John Chapter 8:25-30

This was supposed to be part of the previous section, the post including Verse 21-30. But, that was just too long. So let’s get back to it.

Translation from previous section added for continuity:

(21) So he said again to them, “I am departing, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you are not able to come.” (22) So “The Jews” said, “Will he kill himself, as he says, ‘Whither I go, you cannot follow’?” (23) And he said to them, “You are from things below, and I am from things above. You are of this kosmos/world; I am not from this kosmos/world. (24)  So I say to you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am (he: this is not in the text), you will die in your sins”.

25 ἔλεγον οὖν αὐτῷ, Σὺ τίς εἶ; εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Τὴν ἀρχὴν ὅ τι καὶ λαλῶ ὑμῖν;

26 πολλὰ ἔχω περὶ ὑμῶν λαλεῖν καὶ κρίνειν: ἀλλ’ ὁ πέμψας με ἀληθής ἐστιν, κἀγὼ ἃ ἤκουσα παρ’ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα λαλῶ εἰς τὸν κόσμον.

27 οὐκ ἔγνωσαν ὅτι τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῖς ἔλεγεν.

So they said to him, “Who are you?” Jesus said to them, “What do I say (now) and in the beginning to you?” 

The Greek of Jesus’ answer is funky. One commentator says that each word could be taken in more than one way. A number of modern editions end up with something like “What have I said that (I am) in the beginning?” as a literal translation. The verb Jesus uses is present indicative active rather than an aorist, but in English we might expect a perfect, or perhaps imperfect to convey the sense of “what have I been telling you since the beginning?” which is how it’s frequently rendered.

The question asked of Jesus is the logical follow-up to his statement that “you don’t believe that I am (he–IE, the anointed)”. There is a lot of discussion in the commentaries that the question is hostile as indeed it is. But what the commentators mostly comment is that “The Jews” don’t want to believe Jesus when he says he is the anointed, which accounts for the somewhat exasperated tone of Jesus’ answer: What have I been telling you? Dullards (implied)! So there is a degree of combativeness in this discussion not present heretofore. In a sense, we’re reverting to the Jesus of Mark who often loses patience with his disciples and rebukes them rather sharply. Speaking of disciples, has anyone else noticed that they’re not involved in a lot of this? Heck, they’re not even mentioned. Where are they during this ongoing exchange?

So, yeah, this is a different Jesus than we’ve seen in Matthew and/or Luke. 

25 Dicebant ergo ei: “Tu quis es?”. Dixit eis Iesus: “In principio: id quod et loquor vobis!

26 πολλὰ ἔχω περὶ ὑμῶν λαλεῖν καὶ κρίνειν: ἀλλ’ ὁ πέμψας με ἀληθής ἐστιν, κἀγὼ ἃ ἤκουσα παρ’ αὐτοῦ ταῦτα λαλῶ εἰς τὸν κόσμον.

27 οὐκ ἔγνωσαν ὅτι τὸν πατέρα αὐτοῖς ἔλεγεν.

“I have much to speak and to judge about you; but the one having sent me is true, and I having heard beside him speak these things to the world (kosmos)”. (27) They did not know that he spoke to them (of) the father. 

Let us begin with the grammatical quirks. “Having heard beside him” obviously doesn’t make sense in English. The implication is that this is knowledge imparted to Jesus because he was at the side of the father; at the father’s right hand, as it were. And I’ve relented in my hard-and-fast non-translation of kosmos; “world” is obviously the intended meaning here. And it literally means “spoke the father to them”. It’s accusative case, so the father is being spoken. Again, this is one of those joints where it’s really difficult to maintain fidelity to the original while not spouting gibberish in English.

While we’re at it, the literal translation of the first clause of Verse 26 is “I have much to speak about you and to judge”. But Greek has the capability to use the pronoun once as the subject to two different verbs; well, English does the same, but an English sentence requires a specific word order whereas Greek allows more flexibility due to the case endings. 

As for what this all means, while we still lack consensus on a lot of the details of the individual thoughts, the overall thrust of this seems plain enough. Jesus continues to hammer home his relationship to/with the father, and that “The Jews” do not understand. Of course, by the time John wrote, the breach between Christians and Jews was final and irrevocable. So, just as the Synoptics were required to do, John has to explain this to the world at large. So he does. And forgive me, but it seems like he he goes over the same ground many, may times. Or is it just me? I find myself scratching for comment because it has gotten to feel repetitive.

26 Multa habeo de vobis loqui et iudicare; sed, qui misit me, verax est, et ego, quae audivi ab eo, haec loquor ad mundum”.

27 Non cognoverunt quia Patrem eis dicebat.

28 εἶπεν οὖν [αὐτοῖς] ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Οταν ὑψώσητε τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, τότε γνώσεσθε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, καὶ ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ ποιῶ οὐδέν, ἀλλὰ καθὼς ἐδίδαξέν με ὁ πατὴρ ταῦτα λαλῶ.

29 καὶ ὁ πέμψας με μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐστιν: οὐκ ἀφῆκέν με μόνον, ὅτι ἐγὼ τὰ ἀρεστὰ αὐτῷ ποιῶ πάντοτε.

30 Ταῦτα αὐτοῦ λαλοῦντος πολλοὶ ἐπίστευσαν εἰς αὐτόν. 

So Jesus said [to them], “When you have seen the son of man lifted up, then you will know that I am, and I do nothing on my own (i.e., authority), but accordingly as the father taught me I speak. (29) And the one sending me is with me; he has not left me alone, so that I do the things pleasing him always”. (30) He having spoken these things, many believed in him.

We start in Verse 28 talking about the son of man being “lifted up”. My first instinct was that this was a reference to the Ascension as told in Acts 1; however, a quick check told me that the word used here is not the same word used to describe Jesus being lifted up to…actually, the text does not tell us where he went. We are only told that he was lifted up and a cloud took him from their sight. Presumably that means he went up to the sky, since that’s where clouds are,  but “Luke” does not use the word. In any case, the word here is different. The word in Acts is a compound of the base verb for “to receive” whereas here we have an entirely different word. Is significant? Perhaps. The word in Acts carries the sense of being taken up physically, while the word here has more the connotation of being elevated in a figurative sense. The most common translation for the word here is “exalted”, and this very different from being physically lifted as occurred in Acts. The fact that it confuses us in English is a problem with English; this sort of confusion would not really occur in Greek because the words are different. To use “exalt” would not engender the notion of lifting someone, say, off the ground. While the choice of word is perhaps not entirely clear, I do believe that the idea of Resurrection is fully intended. But what about Ascension? Of that, I’m not so sure. That is part of the reason I’m quibbling about “exalt” vs “physically lift”. Had John used Luke’s word, I would definitely suppose he was referring to Ascension. Without it, I’m not so certain.

Then we get to the term “son of man”. This is rare for John, it’s one of only a 10 or 12 (depending on the source; I didn’t go through and count them) times that he uses the term. There is an interesting parallel passage in 3:14:

…Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…  

And another in Chapter 12:32, wherein Jesus says: 

…when I am lifted up from the earth…

Note that it specifically says “from the earth”, so there is no question that we are speaking of an event like the Ascension. Then in Verse 34, the crowd asks

…‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this ‘Son of Man’?”…

In all three instances use the verb used here in 8:28, and the term. “son of man” appears in all three places. In addition, these are the only times in the NT where this word for “raising up” is not translated as “exalt”. Is this significant? Patterns are worth recognizing, despite being more of a literary convention than something related to historical analysis judgement, but even so my inclination is to say this matters. Note the use in 3:14 refers to a snake being physically borne aloft, just as in 12:32 Jesus is physically raised off the earth. 

It has been suggested–plausibly, I might add–that “raising up” could refer to crucifixion, being raised on a cross. In this case, the parallel with 3:14 about Moses lifting a snake seems pretty clear. I suppose it works equally well with the occurrences in Chapter 12 as well. But what about “son of man?” The term is used by all Synoptics. The lower number of examples in John may indicate the term was falling out of use, superseded perhaps by “Son of God”. I have no explanation for this; not even a guess, really. It’s a pattern, which caught my attention, but that is not to say the pattern has meaning. 

In Verse 28, Jesus also says that the father is with him. This hearkens back to the very beginning of the gospel, when the Logos was with God, but the overall gist is to repeat, again, the special relationship between Jesus and the father. Now to this point Jesus has consistently made it clear–intentionally or not–that he and the father are separate entities; this will change, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, while separate entities, Jesus emphasizes the very close relationship between him and his father. So let’s consider “the father is with me”. This is obviously not an accurate statement in anything resembling shared, objective reality. The audience does not see this father, and back in verse 19 they asked where his father is. So Jesus is speaking metaphorically. But what does “with me” mean in a metaphysical sense, one that transcends whatever I mean by “objective reality?” The answer does not puzzle us: by metaphorical relationship, we understand spiritual relationship. The spirit of God is with him, or God is with him in spirit.

The idea of the spirit of God goes to the foundation of Judaism, way back to Genesis 1 when “the spirit of god moved over the waters”. But the “spirit of God” and the “breath of God” are not, or at least may not be the same thing. In most instances we do not think of “breath” when we consider “spirit”. We do know talk about “School Breath” or “should the breath move you”. However, if you replace each instance of “spirit” in English with “breath”, in the vast majority of the time the sentence will make sense and will still be valid. But what would a Jew of this time have understood Jesus saying “he is beside me”? Belief in non-corporeal entities was not outside of Jewish belief; the messengers (angeloi) of God, or demons fell into this category. Would they have just written it off as metaphorical? My guess is no, since John’s life may have overlapped with that of Philo of Alexandria who was writing extensively that the HS should be understood metaphorically. This is pretty clear indication that, for the most part, the HS were not taken as metaphor by most Jews.

I don’t have an answer to this, but it seems important to mention it. Having the father beside him is a way to make sure he’s presenting the correct message. It’s Jesus appealing to authority.  But that what we all do. 

 Then we get to Verse 30, which I find a bit perplexing. Seriously, what has he said between Verses 21 and 30 to make anyone change their mind? Or, are we to assume that Jesus was having these discussions with “The Jews”, meaning the leaders and important figures while a crowd of onlookers looked on and listened? Upon further reflection, this is perhaps not a far-fetched notion; this is the Temple, after all, with a large courtyard (per my understanding) where all sorts of activities took place. Whatever the origin or genesis, I have the image of a sort of Hyde Park, where preachers of all sorts held forth and those passing would stop to listen to one or another, or to many or to all or to none. If this proposed scenario has any validity, then the final words of Verse 30 can make perfect sense. 

Much of this, I suppose, ties to the idea of how reliable John is as history. The bulk of what we have read of this gospel to date is different both in content and tone from the Synoptics. I hold to my belief that John wanted to write a summary that put the theological case for Jesus on solid ground. He was aiming for Truth, so looking for factual accuracy is rather beside the point. So far, Jesus is teaching who and what he is, and “The Jews” are acting accordingly. For the moment, let’s not go past that point. 

28 Dixit ergo eis Iesus: “Cum exaltaveritis Filium hominis, tunc cognoscetis quia ego sum et a meipso facio nihil, sed, sicut docuit me Pater, haec loquor.

29 Et qui me misit, mecum est; non reliquit me solum, quia ego, quae placita sunt ei, facio semper”.

30 Haec illo loquente, multi crediderunt in eum.