John Chapter 1:19-28

Now we get to the actual story of the John the Baptist as told by John the Evangelist.

Text

19 Καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ μαρτυρί​​α τοῦ Ἰωάννου, ὅτε ἀπέστειλαν [πρὸς αὐτὸν] οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι ἐξ Ἱεροσολύμων ἱερεῖς καὶ Λευίτας ἵνα ἐρωτήσωσιν αὐτόν, Σὺ τίς εἶ;

20 καὶ ὡμολόγησεν καὶ οὐκ ἠρνήσατο, καὶ ὡμολόγησεν ὅτι Ἐγὼ οὐκ εἰμὶ ὁ Χριστός. 

And this is the evidence of John, that the Jews sent [to him] priests and Levites from Jerusalem in order that they might ask him, “who are you?” (20) And he agreed with them and did not deny, that “I am not the anointed one.”

The Greek word I translated as “evidence” is maturia. Realizing that Greek upsilon-u-in transliterated as a ‘y’ in English, the word looks like matyria, which should recognizable as “martyr”. This is another of those common, ordinary, quotidian words in Greek that have come to be a special religious word in English. Like “baptize”. Five of my six crib translations render it as “testimony”; and “witness” is another common translation. Interestingly, it’s the KJV that goes a different path entirely, choosing “record”. Well, it works. I chose the word I did just to give a sense of the breadth of the word. This is one one gave when called to the law court. In Greek, it has noun and verb forms, both “testimony” and “to testify” as it were. But doubtless this is not unfamiliar to many of you. 

Bringing in the Levites is interesting. The term is used only three times in the NT. Once here, once in the parable of the Good Samaritan, once of Barnabas, who was a Levite from Cyprus. Barnabas was apparently a surname attached by the apostles, his actual name being Joses ; this was the name of one of Jesus’ brothers in Mark 6:3. Were they the same person? Hmm…No reason they couldn’t be, but no reason to suppose they were, either. Barnabas only appears in Acts, which is a late account, by which time the identity could have been forgotten. However, IMO, a later source like Acts is more apt to invent the relationship rather than forget it. Food for thought.

But that is a tangent. Per a quick Google into the Levites, it seems they were from the Tribe of Levi, who was one of the 12 sons of Jacob. They had a special role in the Temple services, albeit one subordinate to the priest. They were musicians and gatekeepers and such. So they had an elevated role, but not a critical one as far as services were concerned. So why does John bring them in at this point, only to drop them again directly after? The commentaries that I (quickly) reviewed don’t seem to address this. My initial thought is that he has noticed their absence in the other gospels–the brief mentions by Luke excepted–and has sought to rectify this in order to let us know that it was all the Jews who were rejecting Jesus. (The unfortunate presence of anti-Semitism in John does not require much comment, I think. While I do recognize that the degree and the intent are highly controversial, I am acquiescing to the general consensus that it exists.) After all, the Pharisees are taken to task often enough in the other gospels, as are the priests, chief priests, and scribes. So the Levites are mentioned here to make sure they come in for harsh judgement, but dropped because their role in the affair was peripheral at best.

OTOH, the next part gets a lot of attention in the commentaries. The Baptist explicitly denies that he is the anointed one. Of course, this surprises no one raised in the Christian tradition. We all know that. But this is the first gospel in which the Baptist is made to say this so explicitly. Aside from Mark 1:1 (which I suspect is an interpolation, in some way, shape, or form), the term Christ does not appear again until Chapter 8 in Mark’s Gospel. Recall my thesis about the two gospels of Mark: the first half as the story of the wonder-worker, the second as the story of the Christ. Matthew is similar. The term Christ appears five times in the first two chapters, most of them in Chapter 1, the genealogy and then not again until Chapter 11. That is interesting in and of itself; sort of parallels Mark, does it not? In Luke we get a stream of appearances in Chapters 1-4, but a hiatus until Chapter 9. Again, interesting, and not something I had noted until just now. That two-gospel theory may not seem quite so preposterous now, does it? Regardless, in Luke’s account of the Baptist we are told that many people wondered in their hearts if John might be the anointed; he denies it, but only in a roundabout way, and without categorically stating he was not as he does here in the fourth gospel. Here in Verse 20, John the Evangelist takes Luke’s denial to another level. This, I think, implies that John was indeed well aware of Luke’s gospel. These are the sorts of little things that are never brought up in discussions of whether the subsequent evangelists had read, or were whether they were even aware of their predecessors. We’re too busy counting instances of kai and de to pay attention to minor circumstances like mentions of the Christ in the story of John, or in the gospels as a whole. We are too busy looking at the big pieces to pay attention to the joins, or the mortar, where the big pieces are put together. Luke raised the question of whether the Baptist might be the Christ, and John slams the door shut on the idea. Emphatically. This is a case of development of the story. Just as John took Matthew and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ divinity from birth and carried this divinity all the way back to “the beginning”, so too John carries the denunciation of the Baptist to a  greater degree of certainty. There can be no doubt.

Here might be a good time to consider context. Between the time of Luke and John, The Antiquities of Josephus would have become rather widely known in certain circles. Educated Jews, for example, would likely have become well aware of the work since it dealt with them explicitly. Leaving aside the extremely thorny question of whether his mention of Jesus is authentic, or how much of it, is really from Josephus, the fact remains that John the Dunker gets a much longer, more detailed description than Jesus, who is basically mentioned in passing*. Why is that? Well, the obvious answer is that Josephus thought John was more important–at least to the story Josephus was telling–than Jesus was. So, perhaps the Evangelist went a bit out of his way to let his audience understand which of the two really mattered. 

Again, this is not the sort of consideration that one often–if ever–finds in biblical scholarship. Josephus is triumphantly adduced and promoted as Proof!, but he and his testimony are rarely–if ever–put into context, or examined for historical merit. One aspect of Josephus that is often overlooked is, who were his sources for Jesus and the Christians? Chances are he got his information, ultimately, from Christians. Perhaps there was a remove or two–friend of a friend sort of thing–but Christians were the only ones who were the least bit concerned with the life and times of their founder, and even some of them–Paul, for example–really weren’t that interested. So again, we have to realize, understand, and most of all acknowledge that there is essentially one tradition of the historical Jesus, the one started by Mark. Yes, Matthew, Luke, and John had sources available to them that were not available to Mark, but there is no reason to believe that any of these sources predate Mark. As always, let me add my standard disclaimer: whatever answers I posit to the questions I raise are very contingent. The answers I provide are not the point here; the point is to raise the questions. If we truly want to get to the historical Jesus, and to understand the development of Christianity in history, we have to think like historians. 

*I could accept something like (leaving out the ghosted, italicized text)

 Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

The bottom line is that there were Christians in Josephus’ time, and they had become numerous. So it would make sense that Josephus would mention him while discussing Pilate. Also, if this were entirely a Christian interpolation, I suspect the monks would have come up with something stronger. This is known as the Testimonium Flavianum; this, along with Tacitus, Suetonius, and Pliny are always trotted out to prove that there are non-canonical references to Jesus, thereby proving that he did indeed exist. This “proof” does no such thing. All the references are to Christians, and there is no doubt that they existed. Aside from Josephus, none of them mention Jesus; they only mention the followers he left behind. 

19 Et hoc est testimonium Ioannis, quando miserunt ad eum Iudaei ab Hierosolymis sacerdotes et Levitas, ut interrogarent eum: “Tu quis es?”.

20 Et confessus est et non negavit; et confessus est: “Non sum ego Christus”.

21 καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτόν, Τί οὖν; Σύ Ἠλίας εἶ; καὶ λέγει, Οὐκ εἰμί. Ὁ προφήτης εἶ σύ; καὶ ἀπεκρίθη, Οὔ.

22 εἶπαν οὖν αὐτῷ, Τίς εἶ; ἵνα ἀπόκρισιν δῶμεν τοῖς πέμψασιν ἡμᾶς: τί λέγεις περὶ σεαυτοῦ;

23 ἔφη, Ἐγὼ φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, Εὐθύνατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, καθὼς εἶπεν Ἠσαΐας ὁ προφήτης.

24 Καὶ ἀπεσταλμένοι ἦσαν ἐκ τῶν Φαρισαίων.

And they asked him, “Who, then? Are you Elias?” And he said, “I am not he.” “Are you a prophet?” And he answered, “No.” (22) So they said to him, “Who are you?” In order that I might have given them an answer to them sending us, what do you say about yourself?” (23) He said, “I am the voice shouting in the desert, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord,’ according as Isaiah the prophet said.” (25) And the ones sending were from the Pharisees.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the allusion to Godspell there. That was a great opening for the play/opera. A very powerful song.

The very first thing that catches me about this passage is how it hearkens back to the accounts of the Transfiguration, or the points in the other gospels where Jesus asks his group who people say he is. Elijah is one of the responses. So here they are asking John. Why? I suspect it is of a piece with John explicitly denying that he is the Christ. In a sense, denying he is Elijah is much the same s denying that he is the anointed, since this was what people thought of Jesus in the other gospels. What the Evangelist has done here is he has rather stolen a page from Luke without actually stealing the page. Luke, of course, told us that Jesus and John were related, which creates a very special relationship between the two. This Evangelist doesn’t follow Luke’s lead by stating that they are related, by blood, at least. Rather, John the Evangelist creates the very special bond, the close relationship between the Baptist and Jesus by describing that people felt about the former the same way that people thought about the latter in the other gospels. Luke: close by blood. John: close by the way both were perceived by the population at large.

Here again, IMO, is yet additional evidence that John was very much–intimately–aware of the other three gospels and perhaps Paul. In the literature we get all sorts of debate and discussion about whether John is independent of the other gospels. The answer sometimes comes back as “yes” because of the very, very different form of the fourth gospel. Yes, it’s different. But that is not all the same thing as saying he was independent of them. John did not follow their format, or arrange things as the earlier evangelists, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t aware of them. Why didn’t he follow them? Why did Luke diverge from Matthew, or why did Matthew diverge from Mark? Because why would Matthew simply want to recreate Mark, or why would Luke merely re-copy Matthew? Those gospels had been written. Why reinvent the wheel? And so with John: the Synoptics had done a bang-up job with their versions, so why bother writing a fourth if only to tell the same stories in the same way? That really doesn’t make sense. An author wants to make their own statement, to tell the story in their own way, else why bother? West Side Story retells Romeo and Juliet, but why bother to write WSS if only to come up with R&J once again? You write a new play, or a new gospel, because you have something new to say, or at least a new way to say it. Again, this is what happens when everyone discussing the NT comes from a Scriptural background: they all start from much the same perspective, so they all follow the well-worn tracks. 

Verse 25 strikes me as a bit odd. Back up in Verse 19, we are told these emissaries were sent by “the Jews”. Now we are told they were sent by the Pharisees. Of course, there is no inherent contradiction; Pharisees were Jewish, after all. However, while all Pharisees are Jews, not all Jews are Pharisees, so Verse 25 restricts the meaning, it narrows the field from potentially (all) the Jews to just those Jews who are Pharisees. Was John not ready to level a blanket condemnation at this point in the narrative? It’s difficult for me to say since I am largely ignorant of what comes next. My knowledge of John’s anti-Semitism is based on hearsay and precious little actual evidence. But, keep the question in mind. Does John broaden the target of his accusation? Or does he narrow it?

21 Et interrogaverunt eum: “ Quid ergo? Elias es tu?”. Et dicit: “Non sum”. “ Propheta es tu?”. Et respondit: “Non”.

22 Dixerunt ergo ei: “Quis es? Ut responsum demus his, qui miserunt nos. Quid dicis de teipso?”.

23 Ait: “Ego vox clamantis in deserto: “Dirigite viam Domini”, sicut dixit Isaias propheta”.

24 Et qui missi fuerant, erant ex pharisaeis;

25 καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ, Τί οὖν βαπτίζεις εἰ σὺ οὐκ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς οὐδὲ Ἠλίας οὐδὲ ὁ προφήτης;

26 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰωάννης λέγων, Ἐγὼ βαπτίζω ἐν ὕδατι: μέσος ὑμῶν ἕστηκεν ὃν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε,

27 ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος, οὗ οὐκ εἰμὶ [ἐγὼ] ἄξιος ἵνα λύσω αὐτοῦ τὸν ἱμάντα τοῦ ὑποδήματος.

28 Ταῦτα ἐν Βηθανίᾳ ἐγένετο πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, ὅπου ἦν ὁ Ἰωάννης βαπτίζων.

And they asked him and said to him, “So why do you dunk if you are not the anointed one, nor Elias, nor a prophet?” (26) John answered to them, saying “I dunk (people) in water; amongst you stands one whom you do not know, (27) he who comes after me, of whom I am not worthy in order to loosen the strap of his sandal.” This (event) was Bethany across the Jordan, whence they called him Dunking John.

For the record, I am not being ridiculous. These people did not call him John the Baptist. Actually, here the “baptizing” part is a present participle, a verb, rather than a predicate noun as in “the Baptist”, so he was “Baptizing John”. Except John was not baptizing people. He was dipping, or plunging, or dunking them, presumably in water. The verb in Greek can also mean “to sink a ship”, or to “dip a cup in wine” to fill the cup. We have transformed this common Greek word into a word that describe a single action, that which we call “baptism”. This word refers only to a religious ritual, usually Christian, that is the initiation of a person into the religion. It can be used metaphorically, as in “baptism by fire”, but the sense is the same. Ergo, every once in a while, it is absolutely necessary to give you all a little jolt of reality. Reading this, translating this, understanding this as he “baptized” is to misunderstand what the text is saying at a fairly fundamental level. It is flat-out anachronistic, giving the word an implication it would not adopt for several centuries. It is always important to remember that we are reading another language, and that the translations that we are all so comfortable with influence the way we think in subtle, but very powerful, ways. So, Dunking John, offered without apologies–albeit with explanation.

We discussed John’s disclaimer about not being the anointed one, or Elijah in the Verses 21-24, so no need to go over that. However, here is where I wish I knew more about Jewish ritual practices. I know that ritual ablutions were very important in Jewish practice; just read about the baths that were found at Masada. I have read that baptism was not to cleanse sin as the Christian tradition believes; rather, it was a ritual purification of the body to match the internal purification that had been attained by strictly adhering to Jewish practices. In particular I believe I read this specifically about John. However and unfortunately, my system of taking notes lacks all system, so it’s often very difficult for me to track something down when I’ve taken the note. I will have to see what I can dig up on this topic. This is relevant in light of the implications of the question “why do you dunk people if you are not the anointed or a prophet? Why do they have a monopoly on baptism? Apparently it has something to do with the ritual cleansing of proselytes, which required a standing of authority; since John is dunking full-fledged Pharisees, he would require some sort of extraordinary authority to do this. The anointed one, or Elijah, or another prophet would, in their eyes, have this level of authority, so these people–sent by the Pharisees–felt entitled to an explanation. And there perhaps is the reason for specifying that these interlocutors were sent by the Pharisees. Now, it’s odd, because a Pharisee per se had no special authority; it was a division of sect (or something similar) rather than a division by rank. And yet, all through the gospels the Pharisees are spoken of as if they did have authority of some sort. And so it is here. Specifying that these men were sent by Pharisees carries the implication that the group had the right to do this.

The length of the quote from Isaiah is very brief. Why? Do we have another situation where, like Luke, John decided that the longer quotes reported in the other gospels would suffice, that there was no need to retread old ground? That seems reasonable. Again, being aware of his predecessors, John could leave things out and then replace these items with new stories of his own invention, or that had developed over time. Again, it is just highly improbable that the accounts of these new events managed to escape the notice of Mark, Matthew, and Luke only to surface for John. But the point is that John felt justified in cutting this part short. Notice the lack of “brood of vipers”, but the retention of I am not fit to loosen the strap of his sandal. The latter, of course, reinforces the superiority of Jesus over John, so that is kept, while a fourth repetition of brood of vipers is deemed superfluous. 

The last point of this segment is the placing of these events in Bethany. I’m not sure how much this matters, but I do recall that the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus is said to be in Bethany.

25 et interrogaverunt eum et dixerunt ei: “Quid ergo baptizas, si tu non es Christus neque Elias neque propheta?”.

26 Respondit eis Ioannes dicens: “ Ego baptizo in aqua; medius vestrum stat, quem vos non scitis,

27 qui post me venturus est, cuius ego non sum dignus, ut solvam eius corrigiam calceamenti ”.

28 Haec in Bethania facta sunt trans Iordanem, ubi erat Ioannes baptizans.

John Chapter 1:12-18

Since the end to the last segment was a bit ragged, I’ve included Verses 12 & 13 again in this section. The problem is splitting the two verses means breaking in the middle of a sentence, which does not exactly lend itself to a smooth commentary. 

Text

12 ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, 

13 οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ’ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν. 

However so many (= all who) accepted him, he gave to them power to become the children (lit = sons) of God, to the those believing in (lit=to) his name, (13) they did not from blood nor from will the flesh, nor the will of men, but (from the blood and will) of God they were born.

12 Quotquot autem acceperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his, qui credunt in nomine eius,

13 qui non ex sanguinibus neque ex voluntate carnis neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt.

We had spent way too much time on dissecting the words for received used in Verses 11 & 12, and touched on the idea power to become/be made Gods children vs Jesus giving those who received him the right to become/be made God’s children. This latter is very different from the former, having no basis in either the Greek or the Latin. However, this latter is how the NIV, NASB, and the ESV choose to render the verse. I have no idea whence that understanding originated, so here’s a situation where reading the original is a big improvement over at least some translations. PS: one of the commentators sees the Greek exousia as meaning “privilege”, from whence “the right” is not all that much of a stretch. Apparently this idea of “right to” is a usage of NT provenance, and not all NT lexica render it in this manner.

I’m trying to decide what to make of “who believe in his name”. Why is it “in his name” and not simply “in him”? Here the commentators I read (well, skimmed) don’t seem to bother with this very much, so we’ll take it as a rhetorical flourish and move on.

We did not discuss Verse 13 at all in the previous section. The sentiment, the blood and will of God and not of humans to my ear hearkens back to the beginning of Galatians. There Paul emphatically tells us that he was instructed and made apostle not by humans, but by God. Hmmm…I have a feeling we did not quite do that justice in either of our commentaries on Galatians. There is something of a slap there, a denigration at least some of the other apostles who were, indeed, instructed by humans. In particular, I suspect it may have been directed towards those who were made apostles by James, thus becoming followers of the Jewish path towards Jesus. But that’s now water under the bridge. But still, after the first five verses of this chapter, one is loathe to dismiss the care and consideration John took with his words.

At least, that is the way I’m approaching him, as perhaps the most considered of the four. I tend to think of Mark as a journalist, Matthew as a rabbi (a term that is actually anachronistic), Luke as a novelist, and John as a theologian. Of these, the last usually would require the most contemplation and flat-out thinking. So when he says by the blood and will of God and not humans, we should consider that as having a particular intent, as being a point of some intended precision. Is he making this deliberate contrast to distinguish…what from whom? It is a deliberate contrast. But giving it some thought, it’s probably no mystery. John is still fighting the battle that Jesus was not adopted at the time of his baptism, but that he was the Christ from all eternity. From the beginning. As such, this statement feels a bit like the period at the end of the sentence. Jesus was of the blood and will of God; he was not a wonder-worker, nor a magos, nor a prophet. He was the Christ, of divine origin and of divine will. 

14 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.

And the Rational Principle became flesh and pitched his tent and camped amongst us, and we beheld his glory, glory as the first-born of from the father, full of grace and truth.

OK, once again I’m being difficult, but “rational principle” is just as accurate a translation for logos as “word”; indeed, as you have been told countless times by now, it is more accurate. So that one is not particularly startling. I have made a point to provide alternative translations of a lot of words–angel and baptise, to name but two, but also kosmos and others–so here I persist with Rational Principle. Get used to it, and if it bumps you from a rut, so much the better. OTOH, “pitching his tent and camping among us” may seem a bit over the top, even for me. However, in this case, we hearken back to the Transfiguration when Peter proposed that three dwellings/tents/tabernacles should be set up for the three divine figures. But we hearken back even further, to the Jewish festival of Sukkoth, the Festival of Tabernacles, when temporary dwellings are constructed as part of the festivities. Both tabernacle and skēnē refer to a temporary dwelling; in Greek, like the Hellenika of Xenophon, the various contingents are creating an encampment of tents–the verb form used there is basically what is used here. So that is what the word means. All of my crib translations + the Vulgate render this as “dwelling among us”. Now, that is fine, to a point, but again it, um, loses something in the translation. Yes, Jesus came to dwell among us, but it was not intended to be a permanent dwelling. Greek has a perfectly fine word for taking up permanent residence, and that Greek word is nicely rendered by habitavit as seen below in the Latin. I have no doubt that John was well aware of this other verb that connotes permanent dwelling–as the Athenians dwelling in Athens–but he chose not to use it. Why? I suspect it’s because Jesus’ sojourn on earth, in becoming flesh was a temporary condition, not meant to be permanent. He didn’t build a house; he erected a tent, or a tabernacle, because he didn’t intend to stay forever. No? And there’s a double sense of this. Not only was his dwelling among us temporary, but so was becoming flesh. That was also a temporary condition. So here I wonder why everyone chose to imply that the dwelling was meant to be permanent. Is it because we have another instance where 1000 years of reading the Latin Vulgate predisposes translators to use it when in a pinch? Just as they have done with The Word? There is no earthly reason why a translation based on the Greek text should chose to translate it as “The Word”. Rather, it’s a case of that 1000 years of using the Vulgate has embedded the idea that “In the beginning was the Word” has pounded that idea solidly into Western Christendom. (And I use the term as a Mediaevalist would…)

14 Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis; et vidimus gloriam eius, gloriam quasi Unigeniti a Patre, plenum gratiae et veritatis.

15 Ἰωάννης μαρτυρεῖ περὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ κέκραγεν λέγων, Οὗτος ἦν ὃν εἶπον, Ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμενος ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν, ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν.

John gave witness about him and cried out saying, “He is the one of whom I spoke, He is the one coming after me who became before me, that was first before me.

At first it seemed that the verb tenses are a bit funky here, but on reflection it may be a matter that the quirk may be due is the thought being expressed. Jesus is he of whom I spoke (past tense), he who is coming (present participle denoting current activity) after me who has become (past tense) before me, that was (past tense) first before me. So Jesus comes after the Baptist, but he came into being before John. When we put it like that it makes sense as it hearkens back to “In the beginning…” So we’re getting some reinforcement to the “pitching a tent” idea: Jesus physically follows John as a flesh-bearing entity, but he existed before John in the non-material sense because he is the logos, and the logos is not material. At this point I hesitate to use the word “spiritual”, because that has some very specific connotations and usages. We saw that in Galatians, where the soul (psychē) is not the same thing as the pneuma. We don’t yet know how John will divide up the kosmos, whether it will be flesh and spirit, or material, soul-like, & spirit. Regardless, in whatever form, Jesus existed before John even though his mortal coil arrived in this material world after John.

Although, upon reflection, only in Luke is it an absolute certainty that John was older as based on the facts of the story as presented. Here is an interesting example of how the gospels have been blended and homogenized. Luke has John as an older kinsman, so we more or less start to take it s given that John is older. But then again, thinking about the presentation of John in Mark, we are told, or led to infer, that John had been preaching for some time before Jesus began his ministry. Again Luke, the novelist, fills in the biographical point that Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. How old would John have been? Again, per Luke, John was less than a year older than Jesus; Luke 1:26 says that Gabriel went to make the announcement to Mary in the sixth month, presumably of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, so that would put John as six months older than Jesus. Oddly, thinking about Mark, we don’t–or at least I don’t–get the impression that John and Jesus are that close in age. While this is all rank speculation, it’s a good lesson in how to read these texts as historical texts; the things said have implications, and collecting and then sorting those implications is how we put history together. When you run into situations like this, where Mark’s narrative doesn’t entirely support what Luke says, we have to start questioning both of them. Granted, nothing in Mark’s description of Jesus and John flatly contradicts Luke, and vice-versa, but they don’t fit together all that nicely, either. The story of Mark is that Jesus took up the mantel when John was arrested, that the erstwhile follower took the lead. That sort of succession usually implies some sort of age gap. Again, this is not explicitly said; there is no reason why Jesus and John could not have been the same age; this would in no way prevent Jesus from stepping to the fore after John’s arrest. But here in Verse 15 we have additional indirect indications that John was older. The Evangelists states that the Baptist was before Jesus, but Jesus was metaphysically prior to the Baptist. Ergo, the inference is that John was older. Again, this is hardly a newsflash since no one is saying that the Baptist wasn’t older than Jesus; but the point is that the difference in age seems to be supported in all the gospels. Luke, in fact, is the outlier by placing them as exact contemporaries.  

15 Ioannes testimonium perhibet de ipso et clamat dicens: “ Hic erat, quem dixi: Qui post me venturus est, ante me factus est, quia prior me erat\”.

16 ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ πληρώματος αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἐλάβομεν, καὶ χάριν ἀντὶ χάριτος:

17 ὅτι ὁ νόμος διὰ Μωϋσέως ἐδόθη, ἡ χάρις καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐγένετο.

18 θεὸν οὐδεὶς ἑώρακεν πώποτε: μονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο. 

That from the fulness of him we all receive, and (we receive) grace against (=in exchange for) grace; (17) that the law was given by way of (thru the agency of) Moses, the grace and the truth came into being thru Jesus the anointed. (18) No one ever yet saw God: the first-born God being the one who led to the bosom/lap/arms/side of the father. 

The Greek word is kolpos; the Latin is sinus. The Greek is the root of our word “gulf”; the Latin is the root of our word “sinus”. For those of us who suffer from bad sinuses, we know that a sinus is a cavity, a hollow place in our skull. If you look at a map of the moon, you will see a Sinus Roris; this would be translated as the “Bay of Dew”. The words in both languages, at root, indicate a curve, or a hollow place, which then becomes a place of refuge, like the “Bosom of Abraham” in the famous spiritual song. The point is that Jesus, the first-born, leads us to this place of refuge.

Here we get John echoing the sentiment of Paul in Galatians. The Law, Paul said, was from Moses, but the key to the kingdom we got from Jesus; IOW, faith in Jesus supersedes the Law. Here John agrees with Paul’s sentiment. I don’t know what the consensus opinion is, whether most people believe that John the Evangelist was familiar with Paul’s writings or not. This passage, IMO, is pretty conclusive. It’s difficult–but not impossible–to believe that John came to this independently from Paul. More, John’s tone is such that he is confident that he can make this sort of allusion because he takes it as given that the concept expressed will be clear enough, thus he does not feel the need to explain the thought herein expressed any further. If perchance someone in the audience was not clear on this, John is confident that someone can easily instruct the neophyte. Jesus is here said to be completing, or fulfilling, what was begun under the Law as given by Moses. No one had seen God, but that will be possible now that the first-born will show us the way. 

The Greek word for fulness/fullness is pleroma. This is rather a scarce word in the NT; this is the only use we find in John. It appears in Matthew once and Mark thrice; it is shared by them in the parable of the new patch on an old cloth. The other uses by Mark refer to the baskets full of pieces of bread leftover from the feedings of the 5,000 and the 4,000. Paul, OTOH, uses it several times each in Romans and 1 Corinthians, and it appears a few times in Deutero-Paul. I bring this up because the concept of the Pleroma becomes a big thing in Gnostic thought. It refers to “the totality of divine powers” according to Wikipedia. It’s sort of the primordial whatever whence came the emanations and the Demiurge and the other manifold divine entities found in Gnosticism; Sophia, Wisdom, is another. I want to point this out because Gnosticism is ostensibly a Christian heresy, but the idea of the Pleroma is something that is not really prevalent in the NT. It was developed independently by the Gnostics. Such developments take time, and this is an argument against Gnosticism per se predating Christianity, let alone Judaism. There are elements that Judaism, Christianity, and Gnosticism share, but the wholly different path that Gnosticism took makes it hard, IMO, to credit the idea that the Gospel of Thomas was written in the 50s. This, in turn, knocks out one of the props for the existence of–wait for it–Q. The existence of a sayings gospel like Thomas in the 50s supposedly somehow supports the existence of the sayings gospel Q. Apparently, sayings gospels were all the rage in the 50s. However, if Gnostic thinking had not developed to the point of some of the passages of Thomas until later, then Thomas is not as old as everyone wants to believe. Yes, this is cursory, but this doesn’t feel like the time to go around that cobbler’s bench yet again. Just note that pleroma is a rare word in the NT.

16 Et de plenitudine eius nos omnes accepimus, et gratiam pro gratia;

17 quia lex per Moysen data est, gratia et veritas per Iesum Christum facta est.

18 Deum nemo vidit umquam; unigenitus Deus, qui est in sinum Patris, ipse enarravit.

John Chapter 1:9-13

We were talking about the Baptist, and his relationship to the Light. John the Evangelist made sure that we understand that John the Baptist was decidedly a notch or two below the status of Jesus. Interesting that the Evangelist completely jettisoned Luke’s story about the Baptist being kin to Jesus. In fact, the Evangelist makes nary a veiled allusion to Luke’s story.

9)ην τὸ φῶς τὸ ἀληθινόν, ὃ φωτίζει πάντα ἄνθρωπον, ἐρχόμενον εἰς τὸν κόσμον.

That was the true light, which illuminates all humankind, coming into the kosmos. [Note: in this case the best translation of kosmos may be “world”. See discussion below.* ]

Sorry, want to stop here for a moment. As a point of reference, I am no longer going to translate kosmos or logos, unless the meanings in each case is very obviously reference to something mundane. There will be a lot of instances when logos very obviously refers to an account of something, or a reason, or even a word. Kosmos, however, will remain mostly untranslated because it has a more specific meaning. Again, sneaking a peek at the Vulgate, the word used is mundus, which is normally rendered as “the world”. The problem, of course, is that this very much narrows the lexical field of kosmos. However, surprise surprise, the root meaning of mundus is not “the world”. That, per Lewis & Short, a mundus is in its first meaning some sort of implement, something used for harvesting, or a casket sacred to Ceres, the Goddess of Grain and the Harvest, the Roman version of Demeter. Only in definition B does it become “the universe” in Latin philosophy, whereas in more common usages, such as Pliny’s Natural History, or even in poets such as Horace it means “the world”. And this is how it is translated in four of my five crib texts. (The four: NIV, KJV, NABRE, ESV. The fifth: NASB.) The point being is that “world” has a very different lexical field than kosmos.

FYI.

Now let’s consider the meaning here. There is a bit of logical slippage here; if The Logos was there at the beginning, then the totality was kosmos from that beginning; that is, the totality of existence was organized from inception, or from eternity, because the Logos existed and caused the Totality* to be organised and rational. Now, Genesis 1:1 does at least imply that the Lords (Elohim is plural) existed before they created the heavens and earth. As such, it’s not a stretch that the Logos could come to the Totality. But now we are getting into the sort of logic-chopping that gave the so-called Scholastics of the late Middle Ages their bad reputation, leading Erasmus and others to shove several centuries of Aristotle aside and simply believe without asking too many questions that were, after all, unanswerable. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, but useful nonetheless. After my discussion in the previous paragraph about the difference between kosmos and mundus, it’s interesting to note that this would be a place where the logical slippage could be avoided if we do translate the kosmos used here as “the world”. I thought about editing that paragraph but decided to leave it to provide the sense of how one should go about translation. It’s deductive. Start with the universal, then deduce downward to the specific instance of the word*. This is a case where my understanding of the text increased as I wrote more. My initial impulse was to choose “totality”, but further reflection brought me to “world”. I overthought the situation. Oh well. There are (many) times when wanting to be a pompous ass sneaks up a bites you on your pompous…

*Which may be my translation of kosmos hereafter, assuming that indeed I translate the word.

9 Erat lux vera, quae illuminat omnem hominem, veniens in mundum.

10 ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἦν, καὶ ὁ κόσμος δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸν οὐκ ἔγνω.

11 εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν, καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον.

He (the Light) was in the kosmos, and the kosmos came into being (lit = became) through him, but the kosmos did not know him. (11) He came on his own behalf, and those of his own did not receive him. 

Here we get to some interesting problems in translation. First, do we translate all three of the iterations of kosmos using the same word? The Vulgate does, using mundus. All five of my crib translations follow suit and use “the world”. Is that the best we can do in this instance? I’m not so sure. If the word is to be translated, I would suggest: 

He (the Light) was in the Totality, and the Totality came into being (lit = became) through him, but the world did not accept him. (i.e., did not accept him for who he was.)

The problem lies in the English word. Using it in all three instances sort of distorts the scale of what is being discussed. Remember, the Lords created the heavens as well as the earth. The latter can be captured through “the world”, but “the world” pretty effectively excludes the heavens in any normal understanding of “the world”. As mentioned, the Latin can be stretched to include the heavens without much effort, but the same cannot be said of the English. So how to render? The sense to be gotten across is that even though the Totality was created through or because of him, Jesus had gone unrecognized and certainly scorned by the (entire population of the) world. I would suggest that, en français, tout le monde catches the sense quite nicely, the literal phrase “the whole world” has the idiomatic meaning of “everyone”.

My guess is that a certain amount of irony, or looking askance is entirely intended by the repetition of the same word. John is rather trenchant here, since it is precisely this lack of reception and/or recognition that led to his crucifixion, since no one received (per the Greek) or recognised (per the Latin) Jesus. Once we note that Verse 11 jumps off from this idea of “the world” as expressed in French the meaning becomes fairly obvious, but with a minor twist. The Greek word idios, in two different cases and numbers (singular, then plural) is repeated. It lies at the root of “idiomatic” as we used it above, but it’s also the base for “idiosyncrasy” and, of course, “idiot”. If you stop for a moment the link between the first two examples become clear: they refer to something that is of a specific something. In the first case, it’s a quirk of a language, an expression that does not translate literally into another language. The second is a quirk, but this time of an individual. “Idiot”, OTOH, is a term of abuse; it’s derogatory. The Greek sense of the word is “private”, or “pertaining to a specific individual”. In the days of the direct democracy in Athens, every citizen was expected to attend the Assembly (ekklesia, the “calling out”); one who did not participate was a private person, one shirking his community duty. Since he was private, he was idios, and the term was not a compliment.

So in Verse 11, tout le monde transforms from the whole world to just those that were his own people. IOW, John is referring to the Jews who rejected Jesus; this is the first time, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last. The point is that, of course Jesus was unrecognized and not received by the pagans; why should they know who Jesus was, and why should they care? Jesus was a Jew, after all, from a completely different cultural background. But it’s so much worse that his own people, Jews, neither recognized nor accepted him. The Jews had no excuse. 

If you read about the message found in Mark you will come across references to the “Messianic Secret”, that Jesus deliberately hid his true message to the outside world, revealing his message only to his chosen few. “Outside world” in this case means the Jews in particular rather than everyone as a whole. Perhaps you will recall my explanation for this: by the time Mark wrote, it was obvious that a lot of Jews, perhaps most of them, had not received (as the Greek word says) Jesus. Paul talks about how the crucifixion was a problem for a lot of pagans who might consider becoming followers of Jesus, and at least a potential embarrassment for those who did follow Jesus. Given the emphasis on the so-called Messianic Secret, I would posit the fact that many, or even most, Jews had rejected Jesus was a sore point for many who had chosen to follow him. At the very least, it was likely a question that they found uncomfortable. Ergo, Mark came up with the idea that Jesus kept his identity and his mission secret from most Jews, so it’s not particularly surprising that they didn’t catch Jesus’ drift. Matthew and Luke pretty much ignore this idea that Jesus had a secret that only a chosen few were privileged to know. John, however, revisits the theme. Does he do it independently? Or does he pick it up from Mark? In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter, but I tend to suspect the former. 

10 In mundo erat, et mundus per ipsum factus est, et mundus eum non cognovit.

11 In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt.

12 ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, 

13 οἳ οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος σαρκὸς οὐδὲ ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ’ ἐκ θεοῦ ἐγεννήθησαν. 

However so many (= all who) accepted him, he gave to them power to become the children (lit = sons) of God, to the those believing in (lit=to) his name, (13) they did not from blood nor from will the flesh, nor the will of men, but (from the blood and will) of God they were born.

What jumps out at me here is “to become the children of God”. IOW, we are not such children from birth. It’s something we have to achieve, and we only get the requisite power thru Jesus. At first glance I wanted to call this the doctrine of Predestination as preached by Augustine and more forcefully by Calvin. We humans have no inherent, God-given right, no birth-right, to be these children. A cooler head prevailing, however, it may be closer to the doctrine extra ecclesiam nullus salvus: there is no salvation outside the church. But even that may be overstated. When reading the words of the NT (or any document for that matter) it’s critical not to jump to conclusions before giving some amount of careful consideration. This is advice I should follow more often, but it’s not as much fun as shooting from the hip. The point is that we have to receive this power by receiving Jesus, which is pretty fundamental to Christian belief of all stripes. The disagreements come in describing the ways we receive Jesus, and how we act afterwards. Does God tally up our good vs bad deeds as the Catholics-and the Egyptians before them–taught for a couple of millennia? Or is enough to be penitent, without having to do unending penance, the latter having been what scared the devil out of Martin Luther who believed he could never do enough penance?  

One of the topics I wanted to explore in this Adventure in Translation was the development of the doctrine of salvation and/or eternal life. I believe this is the clearest statement we have encountered to date. That’s my impression, but I could be dead wrong. After all, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and Mark and Matthew were a long time ago. Regardless, this statement means we cannot merit our ultimate fate unless we first pass through Jesus as the gatekeeper.

Now we come to some technical aspects of translation. John almost, but doesn’t quite, repeat the verb lambanō, “to take hold of, to receive”, in Verses 11 & 12. In Verse 11, he chooses a form of the verb, paralambanō, and in Verse 12 he used the base form. There is nothing perplexing about the first, but the base word raised my eyebrows. The most basic sense of lambanō is to take hold of, with a rather blatant understanding that one does so violently.  For definition I*, Liddell & Scott provide us with “take”, which is illustrated in 1a by “take hold of, grasp, seize” is a good rendition. In 1b the idea of violence becomes particularly prevalent, as they offer “take by force, carry off as a prize or booty”. We get more such examples in definitions I.2 – I.10. In I.2.b the definition offered is “possess”, rather in the sense of a demonic possession. We don’t get to “receive” in the more neutral form until way down in definition II.

Rather incidentally, I’ve been reading stuff by people who know a lot more about NT Greek than I do. In such authors one gets a lot of exposition on the way words change over time, and how one has to be aware of what a given word meant in the context of a contemporary text. IOW, my insistence that we compare the vocabulary used by the NT to that of Herodotus or Thucydides is akin to insisting that a word used today be understood as it was meant by Shakespeare is tendentious–and rather iffy–at best. And this is absolutely a valid criticism of what I’m doing here, and the way I’m handling the vocabulary.

Of course, while criticism, or caveat, is valid, it’s also a bit of prestidigitation. I have no doubt that authors in the 1st Century CE may have had “receive” in mind when they used lambanō; however, I’m equally certain that other authors writing at the same time as Luke or John would have used the word to mean “take hold of by force”. And that is my point on insisting that we bear in mind the root meanings of these words, especially one like lambanō, which was a very common word used in very many contexts to mean substantially different things. The vocabulary of Ancient Greek that we possess is rather limited, perhaps constrained by the accidents of survival. Some texts survived, while many, many others did not. Who is to say how much vocabulary died with those texts? Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so many after all. This would explain why words like lambanō (and there are numerous others) have such a wide variety of meanings. Rather than coming up with a new word–perhaps by importing one from a different language–ancient authors had to re-use the old words in different ways, relying on context to clarify the shift in meaning. 

As a reminder, this is the main reason I’ve included the Vulgate: to provide a clue using a language and a text that was in use for a thousand years and more, a translation that carried us up to the Reformation and even beyond. However, we must remember that the Vulgate was still created several centuries after the NT; that the gap between the Vulgate and the Greek wasn’t all that much smaller than the gap between the NT and the Classical Greek of the 5th-4th Centuries BCE. This means that over-reliance on the Vulgate risks confusing the way a word was used in the 17th Century with the way it’s used today. Still, it’s closer to our own time than the Greek NT and by several centuries. The question is whether the translator–whom it is convenient to call St Jerome, even if the particular edition being used has been updated since–had his own agenda. We see below how the Vulgate chose the more neutral forms of the Greek, accepting and receiving, over “taking hold of by force”.

11 In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt. 12 Quotquot autem acceperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his, qui credunt in nomine eius,

In this quote the bolded words are recognizable as “receive” and “accept”. In fact, the latter is close enough to our verb “to accept” that it could be translated as such without comment or even concern; however, since we mentioned versions, the one I use is apparently the Official Vatican version as authorised by both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II. The version on Perseus/Tufts, which houses both Liddell & Scott (Greek) and Lewis & Short (Latin) mega-dictionaries differs from the above, if just a little bit.  

11 In propria venit, et sui eum non receperunt. 12 Quotquot autem receperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his, qui credunt in nomine eius,

Notice that acceperunt in the Official Version is repeated as receperunt in the Perseus version. There are no notes or explanations of the origin of the text they put on their website. It appears it derives from the Bible Foundation and On-Line Book Initiative. I could not find a website for this Foundation, but then again, I didn’t try very hard. My guess would be that the Official Version has been re-edited more recently than the other, since John Paul II was pope until his death in 2005. IOW, the second receperunt was changed at some point in the last 50 years–the blink of an eye in biblical history. Presumably it was changed because a decision was made that receperunt did not convey the proper meaning. Interesting, no? As it turns out, receperunt is not the cognate that I thought at first. It can be, and is–sometimes, at least–translated as “to receive”, but it really means “to take back.” The verb is formed by adding the re- prefix to the base verb capio. The meaning of the prefix is obvious enough since it’s been swallowed whole into English. Reread, rerun, redo, re-…etc. Interestingly, the base verb capio, capere, cepit, captum has much the same meaning as lambanō in Greek: it means “to seize usu by force”. Hence, the verb becomes the root for “capture” or “captive = having been captured”. So re-ceperunt, at its base means “to take back”, or “to recover”. Not exactly the same as “to receive” which is how it is rendered in most modern translations, including the KJV.

Wow. Talk about an exercise in futility, or at least Much Ado About Nothing*, eh? So why did I waste all this time talking about the silly Vulgate version, of all things? Again, the point is to remind everyone that we do not have the iron-grip on the meaning of the words as we like to pretend. I have no idea what Jerome’s original translation was, but, apparently, even his words were revised in the last 50 years. And really, translating the original into Latin is no different than translating it into English. Different translators will make different choices. Assuming there are any left, go into a bookstore and read the opening line of Anna Karenina from three or four different translations and you will see the problem. And Russian is still a living language, whereas Latin, perhaps not so much.

One last point about the Vulgate. The Greek says that those who believe in Jesus become children of God. The Latin says that they are made the children of God. Rather a different take on the matter, no? I also noticed that the NIV, ESB, and NASB all agree that “he gave them the right to be children of God”. I’m not at all sure where they got this; the idea of a “right” is nowhere in the Latin or the Greek, and the KJV simply renders this as “the power to become children of God”, which is how I translated it, largely because that’s pretty much what it says. The Greek word, exousia, can mean either “power” or “authority”, so it’s a description of a government official who has power because they have authority. The Latin potestas is a little more nakedly just “power”.

There really is more to say, but I’m going to defer the rest until the next segment. This has taken much too long already.

12 Quotquot autem acceperunt eum, dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri, his, qui credunt in nomine eius,

13 qui non ex sanguinibus neque ex voluntate carnis neque ex voluntate viri, sed ex Deo nati sunt.

*Great play, BTW. The Kenneth Brannagh version is spectacular, although the Joss Wheeden version set in modern-day LA is good, too. Bottom line is that it’s hard to go wrong when starting with such great material.

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