John Chapter 5:1-3

Minor update 5/21/23

This is going to be very short. A very long time has elapsed since the last post. Blame the IRS as I’ve devoted the interim to doing my taxes.

We last saw Jesus having cured the son of the royal official. The circumstances of the story are similar to the story of the Centurion and his slave that was found in Matthew and Luke, or that of Jairus’ daughter found in all the Synoptics. It’s closer the first since Jesus also worked remotely in this telling, healing the child from a distance without actually going to the official’s house. As said, I believe the story is a good example of the ways the evangelists explained why the Jews had rejected Jesus, one of their own.

Text

1 Μετὰ ταῦτα ἦν ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, καὶ ἀνέβη Ἰησοῦς εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα.

2 ἔστιν δὲ ἐν τοῖς Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐπὶ τῇ προβατικῇ κολυμβήθρα ἡ ἐπιλεγομένη Ἑβραϊστὶ Βηθζαθά, πέντε στοὰς ἔχουσα.

3 ἐν ταύταις κατέκειτο πλῆθος τῶν ἀσθενούντων, τυφλῶν, χωλῶν, ξηρῶν.

After thus there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. (2) There is amongst the Jerusalemites (people living in Jerusalem) upon (near) the Sheep Pool which in Hebrew is called Bethzatha, (Jerusalem) having five porches. (3) In these porches lay many of the sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed.

First, the porches. The word in Greek is stoa, and it means, well, “porch”. Stoic philosophy was born on one of these porches in Athens. However, this word has some connotations, or brings up images in English that are a tad misleading. I noticed that several of the translations rendered the word as “portico”, and I admit that I like this much better. Even if one doesn’t know what a portico is, this word doesn’t bring to mind the image of the front porch on older houses, where people would sit of an evening to catch the cooler air after the heat of the day. Now, in that sense, “porch” is actually a good translation since that is exactly why people congregated in these porches. In Classical architecture, large public buildings often have a colonnade running across the front of the building, which was constructed out of some form of stone, often marble.  Having been to Greece in the spring when the days were already hot by the standards of northerly latitudes in North America, I can attest that the big stone–often marble–buildings that offered shade from the direct sun were very comfortably cool. The stone absorbs the cool night air and remain cool throughout the day, so sitting in one of these porticoes is quite comfortable. I do not know much about the architectural styles of Jerusalem, but under Greek and then Roman influence for several centuries I would not be surprised if a similar trend had not developed.

The commentaries really do not go into this sort of discussion. They are mostly concerned with the location of the pool, or the gate. Some of the commentaries render this as “Jerusalem having five gates”. This is simply not in the Greek. The word is stoa, which does not mean “gate”. Rather, the discussion focuses on the function of such a pool might be, and why it is called “Sheep Pool”. The Book of Nehemiah thrice refers to the “Sheep Gate”, and it’s not entirely unreasonable to blend the two here. It has been suggested that sheep to be sacrificed in the (supposedly) nearby Temple would have been led through the gate and/or been washed in the pool. And the word I transliterated as “Bethzatha” is Anglicised to Bethesda, the name of a large city in the US state of Maryland. There is also discussion of whether the pool or the portico would have survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. John uses the present tense, “there is” and there are suggestions that the pool & portico had survived and/or been rebuilt.  Here, I think, is where an understanding of the way ancient Greek blends verb tenses would be useful. The “historic present” is decidedly a thing amongst Greek authors.

Now, all of this is interesting, but rather beside the point–not that that has ever stopped me before. What interests me is that Jesus is suddenly returning to Jerusalem after an extremely brief hiatus, or sojourn, in Galilee. He only went there in Verse 43 of the previous chapter; there, he healed the official’s daughter and and at the outset of this chapter he’s already skedaddled back to Jerusalem in Verse 1. More, the return to Jerusalem comes after we were told that Jesus left because a prophet has no honour in his own country. I now realise that I did not deal with this at all in any discussion of Chapter 4, and that this was an enormous oversight. Perhaps I can make amends now, and it may not be that difficult since some of what I would say about Jesus’ return pertains to the bit about the home country.

This pericope has appeared in all four gospels, so it was obviously considered a very important part of the message that the evangelists wished to convey. My suspicion is that this was thought to be a cornerstone of the “argument” the evangelists put forward to explain why Jesus had been rejected by those of his own country and his own religion. We’ve discussed this before, but it remains a very significant question and topic. Think about it. Jesus’ followers are proclaiming their good news that the Messiah has come and that salvation has become available to persons of all nations. It’s a fairly novel take on a very old question, one that dates back to the Egyptians: how do I secure salvation? Their response was that each of us are judged after death, and the method of judgement was that one’s heart was weighed. Only those with a heart as light as a feather were judged worthy of reward, the details of which I will not enter at this point. The question had risen to a high degree of prominence amongst the Hellenistic kingdoms of the Diadochoi and their successors, to the point that “Saviour” was a common and honoured title bestowed on these kings. It had been important for Jews, too, who had the prophecy of the coming Messiah who would save and restore Israel. But the salvation offered was, to some degree, political, the restoration of Israel or the establishment of the Seleucids or Ptolemies as pre-eminent kings amongst the nations. Then Jesus came along and changed the message. It was still about a kingdom, but not of Israel or an Hellenistic king, but a Kingdom of God that was open to all persons of good will. It was a powerful message–witness the rapid growth of the religion. Christianity became a force within decades, to the point that Nero could blame the fire of Rome on them. Now, that he could do so implies two things: first, that most everyone knew about “Christians”, at least that they existed; and secondly, most people didn’t know much about Christians beyond the fact that they existed. They were out there, but in a vague, shadowy manner, so it was easy to believe wicked things about them. But regardless, the existence of this group had definitely grown, to the point that Domitian felt the need to “persecute” them to some degree. So, if the message was so appealing, and if anyone could enter this Kingdom of God, why didn’t the Jews accept this message and join this kingdom? It’s a reasonable question, and was apparently persistent and widespread enough that the evangelists–all of them–felt it necessary to address the question. Hence, a prophet has no honor in his own country. It makes sense. Mark’s version is the best: Look, we knew him growing up, we know his mother (but apparently not his father), his brothers and sisters still live here, so he’s not at all special. End of discussion. Of course, the Jewish rejection of Jesus entirely made sense under the system of belief espoused by Judaism. The Anointed was to restore the Kingdom of Israel. Jesus did not do this, so, under those terms, Jesus was not, could not have been, the Messiah.

So there’s that. But there’s something else going on here, something specific to John. The implication of the statement in John 4:44 was that Jesus was leaving his own country to take refuge in Galilee. In short, Galilee was not Jesus’ home; rather, his home was in Jerusalem. There is a good deal of squirming and parsing among the commentators to explain this, and the explanations are a bit squirmy and manage to split a few hairs. I have said right along that Jesus was from Caphernaum, which is definitely in Galilee, although Nazareth is as well. Nathaniel, back in Chapter 1 asked if anything good could possibly come from Nazareth, meaning John believes Jesus was from Galilee. So is John contradicting himself here? My answer is a qualified “Yes”. Yes, because he calls Jerusalem/Judea Jesus’ patria, but qualified because he’s not really talking about Jesus in this situation. What I mean by this is that by the time John wrote, the connexions between Jesus and Galilee, which were so clear and so strong in the Synoptics, had weakened to some extent. By the time John wrote, I suspect, these connexions had fadeded. This was due, I suspect, because the appeal of Jesus had changed location; whereas it began in rural-ish Galilee where he gathered his first followers, it eventually moved into more urban environments. It became, in short, a religion of city people rather than peasants in the countryside. We know this from our sources, starting with Paul and continuing into the Second Century and beyond. The first indication of this came in Luke, where we got tales of the Widow of Nain and Zaccheus of Jericho. Of course, Nain was a village, but it wasn’t the countryside, while Jericho was a large city of longstanding tradition, with roots dating back to the days of Jesus who fought the Battle of Jericho. The new stuff, the new material that John came across was largely centered on Jerusalem and surrounding environs, like Bethsaida, the home of Martha and Mary and their new brother Lazarus. In the Synoptics, Jesus went to Jerusalem once, at the end of his life. Jerusalem was the last stop on his itinerary; in John, Jesus has already returned in Chapter 5, after having spent virtually all of the first four chapters in Jerusalem and along the Jordan. So, for John, naming Jerusalem as Jesus’ hometown was not really wrong. After all, James the Just had become the spiritual leader of his brother’s followers in Jerusalem. It’s more a matter that the term patria had broadened to some extent. And note that the events of this chapter start meta tauta, “after these things” that were described at the end of the previous chapter. This usually implies that only minimal time had elapsed between the two events.

Now, what does this do for the question of John having his own sources which would mean he can be considered “independent” of the Synoptics? The answer is that while John certainly did have sources that were independent of the Synoptics, this does not mean John can be considered as independent of the Synoptics. Matthew had sources that Mark did not and Luke had sources that neither of his predecessors had; this is the so-called M and L material respectively. But notice that the M and L material introduce new details and new stories while basically following the same overall outline as Mark. Matthew gives Jairus a name and gives us the Sermon on the Mount; Matthew and Luke name Jesus’ father, and Luke adds the story of the Prodigal Son. Despite these additions, there are no fundamental contradictions between the gospels. Yes, “blessed are the poor” and “blessed are the poor in spirit” demonstrate obvious disagreement since they cannot both be a verbatim quote, but these are differences of detail that in no way affect or challenge the underlying narrative. Sources that are truly independent sources generally provide flagrant contradiction. Herodotus is full of independent sources that directly contradict each other about important aspects of the historical course of events; the Athenians say this, but the Persians say that and there can be no reconciling of the two. One is largely wrong. OTOH, poor/poor in spirit can be ascribed to different memories of the event, or this could arise from Jesus giving the same speech twice, fundamentally the same but with minor variations. While giving a sermon on the mountain he said poor in spirit; repeating the sermon on the plain it came out as poor. Jesus spoke ex tempore; he did not write his sermons beforehand, and he had no written copy to use as reference the next time he repeated the message, so it came out differently. We don’t know how long Jesus’ ministry lasted; the tradition is three years, but I have read it suggestion that, really, he could have said and done everything in Mark in a few weeks, or months. Realistically, given the impact he had after his death, something closer to three years is more likely. So in that time it’s hardly inconceivable that he repeated his sermons more than once with slight variations. So that is one source of “independent” material: different people heard different things on different days, or remembered things differently. The “Blessed are the cheesemakers” scene from Life of Brian is not really ridiculous. This is the sort of thing that did and does happen. If one is concerned with actual history, these are the sorts of things that have to be considered.   

Of course, the argument for the “independence” of the different sources really amounts to one thing: those craving independence want to postulate that the new material added by subsequent evangelists represents material that actually traces back to the time of Jesus, or at least the apostles. This is unlikely to the extreme. Consider this: the added material does not consist of minor variations, but stuff of entirely new cloth that forms long, continuous, and coherent narratives. The Sermon on the Mount is a carefully crafted and cohesive piece that is rightly considered one of the finest pieces of religious writing ever created. Why does it appear full-grown and clad in shining armour in Matthew, having completely been missed by Mark? Why does the moving story of the Prodigal Son appear in Luke, having been completely missed by Mark and Matthew. When we hear a complete story replete with accrued details, we tend to think that each detail lends more credence to the story, that it makes the story more likely to be true. Unfortunately, statistically speaking, the situation is quite the opposite. It’s akin to laying out a deck of cards face-down and trying to draw all thirteen hearts in sequence. Pulling the first is one in four, and we can get lucky and pull a second, or even a third, but adding each new card, like each new detail, becomes more and more unlikely. The first pull is one in four since there is an even number of cards in each suit. But after the first, there are only twelve hearts among the remaining fifty-one, and then eleven out of fifty while each of the other suits remain at thirteen. There is a 25% chance of pulling one; the odds drop to 23% and 22% for the next two cards and so on. This was illustrated very nicely back in the late 1990s when I was following the stock market very closely. Pundits would start to weave these wonderfully complex narratives about why a particular stock would explode in value. The stories told sounded very convincing; surely, the accumulation of so much detail made the story every-more credible. Except it didn’t. The fact that a pundit, or any outsider could keep pulling these details from…wherever made the likelihood of accuracy ever-less probable. And so it is with historical narratives. How does the message of the Sermon on the Mount go so far underground that Mark didn’t catch a single whiff of this monumental discourse by Jesus? There is not a single hint, or possible allusion to the Sermon in Mark, and yet Mark was supposedly a companion of Peter? Seems a bit unlikely to me. So even more unlikely are the stories of the Prodigal Son and Good Samaritan, and especially all the new material in John. The very fact that John can even imply that Jesus’ homeland was Judea rather than Galilee indicates that we are dealing with an entirely different tradition, a much later tradition, one in which Jerusalem was much more the focus of the story. 

Even though I haven’t presented a truly convincing case here, it’s time to move on. Way past time, actually. 

One final word. The assemblage of the infirm in a portico such as this was fairly common practice in the ancient world. Amongst pagans in the Eastern Mediterranean, this usually occurred in or around a Temple of Asklepios, the Physician deity, or Apollo, the god of prophecy. In either case, the infirm would sleep in the temple precinct hoping that the god would visit, usually in a dream, and prescribe a treatment for the dreamer’s malady. Often this was a matter of sacrifice. Of course the sacrifices were offered to a god, often the god of the temple, which helped keep the temple solvent. Even back then, the medical practitioners were paid to provide services which may, or may not, have actually cured the disease.

1 Post haec erat dies festus Iudaeorum, et ascendit Iesus Hierosolymam.

2 Est autem Hierosolymis, super Probatica, piscina, quae cognominatur Hebraice
Bethsatha, quinque porticus habens.

3 In his iacebat multitudo languentium, caecorum, claudorum, aridorum.

 

Summary John Chapter 4

Starting out, I fear that this chapter will be difficult to summarize with justice. Of course, I feel that way about most (all?) of them when I start. Turns out it took much longer than I’d hoped. Of course, I could say that about most (all?) of them.

At the outset of the chapter, we are dropped into rather an odd set of circumstances. Or perhaps not odd, but unexpected to us reading John almost two millennia later. Jesus, we are told did not baptize. His disciples did. Now, when we discussed this in the original post, it did not occur to me to consider whether this was meant as a one-time thing, or whether this was meant as a categorical statement. Was Jesus not baptizing in this particular instance, or did Jesus not baptize ever? Just for a touchpoint, this is the last mention of baptizing in the gospel, aside from a retrospective about returning to the place where John had baptized. So we should say that this is the last time the act of baptism occurs, or is even discussed, and it’s the only time it is discussed in the connection of Jesus doing, or not doing, it. Then it occurred to me that baptism does not play a terribly large part in any of the gospels. Outside of reference to John the Dunker performing the ritual, there are at most a couple of off-hand references to the act in any of the gospels. If we were to go by the gospels alone and knowing nothing about subsequent Christian practice, our logic could not be truly be faulted if we were to conclude that baptism did not, and would not, be a major part of Christian practice as it developed. Of course baptism became important. And let us throw in 1 Corinthians where Paul does not sound like a major proponent of baptism, and such a conclusion would be entirely justified based on logic and the texts. This would be reinforced since we have not one, but four separate texts, all of which more or less relegate baptism to something that the Baptist did, but did not really catch on overall. Of course, knowing what we do, to conclude that baptism would not become a core Christian tenet would seem foolish.

I mention this because these are the sort of circumstances Classical historians face all the time: we have a bare text that is without context or knowledge of how the actions described in said text played out, or developed, or were practiced over time. We have pagan hymns, or prayers, but we do not know how the practices implied in these texts turned out after subsequent development. They are a dead end. And note that I specifically mentioned we would be justified in our non-baptist conclusion if we had only the gospels. The caveat is deliberate, since we also have Acts, in which the ritual is performed numerous times, clearly indicating that it was a significant aspect of Christian practice. This corrects our view on the sacrament, but it does not explain the apparent-but-odd split in the way the practice was viewed. Why is it that baptism is very much an afterthought in the gospels, something that John did, but Jesus didn’t? Answering this question would require time and research that are beyond the scope of what I am doing here. Once again, my intent is to raise the question, to point out the apparent discrepancy. Yes, it can be papered over, one can construct a position in which no such discrepancy exists. It might even be persuasive, but persuasive or not it has to be constructed and, to date, I’m not aware that it has been. [Editor’s note: this is the Argument from Silence. And given the enormous body of biblical scholarship of which I am not aware, let alone familiar, my statement is on very, extremely shaky logical ground. Just because I’m unfamiliar doesn’t mean it hasn’t been dealt with and disposed in convincing fashion. ]

With that out of the way, let’s go on with the rest of the chapter. If there is one, the theme of the chapter is probably salvation, as effected by the anointed one. So the first order of business is to establish who Jesus is. However, what’s interesting to note is that John sort of sidles up to the topic, beginning the chapter with him entering into discourse with a Samaritan woman. Right off, we are in uncharted territory. As with baptism, Samaritans do not loom large in the NT. There was a Good Samaritan, and a couple of references–like the one here–in which Jesus passes through Samaria. Mark has no references at all, and Matthew’s sole use of the term comes when Jesus instructs the Fictitious Twelve not to go into any towns of the pagans or the Samaritans. In Luke, aside from the aforementioned Good Samaritan, the occurrences are geographical with the exception of the leper who returned to thank Jesus for curing him and his nine companions. This leper was, in a sense, another “good Samaritan” since he is the only one of the group that does return to give thanks. Jesus notes both the lack of gratitude of the other nine, and the fact that the tenth was a Samaritan. Other than that, pretty much bupkis. Here in Chapter 4, however, Samaritans play a significant role in the unfolding of Jesus’ ministry and his message.

For it is here, in Samaria, to a Samaritan woman–a woman!–that Jesus discloses his identity as the Messiah, the Christos, which is to say the Anointed One. Never forget that the first two words are the Hebrew and Greek translations of “Anointed One”. In effect, saying “Jesus Christ is the Messiah” is translated as Jesus The Anointed One is the Anointed One. Again, I bring this up for a reason. Words have power. They have the power to shape how we interpret, or even perceive the world around us. And our native language becomes so deeply ingrained into our understanding of the world that we don’t even notice they are there. It’s not dissimilar to gravity. This is why learning a different language can be so eye-opening–or even jarring–to our sensibilities. This is why I refer to him as John the Dunker, or to the messengers of God as, well, messengers and not angels. Just so, Christ has assumed the status of a surname in the minds of so many people. It’s not. It’s a title. And this is why I insist on going back to Liddell & Scott for lexical interpretations rather that a “Lexicon of NT Greek” or something such. This is why I insist that there is no such thing as NT Greek. Not really. Which is why if we’re only going to stick to the conventional translations of words there is no real point in bothering to learn “NT Greek”. If we’re convinced–or even satisfied–that John wrote “In the beginning was the Word”, then we really have not gained any deeper knowledge of “what the Greek actually says”. Some of this, I freely admit, is the snobbery of a Classicist who reads “real Greek”. Some of it. But not all of it. John gave us both words for a reason. He wanted to remind his audience that there were different understandings of this. To be “christos” is to be anointed with “chrism”, which is oil. In Greek literature, there are many ways to understand that as there were different circumstances for such anointed. In Hebrew, however, the Anointed One has one very specific meaning. By the time he wrote, most new converts would have had some knowledge of Greek–in the way that people in different countries have some knowledge of English–and John wanted to remind his Greek-speaking converts that there was a Hebrew word and concept behind Iēsous Christos.

Anyway, Jesus announcing–if a bit obliquely–his identity to a Samaritan woman was to proclaim that the old rules didn’t work any more. The times they are a-changing. Most of the commentaries I looked at talked about the grammar and other incidentals, but did not truly consider all of the implications. MacLaren, OTOH, does go on at admirable length about the significance of the statement, that Jesus is announcing that he is come to the whole world, to all peoples. And by making the announcement to  Samaritan, a woman, and a sinner, MacLaren continues, Jesus is announcing to all persons, as in “all individuals”. Recall that from here to the end of the chapter the theme is salvation. Jesus is announcing that he is bringing salvation, the description of which process he lays out in the rest of the chapter. By choosing a woman, MacLaren says, Jesus illustrates Paul’s statement that there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, etc. I agree with MacLaren on this point, that a woman is significant, but it’s rather a pity this message was not taken more to heart by Jesus’ followers. Yes, I’m thinking of Deutero-Paul in Ephesians admonishing women to submit to their husbands. And MacLaren pointed out that the woman was a sinner. Now, that hardly distinguishes her from anyone else, for we are all sinners, but note that John laid out specific details of the woman’s sin to make sure we didn’t miss the point. Of course her sin is the most heinous that a woman can commit: lack of chastity. No matter. The point would have been abundantly clear to John’s audience, particularly an audience in the Eastern Mediterranean. From all this we can deduce just how radical Jesus’ message was. He has come for the sick, not the healthy.

This is certainly true. However, I feel that there is a bit more to it than that, which becomes especially apparent when we get to the story at the end of the chapter. This involves the royal official or clansman asking Jesus to come and save his son. As an aside, let’s be sure to clarify that “save” should be taken with a purely physical understanding, to save the child’s mortal life. The story is sort of an amalgamation of the Centurion’s Slave (Matthew & Luke) and the Daughter of Jairus (all three Synoptics). In the former, the supplicant was a pagan; in the latter, he was presumably Jewish. In this version, Jesus rebukes the man for asking for this assistance, scolding him for requiring “signs and wonders”. This detail is similar to stories about interlocutors specifically asking for a sign from Jesus that are found in all three Synoptics. The reaction of Jesus strikes me as a bit odd, since the man asked for help to save his sick child, which most people would regard as an act of love from a concerned parent. Contrast this to the interaction with the woman in Samaria. The man is part of the royal entourage, if not the royal, or at least noble, family so he is of elevated social status. Presumably he is Jewish. Often overlooked is that he is aware that Jesus has certain…capabilities. Now consider the Samaritan woman, of low status, not a man, and from a group at odds with Jews. Of course in the end, the man’s request is granted, but from afar. Jesus does not deign to go to his house. We can quibble about this; after all, either way the child is saved, but there is almost an element of that Jesus can’t be bothered. Compare this to his dining with publicans, and consorting with a prostitute who washes his feet. Yet Jesus does not go to the house of a respected–or even honored–member of the community. Here is where we get back to the radical nature of Jesus’ message. The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Who are these first who shall be last? Well, it’s hard to ignore the fact that the spurned ones are Jews. Jesus announces himself to a Samaritan, and yet is reluctant to accede to the request of a high-ranking Jew. And the latter is disparaged by his demand (?) for “signs and wonders”, which is a reproach often used in the Synoptics. It seems more than a coincidence that John makes this allusion, specifically repeating the words of his predecessors; given that, it’s harder to argue that John was unaware of one or more of the Synoptic Gospels. This, of course, greatly undercuts the desire to claim John as an independent source. The repetition of exact phrases such as this, allusions to several episodes condensed into a single story such as we have here, and other overlaps make it difficult to sustain such an argument, IMO. Overall, it becomes difficult not to see those moved to the back of the line as the Jewish authorities in particular. Again, we’ve mentioned this in conjunction with all the other gospels, but it bears repeating, especially for John. By the time of writing of all the gospels, most people joining the Jesus movement were no longer of Jewish background. Thanks to Paul’s missionary work and the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70, the budding Christian movement had become primarily a pagan event. As such, it was crucial that the gospels explain why the Jews had rejected Jesus, who was a Jew and who taught among them. It was critical to demonstrate that this pagan-centric focus had been the focus and the intent from the beginning. It was like this because Jesus wanted it to be like this. Of course, with John, there is the added problem of a latent, or even a nascent, attitude of anti-Semitism, an attitude that would have horrific consequences for centuries, and one that is still with us today.

Now for something novel. Let’s get back to “sinners”. MacLaren states that the Samaritan woman was a sinner. My reaction is that well, yes, we are all sinners as Augustine and others have declared over and over again. However, it strikes me that I am missing the point. If this is a truism among Bible scholarship, please excuse my ignorance. Given the use of that term, and thinking about its occurrences throughout the NT, and possibly even the HS, “sinner” whether in the singular or plural, seems not so much the description of an action–Bless me, Father, for I have sinned–as it does a category of people. There are the righteous, and there are the sinners, and never–it seems, anyway–the twain shall meet. As I’m just now realizing, the implications for Predestination this distinction carries are huge if not inescapable. For unlike the thinking of Augustine or Luther, the separation is not ordained from the foundations of the world, and it is possible to change categories; specifically, errant Jews can return to YHWH and again be among the righteous. One would think this has all sorts of theological implications for the notion of salvation; but does it? I don’t know at this point, but it’s something to follow.

There is one part this chapter that I have not addressed at all. It comes at the very beginning: News reached the Pharisees that Jesus was attracting and baptizing more disciples than John. Then we are quickly told that Jesus didn’t perform the baptisms himself, and that monopolized our attention. Call me thick, or a dullard, but I hadn’t realized it was a competition. This is emphasized in the Revised English Bible which says Jesus was “winning” more coverts. The Greek is simply the base word for “to make/to do”, which just like our English simple words can be used a thousand different ways; however, word choice is not the point. The point is why is this mentioned? First, let’s state the obvious that this observation is unique to John. Apparently John had some inside dope from the local bookies who had put down a line on John vs Jesus; or he was an eyewitness who did the counting; or he made this up to emphasize a point. No surprise, I’m sure, but my money is on the latter. Unlike the first two, which would be simple recitation of unverifiable facts, this third one requires an explanation. We could ascribe the uniqueness to John as a function of his eyewitness perspective if the second possibility is accepted as most likely. The commentaries I skimmed provide reasons for Jesus’ withdrawal to Galilee (which I have not discussed either), but no one bothers to address how this quantitative conclusion was drawn. The commentators pretty much uniformly suggest that Jesus skipped town to obviate jealousy between him and the Dunker (gotcha!). If the latter had conceded Jesus’ superiority as we are told he did in Chapter 3, why would John have been jealous? Indeed, if John had conceded the field, why was he still baptizing? His message was the preliminary, he was the opening act, but the real Good News was being delivered by the One who was Greater.

The answer, I suspect, lies in the relative position of the Baptist vis-à-vis Jesus. In discussing one of the previous gospels–Matthew, IIRC–I made the point that, in the end, the Baptist was wholly inside Jewish tradition and practice. This would explain why Josephus thought it more important to provide more backstory about John’s execution than he did about that of Jesus. To Josephus and his co-religionists, John was simply the more important figure. Jesus was just not particularly relevant. Tangent alert! This is a good example of how too often biblical scholars will read the relevant passages of Tacitus, or Suetonius, or Josephus to see what was said, but not attempt to read more than the relevant passage or to put said passage into context. I believe (but have not presented an argument in support) that John the Evangelist had read, or was at least aware of The Antiquities of the Jews written by Josephus. As such, I believe that John must be read in the context of Josephus. But in addition, when attempting to decide how much, if any, of Josephus’ treatment of Jesus was actually written by Josephus and how much was interpolated later, we must consider the message of Josephus relative to John’s “correction” of the former author. If John was aware of Josephus, there is no reason to suppose that John did not craft his own message as a way of setting the record straight, at least to some degree. So here, for example, John is going out of his way to demonstrate that Josephus was wrong and that Jesus was the more important of the two. This, in turn, suggests the acceptance of a minimal treatment by Josephus: that Jesus appeared when he did, likely that he was a wonder-worker, and there is no reason to doubt that Josephus stated that Jesus made a number of converts. A short passage like this would make sense when set against what the Evangelist says in 4:1. There is a lot more that needs to be said, but this is the bare outline of a position. The point is that addressing the competition between the two explains two things: 1) why John included it; and 2) why only John included it. The other evangelists wrote without knowledge of Josephus.

So why did Jesus withdraw to Galilee? Like John, Mark does not supply a reason; the latter simply provides the temporal proximity, that Jesus left after the arrest of the Baptist. A causal connexion is not made, but it is implied. While Matthew stops short of a causal statement, he does explicitly connect the two. Mark’s statement, that Jesus left after John’s arrest can be read as if these events were not related; that Jesus happened to leave after the arrest. Matthew makes a connexion explicit, that Jesus left after he had heard of the arrest. Again, he is not saying Jesus left because of John’s arrest, but Jesus at least knew about it. Luke just says Jesus went to Galilee directly from his forty days in the desert. As an aside, here is another example of how Luke does not feel the need to repeat what his two predecessors have covered sufficiently. The reader, Luke assumes, knows that Jesus went back to Galilee after John’s arrest because Mark and Matthew have made this clear.

John’s rationale is oblique, but it is connected to the Baptist in roundabout fashion. He left because he knew that the Pharisees knew that Jesus was attracting more disciples than John. Buried in there somewhere–perhaps–is the implication that the Pharisees felt more threatened by Jesus than by John. I suppose it’s important to remember that the stories regarding the executions of the two men posit a different actor as responsible for their deaths. John was killed by Herod Antipas; Mark, Matthew, and Josephus agree on this, and they give (more or less) the same causal factor: Herod’s illicit marriage to his brother’s widow. The essential agreement of the versions from the gospels and Josephus means one of two things: 1) that Josephus used the gospel(s) as a source; or 2) that the story of the Baptist was accurate and widely known, so that the evangelists and Josephus got basically the same story from different sources. Which is more likely? Now I have been suggesting that Josephus did derive his information about Jesus from Christian sources. I do not believe I have gone so far as to suggest that Josephus read any of the gospels. If I have suggested that, it’s probably time to scratch that one off as more or less disproven, or at as not worth serious consideration. When I suggest a
“Christian source” I’m basically suggesting that he got it from a Christian who acted as a source. The persecutions of Domitian were just ended around the time Josephus was finishing the work. It’s not hard to imagine court gossip about the persecutions, about the Christians and what they believed. Nor does it beggar belief that Josephus knew a few personally, perhaps slaves in his service or something such. So there is no reason Josephus had to get his material from a written work. A word of mouth description over a chalice of wine could suffice for the twenty-five-words-or-less description Josephus gave to Jesus. Really, that he had lived about that time and had worked wonders and attracted followers could easily have been common street gossip. Those are the three elements that I believe are authentically Josephus. The rest probably represents a series of interpolations, one layered on the previous one(s) until we get to the account we have.

The takeaway from this is that the brief mention of Jesus that I suggest would be the sort of thing that would prompt the Evangelist to insist that Jesus was the more popular of the two.