Summary John Chapter 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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