, I believe it was worthwhile to have this discussion to demonstrate how words take on meaning in English that are not present in the Greek. Like angellos, or baptismo, or euangelia.  

Now finally we come to the matter of the sign. I teased that a sign was coming at the outset of the previous post; however, we’ve only just now gotten to the sign. I would say that only part of the crowd is calling the healing a sign, but I don’t think that is accurate. Recall that a sign is a step above a miracle, or a “mighty work” or “deed of power”. I often quote that “the sky hung low in the ancient world, and the traffic in both directions was heavy”. That may not be the exact quote, but it the point becomes clear when it is understood that the air and sky and heavens was full of powers of various sorts, generically called daimones, which, whether benign or malevolent were capable of effecting such deeds of power. So while a deed of power was impressive, or at least above ordinary, a sign was entirely a different matter. A sign means something more than the mere suspension of natural laws; bear in mind that natural laws were largely unknown, so their suspension wasn’t that far out of the grasp of most people. Who knows? Some deeds of power may have involved the invocation of unknown natural law rather than their suspension. Wonder workers were not all that uncommon; reading literary works of Rome or Greece we find the character of the wonder worker to be fairly common, a type that most people would recognize.

But a sign takes us to a different level of supernatural significance, largely because it was understood to be significant. It was from God, meant to manifest his will amongst his people. This is why the Jews were so insistent on a sign; The Jews ask for a sign and the Greeks seek wisdom, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1:22. This is why the man whose sight was restored asks how a sinner can produce such a sign. For when the disciples of the Baptist asked Jesus if he were the one, the part of the latter’s response was that the blind see; of course this is a reference to Isaiah 35, which I saw labeled as the Joy of the Redeemed. So if Jesus is restoring sight, then that is a pretty clear indication that he is not a sinner. In fact, it’s a pretty clear indication that he is the Messiah, as foretold by Isaiah. So is the formerly blind man being a bit disingenuous when he says that Jesus is a prophet? Or is he afraid of speaking too boldly? 

12 Et dixerunt ei: “Ubi est ille?”. Ait: “Nescio”.
13 Adducunt eum ad pharisaeos, qui caec us fuerat.
14 Erat autem sabbatum, in qua die lutum fecit Iesus et aperuit oculos eius.
15 Iterum ergo interrogabant et eum pharisaei quomodo vidisset. Ille autem dixit eis: “Lutum posuit super oculos meos, et lavi et video”.
16 Dicebant ergo ex pharisaeis quidam: “Non est hic homo a Deo, quia sabbatum non custodit! ”; alii autem dicebant: “ Quomodo potest homo peccator haec signa facere?”. Et schisma erat in eis.

 18 Οὐκ ἐπίστευσαν οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι περὶ αὐτοῦ ὅτι ἦν τυφλὸς καὶ ἀνέβλεψεν, ἕως ὅτου ἐφώνησαν τοὺς γονεῖς αὐτοῦ τοῦ ἀναβλέψαντος

19 καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτοὺς λέγοντες, Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς ὑμῶν, ὃν ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι τυφλὸς ἐγεννήθη; πῶς οὖν βλέπει ἄρτι;

20 ἀπεκρίθησαν οὖν οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ εἶπαν, Οἴδαμεν ὅτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς ἡμῶν καὶ ὅτι τυφλὸς ἐγεννήθη:

21 πῶς δὲ νῦν βλέπει οὐκ οἴδαμεν, ἢ τίς ἤνοιξεν αὐτοῦ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἡμεῖς οὐκ οἴδαμεν: αὐτὸν ἐρωτήσατε, ἡλικίαν ἔχει, αὐτὸς περὶ ἑαυτοῦ λαλήσει. 

 So “the Jews” did not believe he who had been blind and whose sight was restored, until they heard the parents of him whose sight was restored (19) and they (“The Jews”) asked them (the parents), saying, “Is he your son, who you say was born blind? So how exactly does he see?” (20) So the parents of him answered and said, “We know that he is our son and that he was born blind. (21) How he now sees we do not know. Ask him. He has (requisite) age, he speaks for himself.”

At the end of the last section, I asked why the formerly blind man referred to Jesus as a prophet, rather than as the Messiah. It now occurs to me that I provided the quote about the blind seeing; it’s not part of the text, so the reference to Isaiah is only in my mind rather than in the story. We will assume John was fully aware of the reference, oblique as it may be. One suspects that this is why the report to the Baptist includes the phrase about the blind seeing in Matthew and Luke. Matthew likely would have been aware of Isaiah; would Q have known? There is a question that deserves to be asked. My hard copy Greek NT has the cross references in the margins, which is immensely helpful in cases like this. Matthew, being the HS scholar that he was, to the point of coming up with “He will be called a Nazarene” likely added the report to the Baptist about the blind regaining their sight as further demonstration of the foretelling of Jesus in the HS.

The question then becomes whether John expected his audience to catch the allusion made here. Naturally, this would require rather a high degree of proficiency and understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures. There is no overt repetition of the phrase regarding the blind. We have the stark account of the story. In his book Jesus Before the Gospels, Ehrman hypothesizes that the community of John the Evangelist consisted of people with a strong background in Judaism, even if not actually raised as Jews. This community had come to the point where they decided it was time to cut their ties with the Jewish religion and become fully Christians, rather than continue on as Jewish-Christians. It’s an interesting hypothesis and it really helps explain the degree of animosity John expresses towards “The Jews”. If true, one inference to be drawn is that the audience for this gospel probably did have a decent degree of knowledge about the HS in general, and perhaps of Isaiah in particular. We must realize that, as Christians, in some ways Isaiah is more significant for us than it is for Jews, who probably put more emphasis on Ezekiel. Of course, that is a horridly subjective statement on my part, but that has been my overall impression. BUT!! that impression is based on very little evidence, so take what I say with way more than a grain of salt. I cannot even begin to formulate an argument for my position; at best, it’s sort of a vague, hazy, inchoate feeling, not at all something even remotely suitable for a serious scholarly judgement.

The point here is that there is a decent chance that the audience may not have picked up on the reference to Isaiah. We would have to assess just how thoroughly familiar the “average Jew” of the early Second Century was with the HS. I don’t know. Observant Jews would have attended Temple at least some of the time, one would think, but based on the degree of knowledge a lot of the Catholics I grew up with had of the Bible, even regular attendance at church on Sunday was hardly sufficient to impart any deep knowledge. I don’t think I’m atypical of my peers, and there is even reason to think that maybe I got a little more than most; regardless, there have been numerous passages and stories that I had never heard before. And I’m just talking the NT; as for the so-called “Old Testament” as it was known in my youth, well, I got a sketchy outline of some of the major events in the first three books, a few stories here and there about Saul and David and Solomon, Jonah, the Dry Bones of Ezekiel, and the impression that Isaiah was very important. So based on my experience, I wouldn’t really be surprised if many people in John’s ekklesia did not catch the allusion. OTOH, perhaps this group was more robust in their belief and their practice than the standard American Catholic congregation. But then, my experience could have been atypical; perhaps most congregations were/are much more fervent in their learning than the rural parish in rural Michigan where I was raised. 

Because if the ekklesia was as clueless as I’m suggesting as possible, the whole point of the Sign would be lost. The question of the sign was apparently some of “The Jews”, who should be takem as more learned. They would get the allusion; indeed, it’s probably safe to say they did get the allusion since they consider the event before them to be a sign. 

But that was all relevant to the passage above; here the discussion focuses on the man’s parents. They are very cagey about their answers; they apparently understand that there are significant implications to the event, even if they maybe don’t grasp the full depth of the problem. Perhaps they do, which is why they’re so evasive. Or, at least, John is suggesting that they did because while the likelihood that these events transpired is not zero, the odds are very close to that. Given all the back and forth we’ve been hashing out, I think the reasonable conclusion is that John did expect his audience–at least the most learned segment of it–to grasp the idea of the sign as it related to the  “prophecy” of Isaiah. That is, after all, why this is a sign. 

17 Dicunt ergo caeco iterum: “Tu quid dicis de eo quia aperuit oculos tuos?”.  Ille autem dixit: “Propheta est!”.
18 Non crediderunt ergo Iudaei de illo quia caecus fuisset et vidisset, donec vocaverunt parentes eius, qui viderat.
19 Et interrogaverunt eos dicentes: “Hic est filius vester, quem vos dicitis quia caecus natus est? Quomodo ergo nunc videt?”.
20 Responderunt ergo parentes eius et dixerunt: “Scimus quia hic est filius noster et quia caecus natus est.
21 Quomodo autem nunc videat nescimus, aut quis eius aperuit oculos nos nescimus; ipsum interrogate. Aetatem habet; ipse de se loquetur!”.

John Chapter 9:1-7

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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.

Vindcation

Anyone who has been following this blog has probably/possibly heard me say that I suspect that Luke and Jewish historian Josephus influenced each other. I’ve based my conclusion on what I see as some pretty obvious overlaps between the material of the two. Now, if Luke was written in ca. 85 as is the traditional view, then Josephus, writing in the early-mid 90s, would have/could have used Luke as a source.

In the YouTube video below, Dr Bart Ehrmann tells us that the traditional date for Luke may be too early. According to Ehrman, in the past 20 years or so, some scholars have started suggesting that Luke was dependent on Josephus, and so they push the date of Luke/Acts back to 120 or so. This has become the high-end date for John, so we’re moving further away from the time of Jesus. This has obvious consequences for the historical reliability of Luke/Acts and John. However, I would suggest that the precedence is backward. IMO, it is more likely that Josephus used Luke rather than the other way around. Why? Both Luke and Josephus are likely based on Christian sources, but there were very few–if any–written Christian sources other than the NT. There is basically nothing else that Josephus could have used as a source aside from one of the gospels, whether Luke or Matthew. The Roman historians who mention Christians were written later, definitely in the early 2nd Century. As a result, Josephus needed Luke much more than Luke needed Josephus. Luke had the other two (and perhaps more) gospels but Josephus had nothing else. Even so, I’m claiming vindication because I came to this conclusion about Luke/Josephus entirely independently, based on a simple reading of the two. In particular, it’s based on reading Luke as an historical document, treating it as a Classics major would read any Greek or Roman writing, whether intended to be historical or not.

By the way: The Roman historians that are trotted out to prove the existence of Jesus do no such thing. None of them provide evidence for Jesus. They all talk about Christians, but say nothing about Jesus himself. Tacitus explains that Christians are named from their founder Chrestos, but that simply an inference from the name. The Greeks & Romans tended to attribute all sorts of things, such as land areas and rivers, to some eponymous hero who obligingly donated his or her name to an area. For example, “Europe” was named after Europa, whom Zeus carried off while he was in the form of a bull. The Peloponnese, meaning “Island of Pelops” was named after the mythical hero Pelops. So deriving “Chrestos” from “Christian” is perfectly in line with this logic.

One analogy to Jesus and his followers may be the Apology of Socrates, the speech Socrates gave when he was on trial for his life on the charge of impiety. Spoiler alert: his defense was unsuccessful and he was executed. Both Plato and Xenophon wrote versions of this speech, and they don’t exactly line up with each other. Which is “correct”? Probably neither. But each can tell us things, and comparing these things can lead to other conclusions. And this analogy may be particularly apt: both The Apology of Socrates and the Passion narratives are accounts of the capital trial of the Teacher written after the fact by disciples. None of them completely agree with the others. The PNs are much more alike than than they are different but that proves nothing about their reliability; rather, it indicates that each telling was heavily dependent on the previous accounts.

The point here fairly simple. I do not have a background in NT studies, and I am starting to realize just how much I don’t know. I recently published an update to 1 Corinthians 9-16 that incorporated information from reading Hippolytus Romanus and Dr Elaine Pagels The Gnostic Paul; I would not have made the update unless I had read both of those sources. Ergo, as I have said numerous times, any and all of my conclusions are subject to revision without advance warning because I have no problem revising, changing, or even contradicting something I said previously because I came across new or better information. My conclusions are just that: conclusions that are logically–one hopes!–supported by the evidence supported. Change or increase the evidence, the conclusion should change. That is how this process is supposed to work. That being said, I am pleased (with myself!) to report that a lot of what I have drawn as conclusions have also been suggested or argued by others who have a much stronger background than I do in NT Studies. My instincts are pretty good, so you can feel some confidence when I draw historical conclusions, such as suggesting that Matthew began life as a pagan rather than a Jew; I’m not the first to suggest that. Or that there was a connection between Luke and Josephus, which has also been suggested. Or that Jesus was not actually from Nazareth; which I believe I am the first to suggest.

FYI. But, as always, take it with a grain or two of salt.

Relevant section approx 5:35 – 5:55

Summary John Chapter 8

Where to start? We started our commentary with the story of the woman caught in adultery. This story is not in all mss traditions, and there is good reason to suspect that it was not part of the original text as written by “John”. That being said, the NIV, NASB, ESV, RSVP, NRSVC, and KJV all include it in the chapter. The REB does not. It’s a famous story, and it appears more often than not, so it’s worth a few words of summary.

It would be extremely valuable to know when, where, and how this got added into the text, but we don’t. Regardless, it’s a great example of how little we know about the actual texts as they were written, before they were copied many multiple times over. It’s a great lesson on how stuff gets added to the text; I’ve said many times that legends grow over time. The stories get longer and more complex as details an even entire people are added–not subtracted–from the legend. Always bear that in mind. A story like the Centurion’s Slave is another great example. It wasn’t in Mark, and it wasn’t in Q because there was no such thing. This leaves us to conclude that the story was added, the whole thing. It was created after–probably long after–Jesus’ death, and probably even after Mark. Then there are the stories unique to Matthew and Luke, such as the Talents, or Workers in the Vineyard and the Widow of Nain, or Zaccheus; where did those come from? In this instance we are fortunate to have competing mss traditions that tell us in no uncertain terms that at least some of the content of the texts is a bit dodgy at best. It can be argued that the story was original to John and omitted in some traditions, which makes the story…I’m not sure what. Think about it: what monk, or what believer is going to take it upon himself to cut out a story about the Lord? Seems a bit presumptuous, to put it mildly. Of course the scribe could have just lost his place in the ms, but to skip over 11 lines is really falling asleep on the job.

As for the story itself, it’s very interesting, in no small part because the message is not as obvious as we might suppose. The people in the Temple are very willing, even eager, to punish the sinner, and the Law said they had legal justification to do so. Jesus, however, intervenes with his famous axiom about sin. With that we may be forgiven to think that the message is one of mercy: She, and so we, should not be put to death for our sins; but there is an element missing, and it’s arguably the most important part of the message. Jesus does not forgive her. He tells her to sin no more, but there is no, “Daughter, your sins are forgiven”. He forgave the sins of the paralytic at the Sheep Gate/Pool. Why did he not forgive hers? That is a doctrinal question way above my pay grade. It seems inconsistent with the message we get elsewhere, when we are told that all sins can be forgiven, except for one against the spirit. Adultery is more or less the defining “sin of the flesh”, so it should be forgivable, but forgiveness is not forthcoming. So what we get is that Jesus is more than willing to intervene and to stand against the pitiless strictures of the Law, but he is not willing to forgive her sin. Was she not repentant? Was the paralytic? Not really, but it can be argued that his sin was not so overt, but how do we know that? The conclusion to be drawn seems to be that the story was added by someone who sympathized with the Prodigal Son’s older brother, or the Vineyard Workers who worked the whole day. Or something. Bottom line is that I do not have the chops to explain this.

From here we get back to the ongoing debate or argument or whatever between Jesus and “The Jews” in which Jesus seeks to explain how things have changed now that he is in their midst. As such, the Cast the First Stone story is a not unsuitable introduction. Jesus is very clearly demonstrating that the Law is not necessarily the proper standard any longer. Yes, she “should” have been stoned to comply with the Law, but such compliance is no longer the concern. Another standard has taken hold. “The Jews” do not understand, or do not realize this so they have to have it spelled out for them. Now, this is arguably the reason why they do not understand who Jesus is, or why he is, and why he says that they are not the children of Abraham, but the children of the Devil. And their lack of understanding means that they will die in their sins. That is a very harsh judgement. The last several chapters have involved Jesus in dialogue with people in the Temple, and for the most part it has not been exactly friendly. There is tension, most of which is due to Jesus chastising his audience for not understanding who Jesus is, or what Jesus’ message is. To the casual observer, to some degree, the puzzlement, or ignorance of the audience can be understood; after all, Jesus is presenting a novel message, no? Or is Jesus a bit peeved–and he sure seems to be–because “The Jews” are not understanding the full message of their own sacred writings? Or is it both of the above?

But if we step back to look at the bigger picture, this ongoing discussion between Jesus and his fictional audience began in Chapter 5 and ends here with Chapter 8. Despite some minor contextual differences, these chapters more or less form a unit, the theme of which is Jesus attempting to  explain who he is to “The Jews”. Of course, the real audience is not “the Jews”, but us. In Chapter 5 we had the healing of the paralytic at the Sheep Pool, which led to a discussion of Jesus’ right to break the Sabbath and his temerity to call God his father. Here Jesus begins to explain what the Son of Man is allowed to do, and the scope is extensive, including the ability to give life and to pass judgement. Of course, these would normally be considered the prerogatives of God alone, and so of course “The Jews” are outraged and wish to kill him for claiming equality with God. In Chapter 6 we had John’s version of the Feeding story. This led to Jesus’ declaration that he is the Bread of Life. This event took place (at least partially) in Galilee, and so Jesus’ presumption resulted in him outraging and entirely new group of Jews, especially when he claimed to have come down from heaven.

As a side note, I’m not sure I caught this at the appropriate time. In Chapter 6, after Jesus has fed the 5,000, he crosses the Sea of Galilee (V-16), departing from Tiberias to return to Caphernaum. The folks from Tiberias who had witnessed the feeding follow, and it is with this group that Jesus has his discussion, during which he made the claim about coming down from the sky in Verse 38. Without any sense that the location of the discussion, or the participants have changed, the crowd grumbles and says, do we not know that this is the son of Joseph? We know his father and mother. How can he claim to come from the sky? This takes us back to the discussion of whether Jesus was actually from Nazareth. As many of you know, I do not believe he was. Mark mentions Nazareth exactly once, in 1:9. John mentions it twice, in 1:45 & 1:46, when Philipp and Nathaniel are talking about Jesus. And here we have John very strongly implying that the crowd in Caphernaum know his family. Recall that Nazareth is some distance from Caphernaum. A quick Google puts the distance at 50 km by the modern roadway, but another entry says Jesus walked 40 miles to get from one to the other. The two don’t quite square since 49.7 km = 30 miles. Close enough. Or rather, either way the distance is much more than a casual stroll. Average walking speed is 3 mph, so that’s a ten-hour hike for 30 miles. I say this to demonstrate that the amount of back-and-forth between the two towns would not have been substantial. It takes purpose to walk for ten hours, so the chances of the people of Caphernaum knowing Joseph and Mary are not great. Some of them probably did, but not all of them. Yes, one can posit a lot of plausible ways for the crowd to come to know Jesus family, but we’re making stuff up when we do that. We don’t know if Jesus’ entire family moved to Caphernaum when he did. We don’t know if/how/why the residents of Caphernaum knew Jesus’ family if they didn’t reside there. My point is that we need to determine what the text tells us. Mark tells us once, in a passage that could easily be an interpolation added later when Nazareth became fixed on the tradition. Strictly speaking, Matthew and Luke disagree. Matthew tells us Jesus, Mary, and Joseph actually lived in Bethlehem, and only moved to Nazareth after their return from Egypt. Luke is actually the most definite on the Nazareth tradition, stating that they lived in Nazareth but the birth occurred in Bethlehem due to the cockamamie notion that Joseph had to return there to be counted in a census that likely never happened. But then he reinforces this in 4:16, in the Prophet Without Honor story which he says took place in Nazareth. The point is that John places this story in Caphernaum. Whether Jesus was from Nazareth is, frankly, at best peripheral to the message of the gospels, so we are best off taking the weight of the textual evidence which puts him in Caphernaum.

In Chapter 7 we get a discussion of Jesus vis à vis Moses. In Chapter 8 we tuned to Abraham and slavery and other assorted issues. There are threats, or the desire to kill Jesus, but mostly he’s still trying to explain himself. Chapter 8 is a crescendo of sorts because Jesus tells the Jews that they are going to die in their sin. Having now finished Ehrman’s Jesus Before The Gospels, I can pass along some of his insights. This is cheating to a degree, because my purpose was to do the translation and commentary more or less cold without secondary sources or interpretation. That way I see what I see, not what someone else tells me is there. This may seem like a very noble goal, and it is, more or less. In some ways. Yes, we get my opinion, . My opinion is just that, my opinion often unsupported by any outside evidence. This is perhaps as much a bug as a feature. Be that as it may, having Prof Ehrman’s insight is useful for Chapter 8.

I am pleased to inform you that my instincts for historical and/or textual analysis seem to be pretty good. He agrees with me (ahem) that the overall theme of John is very different from that of the Synoptics, whether singly or as a group. As I said above, John is interested in telling us, definitively and in no uncertain terms, who and what Jesus was: A divine entity that was somehow the same as, yet different from God the Father. We have spent the last four chapters reading about how Jesus went about explaining himself. Ehrman says that this attempt to summarize and/or explain is due in some part to the timing of when the gospel was written. At the time of writing Christians and Jews had become two separate and distinct groups. And of course, in John’s opinion, the Jews were completely wrong. Hence we get the condemnation that they will die in their sins. By this time “The Jews” had rejected Jesus which meant the path to salvation was closed to them, so there would be no eternal life for them. So here in Chapter 8 we got the pronouncement of the verdict, or perhaps the sentence: They would die in their sins.

While John contrasts with the Synoptics, there are parallels, just as I have drawn parallels to the birth stories of Matthew and Luke. They are different, but they share an underlying organization; that is, the logos of the two gospels is very similar, or perhaps even identical in the essential* qualities. Just as the Sermon on the Mount gave us many of the foundational principles of Christian ethics and practice, so John gives us many of the statements that tell us who Jesus is. He is The Word who was there In the Beginning. He is the Light of the World. He is the Bread of Life. He is the Resurrection and the Life. As Dr Ehrman says, Jesus “proclaims his divine identity publicly and repeatedly” throughout the gospel. So I stick by my earlier assessment that John’s gospel is, in effect, a summary of Jesus’ career, with the purpose to let us all know that Jesus is, in some very real and essential* way.

*Essence in the technical, philosophical, Aristotelean definition, essence being the nature of an entity’s being at the most fundamental and inalterable level.

Update Notice

I have never done this before, but I wanted to send out a separate notice that I have updated a previous post. It concerns my commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:9-16 that was originally published in November 2013. So yes, it’s very old, but I have come into some new knowledge about Paul that substantially changes the implications of my original commentary. The details are in the update section, which is at the top of the post.

This is the link to the post, which can be found in the archives under November 2013. Which I just realized is pretty much exactly ten years ago.

1 Corinthians Chapter 2:9-16 Updated 12/12/23