Category Archives: Chapter 1
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 μαρτυρία 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.
Summary Luke Chapter 1-Update
The very large bulk of this chapter is dedicated to the story of John the Baptist. Or, rather, it’s given over to his rather miraculous origins. As such, calling this the Chapter of John the Baptist is not much of a stretch. Yes, we also have the story of the Annunciation, which became a major event on the Catholic calendar, but that is really sort of shoe-horned in amongst the tale of John’s parents and his parentage. This attention to John should tell us a lot about what the early church thought about Jesus’ precursor.
There have been countless times when I have encountered protestations that the early church was embarrassed by the connexion of Jesus to the Baptist. This chapter should drive a stake through the heart of that idea; indeed, this chapter should have driven that stake centuries ago. Time and again I have pointed out that one does not expand the attention given to a character that is supposed to be an embarrassment. Mark introduces John; there, if one is not paying attention, one could consider John is decidedly a second-, or even third-tier character. He appears, we are told a bit about him, he baptises Jesus, he gets executed. But think about that; given that Mark is not a terribly long gospel, the amount of space given to John is not inconsequential. So, even in Mark, we have the sense that John is someone important. Worse, from the Christian standpoint, is that Jesus seeks out John, and the John is the one performing the ritual baptism on Jesus, putting the Jesus in a decidedly inferior position. This is the source of the embarrassment.
If we accept that early, or proto-Christians found this embarrassing, we should expect that Matthew would take steps to downplay, or even omit entirely, the episode of the baptism. On the contrary, Matthew increases John’s role by giving him dialogue. More, this dialogue is supposedly part of Q, which supposedly means this dialogue was deemed important enough to be included in what is suppose to be a collection of Jesus’ teachings. More, it was included in Christian lore from a very early time in the development of the belief system. So, on one hand, John was embarrassing, but his teaching was included in sayings of Jesus; the two of those don’t quite match, do they? This is, yet another, indication that Q is not to be taken seriously; the definition of what Q is supposed to be changes to fit the circumstances the Q people wish to explain. John’s “brood of vipers” speech is found in Matthew and (spoiler alert!) Luke, but not Mark. Ergo, by definition, it had to have been part of Q or the tidy package of Q’s contents begins to unravel a bit. If there is material in Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark, but it’s not part of Q, then that opens the door to questions about what else in Matthew and Luke but not Mark (M&LbnM) might not be part of Q? And if we start picking out such pieces, the raison d’être for Q starts to come apart.
So, if Q is eliminated–as it should have been a century ago–and yet Matthew gave John dialogue that was not in Mark, then we are faced with the situation where Matthew is focusing even more on a personage about whom he’s supposed to be embarrassed. But wait, there’s more. Luke then follows up with expanding John’s story even more. The result of this expansion is the bulk of this chapter. This enlargement of John’s character fits very nicely into the way that legends grow. A name is remembered–or invented–in the first layer of the story. As time passes, the name attracts stories. I keep going back to the Arthur legend, but it is such a good example of the process. First we get Launcelot. Then Guinevere (or the other way around). Then we get their adulterous affair. Then Launcelot has a bastard son. Then that bastard son is given a name, and eventually Galahad becomes one of the knights who find the Grail. And so on. So, in the early layer, we get John. Matthew kinda sorta gives John some lines, the sort of thing that he thinks John woulda shoulda coulda said. Then Luke comes along and gives John a lineage. And not only is John not swept under the rug, he’s made into a kinsman of Jesus! They are first cousins!
Really, though, what Luke has done is to complete the domestication of John. The embarrassment of John was that Jesus began by seeking him out for baptism, putting Jesus in the subordinate role; it wasn’t John per se. Matthew, rather half-heartedly, attempts to solve the problem by having John demur upon Jesus’ request for baptism, John saying that it is he who should be baptised by Jesus. Very nice, but not enough for Luke. The new interpretation that Luke provides is brilliant, because it both elevates John while subordinating him even further. For when Mary goes to visit, even in utero John recognises that he is in the presence of the divine lord. His mother states that she is truly blessed to be visited by the mother of her lord. Zacharias provides a prophesy that is sort of a greatest hits from the HS, a compilation of prophecies that could be applied to Jesus, but all of them emphasizing John’s role as the precursor and herald of the mightier Jesus. It is Jesus who is the one everyone has been waiting for. John has been sent to make straight Jesus’ path. All of this emphasizes and re-emphasizes that it is John, not Jesus, who plays the subordinate role.
Even so, Luke subordinates John while raising him to nearly divine heights himself. John’s conception is modeled after that of Isaac, and no one with even a cursory knowledge of Hebrew myth would–could–miss this. John is conceived by a barren woman who is past the age of child-bearing, just as Sarah was before Elisabeth. In other words, John was important enough to the cosmic scheme that God himself intervened in order to make sure that John is conceived. And beyond that, he sent a messenger to tell Zacharias, just as the angels came to visit Abram, and his descendant Joseph. All in all, this indicates that John has a most important role to play in the unfolding of the divine plan; the subtle genius of Luke is that, by making John so important, he double-underscores the even greater significance of Jesus. After all, if God went to all this trouble about John, and John is just the herald, then well boy howdy Jesus must really be important. So Luke’s tale provides a double-whammy, kills two birds with one stone, and all those other two-for-one clichés. This is quite an accomplishment.
When discussing the messenger, Gabriel, sent to Zacharias, we mentioned the parallel to Matthew. He, too, had an angel reveal to Joseph the identity and the provenance of the child in Mary’s womb. This messenger returns, this time with a name. This is the first time in the NT that an angel is named. Michael appeared in Daniel, which would be the first canonical naming of an angel. It is interesting to note that 1 Enoch mentions Gabriel and six others; the date of 1 Enoch is the source of much speculation; most often it seems like it’s put in either of the first centuries, whether before or during the Common Era. This makes it possible, or even likely, that Luke got the name from 1 Enoch, if not directly, then indirectly because this angelology was in circulation in the time that Luke was writing. Did Matthew not name his angel because he wasn’t aware of 1 Enoch, or that angels were being given names? That strikes me as a very interesting question, one that could have some bearing on the date of 1 Enoch, pushing it later, rather than earlier. The other aspect of this is where did Matthew and Luke write? If Matthew wrote in Antioch, and Luke wrote in Rome, how is it that Luke (seemingly) knew about Enoch but Matthew didn’t? The point of all of this is that, once again, Luke is expanding on a theme introduced by Matthew. He doesn’t repeat Matthew, but he takes the basic concept, uses it, and enlarges the story.
Along with that, of course, is the idea of the virgin birth. As mentioned, this theme is found only in Matthew and Luke. It wasn’t part of the overall tradition, because it doesn’t show up anywhere else. Nor is it considered part of Q, largely because there is no single point of contact between the two gospels. And yet, there it is, along with the messenger of God and (spoiler alert!) Bethlehem. But we’ll get to that shortly.
It would be remiss not to say something about the Annunciation. Except I have no idea what to say about it. It’s another way that Luke expands on Matthew, although the announcement comes to Mary, and not to Joseph. This may be significant. But enough for now. On to Chapter Two.
Update: A possible explanation for the Annunciation has just occurred to me. Recall that, in Matthew, Joseph was not aware of the conception of Jesus by the sacred breath. The messenger had to come and tell Joseph so that he wouldn’t divorce Mary for carrying the child of another man. This way, that bit of awkwardness is eliminated; we all know going in that Jesus was of divine origin, and so Joseph has no need to contemplate divorce.
Luke Chapter 1:67-80
This is the end of Chapter One. The whole of this section is given over to the prophecy uttered by Zacharias about his son, and the state of the cosmos as a whole. It’s not a section I’m terribly familiar with, but having been raised in the Roman Rite, reading the Bible was not emphasized, and there are chunks of it with which I’m not familiar. With the NT, these are relegated mostly to some of the lesser epistles-James, Peter, Jude & such–and odd corners of the gospels, like this one.
The sections are going fairly quickly. I attribute this to the high level of “literary” content; since there is so much material devoted to the setting the scene, and since the scenes themselves are quite long and are woven tightly into a cohesive unit, there is a great deal of supporting detail that doesn’t really need to be broken out. This section is a good example: it’s the prophecy of Zacharias, all of it following a single theme. As a result, there are not a lot of different aspects requiring comment.
67 Καὶ Ζαχαρίας ὁ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ ἐπλήσθη πνεύματος ἁγίου καὶ ἐπροφήτευσεν λέγων,
68 Εὐλογητὸς κύριος ὁ θεὸς τοῦ Ἰσραήλ, ὅτι ἐπεσκέψατο καὶ ἐποίησεν λύτρωσιν τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ,
And Zacharias the father of him was filled with sacred breath and he prophesied, saying
“Blessed is the lord the God of Israel, that visited and made ransom for his people…”
Have to break in here for a moment. First of all, there are about three words in here that are forms, if not unique, then are very narrowly used by NT authors, Luke being the primary example. Greek is a fluid language that allows for creation and manipulation of the forms of verbs, in particular.
But the real point here is the “ransom”. To begin with, this is one of the variant forms, appearing twice in the NT, once in the LXX, and once by Plutarch, which gives the word validity. Interestingly enough, Plutarch was more or less contemporary with Luke, so the use by the two authors perhaps indicates a) that the word was in general circulation in the late First Century; and b) that perhaps Luke had a literary background and pretensions. The standard form of the word is “lutron”, and is used as such by both Mark and Matthew–and no one else in the NT.
But to the real point is the theology of the word. We are so accustomed to the terms “redemption” and “redeemer”–or “Redeemer” that the underlying concept is a bit lost. It’s the idea of ransom; in the ancient and Mediaeval world, the capture of an enemy of means meant holding him for ransom, a payment of cash, the more noble the captive, the higher the net worth. Hence the term “king’s ransom”. In modern terms, it’s usually the price paid to kidnappers for the release of the victim, but the idea is the same. It also means to redeem a pledge with a pawnbroker; that is, to pay off the fee to get something back from a pawnbroker. In the ancient world it was used as the term for the price paid to free a slave. In all these cases, the underlying concept is the same: a cash payment in exchange for the release of someone or something. So I want to bring that meaning to the forefront instead of using ‘redeemer’, a word so specialized that we don’t even think of it. How many “Holy Redeemer” schools or churches have you encountered in your lifetime? So it’s a case of giving the reader a bit of a jolt by using a non-standard word in translation. We need these jolts; otherwise we get complacent in our “understanding” of the Bible.
But to the theology. The idea of ransom requires that we ask the question: To whom was the ransom paid?” This creates all sorts of sticky theological wickets. Why does a Triple-O God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) have to pay anything to anyone? God has to pay off the devil? Or the Devil? Or Satan? That implies that God has to cut a deal and give the devil some tangible benefit so that the devil does something in return. Which means God is not omnipotent, which doesn’t square with the Greek philosophy definition of God; but it does fit very nicely with a polytheistic view of things in which the gods have powers over each other. Zeus, for example, could not simply intervene in the dispute of Demeter/Ceres and Hades/Pluto over the fate of the former’s daughter Persephone, and compel Hades to let her go. There were rules that bound even Zeus, so a ransom was paid for the release of Persephone for at least part of the year. A God of Israel, who is one tribal god among many, could find himself in a situation where he would have to pay ransom to another, equal god, for the release of the former’s people from some sort of bondage, or predicament. This is just a great insight as to how the idea of God for the writer’s of the NT was markedly different from God as conceived by later Mediaeval theologians who filtered their ideas through the lens of Greek philosophy. The two ideas are not the same.
Finally, as a bit of a side note, let’s not overlook that Zacharias was filled with sacred breath. God, IOW, breathed into Zacharias, a concept perfectly captured by the word “inspire”, which has that exact literal meaning. Not everyone gets filled with this; it’s a rare mark of God’s favour. That God chose Zacharias for such an honour is another red flag to the audience that this is a big deal. And I’ve been holding back on this for most of the chapter, but it needs to be mentioned here, even if we go into it in more detail a bit later. This is a great example of how foolish and how ridiculous it is to claim that the early church, or the prot0-church was embarrassed by Jesus’ connexion to the Baptist. They have it exactly backwards. The early communities, or the communities that came a bit later did everything in their power to expand the role of the Baptist in Jesus’ life. In each gospel, John has become ever-more important to the story. Mark mentions him; Matthew gives him dialogue; Luke gives him a genealogy. But more on this later.
67 Et Zacharias pater eius impletus est Spiritu Sancto et prophetavit dicens:
68 “Benedictus Dominus, Deus Israel, / quia visitavit et fecit redemptionem plebi suae
69 καὶ ἤγειρεν κέρας σωτηρίας ἡμῖν ἐν οἴκῳ Δαυὶδ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ,
70 καθὼς ἐλάλησεν διὰ στόματος τῶν ἁγίων ἀπ’ αἰῶνος προφητῶν αὐτοῦ,
71 σωτηρίαν ἐξ ἐχθρῶν ἡμῶν καὶ ἐκ χειρὸς πάντων τῶν μισούντων ἡμᾶς:
72 ποιῆσαι ἔλεος μετὰ τῶν πατέρων ἡμῶν καὶ μνησθῆναι διαθήκης ἁγίας αὐτοῦ,
73 ὅρκον ὃν ὤμοσεν πρὸς Ἀβραὰμ τὸν πατέρα ἡμῶν, τοῦ δοῦναι ἡμῖν
74 ἀφόβως ἐκ χειρὸς ἐχθρῶν ῥυσθέντας λατρεύειν αὐτῷ
75 ἐν ὁσιότητι καὶ δικαιοσύνῃ ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ πάσαις ταῖς ἡμέραις ἡμῶν.
“And he has raised a horn of salvation for us in the house of David, his child, (70) accordingly he has spoken through the mouths of his holy prophets forever, (71) salvation from our enemies and the hand of all hating us. (72) To have made mercy with our fathers, and to be remembered by his holy covenant (73) the oath (subject of the sentence) he swore to Abraham our father, that given to us (74) fearlessly from the hand of enemies having delivered to serve him (75) in holiness and justification before him for all of our days.
FYI, this speech is composed of a number of quotes from a number of books from the HS; there is Genesis, Numbers, Psalms, Malachi and others. By this point someone has been scouring the HS for all the possible places where the HS could possibly have been contorted into being relevant to the arrival of the Messiah, the Redeemer, the Savior. The reference to Abraham is particularly apt here, since Zacharias is, in a sense, a second Abraham, one whom God favoured by giving him a son in his old age, to a wife who was past normal child-bearing years. With all this OT context in mind, note the way “salvation” is used. It’s very literal, referring to one’s physical life on earth. There are no implications of a salvation in the afterlife here, nor should we expect that. One of the really interesting things I’ve seen is how these concepts from the HS are sort of changed via sleight of hand into a slightly different meaning. One that’s the same, but different. We saw this with “redeemer”, and it’s especially evident here with saviour. Another example is “psyche”; while that is not a term nor a concept from the HS, it gradually comes to have a specific meaning that was not necessarily the primary use of the word.
76 Καὶ σὺ δέ, παιδίον, προφήτης ὑψίστου κληθήσῃ, προπορεύσῃ γὰρ ἐνώπιον κυρίου ἑτοιμάσαι ὁδοὺς αὐτοῦ,
77 τοῦ δοῦναι γνῶσιν σωτηρίας τῷ λαῷ αὐτοῦ ἐν ἀφέσει ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν,
78 διὰ σπλάγχνα ἐλέους θεοῦ ἡμῶν, ἐν οἷς ἐπισκέψεται ἡμᾶς ἀνατολὴ ἐξ ὕψους,
79 ἐπιφᾶναι τοῖς ἐν σκότει καὶ σκιᾷ θανάτου καθημένοις, τοῦ κατευθῦναι τοὺς πόδας ἡμῶν εἰς ὁδὸν εἰρήνης.
80 Τὸ δὲ παιδίον ηὔξανεν καὶ ἐκραταιοῦτο πνεύματι, καὶ ἦν ἐν ταῖς ἐρήμοις ἕως ἡμέρας ἀναδείξεως αὐτοῦ πρὸς τὸν Ἰσραήλ.
“And you, child, will be called prophet of the most high, for you will go forward before the lord to prepare his road, (77) the having given knowledge of the salvation of his people in remittance of our sins, (78) through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which will visit us the east (= dawn) from on high, appearing to them sitting in the darkness and shadow of death, of the directing our steps to the road of peace. (80) The child will grow and be strong in the spirit, and the one in the desert until the days showing him to Israel”.
Yes, that says “bowels”. Apparently in Hebrew thought, the bowels were the seat of the tender emotions. That’s what I read, anyway, and I can neither confirm nor deny this. Other than that, this entire prophecy is really just directed to make us understand the divine mission and the divine purpose of John. By building up John like this, who was “merely” the herald of Jesus, Luke is building up Jesus.
See, here’s the thing. Building up Jesus was begun by Matthew. Here, Luke not only follows suit, but he takes it to the next level. Just as Matthew sought to elevate the Jesus described in Mark, so Luke wants to elevate even more the Jesus described by Matthew. And the kicker is that the stuff of Q is not at all about Jesus as divine. Quite the contrary, in fact. So where did Luke get this idea of raising up Jesus? To be fair, we could–and should–ask exactly the same question about Matthew: where did he get it? We can’t answer either one. The Q people would simply say that this all came from the ubiquitous oral tradition, thereby making the question unanswerable. Actually, that’s not accurate. Citing the oral tradition allows one to answer the question howsoever one wishes it to be answered. Whatever answer we provide cannot be authenticated against the oral tradition, so who can say that our answer is wrong? No one. But let’s talk probabilities. Is it more likely, or less, that Luke would have chosen this path of elevating Jesus by elevating the Baptist if he knew that Matthew had already started down that road? I would think it more likely. So again, not even close to smoking gun, but a bump in that direction. We have to count up these little bumps and see where we are at the end.
69 et erexit cornu salutis nobis / in domo David pueri sui,
70 sicut locutus est per os sanctorum, / qui a saeculo sunt, prophetarum eius,
71 salutem ex inimicis nostris / et de manu omnium, qui oderunt nos;
72 ad faciendam misericordiam cum patribus nostris / et memorari testamenti sui sancti,
73 iusiurandum, quod iuravit ad Abraham patrem nostrum, / daturum se nobis,
74 ut sine timore, de manu inimicorum liberati, / serviamus illi
75 in sanctitate et iustitia coram ipso / omnibus diebus nostris.
76 Et tu, puer, propheta Altissimi vocaberis: / praeibis enim ante faciem Domini parare vias eius,
77 ad dandam scientiam salutis plebi eius / in remissionem peccatorum eorum,
78 per viscera misericordiae Dei nostri, / in quibus visitabit nos oriens ex alto,
79 illuminare his, qui in tenebris et in umbra mortis sedent, / ad dirigendos pedes nostros in viam pacis”.
80 Puer autem crescebat et confortabatur spiritu et erat in deserto usque in diem ostensionis suae ad Israel.
Luke Chapter 1:57-66
Several times I went back and forth on whether to include the last 13 Verses here, or to make that a separate post. I chose the latter, since two shorter posts are probably better than a single post that is too long.
To set the scene, Mary has just left the home of Elisabeth and Zacharias. Mary went there after being told she would conceive by the sacred breath; apparently that happened prior to the trip, because the baby in Elisabeth’s womb–the future Baptist–leapt inside Elisabeth at Mary’s greeting.
57 Τῇ δὲ Ἐλισάβετ ἐπλήσθη ὁ χρόνος τοῦ τεκεῖν αὐτήν, καὶ ἐγέννησεν υἱόν.
58 καὶ ἤκουσαν οἱ περίοικοι καὶ οἱ συγγενεῖς αὐτῆς ὅτι ἐμεγάλυνεν κύριος τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ μετ’ αὐτῆς, καὶ συνέχαιρον αὐτῇ.
59 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ὀγδόῃ ἦλθον περιτεμεῖν τὸ παιδίον, καὶ ἐκάλουν αὐτὸ ἐπὶ τῷ ὀνόματι τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ Ζαχαρίαν.
60 καὶ ἀποκριθεῖσα ἡ μήτηρ αὐτοῦ εἶπεν, Οὐχί, ἀλλὰ κληθήσεται Ἰωάννης.
61 καὶ εἶπαν πρὸς αὐτὴν ὅτι Οὐδείς ἐστιν ἐκ τῆς συγγενείας σου ὃς καλεῖται τῷ ὀνόματι τούτῳ.
62 ἐνένευον δὲ τῷ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ τὸ τί ἂν θέλοι καλεῖσθαι αὐτό.
To Elisabeth came the time of her giving birth, and she gave birth to a son. (58) And those living about her and her relatives heard that the lord increas(ed)ing his mercy and co-rejoiced with her. (59) And it became on the eighth day to they went to circumcise the boy, and they had called him after the name of his father, Zacharias. (60) And having answered, his mother said, “No, rather call him John.” (61) And the said towards her that “No one from your relatives is so called by that name.” (62) And they made signs to father made signs what he might wish him to be called.
Let’s stop there. We have a nearly unique event in front of us. “What he might wish” is one of two or three occurrences of this particular verb tense in the entire NT. (I don’t remember exactly how many instances of this tense there are exactly, but it’s not more than three. I believe the actual number is two, but don’t quote me on that.) This tense is the optative. This is not a form found in any of the other Ind0-European languages I’ve studied, but there are numerous ones I haven’t. Essentially, this is an historical subjunctive, so it has the subjunctive element of uncertainty or doubt or unreality, but occurring in the past. This is, to our minds perhaps, a bit odd that there might be uncertainty in the past, and I suspect that this is part of the reason the tense disappeared. I’ve been reading Xenophon’s Anabasis in a fairly desultory fashion, and I can tell you that the optative is a very common occurrence, and Xenophon is not considered one of the more literary of authors. It would seem that perhaps the tense was on its way out by the time the NT was written, 300-400 years after the Anabasis, and perhaps it was especially on the way out among less-than-erudite authors. Although Luke’s Greek seems rather more upscale than even Matthew’s Greek.
Latin does not have an optative tense, nor anything really quite like it. One thing about languages is that, the earlier in its development that it becomes written, and especially a literary language, the more old-fashioned aspects it preserves. The peculiarities of English spelling vs pronunciation have a lot to do with the fact that English has been written continuously for about 600 years–I’m going back approximately to Chaucer. As such, a lot of archaic spellings are trapped in amber, as it were, because the writing has preserved the spelling of the way the word was pronounced back then. “Knight” is a great example. If you hear a version of the Canterbury Tales, you will note that the initial “k” and the interior “gh” are actually pronounced. So too, I think, with the optative. Greek became a written language about 700 years before Jesus, and it became a literary language almost immediately. Now, there are a lot of forms in Homer that were dropped in mainstream Greek long before Herodotus began making inquiries; the Great Scott is full of notes about Homeric forms of the word being defined. Really, though, this is no different from the forms we find in Chaucer, except that Homeric Greek is more comprehensible to a reader of Classical Greek than Chaucer is to a contemporary reader.
As for the content, how many of you remember (or ever knew) that New Year’s Day was once upon a time a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Church? For that matter, it may still be. This means (or meant) that a Catholic is obligated to go to mass or face the pains of Hell for committing a mortal sin. NY Day is eight days after Christmas, or rather, the eighth day, and this is when Jesus was taken to be presented in the Temple and to be circumcised and named. As such, it was known, at one time, as the Feast of the Circumcision. Having worked in life insurance, one cannot insure a child that is less than two weeks old. This is because the mortality rate in these first two weeks is significantly higher than after. So the eight-day interlude was sort of a wait-and-see period, to see if the child would survive. If he did, the boy was taken to the Temple to be circumcised, named, and accepted into the religion and the community. The parallel with infant baptism among most Christian groups are real and deliberate. The Catholics are among the earliest to baptise their children; this is likely a holdover from the days of high infant/child mortality. The idea was to have the child baptised ASAP so that the child would go to heaven should he or she die. Tough world back then.
The other thing to note is that the Temple authorities were going to name the boy after his father. This is different from contemporary practice, among some Jews anyway, where a child is not named after anyone who is alive. I have no idea of the genesis or the timing of this change, but I experienced it as a living practice within a contemporary Jewish community. Even more interesting is that when Elisabeth says that his name is to be John, the authorities push back and are not willing to take her word on the matter, so they immediately turn to Zacharias, since he is the patriarch of the family.
57 Elisabeth autem impletum est tempus pariendi, et peperit filium.
58 Et audierunt vicini et cognati eius quia magnificavit Dominus misericordiam suam cum illa, et congratulabantur ei.
59 Et factum est, in die octavo venerunt circumcidere puerum et vocabant eum nomine patris eius, Zachariam.
60 Et respondens mater eius dixit: “ Nequaquam, sed vocabitur Ioannes ”.
61 Et dixerunt ad illam: “ Nemo est in cognatione tua, qui vocetur hoc nomine ”.
62 Innuebant autem patri eius quem vellet vocari eum.
63 καὶ αἰτήσας πινακίδιον ἔγραψεν λέγων, Ἰωάννης ἐστὶν ὄνομα αὐτοῦ. καὶ ἐθαύμασαν πάντες.
64 ἀνεῴχθη δὲ τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ παραχρῆμα καὶ ἡ γλῶσσα αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐλάλει εὐλογῶν τὸν θεόν.
65 καὶ ἐγένετο ἐπὶ πάντας φόβος τοὺς περιοικοῦντας αὐτούς, καὶ ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ ὀρεινῇ τῆς Ἰουδαίας διελαλεῖτο πάντα τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα,
66 καὶ ἔθεντο πάντες οἱ ἀκούσαντες ἐν τῇ καρδίᾳ αὐτῶν, λέγοντες, Τί ἄρα τὸ παιδίον τοῦτο ἔσται; καὶ γὰρ χεὶρ κυρίου ἦν μετ’ αὐτοῦ.
And asking for a writing tablet he wrote, saying, “John is his name.” And they all marveled. (64) And opened was his mouth and immediately and also his tongue, and he spoke, praising God. (65) And there was a fear among all his neighbors, and in the whole hill-country of Judea, they all spoke his words, and all hearing put in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be? And for the hand of God is with him.”
There will be much more to say about this. First, the idea that the boy was names something no one expected, and that this caused some consternation in and of itself is a good indication of how conservative and tradition-bound this community was. Or, at least, Luke wants to portray them this way, and wants us to believe it was so. Here is a very clear indication, I think, that Luke was unquestionably writing for a pagan audience. As argued, I believe Matthew was as well, and I believe Mark was, too, to a much greater extent than is generally recognised, or certainly more than is generally acknowledged. Second, we have the miracle of the restoration of Zacharias’ speech. This set tongues wagging (pun intended. But, does anyone use that expression any more? Or does it only exist in Penguin translations from a generation or two ago?). But people saw this as more than a ma temporarily made mute regaining his speech. This was divine intervention: it was God who made him mute and it was God who loosened his tongue again. Keep this in mind, that this was viewed as a miracle. It demonstrates very clearly that Luke was aware of Matthew’s version of the nativity, and that Luke was going to take that an expand upon it. Because not only do we have two miraculous births, but we have two miraculous births announced by angels who command, in exactly the same words, one of the parents on what to name the boy that has been (Matthew) or will be (Luke) conceived. Matthew used this to set up the divine nature of Jesus, the nature that was there from even before Jesus was born; Luke takes that back a step further and tells us that, not only Jesus, but his herald John was the result of a divine intervention. And, I would argue, Luke wrote all of this about John on the assumption that the person hearing this version of the nativity would be aware of what Matthew had already written. There is a tacit acknowledgement of Matthew’s story here.
We can, and will, discuss this more in the next section, and in the summary to the chapter.
63 Et postulans pugillarem scripsit dicens: “ Ioannes est nomen eius ”. Et mirati sunt universi.
64 Apertum est autem ilico os eius et lingua eius, et loquebatur benedicens Deum.
65 Et factus est timor super omnes vicinos eorum, et super omnia montana Iudaeae divulgabantur omnia verba haec.
66 Et posuerunt omnes, qui audierant, in corde suo dicentes: “ Quid putas puer iste erit? ”. Etenim manus Domini erat cum illo.
Luke Chapter 1:38-56
The messenger of the lord has just left Mary, and now we get a change of scene.
39 Ἀναστᾶσα δὲ Μαριὰμἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ταύταις ἐπορεύθη εἰς τὴν ὀρεινὴν μετὰ σπουδῆς εἰς πόλιν Ἰούδα,
40 καὶ εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον Ζαχαρίου καὶ ἠσπάσατο τὴν Ἐλισάβετ.
41 καὶ ἐγένετο ὡς ἤκουσεν τὸν ἀσπασμὸν τῆς Μαρίας ἡ Ἐλισάβετ, ἐσκίρτησεν τὸ βρέφος ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ αὐτῆς, καὶ ἐπλήσθη πνεύματος ἁγίου ἡ Ἐλισάβετ,
Having stood up, Mariam in those days traveled to the hilly (part, hill country) with haste to the city of Judah, (40) and went to the home of Zacharias and greeted Elisabeth. (41) And it happened (that) Elisabeth hearing the greeting of Mary, the foetus in her womb leapt, and Elisabeth was filled with the sacred breath.
There is a bit of a weird juxtaposition here. On the one hand, we get the immediacy of “having stood up”, as in directly after the angel left; but this is contrasted with “in those days”, which can mean straight away, but it certainly doesn’t have to, and generally implies a sort of vagueness about exactly when, just as the English phrase does.
As a technical note, I don’t know if there was a “city of Judah”. Judah is the another form of Judea, so I think that the literal translation is probably too literal. I will note, however, that it was translated as-is, that means literally, into the Vulgate, which also renders this as “city of Judah”. I don’t think this really matters; Luke is not giving us a geography lesson, nor is he writing a travelogue. His point is that Mary went to see Elisabeth, and that Elisabeth lived in Judea, Which is interesting in a way, since this is the first connexion of the Jesus story to a site that is not Bethlehem, but is outside Galilee. Perhaps we are to assume from this that Mary’s people came from Judea? Because we are specifically told that she was visited by the messenger of the lord in Nazareth, in Galilee.
Now, you have heard me argue that Jesus was from Caphernaum. I still believe this. However, Matthew fixed the hometown of Jesus as Nazareth. And I believe it was Matthew who did this, and not Mark. Mark mentions the name of Nazareth exactly once, in 1:9 when he introduces Jesus, saying that he comes from Nazareth. That’s it. And that could very, very easily be a later interpolation. In Chapter 3, when Jesus’ family comes to “rescue” him from the hostile crowd of Pharisees, we are not told the name of the home town, and we discussed that it would have been impossible for word to travel from Caphaernaum, where the story is set, to Nazareth, and for the family to travel from Nazareth back to Caphernaum in anything much less than about a day, not in the time the story indicates. Which leads me to believe that his family lived in Caphernaum. Mark told us that Jesus moved to Caphernaum, but we are not told he moved with his mother and brothers and sisters. Perhaps we are to assume that, but in Chapter 6, when Jesus returned to his unnamed home town as a prophet withouth honour, those who knew Jesus as a child pointed to Jesus’ siblings, making it very much sound like they were present in the home town. This conflicts with the previous story, but that’s kind of the point. When Mark wrote, Jesus had no fixed address, just as he had no father. Matthew had to correct both of these, Luke followed, and the “from Nazareth” was interpolated into the text of Mark.
Which takes us to my real point here. Once again, we have Luke agreeing with Matthew in a situation that is not represented anywhere else in the tradition. Matthew mentions Nazareth twice, both in Chapter 2 which contains the birth narrative, and then once later to situate Jesus as “from Nazareth”. Luke/Acts mentions Jesus six times, twice as many as Matthew, but half of those are in Chapter 2, which contains the birth and early life of Jesus. John mentions Nazareth twice. And that’s it. Nothing else in the entire NT. So, much like the virgin birth, the home town is basically found only in Matthew and Luke, and almost exclusively in the context of Jesus’ early life, and then it more or less disappears from the narrative. Nor does Nazareth appear in any of the Q material, although, by rights, the virgin should be considered Q material, since it only occurs in Matthew and Luke. So once again, I think this presents fairly solid evidence that Luke was very well aware of Matthew, and that he followed Matthew. BUT: Luke rewrote Matthew very thoroughly, so thoroughly that scholars don’t recognize that what Luke is telling us is actually an expanded version of Matthew’s story. That is, it’s the same story with a whole lot of more details and episodes and anecdotes thrown in to flesh it all out, to make it read more like a story, or perhaps–dare I say it?–more like a novel. We are getting Zacharias and Elisabeth just as Arthur got Sir Palomides and Nyneve; minor characters who play a role and disappear, at least for long stretches of time.
39 Exsurgens autem Maria in diebus illis abiit in montana cum festinatione in civitatem Iudae
40 et intravit in domum Zachariae et salutavit Elisabeth.
41 Et factum est, ut audivit salutationem Mariae Elisabeth, exsultavit infans in utero eius, et repleta est Spiritu Sancto Elisabeth
42 καὶ ἀνεφώνησεν κραυγῇ μεγάλῃ καὶ εἶπεν, Εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας σου.
43 καὶ πόθεν μοι τοῦτο ἵνα ἔλθῃ ἡ μήτηρ τοῦ κυρίου μου πρὸς ἐμέ;
44 ἰδοὺ γὰρ ὡς ἐγένετο ἡ φωνὴ τοῦ ἀσπασμοῦ σου εἰς τὰ ὦτά μου, ἐσκίρτησεν ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει τὸ βρέφος ἐν τῇ κοιλίᾳ μου.
45 καὶ μακαρία ἡ πιστεύσασα ὅτι ἔσται τελείωσις τοῖς λελαλημένοις αὐτῇ παρὰ κυρίου.
And (Elisabeth) sounded out, in a great cry and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And wherefore to me this in order that came the mother of my lord to me? For behold, how it happened the voice of your greeting to my ears (came), the foetus in my womb leapt in exultation. And happy her having believed that the culmination will come by those things spoken to her from the lord”.
[ A bit rough here; first, this speech of Elisabeth follows directly upon the previous verse; there is a comma between, and not a full stop; however, to discuss the text it seemed better to break these verses apart. ]
About the vocabulary. In Verse 42, the word Elisabeth uses that I have rendered as “blessed” is ‘eulogia’. Strictly speaking, this means “well-spoken of”, or even just “good speech”. It’s the root of “eulogy”, the part of the funeral in which we speak well of the deceased. In the LXX and NT, it comes to be associated with “blessed”–whether one or two syllables–and I can support that. Then, the word in Verse 45 that I translated as “happy” is ‘makaria’. This is the word at the beginning of all of those Beatitudes: “Makaria hoi ptochoi…” And that gets translated as “blessed”, usually the two syllable form. There is some overlap in the words, but the base meaning of neither word is anything close to our conception of “blessed”. That has not stopped any number of translation from rendering both of these as “blessed”; I did not do so just to be a crank. Er, to show that there is a different word behind each of these.
Finally, there is the idea of culmination. That is a connexion to Matthew, but not one exclusively to Matthew.
42 et exclamavit voce magna et dixit: “Benedicta tu inter mulieres, et benedictus fructus ventris tui.
43 Et unde hoc mihi, ut veniat mater Domini mei ad me?
44 Ecce enim ut facta est vox salutationis tuae in auribus meis, exsultavit in gaudio infans in utero meo.
45 Et beata, quae credidit, quoniam perficientur ea, quae dicta sunt ei a Domino”.
46 Καὶ εἶπεν Μαριάμ, Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν κύριον,
47 καὶ ἠγαλλίασεν τὸ πνεῦμά μου ἐπὶ τῷ θεῷ τῷ σωτῆρί μου,
48 ὅτι ἐπέβλεψεν ἐπὶ τὴν ταπείνωσιν τῆς δούλης αὐτοῦ. ἰδοὺ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσίν με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί:
49 ὅτι ἐποίησέν μοι μεγάλα ὁ δυνατός, καὶ ἅγιον τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ,
50 καὶ τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ εἰς γενεὰς καὶ γενεὰς τοῖς φοβουμένοις αὐτόν.
51 Ἐποίησεν κράτος ἐν βραχίονι αὐτοῦ, διεσκόρπισεν ὑπερηφάνους διανοίᾳ καρδίας αὐτῶν:
52 καθεῖλεν δυνάστας ἀπὸ θρόνων καὶ ὕψωσεν ταπεινούς,
53 πεινῶντας ἐνέπλησεν ἀγαθῶν καὶ πλουτοῦντας ἐξαπέστειλεν κενούς.
54 ἀντελάβετο Ἰσραὴλ παιδὸς αὐτοῦ, μνησθῆναι ἐλέους,
55 καθὼς ἐλάλησεν πρὸς τοὺς πατέρας ἡμῶν, τῷ Ἀβραὰμ καὶ τῷ σπέρματι αὐτοῦ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.
56 Ἔμεινεν δὲ Μαριὰμ σὺν αὐτῇ ὡς μῆνας τρεῖς, καὶ ὑπέστρεψεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτῆς.
And Mary said, “Makes great my soul the lord, (47) and rejoices my spirit upon God my saviour, (48) that looks upon the lowliness of his female slave. For behold, from him now will make happy me all his children. (49) that his power has made me great, and (made) holy my name, (50) and his mercy to generation after generation for those fearing him. (51) His strength made in his arm, scattered the proud in (the) thought of their hearts. (52) He brought low the powerful from their thrones and raised the lowly, (53) those hungering are filled of good things and the wealthy he sends empty. (54) He has taken up his child Israel, mindful of mercy, (55) accordingly he has spoken to our fathers, to Abraham and his progeny to eternity.”
(56) Mariam remained with her (Elisabeth) for three months, and returned to her own dwelling.
This, of course, is the Magnificat. If you take a peek down below at the Latin, you will see the first word on the second line is “Magnificat”, whence the title of the prayer. My kids sing in the church choir, and I have heard this sung as a hymn many, many times. It’s beautiful. Both in Greek and in Latin, the first word is a verb: “makes great”, the subject of which is “my soul”. But the verb comes first in that wonderful flexibility of a case language.
This translation is really awful from a poetic sense. Here, I am just being a crank because this deserves a less literal and a more poetic translation. The versions I’ve heard sung, mostly English, but once or twice in Latin, sound ever so much better than what I’ve put down. But then, creating poetry is not the goal here.
46 Et ait Maria:
“Magnificat anima mea Dominum, /47 et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo, / 48 quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae.
Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent omnes generationes, / 49 quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est, et sanctum nomen eius,
50 et misericordia eius in progenies et progenies / timentibus eum.
51 Fecit potentiam in brachio suo, / dispersit superbos mente cordis sui; /
52 deposuit potentes de sede / et exaltavit humiles; / 53 esurientes implevit bonis / et divites dimisit inanes.
54 Suscepit Israel puerum suum, / recordatus misericordiae, / 55 sicut locutus est ad patres nostros,
Abraham et semini eius in saecula ”.
56 Mansit autem Maria cum illa quasi mensibus tribus et reversa est in domum suam.
Luke Chapter 1:24-38
This chapter is very long; it runs to some 80 verses. However, the sections seem to be going fairly quickly. This is largely because the narrative is broken into story-segments, in which the whole is more significant than the pieces, at least to some degree, and to this point. We are still in the story of Zacharias, the father of the Baptist. He has emerged from the Temple sanctuary mute after having a conversation with a messenger of God.
24 Μετὰ δὲ ταύτας τὰς ἡμέρας συνέλαβεν Ἐλισάβετ ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ: καὶ περιέκρυβεν ἑαυτὴν μῆνας πέντε, λέγουσα
25 ὅτι Οὕτως μοι πεποίηκεν κύριος ἐν ἡμέραις αἷς ἐπεῖδεν ἀφελεῖν ὄνειδός μου ἐν ἀνθρώποις.
After these days, Elisabeth his wife conceived; and she confined herself for five months, saying that “In this way the lord has done with me, in days which he saw (as in, saw fit) to take away my reproach (the reproach directed at her) among men.
Now we have switched to Elisabeth. I don’t recall offhand whether Zacharias makes another appearance or not; regardless, both of the parents of the Baptist disappear completely after these opening verses. They simply vanish with nary another thought. That’s just the way it is. The question, I think, is not where they go, but where did they come from? This stuff is, by definition, L material, stories that Luke got from a mysterious source unknown to the other evangelists, and either not known or not used by John. This takes us back to the very beginning of this gospel and those “servants” that he mentioned. Honestly, though, isn’t the most likely answer that Luke made this up, along with all the other new additions to the story of Jesus? It is, quite frankly. And the fact that there are so many of them adds weight to the suggestion, since the collection indicates that we are dealing with a creative mind working at a high level.
24 Post hos autem dies concepit Elisabeth uxor eius et occultabat se mensibus quinque dicens:
25 “Sic mihi fecit Dominus in diebus, quibus respexit auferre opprobrium meum inter homines”.
26 Ἐν δὲ τῷ μηνὶ τῷ ἕκτῳ ἀπεστάλη ὁ ἄγγελος Γαβριὴλ ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰς πόλιν τῆς Γαλιλαίας ἧ ὄνομα Ναζαρὲθ
27 πρὸς παρθένον ἐμνηστευμένην ἀνδρὶ ᾧ ὄνομαἸωσὴφ ἐξ οἴκου Δαυίδ, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα τῆς παρθένου Μαριάμ.
In the sixth month, the messenger Gabriel was sent by God to the town of Galilee the name (of which) was Nazareth (27) to the virgin betrothed to a man the name to whom was Joseph, from the house of David, and the name of the virgin was Mariam.
Bear in mind that the Jewish new year starts in September, at the time of the equinox, IIRC. In which case, the sixth month is March. In the Roman Church the Feast of the Annunciation is celebrated March 25, which happens to be exactly nine months before December 25. Now, this is interesting because I’ve read that the whole bit about the shepherds being out with their flocks indicates a time of year other than the winter. But let’s give the text points for consistency. Let’s not speculate when the phrase “in the sixth month” was actually added to the text. Could it have been inserted after the date for Christmas was settled on December 25? Yes, that is entirely possible.
Now I count three. Three what? We’ve got Nazareth, Joseph, and, most importantly, the virgin. That Jesus was from Nazareth occurs exactly once in Mark, in 1:9. It occurs several times in both Matthew and Luke. Since Mark was altogether unconcerned with Jesus’ background, or the physical aspects of his earthly life, it is very easy to suppose that the use in Mark was added after it had become established lore that Jesus was from Nazareth. So, if this was not in Q–and it can’t be, since it’s in Mark, too, if only added later–then where did Luke get this “fact” about Jesus? And let’s not forget that Matthew came up with the name of the home town in order to add the prophecy that “he will be called a Nazarene”. The internal evidence of the text, as I’ve argued, indicates that Jesus came from Caphernaum.
And, BTW, John only mentions Nazareth twice, both times coming in the same story in Chapter 1.
Secondly, we have Joseph. Once again, this “fact” is not found in any text of Q. Again, it’s i Matthew. Again, we know one definite source for both of these two facts; the simplest explanation is that Luke got them from Matthew. Yes, could be part of the oral tradition. but we don’t know, and can’t know that. We do know our earliest recorded source. I am positively flabbergasted that these two things never come up in discussions about Q. Why not? I can understand why the Q people wouldn’t want to go there, but what about the Mark Without Q proponents? Is their sense of historical evidence and/or argument so badly stunted that this never occurs to them? Part of the problem is that the Q people have been so successful in entrenching Q in the “scholarship” that they have been able completely to set the parameters and the
26 In mense autem sexto missus est angelus Gabriel a Deo in civitatem Galilaeae, cui nomen Nazareth,
27 ad virginem desponsatam viro, cui nomen erat Ioseph de domo David, et nomen virginis Maria.
acceptable in the debate.
In my opinion, the clincher is the virgin. This is based on the quote from Isaiah, translated into Greek. Now, reading the HS in the LXX was not uncommon; IIRC, Philo of Alexandria read the LXX rather than the Hebrew version. But where and when did that quote from Isaiah become associated with Jesus? In Matthew. There is no mention of the birth, let alone a virgin birth in any of the reconstructed versions of Q that I’ve ever seen. So, once again, why is this not discussed in conjunction with Luke’s use of Matthew? This seems almost impossible to explain if Luke did not use Matthew. Again, using the oral tradition may be tempting, but how much, but more critically, to what level of detail are we to assume was transmitted via the oral tradition? Then we need to consider subsequent development. We obviously know that the idea of the virgin birth lodged–firmly–in Christian tradition. Now let’s realize that this is only found in two books of the entire NT; more, it’s only found in the first chapter of those two books. That’s it. It occurs in Matthew’s birth narrative and here in Luke’s birth narrative. The clear inference to be drawn here is that this was not a belief that was firmly lodged in the “tradition”, whether oral, written, or whatever combination of the two. Given this, it would seem imprudent, if not foolish, to assume that Luke simply plucked this out of the air of the ambient “tradition”, or unspecified and unnameable “oral sources”, when all the evidence tells us that it was not part of the overall tradition. In the entirety of the rest of the NT, only Luke picked up on the idea. When you think about it, we have a large overlap of material that is not in Mark shared between Matthew and Luke, and on top of that we have a very specific, very rare bit of belief that the two–and only these two–share. This is not smoking-gun proof; that will never be found. But the connexions here between Matthew and Luke make it very, very difficult to accept as remotely probable that Luke was unaware of Matthew. This is just too coincidental otherwise. The placement, the wording, the overlaps, those are all secondary, if not tertiary points that can be used in support of an argument, but they alone do not constitute an argument.
26 In mense autem sexto missus est angelus Gabriel a Deo in civitatem Galilaeae, cui nomen Nazareth,
27 ad virginem desponsatam viro, cui nomen erat Ioseph de domo David, et nomen virginis Maria.
28 καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἶπεν, Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ.
29 ἡδὲ ἐπὶ τῷ λόγῳ διεταράχθη καὶ διελογίζετο ποταπὸς εἴη ὁ ἀσπασμὸς οὗτος.
30 καὶ εἶπεν ὁ ἄγγελος αὐτῇ, Μὴ φοβοῦ, Μαριάμ, εὗρες γὰρ χάριν παρὰ τῷ θεῷ:
31 καὶ ἰδοὺ συλλήμψῃ ἐν γαστρὶ καὶ τέξῃ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν.
32 οὗτος ἔσται μέγας καὶ υἱὸς ὑψίστου κληθήσεται, καὶ δώσει αὐτῷ κύριος ὁ θεὸς τὸν θρόνον Δαυὶδ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ,
33 καὶ βασιλεύσει ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον Ἰακὼβ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, καὶ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτοῦ οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.
And he (the messenger) coming in to her said, “Rejoice, having been favoured, the lord is with you”. (29) Indeed, upon the speech she was troubled, and dialogued in what manner this greeting could be. (30) And the messenger said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mariam, for you have found grace beside God. (31) And look, you will conceive in your belly and will give birth to a son, and you will call his name Jesus. (32) He will be great, and he will be called son of the most high, the lord the God will give him the throne of David his father, (33) and he will reign in the home of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom will be no end.”
There is a whole lot of allusions to Matthew here. We mentioned this regarding John, but the “you will call the name to him Jesus” is pretty much verbatim from Matthew, and it’s used in the very same context that Matthew has it. Granted, the person on the other end of the prophecy has change, and even changed sex, but the idea is identical. And yet, this never comes up in the Q discussions as part of Q, nor is it ever mentioned as an agreement that has to be explained. Why not? Because I don’t think it can be explained, at least not in terms of Q. I’ve just been re-reading one of Kloppenborg’s books, Q The Earliest Gospel, and he talks about “Minimal Q”. This includes all the stuff that’s in Luke and Matthew that’s not in Mark. This would certainly qualify under that criterion, but it’s nowhere to be found in the reconstructions. Instead, we get all these unprovable discussions about why Matthew or Luke deviated, or kept close to the source.
There is also a lot of connecting to the HS as well. We have the reference to David, and that Jesus is of the line of David. Now, do we have to take this literally? Because, strictly speaking, in Matthew Jesus is not of the line of David, because Joseph was not Jesus’ father. There I think we have a pretty clear indication of how the whole virgin birth got grafted onto another version of who Jesus was. And also note that Matthew called Joseph the son of David, so this seems like another instance where Luke is very thematically linked to Matthew, even if the story seems to be very different. Here perhaps is a good introduction to the idea of Luke as a novelist; Matthew’s creation of Joseph is very functional, but not much more. Here, the announcement, perhaps I should call it the Annunciation, is so much more than that, to the point that people don’t even particularly notice just how the two versions of the messenger story are linked together by themes. The underlying idea is Matthew’s, but the decoration is all from Luke, who has turned this into a story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and he’s given us dialogue, not just an announcement from a herald or messenger, and he’s given us psychological insights, for we are told Mary was troubled by all of this. As well she might be when a divine creature suddenly shows up in your living room.
Finally, I think that the idea of Jesus’ kingdom being eternal is a new development; I don’t recall that from previous gospels or epistles. However, I cannot say that with certainty. I’ll keep an eye out and see.
28 Et ingressus ad eam dixit: “Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum”.
29 Ipsa autem turbata est in sermone eius et cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio.
30 Et ait angelus ei: “Ne timeas, Maria; invenisti enim gratiam apud Deum.
31 Et ecce concipies in utero et paries filium et vocabis nomen eius Iesum.
32 Hic erit magnus et Filius Altissimi vocabitur, et dabit illi Dominus Deus sedem David patris eius,
33 et regnabit super domum Iacob in aeternum, et regni eius non erit finis”.
34 εἶπεν δὲ Μαριὰμ πρὸς τὸν ἄγγελον, Πῶς ἔσται τοῦτο, ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω;
35 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ ἄγγελος εἶπεν αὐτῇ, Πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐπελεύσεται ἐπὶ σέ, καὶ δύναμις ὑψίστου ἐπισκιάσει σοι: διὸ καὶ τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον κληθήσεται, υἱὸς θεοῦ.
Mariam said towards the messenger, “How will this be, since Ido not know a man?” (35)And answering the messenger said to her, “The sacred breath will complete this upon you, and the power of the most high will overshadow you. And on which account these occurrences holy he will be called, the son of God”.
The “sacred breath will complete this.” Once more, we have a bit of Matthew’s Christology, or theology, or explanation used in exactly the same context by Luke. In both these gospels, and nowhere else, Jesus was conceived within Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit. God literally breathed on her and effected this miracle. Again, the details match up exactly. The angel, the virgin, the holy spirit. Where did Luke get this? I stated this before, and I will restate it here for additional emphasis, that these pieces of the story are not to be found anywhere else. They show up in no gospel, nor in Thomas nor in Q. So whence did they come? Where did Luke find them? The answer is pretty close to being blindingly obvious: he got them from Matthew. Yes, yes, they could be parallel development, but the degree of agreement pretty much excludes a coincidental arrival at the same place by two separate authors. This is not the result of a random set of circumstances. And yes, each evangelist could have tapped into the same oral tradition, but that is not an argument, nor an hypothesis. There is no way either to prove or disprove this contention. And it falls into the same category as Q: it was there for Matthew and Luke and then subsequently vanished without a trace. If this is so probable, why didn’t Mark disappear, too? He was cannibalized pretty much completely. Are we to assume that a gospel that was squishy on Jesus’ divinity was preserved, where the collected sayings of The Man Himself were tossed into the junk pile? Does that really seem credible? Sure, it’s possible, but does it really, and I mean really make sense?
That is the question you have to ask yourself, and answer for yourself. But you must ask that question.
34 Dixit autem Maria ad angelum: “Quomodo fiet istud, quoniam virum non cognosco?”.
35 Et respondens angelus dixit ei: “ Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te, et virtus Altissimi obumbrabit tibi: ideoque et quod nascetur sanctum, vocabitur Filius Dei.
36 καὶ ἰδοὺ Ἐλισάβετ ἡ συγγενίς σου καὶ αὐτὴ συνείληφεν υἱὸν ἐν γήρει αὐτῆς, καὶ οὗτος μὴν ἕκτος ἐστὶν αὐτῇ τῇ καλουμένῃ στείρᾳ:
37 ὅτι οὐκ ἀδυνατήσει παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ πᾶν ῥῆμα.
38 εἶπεν δὲ Μαριάμ, Ἰδοὺ ἡ δούλη κυρίου: γένοιτό μοι κατὰ τὸ ῥῆμά σου. καὶ ἀπῆλθεν ἀπ’ αὐτῆς ὁ ἄγγελος.
“And you know, Elisabeth your kinswoman, she also has conceived a son in her old age, and this indeed in the sixth month to her the barren one is called. (Six months ago she was called barren). (37) That is not impossible for God, the all the writings (say). [Translation here is very literal; the more idiomatic would be that nothing is impossible. And in a literal sense, the “say” has to be understood.] (38) Mary said, “Behold the slave-girl of the lord. It may be according to your words.” And went away from her the messenger.
Here’s another question: is “slave girl” over the top? Or is it unflinchingly accurate. But “handmaid” and “servant” really don’t capture the word. “Doule” means “slave”, in this case female. I would take “bondmaid”. It’s just that this word has become distasteful to us; “slave” was even too much for the KJV. The NASB preserves the sense by using “bondmaid”, but there is a degree of separation even there. This sort of thing, along with “baptize”, “angel”, and “Holy Spirit” have become, I think, impediments to our being able to see the NT as anything but a work that is somehow outside the realm of human existence. It is a creation, a whole, a separate entity protected by this veil of euphemisms (handmaid) and what have become pre-conceived notions (Holy Spirit) in our culture. We fall into those “everybody knows” traps, in which basic premises are never challenged. They’re really not even recognized as premises; they are understood a priori as having a very specific and rock-solid meaning when they have no such meaning. This is the problem I have with “NT Greek”. Even conceding that such a thing exists–which I don’t, except in terms so abstruse as to be almost meaningless–it becomes a closed system, self-referential and never seeing itself in context. Words have pre-set meanings that may–or may not–have a strong connexion to the meaning of the word in the rest of Greek literature. To dislodge us from these mental ruts is the biggest reason I insist on being a crank and looking outside the world of “NT Greek” and seeing these words and these texts in the larger context of the Greek language.
36 Et ecce Elisabeth cognata tua et ipsa concepit filium in senecta sua, et hic mensis est sextus illi, quae vocatur sterilis,
37 quia non erit impossibile apud Deum omne verbum ”.
38 Dixit autem Maria: “ Ecce ancilla Domini; fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum ”. Et discessit ab illa angelus.
Luke Chapter 1:12-23
As the scene opens, we are with Zacahrias inside the temple sanctuary where he is holding conversation with a herald of God. It did not occur to me before, but presumably (obviously?) this is the Temple in Jerusalem. This would mean that Zacharias is at least a few rungs up on the socio-economic scale. The priests were well-t0-do, because all God’s friends were rich, an attitude that, unfortunately, too many still share today. And it wasn’t just among Jews, either. The pagans felt much the same way. That is a very important bit of knowledge to carry in your head as we progress through this gospel.
12 καὶ ἐταράχθη Ζαχαρίας ἰδών, καὶ φόβος ἐπέπεσεν ἐπ’ αὐτόν.
13 εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ ἄγγελος, Μὴ φοβοῦ, Ζαχαρία, διότι εἰσηκούσθη ἡ δέησίς σου, καὶ ἡ γυνή σου Ἐλισάβετ γεννήσει υἱόν σοι, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννην.
And disturbed was Zacharias seeing, and fear fell upon him. (13) And said towards him the herald, “Do not fear, Zacharias, because your need was heard, and your woman Elisabeth will bring forth a son, and you will call the name to him John”.
First of all, let’s look at the last bit. “You will call the name to him…” Sort of reminds me of <<καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν>>. That is Matthew 1:21; here we have << καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννην>>. The two are verbatim with the obvious exception of the name. This is not part of Q by anyone’s definition, or edition. Now, one can suggest that this is a standard expression, and that would be a valid statement. But…In both cases, we have an angel announcing a miraculous birth to a man, whether Joseph in Matthew, or here to Zacharias. Granted, perhaps this one is not quite as miraculous, because this baby has a human father. That detail aside, the two scenarios, and the words used, are remarkably similar, verbally and thematically. It’s this latter that is virtually ignored in the discussion about Q and whether Luke used Matthew. Here we have Luke doing everything he can to evoke those verses of Matthew when Joseph is told a son has been conceived within Mary. Oh, and the angel also tells Joseph “Don’t be afraid”. And yet, I’ve never seen this discussed in regard to Q. Why not? Part of it is that the Q people have set the terms of the debate for the past century, and those terms are the order and placement of material in Matthew vs. Luke. IOW, the debate is virtually without real substance.
While looking into this in the commentaries, I came across a really interesting interpretation. And it was not put out by just one commentator, but by several. They suggest that Zacharias and Elisabeth had reconciled themselves to being childless, especially given their advanced years. So, their entreaty–this is not the standard word for “prayer”–was not for a child. The couple had, we are told, given up on that years before; rather, the entreaty was for the kingdom of God. Have to say, that seems a bit of a stretch. It’s the sort of thing that comes up after a topic has been debated endlessly for decades; I’m betting that this interpretation is post-Reformation, so the debate was one of decades rather than centuries.
12 et Zacharias turbatus est videns, et timor irruit super eum.
13 Ait autem ad illum angelus: “ Ne timeas, Zacharia, quoniam exaudita est deprecatio tua, et uxor tua Elisabeth pariet tibi filium, et vocabis nomen eius Ioannem.
14 καὶ ἔσται χαρά σοι καὶ ἀγαλλίασις, καὶ πολλοὶ ἐπὶ τῇ γενέσει αὐτοῦ χαρήσονται:
15 ἔσται γὰρ μέγας ἐνώπιον [τοῦ] κυρίου, καὶ οἶνον καὶ σίκερα οὐ μὴ πίῃ, καὶ πνεύματος ἁγίου πλησθήσεται ἔτι ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς αὐτοῦ,
16 καὶ πολλοὺς τῶν υἱῶν Ἰσραὴλ ἐπιστρέψει ἐπὶ κύριον τὸν θεὸν αὐτῶν.
“And there will be joy to you and rejoicing, and many upon the birth of him will rejoice. For he will be great before the lord, and wine and strong drink he will not drink, and with the sacred breath he will be filled already from the womb of his mother, (16) and he will turn many of the sons of Israel towards the lord their God.”
Anyone who claims that the early church was embarrassed by Jesus’ connexion to John should be made to explain this passage, and this whole section. Far from being swept under the rug, which is what you do with embarrassing things, John is being elevated here, to a very dizzying height. We are told he will induce many in Israel–more properly, Judea–to repent of their sins and turn back to God. This is extremely high praise.
A word while we’re on the subject of Israel. Strictly speaking, the Kingdom of Israel ceased to exist after its conquest by Assyria. The successor kingdom, centered on Jerusalem was just that: a successor state. It was assuredly not a continuation of the earlier state of Israel. This latter had remained largely a pagan state, which is why the kings so often did evil in the sight of YHWH. Israel and her kings worshipped other gods because they had not really accepted YHWH as it’s chief–let alone sole–god. And yet, because Israel had been a large state that ruled some of the richer land in the area, the successors in Jerusalem wished to portray themselves as the legitimate heirs of the older kingdom. This is why they elevatated their bandit-in-chief David to the purely mythological throne of the United Kingdom. As such, the kings who sat in Jerusalem maintained their dynastic pretensions for centuries, until “Israel” became a spiritual kingdom inherited by the Christians, or until the State of Israel was resurrected in 1948. Even after all those centuries, the regime in Jerusalem still insisted that the whole of the land from Dan to Beersheba was their heritage. That’s not intended to be anti-Zionist; rather, it’s a commentary on the power of a foundation myth.
One thing I have to comment on is Luke’s vocabulary. It’s pretty remarkable. The man was erudite. He sort of coins a lot of words, by giving older words new forms. I’m not sure what to make of this quite yet; or, rather, I’m not quite sure how to fit this into the overall interpretation of the gospel, but presumably this will work itself out.
14 Et erit gaudium tibi et exsultatio, et multi in nativitate eius gaudebunt:
15 erit enim magnus coram Domino et vinum et siceram non bibet et Spiritu Sancto replebitur adhuc ex utero matris suae
16 et multos filiorum Israel convertet ad Dominum Deum ipsorum.
17 καὶ αὐτὸς προελεύσεται ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ ἐν πνεύματι καὶ δυνάμει Ἠλίου, ἐπιστρέψαι καρδίας πατέρων ἐπὶ τέκνα καὶ ἀπειθεῖς ἐν φρονήσει δικαίων, ἑτοιμάσαι κυρίῳ λαὸν κατεσκευασμένον.
18 Καὶ εἶπεν Ζαχαρίας πρὸς τὸν ἄγγελον, Κατὰ τί γνώσομαι τοῦτο; ἐγὼ γάρ εἰμι πρεσβύτης καὶ ἡ γυνή μου προβεβηκυῖα ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις αὐτῆς.
19 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ ἄγγελος εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ἐγώ εἰμι Γαβριὴλ ὁ παρεστηκὼς ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ ἀπεστάλην λαλῆσαι πρὸς σὲ καὶ εὐαγγελίσασθαί σοι ταῦτα:
“And he will go forward before him in the spirit and the power of Elijah, converting hearts of the fathers upon the children and disbelief in the prudence of the just, to have made ready the people of the lord having been prepared. (18) And Zacharias said to the herald, “According to what will I know this? For I am old, and my wife is advanced in years”. (19) And answering the herald said to him, “I am Gabriel the one standing beside in front of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to announce these things to you.
Quick note: the Greek for “announce” in the last sentence is “euangelizai”. This includes the announcing and the glad tidings all in one word. That is impossible in English. Or, I couldn’t come up with a solution, anyway.
Did I mention that, far from being swept under the rug, John was being elevated here? For he will have the spirit and the power of Elijah, and in Jewish circles Elijah was pretty much the pinnacle of human accomplishment. Of course, by elevating John, Jesus will be elevated even further. And here, again, I think, we see an example of Luke following Matthew’s lead, and then expanding upon it. For this is what Matthew did with the announcement of the (unnamed) angel to Joseph: he elevated Jesus to the divine level. Here, (spoiler alert!) not only will we get an announcement to Mary about Jesus, but we get the announcement about Jesus’ forerunner, who could also be called an “angelos”, a “herald”. In this way, Luke raises the playing field even further. We are truly talking about cosmic-scale, divine-level actions here. In a way, it reminds me of the Prologue in Heaven that we find at the opening of Goethe’s Faust, or even the conversation between God and the slanderer (ho diabolos) at the beginning of Job.
As an aside, this is really interesting. In Job 1:6, we are told that
ἦλθον οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ παραστῆναι ἐνώπιον τοῦ κυρίου, / καὶ ὁ διάβολος ἦλθεν μετ᾽ αὐτῶν.
There came the angels of God standing beside before the lord, / and the slanderer came with them…
The (very clumsy) expression “standing beside before the lord” is pretty much exactly what we got from Gabriel. The participle is “standing”, but with the prefix for “beside”, so the entire verb is “standing beside”, which is then followed by a preposition for “before”, as in “before the lord”. So the image is a bit of a foreshadow of The Apocalypse of John, with all the elders seated around the throne of God, “before” him in the sense of being in his presence. So the point is that I suspect that Luke deliberately meant to evoke this quote, and I also suspect that it’s something of a standardized formula that appears in various places throughout the LXX, replacing an underlying formula in the Hebrew.
One final note about this quote from Job. Several translations, including the KJV, translate “angeloi” as “sons” of God. There is a good lesson here for not using the same stock word to translate a word in Greek, or Hebrew. In the context, I actually think “sons” might be closer to the sense of the Greek, even if it is a bit more poetic. In fact, the Vulgate renders it as “filii”, which is the standard Latin word for “sons”.
Also, the idea of “standing beside in front of God” is a bit of a foreshadow of some later ideas that will evolve into the Gnostic/Hermetic ideas of the Emanations. The idea that there is a Power at the centre, and then slightly lesser beings around that, spreading out in concentric circles. The Creator is a level–or several, depending on the source–removed from the centre. Yes, this is a bit of a stretch, perhaps, but only a bit. Ideas are fluid things that eddy and swirl about and within each other. And that poetic element should never, ever be forgotten. Because what English so clumsily conveys as “poetry”–a bunch of words strung together that may or may not rhyme–is itself a poor and dulled reflection of the Greek “poesis”. This contains both the idea of doing, as in doing a task, as well as creating a long poem meant to explain the Nature of Things (de Rerum Natura, Epictetus).
And I think Zacharias’ questions to the messenger sort of indicate that the “entreaty” back in Verse 13 was indeed, about a child. I suppose that these questions are natural enough given the news, but we also need to be careful, I think, about reading too much into this. Of course the parallel to Abraham is too obvious to need mention, but then I just did. The conception of Isaac was miraculous, and so is the conception of John. But, while miraculous, they are also human-scale miracles, where the child–the son, always a son–conceived has two human parents.
Finally, just want to stress the idea that this angel has a name. Here we have such a classic example of the growth of legend that it’s worth dwelling on for a moment or two. This is exactly how legends grow. Matthew added the angel, Luje gave the angel a name, and later thinkers would ascribe roles and adventures to the angels. The same happened with the Twelve; once created, they had to have names. Then, once named, they had to have stories and adventures, and so these sprang up, just the way Arthur became surrounded by a host of knights, all of them with their own tale. So this further development of the story is, I firmly believe, another example of how Luke expanded on Matthew’s edifice, which was itself an expansion of the foundation laid by Mark. And here is where the Q people, and the whole Q debate goes so horribly wrong: instead of nitpicking over the order of the placement of the (alleged) Q material, look at the storied told as separate entities that each complement, rather than repeat or supersede the previous one. There is nothing about an angel in the Q material, which starts with the preaching of John. So where did Luke get the idea? Is this parallel development? It could be. But that is where you have to start looking at the numbers of incidents, how many times does Luke pick up a theme from Matthew and run with it? To that end, I’m going to be taking notes. Because one of the big “arguments” (I’m being kind) for Q is that Luke is never aware of Matthew’s additions to Mark. Well, we have an example here of Luke being well aware of an addition of Matthew.
Second finally, the whole idea of finding precedents from the HS is another example. Matthew added references to texts from the HS; Luke appears to be doing the same thing here, borrowing a line from Job (which may also appear elsewhere).
17 Et ipse praecedet ante illum in spiritu et virtute Eliae, ut convertat corda patrum in filios et incredibiles ad prudentiam iustorum, parare Domino plebem perfectam ”.
18 Et dixit Zacharias ad angelum: “ Unde hoc sciam? Ego enim sum senex, et uxor mea processit in diebus suis ”.
19 Et respondens angelus dixit ei: “ Ego sum Gabriel, qui adsto ante Deum, et missus sum loqui ad te et haec tibi evangelizare.
20 καὶ ἰδοὺ ἔσῃ σιωπῶν καὶ μὴ δυνάμενος λαλῆσαι ἄχρι ἧς ἡμέρας γένηται ταῦτα, ἀνθ’ ὧν οὐκ ἐπίστευσας τοῖς λόγοις μου, οἵτινες πληρωθήσονται εἰς τὸν καιρὸν αὐτῶν .
21 Καὶ ἦν ὁ λαὸς προσδοκῶν τὸν Ζαχαρίαν, καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ἐν τῷ χρονίζειν ἐν τῷ ναῷ αὐτόν.
22 ἐξελθὼν δὲ οὐκ ἐδύνατο λαλῆσαι αὐτοῖς, καὶ ἐπέγνωσαν ὅτι ὀπτασίαν ἑώρακεν ἐν τῷ ναῷ: καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν διανεύων αὐτοῖς, καὶ διέμενεν κωφός.
23 καὶ ἐγένετο ὡς ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι τῆς λειτουργίας αὐτοῦ ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ.
“And behold, may you being silent and not able to speak until the days that these things become, before which not believing the my words, which will be fulfilled in their season (i.e., proper time)”. (21) And there were people expecting Zacharias, and they marveled at the time he being in the Temple. (22) Coming out, he was not able to speak to them, and they knew that a vision he had seen in the temple. And he gestured to them, and he remained mute. (23) And it became as fulfilled the days of his liturgies, he went to his home.
The first thing that strikes me is that God will punish your disbelief. OK. That shouldn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t, but it still strikes me as interesting. That’s the problem with being a rationalist, I suppose. These sorts of actions seem rather arbitrary, or even whimsical; but mainly, they seem rather petty and beneath the dignity of a God that laid the foundations of the cosmos.
The second thing is that this is a very perceptive lot of fellow priests. They knew that he had seen a vision inside. But then, maybe this sort of thing happened frequently? Who’s to say? The word I translated as “liturgies” is actually more or less a transliteration. “Leitourgious” would be the exact translation, so the relation should be obvious. Were I truly a biblical scholar, I would be able to explain the rotation of the priests more effectively, but it’s simply not that important. What matters more is whether his home was in Jerusalem–at least, the Greater Jerusalem Metro Area? I would suspect so. We’ll see if, or how much, this matters in the next section.
20 Et ecce: eris tacens et non poteris loqui usque in diem, quo haec fiant, pro eo quod non credidisti verbis meis, quae implebuntur in tempore suo ”.
21 Et erat plebs exspectans Zachariam, et mirabantur quod tardaret ipse in templo.
22 Egressus autem non poterat loqui ad illos, et cognoverunt quod visionem vidisset in templo; et ipse erat innuens illis et permansit mutus.
23 Et factum est, ut impleti sunt dies officii eius, abiit in domum suam.
Luke Chapter 1:1-11
Having done a fair bit of research into Q since the last summary of Matthew was published, the conclusion I’ve arrived at is that the best way to contextualize Matthew is by way of comparison to Luke. My sense is that the Q people are still missing the forest for the trees; moreover, I believe a certain amount of this “missing” is willful, the result of a deliberate effort not to look at the Q hypothesis. While the effort is deliberate, it may not be wholly conscious; Mark Goodacre seems to be one of the leading proponents of the Mark without Q theory which believes, as I do, that Luke used Matthew, describes the Q proponents as a bit arrogant, and more than a bit miffed that there are these annoying people who still won’t accept Q. After all, it was settled a century ago! Er, wasn’t it?
No, it wasn’t settled. It was postulated and accepted and then just taken on faith. The Q people have so firmly entrenched the theory that it is somehow incumbent on the naysayers (myself included) to prove that Q did not exist. This is completely backwards. The burden of proof lies on those who believe to prove that the document existed. For the umpteenth time, there is absolutely no proof that such a document existed. None. There are no oblique references by later sources, no tradition of a sayings collection, nothing. That’s bad enough. Worse is that there is no argument for Q. The proponents of Q have never, ever, come up with anything resembling a cohesive or coherent case to show why it’s likely that Q existed. The entirety of their case rests on the premise, “if Luke knew Matthew, Luke would never have…” Largely Luke would never have messed with the “masterful” arrangement of the material presented in Matthew. And that is the whole case: an argument (being kind), that the way Luke arranged the Q material is simply…substandard, if not simply wrong, or bizarre, or “unscrambling the egg with a vengeance”. So let’s look at some of this.
Please note that some of this may be a bit of a rerun from the Introduction to Luke post. My apologies, but some of this is worth seeing in more textual context than we had in the Introduction.
1 Ἐπειδήπερ πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν περὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων,
2 καθὼς παρέδοσαν ἡμῖν οἱ ἀπ’ἀρχῆς αὐτόπται καὶ ὑπηρέται γενόμενοι τοῦ λόγου,
3 ἔδοξε κἀμοὶ παρηκολουθηκότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀκριβῶς καθεξῆς σοι γράψαι, κράτιστε Θεόφιλε,
4 ἵνα ἐπιγνῷς περὶ ὧν κατηχήθης λόγων τὴν ἀσφάλειαν.
Inasmuch as many have attempted to order the narrative of the fulfillment in our affairs, accordingly those having been eyewitnesses and servants of the account handed (it–i.e., the account) over to us from the beginning, and it seemed to me to the one following all (of them) diligently afterwards to have written to you, most excellent Theophilos, so that you may come to know certainty about these accounts, having been instructed.
My translation is slightly different from what you may read elsewhere. First, it’s a bit less definitive on some of the ideas, but I believe that some of the ideas are a bit overconfidently expressed in other places. At least, I’m going to present the ambiguity to provide, I hope, some sense of the amount of interpretation present in other translations.
As an incidental, the word in V4 that is rendered as “instructed” is “katachesis”. Any child of the Roman Church should see the word “catechism”, and now perhaps better understand its root. Oddly–to my mind, anyway–the word does not get transliterated into Latin. Rather, it’s translated as “eruditis”.
Now to the substance. Anyone who’s read the historical accounts written in the Middle Ages will be familiar with this sort of introduction. Luke did not start this, but he popularized it among Christian historians of the monastic sort, so this has a long tail moving into the future. But the interesting thing is that Luke is placing himself in context by discussing the eyewitnesses of the events, and then the “servants” of the account. [What I have translated as “account” usually gets rendered as “word/words”; however, this is done, I believe, for consistency with John 1:1: in the beginning was the Word…] He is, in effect, saying that what he has written down is the account that was created at the beginning, and then entrusted to the “servants” of the account. This I would take as the others who have written the account. Who are these others? Interestingly, as I was checking commentaries on this, I found that the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges adamantly insists that this does not refer to other evangelists. That is, not even Mark, let alone Matthew. This, obviously, is an extremist position; just as obviously, I think, we have no need to take this position seriously.
So who are these “servants”? One of them has to be Mark. And I say “one of them” because the word is plural; Luke is attesting that there are multiple servants of the account. The plain sense understanding of this, at least to someone with historical training, is that Luke has read more than one account of the story of Jesus. Immediately we could understand this to mean Mark and Matthew, or Mark and Q. But the way this reads indicates, to me at least, that there were even more than two different sources available to Luke. And this should not surprise us. This, of course, leads to (but does not “beg”) the question of what these sources might be. Given this statement, it’s not inconceivable that one of them might, indeed, be a collection of Jesus’ sayings. Oddly, this is never suggested by the Q people, and I don’t quite understand why not. One of the sources very clearly carried some evidence of Paul or his activities. This is the first gospel written for which we can be certain that the evangelist had some knowledge of Paul. We do not know if Luke had available to him any of Paul’s letters; perhaps we can tell from the writing.
This is actually a crucial question, because it would give us great insight into Luke’s methods, purpose, and outlook. We commented in Galatians on the difference between the conversion story related by Paul with the much more famous version in Acts. At first glance, the two share little; however, if you squint your eyes a bit, I think that it’s possible to see Paul’s revelation from God as the basis for the flash of light from heaven and the voice of God/Jesus coming down from the sky. The version in Acts is, possibly, an over-dramatized version of what Paul himself described. If we can, or do, accept this connexion, then this may provide us a glimpse into the way Luke thought and wrote. In describing the Four Evangelists, I used to describe Mark as a journalist, Matthew as a rabbi (albeit converted), John as a theologian, and Luke as a novelist. The comparison of Acts to Hellenistic novels is old and widespread, so I’m hardly breaking new ground, but this approach is worth keeping in mind as we proceed through the text.
The whole question of who Theophilos was needn’t concern us overmuch. Stated bluntly, it really doesn’t matter. I see no reason not to believe that there was a Theophilos; there is no profit in making someone up. What is important is the statement of purpose. Luke wants to educate this other person, even if the “other person” is the audience in general. This hearkens back to what I said in the Introduction to Luke about why the evangelists wrote a second, third, and fourth gospel. They wrote because they had something they felt was important to say. And if you read between the lines a bit, there is an implicit implication that Luke needs to provide some additional information, explain a few things, or generally set the record straight. It is very tempting to use that first purpose of providing additional information as a point of departure to fly off on a tangent, but it would be pure speculation. Or would it? Let us remember that Luke adds a lot of new material, a lot of stories that have become central to Christianity, and via that to Western culture as a whole. We can talk about being a “good Samaritan” because of Luke’s story. So I don’t think it’s completely bonkers to suggest that this new material is part–a big part?–of the reason Luke decided he needed to retell the story again. Yes, we can say that this is due to source material that was lying hidden from the other evangelists, but the simplest, and most reasonable explanation for the new stories that Luke adds is that they arose from within Luke himself.
1 Quoniam quidem multi conati sunt ordinare narrationem, quae in nobis completae sunt, rerum,
2 sicut tradiderunt nobis, qui ab initio ipsi viderunt et ministri fuerunt verbi,
3 visum est et mihi, adsecuto a principio omnia, diligenter ex ordine tibi scribere, optime Theophile,
4 ut cognoscas eorum verborum, de quibus eruditus es, firmitatem.
5 Ἐγένετο ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου βασιλέως τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἱερεύς τις ὀνόματι Ζαχαρίας ἐξ ἐφημερίας Ἀβιά, καὶ γυνὴ αὐτῷ ἐκ τῶν θυγατέρων Ἀαρών, καὶ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῆς Ἐλισάβετ.
It happened in those days of Herod ruling the Jews there was a priest to whom the name was Zacharias of the course of Abiah, and his wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.
We need to pause a minute to consider the word << ἐφημερίας >>. This word is only found twice in the LXX, once here, and then nowhere else. It appears to be a compound of << epi-hemeras >> the literal meaning of which would most likely mean something like “upon the day”, which in standard usage would mean, more or less, “daily”. However, the two English words associated are “course” or “division”. And there is the sense of a connexion to religious ritual. My suspicion is that it originally referred to a round of ritual, say a week in length, in which the same priest performed the same ritual for the length of the given cycle. From there it came to have genealogical implications, because here it pretty clearly means that he was a descendant of Abiah, since we are then told of his wife Elisabeth’s lineage. Regardless, it’s rather an odd word, but here, at least, the context does help. And the Latin is interesting: “de vice”, the latter being the first part of “vice versa”. So at root there is the idea of change. This does point to a cycle of ritual performance, I believe. But Lewis and Short don’t give us any clue of any connexion to family lineage. Perhaps St Jerome knew something that Lewis and Short forgot?
5 Fuit in diebus Herodis regis Iudaeae sacerdos quidam nomine Zacharias de vice Abiae, et uxor illi de filiabus Aaron, et nomen eius Elisabeth.
6 ἦσαν δὲ δίκαιοι ἀμφότεροι ἐναντίον τοῦ θεοῦ, πορευόμενοι ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐντολαῖς καὶ δικαιώμασιν τοῦ κυρίου ἄμεμπτοι.
7 καὶ οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τέκνον, καθότι ἦν ἡ Ἐλισάβετ στεῖρα, καὶ ἀμφότεροι προβεβηκότες ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις αὐτῶν ἦσαν.
8 Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ ἱερατεύειν αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ τάξει τῆς ἐφημερίας αὐτοῦ ἔναντι τοῦ θεοῦ,
They were both just people against God, following all the commandments and the decrees of the lord and blameless. (7) And there were to them no progeny, on account that Elisabeth was barren, and both well along their days (i.e., well-along in years). (8) He went in the temple in the arrangement of the daily cycle of him before God.
Here I think is where we can make out the sense of << ἐφημερίας >>. Basically, Verse 8 is saying that it was Zacharias’ turn to perform the daily ritual. I have the vague sense that the cycle of ritual was divided by priestly families or clans, with each clan being appointed to perform a given series of days. So, Zacharias was of the division of Abia, who performed the course of the ritual in a specified period of days.
6 Erant autem iusti ambo ante Deum, incedentes in omnibus mandatis et iustificationibus Domini, irreprehensibiles.
7 Et non erat illis filius, eo quod esset Elisabeth sterilis, et ambo processissent in diebus suis.
8 Factum est autem, cum sacerdotio fungeretur in ordine vicis suae ante Deum,
9 κατὰ τὸ ἔθος τῆς ἱερατείας ἔλαχε τοῦ θυμιᾶσαι εἰσελθὼν εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ κυρίου,
10 καὶ πᾶν τὸ πλῆθος ἦν τοῦ λαοῦ προσευχόμενον ἔξω τῇ ὥρᾳ τοῦ θυμιάματος:
11 ὤφθη δὲ αὐτῷ ἄγγελος κυρίου ἑστὼς ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου τοῦ θυμιάματος.
According to the custom of the temple he was chosen by lot of the incense going in to the sanctuary of the lord. (10) And all the whole of the people prayed outside in the hour of the incense. (11) Was seen by him the herald of the lord outside on the right of the alter of the incense.
This is clear enough in Greek; the English maybe not so much. At least not the way I rendered it. I can say right off the bat that Luke’s vocabulary is much richer than either Mark’s or Matthew’s, and his prose feels a bit more sophisticated. Basically, it was Zacharias’ turn to go into the inner part of the temple and burn incense. When he got there, he found a herald of the lord. I’ve decided to stop translating this as “angel” because, once again, English has made a special word of a word that is not particularly special in Greek. In Xenophon, there are angels running back and forth between the Greeks and the Great King every few pages.
And I deliberately broke the story at the appearance of the angel. This is purely for dramatic purposes. Note how we have set this all up: they are childless and advanced in years, just like Abraham and Sarah. And now we get an angel. Novelist? I report, you decide.
9 secundum consuetudinem sacerdotii sorte exiit, ut incensum poneret ingressus in templum Domini;
10 et omnis multitudo erat populi orans foris hora incensi.
11 Apparuit autem illi angelus Domini stans a dextris altaris incensi;
Commenting on the Bible 
John Chapter 1:45-51
Jul 5
Posted by James, brother of Jesus
We broke after the calling of Philipp. The intent had been to include the verses in the last segment, but it was running too long so I split them.
Text
45 εὑρίσκει Φίλιππος τὸν Ναθαναὴλ καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ, Ὃν ἔγραψεν Μωϋσῆς ἐν τῷ νόμῳ καὶ οἱ προφῆται εὑρήκαμεν, Ἰησοῦν υἱὸν τοῦ Ἰωσὴφ τὸν ἀπὸ Ναζαρέτ.
46 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ναθαναήλ, Ἐκ Ναζαρὲτ δύναταί τι ἀγαθὸν εἶναι; λέγει αὐτῷ [ὁ] Φίλιππος, Ἔρχου καὶ ἴδε.
Philipp found Nathaniel, and said to him (the latter), “The one Moses wrote (about) in the Law and the prophets (wrote about–this has to be understood; it is not in the text) we have found, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” (46) And Nathaniel said to him, “Can anything good be from Nazareth?” Philipp said to him, “Come and see”.
This is interesting. Can anything good come from Nazareth? On the one hand, Ellicott’s Commentary says that the town is scarcely known, and is not mentioned in Josephus. Other commentators state that the town had an ill-repute, for reasons or causes unexplained. None of those I skimmed seemed to reference Matthew 2:23, in which Matthew refers to a prophecy that “He will be called a Nazarene”. To their credit, the commentators do duly not that no citation of chapter & verse is provided for this prophecy. Ellicott again finds it unlikely that Matthew would quote from an apocryphal prophet, but it seems to be a case of apocryphal or nonexistent. Some of this goes back to the whole issue of Bethlehem and Nazareth: where was Jesus really from? As the anointed, it had to be Bethlehem, which is why Matthew and then Luke had come up with a story to have him born there. At least Matthew’s is straightforward enough; he was born in Bethlehem but then moved to Galilee to escape Herod. One suspects that there was contention about whether he was indeed a Nazarene in which case. In turn, apparently Luke felt compelled to twist himself into knots to come up with a story that included both the two towns. He went to the length of having the entire Roman Empire shuffling about to return to their home city for the census, but then Matthew came up with the entire story of the Slaughter of the Innocents which is arguably even more of a stretch.
The bottom line is that the whole issue of Nazareth, or Jesus’ actual home town, is a confusing muddle. Paul and Mark either did not know, did not care, or both. The references to Jesus of Nazareth in Mark Chapter 1 could very easily have been added later. In fact, the very insistence on his home town strikes me as possibly suspect. Why would the unclean spirit address him as Jesus of Nazareth? What purpose does that serve? There are a total of four mentions of Nazareth in Mark that come before the Passion, and none of them are necessarily integral to the narrative, but that alone is not sufficient reason to dismiss them as interpolations. Such identifiers were part of the technique of ancient writers. And the fact of the matter is that Jesus of Nazareth became entrenched into the narrative; it was accepted as Jesus’ home town by all subsequent writers and is now part of the canon. Why? The simplest reason is that it was factual; normally, I would consider that a powerful argument and take it at face value, but there are too many conflicting undercurrents for me to do that. Perhaps this question of Nathaniel is rather the last ditch–if half-hearted–attempt to throw some doubt on the idea that Nazareth was Jesus’ home town.
And as a last point, what about my idea that Jesus was actually raised in Caphernaum? That makes way more sense than pretty well anywhere else. Again, if Bethsaida here is said to be the city of Simon and Andrew, but it’s either not on the shore or it’s not in Galilee and either one of these are fatal to some very structural aspects of the story. I had suggested that the calling of Peter and Andrew makes way more sense if they knew Jesus as a fellow resident of Caphernaum, and Mark states that Jesus has a house there. Such things are much less likely to be inserted into a narrative than the name of a town that is easily amended. By placing both Peter and Philipp in the same home town indicates the idea of former connexions between the earliest followers of Jesus. Is the mention of Bethsaida as this town an echo of Peter, Andrew, James, John, and Jesus all coming from the same place?
Then let’s get to Nathaniel. This is yet another name missing from the lists of the Twelve as provided in the Synoptics. It has been suggested that he is to be understood as the Bartholemew, or Bartholemeus of MatthewMarkLuke. This is not wholly without merit, as “Bartholemew” is not an actual name, but a patronymic. Simon bar Jona, Simon, son of Jonah. So the understanding is that he was Nathaniel bar Tholemeus, the son of Tholemeus. In and of itself, this is not implausible. But–and you knew that was coming–we are to believe that the earlier gospels did not know Nathaniel’s first name, but John did? How does that work? It works like this. When Mark was coming up with the names of the Twelve, he took down those he could find, but he was unable to pin down Nathaniel’s personal name (much better description than “first” name), but he had heard of a bar Tholemeus. Then, as time passed, the hole created by the lack of this personal name became a sore spot, so someone had to get busy and fill the hole with a name as had to be done with the name of Jesus’ father Joseph.
And John mentions the latter’s name here, adding the patronymic to the demonymic to make sure we know who this Jesus is. Really, this fits with my idea that John was writing the Official Summary Account of the story of Jesus, summing up, filling in the empty spots, making sure the loose ends were tied off. Of course, there is no way to prove what I’m saying; rather, it’s a matter of keeping in under consideration. Again asking the question since I can’t provide the answer.
45 Invenit Philippus Nathanael et dicit ei: “Quem scripsit Moyses in Lege et Prophetae invenimus, Iesum filium Ioseph a Nazareth”.
46 Et dixit ei Nathanael: “A Nazareth potest aliquid boni esse?”. Dicit ei Philippus: “Veni et vide”.
47 εἶδεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς τὸν Ναθαναὴλ ἐρχόμενον πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ λέγει περὶ αὐτοῦ, Ἴδε ἀληθῶς Ἰσραηλίτης ἐν ᾧ δόλος οὐκ ἔστιν.
48 λέγει αὐτῷ Ναθαναήλ, Πόθεν με γινώσκεις; ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Πρὸ τοῦ σε Φίλιππον φωνῆσαι ὄντα ὑπὸ τὴν συκῆν εἶδόν σε.
49 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ Ναθαναήλ, Ῥαββί, σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, σὺ βασιλεὺς εἶ τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.
50 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Οτι εἶπόν σοι ὅτι εἶδόν σε ὑποκάτω τῆς συκῆς πιστεύεις; μείζω τούτων ὄψῃ.
51 καὶ λέγει αὐτῷ, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὄψεσθε τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνεῳγότα καὶ τοὺς ἀγγέλους τοῦ θεοῦ ἀναβαίνοντας καὶ καταβαίνοντας ἐπὶ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
Jesus saw Nathaniel coming and said, towards him and said about him, “See, truly, the Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” (48) Nathaniel said to him, “From where do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philipp said your name I saw you being under the fig tree.” (49) Nathaniel answered him, “Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel.” (50) Jesus answered and said to him, “As I said to you that I knew you beneath the fig tree, do you believe? You will see things better (than these).” (51) And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see the sky open and messengers of God going up and coming down towards the son of Man.”
So Jesus saw Nathaniel standing under a fig tree before Philipp brought Nathaniel to Jesus; IOW, Jesus had a prophetic vision. Since Jesus knew Nathaniel was standing under a fig tree, Nathaniel understood that Jesus “saw” things that no mere human could. Thus, Nathaniel understood the divinity of Jesus and believed, and, interestingly, Jesus gently chides Nathaniel about this. It’s rather a presage of the “Doubting Thomas” moment, as if Jesus were saying, “What? You only believe because I had the vision?” Interestingly, many of the commentators suggest that “do you believe” should be a statement rather than a question: “you believe”. Recall that the early text would have been ALLCAPSWITHNOSPACESBETWEENWORDSANDCERTAINLYNOPUNCTUATION, the choice between a question and a statement it is something of an interpretation. I rendered it as a question because that is how the punctuation marks it, both in the Greek and in the Vulgate. I have no idea when the concept of punctuation was introduced, or when it became popular, so it’s hard to tell what the original intent was. What is interesting is whether the idea of the Bible as “accurate” in a verbatim sense includes the idea of punctuation. The KJV, which, IIRC, is considered the inerrant translation renders this as a question, so translating as “you believe” creates a minor discrepancy. MacLaren’s Expositions says that there is “comparatively little difference to the substantial meaning” of the words between the question or the statement, which is true enough; however, my point here is to note the way this has all been set up.
We didn’t get into this with the intro to Philipp because I had enough other stuff to discuss–the segment ran long as it was–but we need to note how Jesus is introduced. He knew the name of Simon’s father when it was not stated in the text. The commentators debated or considered whether this was meant as a display of divinity: more than human knowledge as one of them put it. Then add seeing Nathaniel under the fig tree, and there is the overall sense that Jesus is more than human. That, however, is not terribly surprising, given the opening sentence of the gospel. John has come up with a way to confirm that initial statement in a way that does not hit us over the head. It’s subtle. Rather, I want to go back to “Doubting Thomas”. Even if MacLaren is correct and the choice between the question and the statement does not have substantial difference, Jesus is still calling out Nathaniel to some extent. In a sense, Nathaniel’s outburst that Jesus is the son of God and the King of Israel* is rather the culmination of the chapter. Is “seeing v s believing” going to be a theme in the gospel? Do we have to see–literally for Thomas, figuratively here–to believe? This bears following as we proceed. If I don’t mention it again, it’s because situations don’t come up in the gospel.
*Bear in mind, that no political entity named “Israel” had existed since the 8th Century BCE, approximately. And that assumes that a Kingdom of Israel existed even then. It probably did, but it probably did not exist in a form resembling the descriptions of Samuel and/or Kings 1 & 2. This kingdom very probably did not include Jerusalem and what became Judea, and almost assuredly was not ruled by a King David, and probably not a Solomon. There attestations to a House of David, and a House. of Omri, but these names on Egyptian stelae don’t prove much beyond the bare existence. In fact, what the evidence of Samuel indicates is that David was either a bandit leader, or, at best, a rebel who managed to break off the area of Judea from a Kingdom of Israel, which may or may not have been ruled by someone named Saul. The Unified Monarchy, IMO, was a foundation myth concocted by the Judeans who had been carried off to Jerusalem. The UM was political propaganda, trying to establish a legitimate claim by Judea over the former territory of Israel, which was much larger and much more prosperous than Judea. This story is hardly different from the foundation myth of Rome by Romulus, or any of a dozen others. Greek cities, in particular, had foundation myths tracing them back to some mythical founder. Pelops, as an early king in what became the Peloponnese, the Island of Pelops.
One point that warrants mention comes in the last part of the last verse. This expression was particularly popular in Mark, but Matthew and Luke each use it a couple of dozen times, if not more. The count is based on a semi-manual search, so it could be off by a few. John uses it six times. How significant is this? In the Synoptics, there are a number of instances where the phrase is perpetuated from the use by previous evangelists. Mark used it, so Matthew and Luke used it, or Matthew and Luke used it. Why does it fall so far out of favor in John? Of course there is no real answer, but one suspects it doesn’t fit the image of Jesus that John is trying to create.
But then we read about the escalators going up and down from the sky. What are we to understand by that? Here, the ambiguity of the Greek ouranos plays a significant role. In English, we can talk about the vault of the heavens a synonym for the sky, the heavens–meaning the sky, opening with rain, and other such expressions. For the record, the same ambiguity exists in the Latin caelo. All of my crib translations, naturally, render it as “heaven”. But note that in English “heaven” is not necessarily the same as “Heaven”, so how are we to understand the word here?
In one of his books, Jaroslav Pelikan’s cites a quote that runs (more or less) to the effect, “The sky hung low in the ancient world, and there was much traffic in both directions”. Lesser spirits, perhaps especially daimons, whether good or bad, were thought to live in the air, so the description of messengers going up (anabainontas) and coming down (katabainontas) makes that description seem particularly apt. What does it mean? In later centuries, the traffic, or the communication between humans and daimons, whether of the air or the earth, would play a significant role in the understanding of magic, or sorcery. The thinking was that magic was only possible with the aid of a daimon, which got moved into Latin as daemon, which then rather quickly became “demon”, as we understand the word. For the record, I do not believe John is saying that kakodaimones, evil daimons, are resident in Heaven, or even in heaven; what I will say is that John absolutely left the door open to such an interpretation. (As an aside, it needs to be mentioned that the idea of sky = heaven is very old, going back to Homer in the 700s BCE, and was probably old even then.) Then for a little self-congratulation, I also think this is a good place to note that not translating angelos as “angel” is useful, if not necessary. After all, why are they moving up and down? To deliver messages and make reports, I suppose. The intent of giving Nathaniel this gift of sight, I suppose, is to let him know that he will be more privy to God’s ways, or his plan. Or something.
Here we are. First of all, this last bit about the Stairway to Heaven is not some of the older MSS traditions, namely the Siniatic, nor the Vatican. The former is the oldest ms we have. So there is a pretty good chance–in the 30% range, IMO–that this is an interpolation. As such, it made sense to the copyist even as it was not the intent of the evangelist. The commentator Ellicott points out this is a reference to Jacob’s Ladder, so small wonder that it didn’t make sense to me.
47 Vidit Iesus Nathanael venientem ad se et dicit de eo: “Ecce vere Israelita, in quo dolus non est”.
48 Dicit ei Nathanael: “Unde me nosti? ”. Respondit Iesus et dixit ei: “ Priusquam te Philippus vocaret, cum esses sub ficu, vidi te”.
49 Respondit ei Nathanael: “Rabbi, tu es Filius Dei, tu rex es Israel!”.
50 Respondit Iesus et dixit ei: “Quia dixi tibi: Vidi te sub ficu, credis? Maiora his videbis”.
51 Et dicit ei: “Amen, amen dico vobis: Videbitis caelum apertum et angelos Dei ascendentes et descendentes supra Filium hominis”.
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