Luke Chapter 20: 1-8

Verse 9 takes us into a long story, so we’ll start with a short piece. Recall that Chapter 19 left us with a very brief version of the Cleansing of the Temple. We are still in the Temple, or perhaps in the Temple again. To me, this is the biggest problem I have with the story of the Cleansing. Why in the world would the Temple authorities not have arrested Jesus when it happened in the first place? And second, does it make any sense to believe that they would allow Jesus to return, whether the next day, as Mark says, or especially to remain after the ruckus, as Matthew says? It simply doesn’t. The excuse is that they were afraid of the crowd. Well, in two days’ time, they will arrest Jesus and have him executed, and the crowd is all in favor. So that doesn’t fly, either. Yes, the arrest was at night, but the crowd filling Pilate’s courtyard was pretty rabid about demanding crucifixion. This just doesn’t add up. And recall, Herod was supposedly afraid to arrest John because of the crowd, but that did not prevent Herod from having John beheaded. Mind that thought; it will appear below.

Text

1 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν μιᾷ τῶν ἡμερῶν διδάσκοντος αὐτοῦ τὸν λαὸν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ εὐαγγελιζομένου ἐπέστησαν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς σὺν τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις,

And it happened one of those days he was teaching the people in the Temple, and good-newsing (them), the high priests and the scribes together with the elders stood against him.

A couple of things, quickly; I dislike interrupting in the middle of a sentence. Note, Luke says “one of those days”; this refers, I believe, to the interlude between the Cleansing and the Arrest. The novelist is setting the stage. Note that Jesus is teaching in the Temple; the “good-newsing” is an obnoxiously over-literal translation of ‘evangelizing’. But, I do feel it’s important to remember the Greek roots of what is being said. To us, ‘evangelize’ means to preach a religious message, whereas the Greek is “spreading the good news”. One can debate the overlap in terms, but there is a difference in tone and implication. The Greek is much more neutral, having no real religious connotations as it does for us. It certainly does not imply to “preach the gospel”, which is how the ESV and the NASB and the KJV render this. The NIV translates more literally as “proclaiming the good news”. That’s really the best of the four translations of this phrase. For Greek geeks, the bulk of the sentence, starting after << ἡμερῶν >> and ending with << οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς >> is a genitive absolute. This is sort of a prepositional phrase, or probably more generally just a subordinate clause that has no real grammatical connexion to the main clause. We could remove the whole clause and just say “one of those days the high priests stood against Jesus” without damaging the grammar of the whole sentence. So when you’re reading along and you come to a string of words in the genitive case, chances are this is what you’re dealing with. Latin does the same thing, but uses the ablative. Finally, “stood against”. The NT Greek lexicon says the base meaning is “to come”, as in “came to him”, or “came up to him”. This blunts the implication of the original too much, IMO. The root word is “to stand”, here with the prefix “epi”/<<ἐπἱ >>, the iota changing to an epsilon << ἐπέ >> because of the way the aorist is formed. Really, in Greek, the base is “to set/place upon”. One stands the statue on the mantle, as it were. But there is also the meaning of “to stand against”, as in “to challenge”, or, as the NASB says, “to confront” him. That gives us the best sense of the Greek, bringing across the sense of hostility implied in the original.

1 Et factum est in una dierum, docente illo populum in tem plo et evangelizante, supervenerunt principes sacerdotum et scribae cum senioribus 

1 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν μιᾷ τῶν ἡμερῶν διδάσκοντος αὐτοῦ τὸν λαὸν ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ καὶ εὐαγγελιζομένου ἐπέστησαν οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς καὶ οἱ γραμματεῖς σὺν τοῖς πρεσβυτέροις,

2 καὶ εἶπαν λέγοντες πρὸς αὐτόν, Εἰπὸν ἡμῖν ἐν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ ταῦτα ποιεῖς, ἢ τίς ἐστιν ὁ δούς σοι τὴν ἐξουσίαν ταύτην.

3 ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτούς, Ἐρωτήσω ὑμᾶς κἀγὼ λόγον, καὶ εἴπατέ μοι:

4 Τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου ἐξ οὐρανοῦ ἦν ἢ ἐξ ἀνθρώπων;

5 οἱ δὲ συνελογίσαντο πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς λέγοντες ὅτι Ἐὰν εἴπωμεν, Ἐξ οὐρανοῦ, ἐρεῖ, Διὰ τί οὐκ ἐπιστεύσατε αὐτῷ;

6 ἐὰν δὲ εἴπωμεν, Ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, ὁ λαὸς ἅπας καταλιθάσει ἡμᾶς, πεπεισμένος γάρ ἐστιν Ἰωάννην προφήτην εἶναι.

7 καὶ ἀπεκρίθησαν μὴ εἰδέναι πόθεν.

8 καὶ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Οὐδὲ ἐγὼ λέγω ὑμῖν ἐν ποίᾳ ἐξουσίᾳ ταῦτα ποιῶ. 

(Repeating Verse 1 for continuity) And it happened one of those days he was teaching the people in the Temple, and good-newsing (them), the high priests and the scribes together with the elders stood against him. (2) And speaking, they said to him, “Tell us in which authority you do these things, or who is it giving you this power.” (3) Answering, he said to them, “And I will ask you for an explanation, and tell me. (4) Was the dunking of John (the Baptist), was he from heaven or from men?” (5) They consulted together amongst themselves, saying that, “if we say ‘from heaven’, he will say, ‘On what account did you not believe him?’ (6) If we say, ‘From men’, the whole people will stone us, for they have been persuaded that John was a prophet”. (7) And they answered him, “We do not know from whence”. (8) And Jesus said to them, “Nor will I say to you in what sort of power I do these things.”

I have to admit being a bit confused by this. Of course Jesus has succeeded in hooking them on the horns of a dilemma; they’re damned if they say ‘heaven’ and damned if they say ‘of men’. But why are they damned for the latter? They say that the latter response will get them stoned because the people believe he was a prophet. By way of transitive* property, the conclusion is that prophets come from men. This strikes me as a bit odd. My understanding is that the force of a prophet derives from the fact that he was sent by God, and did not arise from men. Isaiah is very clear about this, that he was called directly by God. As was the case with Samuel, too.

Regardless, the most interesting point is not the origin of prophets, but the sleight of hand being pulled here. What the evangelists have done with this passage is use it to link Jesus with John the Baptist. As I have stated repeatedly, far from playing the connexion of Jesus to John, due to the implicit implication that John had the superior position which allowed him to ‘delegate’ Jesus, the early followers of Jesus went to lengths to emphasize that connexion. Why? Because it tied Jesus to the ancient and respected tradition of Judaism. Remember: in antiquity, novelty was a bad thing. The old stuff was the good stuff. Eusebios spends the first twenty or thirty pages of his long book “proving” that the Christ was an ancient concept, and that even the name Jesus was anticipated when Moses delegated Jesus as his successor. Jesus then fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down. In short Jesus is the Graeco-Latin form of the name that got anglicized as Joshua. We call him Jesus to separate him from all others with this name, and English-speakers don’t bestow the name Jesus qua Jesus. Joshua is certainly common, but I’ve never encountered a Jesus who was not Hispanic. And one of the criticisms that Hippolytus Romanus throws at the Gnostics is that they are “novel”. The term is used as an insult. It belittles the Gnostics. So here we have Jesus showing himself as part of the tradition that produced John, who was firmly Jewish.

I just had a bit of an epiphany (a showing upon). By constructing the logical chain about prophets being from men, and then stating that John was a prophet, the evangelists have very cleverly set up a distinction between John and Jesus. John was from men. He was a prophet. Jesus, OTOH, we are to conclude, was from God. It’s one of those little advertising tricks where fresher breath and a bigger car are the equivalent of being happier. And it’s no less powerful, IMO, for being stated so subtly. In fact, it may be more powerful because it is so subtle. It does not stand up against us and so confront us directly, so that we can assess the value or merit of the claim. Rather, it slips in from the side, unseen and so unchallenged. It’s like two knights in mail fighting with broadswords, which are big and heavy and obvious. But then one of them uses a slender stiletto to slip inside one of the rings of the chain mail. (This was what a stiletto, a slender, round blade, was designed to do.) Because we do not see the stiletto coming, we don’t defend against us, and before we realize it’s lodged in our heart, or some vital organ, and we’re done in by the puncture. When you read enough philosophy, or any sort of argument constructed by words, rhetorical tricks like this become a bit more noticeable. Which, in turn, is the point of a liberal arts education: to recognize when someone is trying to pull the wool over our collective eyes.

Clever, no?

1 Et factum est in una dierum, docente illo populum in templo et evangelizante, supervenerunt principes sacerdotum et scribae cum senioribus 

2 et aiunt dicentes ad illum: “Dic nobis: In qua potestate haec facis, aut quis est qui dedit tibi hanc potestatem? ”. 

3 Respondens autem dixit ad illos: “Interrogabo vos et ego verbum; et dicite mihi: 

4 Baptismum Ioannis de caelo erat an ex hominibus?”. 

5 At illi cogitabant inter se dicentes: “Si dixerimus: “De caelo”, dicet: “Quare non credidistis illi?; 

6 si autem dixerimus: “Ex hominibus”, plebs universa lapidabit nos; certi sunt enim Ioannem prophetam esse”. 

7 Et responderunt se nescire unde esset. 

8 Et Iesus ait illis: “Neque ego dico vobis in qua potestate haec facio”.

*Transitive property: if a=b, and b=c, then a=c. If we say ‘of men’ we will be stoned because people believe John was a prophet. People believe John was a prophet. Therefore, prophets are ‘of men’. There are a couple of other ways this could be diagrammed logically, but I think this one holds well enough.