John Chapter 8:54-59

We continue. The goal here is (finally) to finish this chapter. We are still not half-way through the gospel. It seems like this is really slow-going, but the unique material in John requires additional analysis; my hope is that I’m doing it some justice. As has become the trend, the last part of the previous post included for continuity, since we are breaking the posts in mid-conversation.

Text

[Thus] “The Jews” said to him, “Now we know you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets (died), and you say ‘If you do not keep my teaching, you will not taste death forever’. (53) Are better than the father of us Abraham, who died? Or the prophets who died? What do you make yourself?” (= “what do you make yourself to be”, or “who do you think you are?”)

54 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς, Ἐὰν ἐγὼ δοξάσω ἐμαυτόν, ἡ δόξα μου οὐδέν ἐστιν: ἔστιν ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ δοξάζων με, ὃν ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι θεὸς ἡμῶν ἐστιν:

55 καὶ οὐκ ἐγνώκατε αὐτόν, ἐγὼ δὲ οἶδα αὐτόν. κἂν εἴπω ὅτι οὐκ οἶδα αὐτόν, ἔσομαι ὅμοιος ὑμῖν ψεύστης: ἀλλὰ οἶδα αὐτὸν καὶ τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ τηρῶ.

56 Ἀβραὰμ ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ἠγαλλιάσατο ἵνα ἴδῃ τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν ἐμήν, καὶ εἶδεν καὶ ἐχάρη.

Jesus answered, “If I will glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me, who you say is our God. And you do not know him, but I know him. And if I say I don’t  know him, I will be like (lit = equal to) you, a liar. But I know him and I keep his word/message. Your father Abraham rejoiced exceedingly, in that he somehow saw my day, and he saw and rejoiced.” 

It’s always tricky to get the aorist subjunctive into an English sentence that does justice to the subjunctive, as it mixes a past action with uncertain or unreal conditions. That is what we get in the last half of Verse 56, which I very clumsily rendered as “he somehow saw my day“. This is  followed by two aorist verbs, “he saw” and “he rejoiced”, both singular actions completed in the past. The subjunctive can also be used for emotional states, but then it would be more appropriate for the second clause, for the exultation rather than the seeing. The point is that Abraham was able, somehow, to see Jesus’ day. The somehow is meant to convey the unreal or uncertain condition, so I guess that makes sense. “Abraham, even though he died centuries ago, somehow, via some unspecified mechanism, saw Jesus’ day, and he saw and rejoiced”. The repetition of “he saw” is more or less necessary to confirm that the unspecified mechanism did indeed function properly, so we can use the aorist and so state with certainty Abraham, indeed, saw Jesus’ day. 

Is it just me, or is this all getting a tad repetitious? Those in the audience don’t know God, so they don’t understand Jesus.

But one aspect of this that we have not noted is the way Jesus seems to separate himself from God. The father is the one who glorifies, and he glorifies Jesus. Jesus keeps his father’s word. Here is where/how/why it becomes difficult to believe that John was not fully aware of the Synoptic gospels. After all, we started this gospel with “and the Logos was God”, an assertion of the identity of the “two” who in fact were one. They are not the same, but the Logos is God. When reading this one needs to keep in mind that the idea of the Trinity is still several hundred years in the future. The Trinity is strictly speaking biblical; the Trinity is an inference compose from the amalgamation of “The Logos was God” and “It is my father who glorifies me”. Now, I have to admit that I’ve probably spent too much time messing around with Plato, Augustine, and Aquinas, so my perspective may be a bit overly-formal and perhaps downright archaic. However, some of this is just plain historical analysis where we have to understand what the text actually says, and it says that the Logos was God and the father glorifies the son. Those two statements are not exactly contradictory or mutually exclusive, but they are also not fully compatible with each other–unless you posit the Trinity. Then the two statements make sense in relation to each other. But then we have to ask ourselves if John truly had this intention in mind when he wrote? I am not at all sure how we can make that statement.     

The point here is that when John says things like “the father glorifies me”, he is very much aligned with the Christology of the Synoptics, wherein the father and son were separate entities. These are the sorts of comparisons that need to be made. There is certainly a vast discussion of the difference between “Blessed are the poor” and “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. There is an enormous debate about differences in wording, but not so much about the implications of the words used. I mentioned Ehrman’s book, Jesus Before the Gospels–which I do recommend; in it he discusses at some length whether we can trust stories, or aspects of stories, but then he falls back on his buried assumptions about the historicity of much of the NT. This shows up when he discusses  those facts that we can take as given–as data. Anyone who remembers–or doesn’t–geometric proofs, the givens are the statements set out at the beginning that can be accepted as true and accurate. Ehrman doesn’t really look at his givens; rather, he believes we can build our house on the foundation of Jesus was from Nazareth without really examining the various gospels to see if this is actually a valid conclusion. I believe it is not. I believe the texts overwhelmingly indicate that Jesus was born, raised, and lived in Caphernaum, and that his extended family lived there too. Now, whether or not Jesus was born/raised in Nazareth really does not have much impact on the rest of it, but it’s a great example of simply accepting an assumption as something that has been proven.

In the final analysis, these verses further John’s position that “The Jews” have misunderstood Jesus.  

54 Respondit Iesus: “Si ego glorifico meipsum, gloria mea nihil est; est Pater meus, qui glorificat me, quem vos dicitis: “Deus noster est!”,

55 et non cognovistis eum. Ego autem novi eum. Et si dixero: Non scio eum, ero similis vobis, mendax; sed scio eum et sermonem eius servo.

56 Abraham pater vester exsultavit, ut videret diem meum; et vidit et gavisus est ”.

57 εἶπον οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι πρὸς αὐτόν, Πεντήκοντα ἔτη οὔπω ἔχεις καὶ Ἀβραὰμ ἑώρακας;

58 εἶπεν αὐτοῖς Ἰησοῦς, Ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί.

59 ἦραν οὖν λίθους ἵνα βάλωσιν ἐπ’ αὐτόν: Ἰησοῦς δὲ ἐκρύβη καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ.

So “the Jews” said to him, “Five hundred years and have you seen Abraham?” (58) Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen I say to you, before Abraham became, I am there.” (59) So they picked up stones in order to throw them at him, but Jesus hid, and went out of the temple.

So “the Jews” more or less made my point, that how did Abraham see Jesus half a millennium prior to Jesus birth? But then Jesus picked up on my other point that the Logos was there in the beginning. So here, I think, it would behoove me to reconsider my earlier point about John had the intent to introduce the concept of the Trinity. Granted, there are not yet Three Persons, but we have Two who seem to be the same and yet different, separate but equal, as it were. Jesus said Abraham had seen Jesus’ day, meaning the present time when Jesus is on earth and so can be seen, but now he adds that he was before Abraham became; that is, Jesus existed before Abraham was born. This is another way to say that “in the beginning was the Logos”. This sort of concept might seem to indicate that the author of John was, to some degree, familiar with some of the concepts of Greek philosophy; by “Greek philosophy” I mean the formal study of Plato and Aristotle and the principles of being, existence, soul, time, and the like. Augustine and Aquinas were familiar with these concepts, and they imported this sort of thinking into Christianity. The merger of Greek and Hebrew thought was never complete and this caused all sorts of problems in the Later Middle Ages. And throughout, there were Christians who were arguably Platonists, and Christians who abhorred Plato and his argumentation and insisted on doctrines of faith that did not rely on rational proof. The end result of this tension was the Reformation, although that did not solve anything; the philosophical questions and conundrums–mutually exclusive absolutes being a big one–remain, but we now understand that they don’t really matter. This is summed up nicely by the Roman Church when it declared that something was a mystery that was beyond human comprehension, so just drop it. Kind of a cop-out, but also eminently practical. We can get on with our lives.

And here we see the result of this tension in Verse 59. “The Jews” felt the abyss of irreconcilable truths: how could Jesus exist now and yet have been seen by Abraham. There was no clear answer, and there still isn’t. Baffled by this inability to understand, they fall into the all-too-human universal solution: violence. Destroy what you cannot understand. But the real kicker is Jesus’ reaction: he hid. In Luke, when Jesus found himself hemmed in by angry townsfolk, Jesus simply passed through the crowd, apparently while still visible, although that is conjecture on my part. Here, he hid. That makes one consider the logistics of such an act. The Temple was enormous, something like 3-5 American football fields according to Ehrman’s book that I’m reading. So, assuming it was full of people during the festival (Sukkoth), are we to assume further that he ducked into the crowd? It’s plausible. What I want to know is whether the floor was paved or not. If so, where did they get the stones?  

57 Dixerunt ergo Iudaei ad eum: “Quinquaginta annos nondum habes et Abraham vidisti?”.

58 Dixit eis Iesus: “ Amen, amen dico vobis: Antequam Abraham fieret, ego sum”.

59 Tulerunt ergo lapides, ut iacerent in eum; Iesus autem abscondit se et exivit de templo.