Summary John Chapter 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Chapter 4:47-54

The remainder of the chapter is John’s version of the ruler (of the synagogue) who approaches Jesus and asks that he come and heal his sick child. We first encountered in the story in Mark 5, but it is in all the Synoptics. Here, however, we get a couple of differences in detail. First, as mentioned in the last post, the man is now connected to the royal household, doubtless that of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee. Strictly speaking Herod is not a king; he is an official of the Roman Empire, likely with royal pretensions. After all, he is the grandson of Herod the Great, the last King of Judea, Galilee, and a few other places. IOW, the man has become of higher status than a ruler of the synagogue (whatever that is). Also, the child is higher in status; here he is a son rather than a daughter, and you best believe that imparted higher status.

Now, raising the father in stature is the sort of thing that one would expect from a continued retelling of story. He wasn’t just an official of a synagogue, but of the king! Be that as it may, it occurs to me that John may have conflated this story with that of the Centurion and his pais, that we find only in Matthew and Luke. Oh, and Q. There we determined that the pais was likely a slave rather than the offspring of the Centurion. So here we have a child in place of a slave, and a son in place of a daughter. So yes, the status of the sick individual has been elevated as well, but for different reasons. Now, no doubt we have to have a redactionally consistent explanation for all the times John disagrees with Q. Or with Mark, since the sick child is not part of Q. But what this is, well, hard to say.

once again, the final verse from the last section is included for continuity. The story starts in Verse 47, so it belongs here regardless. Without further ado,

Text

47 οὗτος ἀκούσας ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἥκει ἐκ τῆς Ἰουδαίας εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν ἀπῆλθεν πρὸς αὐτὸν καὶ ἠρώτα ἵνα καταβῇ καὶ ἰάσηται αὐτοῦ τὸν υἱόν, ἤμελλεν γὰρ ἀποθνῄσκειν.

48 εἶπεν οὖν ὁ Ἰησοῦς πρὸς αὐτόν, Ἐὰν μὴ σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα ἴδητε, οὐ μὴ πιστεύσητε.

He (the official) hearing that Jesus came from Judea into Galilee, went to him and asked in order that he (Jesus) might come and heal his son, who was likely to die. (48) Jesus said to him, “Unless you see wonders and signs, you will not believe”.

In addition to conflating the ruler of the synagogue–whom Matthew named as Jairus–and the Centurion, John now adds in Jesus and the Pharisees that we first saw in Mark 8, and thereafter. In that story, the Pharisees ask for, or perhaps demand, a sign from Jesus, who grows exasperated with them. His words here are also a bit sharp. My thing is that the attitude of annoyance is justified to some degree with the Pharisees since Jesus knows they are trying to trick him, whereas here is a father in genuine distress. 

But the real reason I bring this up has to do with our discussion about oral traditions that each of the evangelists ran into separately. It is easy to suppose that John got this story more or less intact from an oral source, whether or not that source was truly oral, or if it derived from one of the written gospels. It’s entirely likely–but not necessary–that John would not have known where the person telling him got the information being related. Ancient chroniclers were mot always fastidious about source criticism, and Thucydides rather tartly levels this charge against his unnamed predecessor, aka Herodotus. However, given that all three events here reflect stories in the Synoptics, it’s pretty easy to conclude that John read the accounts of the older gospels, condensed them, and retold a similar story that caught the underlying gist of those earlier accounts even if the specific details didn’t align perfectly. Very few ancient chroniclers would have seen any problem with this; in fact, that same snarky Thucydides more or less explains his research process and more or less tells us that his process was more or less as I just ascribed to John. As I see it, the ancients were often concerned with Truth, whether or not the stories were factually accurate. This latter criterion was not an overriding concern, but the Eternal Truth most definitely was. Thucydides tells us flat-out that many of the speeches are the “sort of thing” that the speaker “would have said” under the circumstances; that is, the first “scientific” historian made stuff up. He also tells us that he would choose certain events as sort of an example of the behaviours practiced by the governments and individuals involved. From that statement it’s not hard to imagine that perhaps he may have mixed in a few details from other but similar events. Knowing this about Thucydides is important for our purposes here. As I alluded, he is known as the first scientific historian largely because he did check and cross-check his sources, note the discrepancies and the similarities, and only then made judgements about which was more apt to be factually accurate. His predecessor Herodotus, OTOH, pretty much related whatever he had been told. Now, in the latter’s favour, we should note that Herodotus often gave both sides of a story and then drew his judgement and then prompted the audience to decide which story was to be preferred. 

As I have repeated–over and over–the gospels, nor anything in the NT, nor the Bible in its entirety, should be understood as historical accounts. That was not their purpose nor their intent. They did not try to record the actual events of the Hebrew peoples, one branch of which became Jews as we understand the term. And neither were the gospels so concerned. Rather, the point and purpose was not to provide a factual record, but Divine Truth, and any correlation to actual events was more less an afterthought. In this last half-chapter, we have incidents that retell, or at least recall, three different episodes in the Synoptics. Did John get his information about the three from independent sources?  Or from the Synoptics? That is a loaded question, and in fact comes very close to begging the question* as the question itself assumes part of the answer in the question. It assumes that independent sources existed to John. Then it slyly elides “sources” into “written sources” and the two are emphatically not the same. One is a subset of the other: all written sources are sources, but not all sources are written sources, but this latter clause is too often conveniently forgotten. Yes, it is possible that John encountered people who told him stories, but did the evangelists go about seeking out such people as the two Greeks I mentioned did? Color me skeptical. It must be conceded, however, that as a member of a Christian community that was probably growing John likely heard the stories that they told him. But there’s something that does not receive nearly enough consideration: how many of the stories that newcomers heard and brought in were actually independent of the Synoptics? That’s not to say that everyone had read the Synoptics, but how many of the stories that were circulating by John’s time had been derived from the Synoptics? Remember, not everyone had a personal copy of a gospel in their possession–assuming they could read it if they had. But people heard readings from it and then repeated what they had heard just as their ancestors repeated what they had heard Jesus say. By the time John wrote, Mark was nearly 30 years old, and Matthew and Luke were maybe 10 or 15 years, so there had been plenty of time for the “(good) word to get out” as it were, and pun intended. I suspect that the accounts of Josephus–and probably Tacitus and other Romans–derived, ultimately, from NT sources. Who else was writing about the life of Jesus? It strains credulity not in the least to suppose that Josephus knew someone who knew someone who was a Christian. Or, having gone through the persecutions of Domitian, the Roman officials who interrogated–read “tortured”–and executed (assuming that happened) had heard things from their victims, and this was the sort of novelty story that could easily prove very popular at the next banquet, or just a supper with one’s circle. 

So yeah, John heard people tell. But the fact that there are themes from three separate stories from the Synoptics retold here, and nowhere else, leads me to conclude that John, acting as an editor, put the three stories together into the one he repeats in this section. That is, that it seems most likely that John had read the Synoptics and likely had copies of them all and used them as sources for this particular conflation of the evidence he found. The overall drift of the three is captured very well, at least individually. And the rough seam that I noted about Jesus complaining that the man wanted a sign seems to indicate that John made the stores fit even when they really did not. The man did not ask for a sign; he pleaded for help for his child. But John wanted to include a point that he had gotten from the Synoptics, so he gave Jesus a response that is not really appropriate to the situation. Skimming through the commentaries, several of them contrast this healing with that of the centurion’s slave. In that one, the centurion was strong in his faith; here, the father is somehow wanting in faith. This goes back to Jesus’ rebuke about the need for signs and wonders; frankly, I don’t see the father’s faith as weak a all. The man traveled from Caphernaum to (apparently) Cana to ask Jesus to heal his son. It appears that the father’s faith is weak because he asked Jesus to come, whereas the centurion begged that Jesus not come due to his unworthiness; it was enough that Jesus speak, and it would be done. I suppose. The other contrast is that Jesus just came from Samaria, where he was accepted without a performance of signs and wonders, but here, amongst Jews, such visible manifestations of power seem to be required.

47 hic, cum audisset quia Iesus advenerit a Iudaea in Galilaeam, abiit ad eum et rogabat, ut descenderet et sanaret filium eius; incipiebat enim mori.

48 Dixit ergo Iesus ad eum: “ Nisi signa et prodigia videritis, non credetis ”.

49 λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ βασιλικός, Κύριε, κατάβηθι πρὶν ἀποθανεῖν τὸ παιδίον μου.

50 λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Πορεύου: ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ. ἐπίστευσεν ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῷ λόγῳ ὃν εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐπορεύετο.

51 ἤδη δὲ αὐτοῦ καταβαίνοντος οἱ δοῦλοι αὐτοῦ ὑπήντησαν αὐτῷ λέγοντες ὅτι ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ ζῇ.

52 ἐπύθετο οὖν τὴν ὥραν παρ’ αὐτῶν ἐν ἧ κομψότερον ἔσχεν: εἶπαν οὖν αὐτῷ ὅτι Ἐχθὲς ὥραν ἑβδόμην ἀφῆκεν αὐτὸν ὁ πυρετός. 53 ἔγνω οὖν ὁ πατὴρ ὅτι [ἐν] ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐν ἧ εἶπεν αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ, καὶ ἐπίστευσεν αὐτὸς καὶ ἡ οἰκία αὐτοῦ ὅλη.

54 Τοῦτο [δὲ] πάλιν δεύτερον σημεῖον ἐποίησεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἐλθὼν ἐκ τῆς Ἰουδαίας εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν.

The official said to him, “Lord, please come down before my son dies.” (50) Jesus said to him, “Go, your son lives.” The man believed the words which Jesus spoke to him, and departed. (51) Indeed, his slaves met him going down saying to him that his son lives. (52) So he asked of them the hour in which held the improvement, so the told him that, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left.” (53) The father knew thus that at that hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives”, and he believed and the whole house. (54) This was again the second sign that Jesus made coming from Judea into Galilee.

 Before I forget, let it be noted that in Verse 51 the child is referred to as pais, using the word of the Centurion in Matthew and Luke. In all other instances the child is referred to as uios, which specifically means “son” where pais can be used of any child, or even a slave. Does this prove that John was making a deliberate reference to Matthew & Luke? Absolutely not. Perhaps John simply wanted to avoid the redundancy of using “son” once again and so chose the generic term. In fact, that is an entirely plausible explanation for the choice of word. In fact, it’s the most probable explanation. Nonetheless, one must admit that the coincidence is rather convenient, no?

In this telling we do not get the details of Jesus going to the house and being laughed at for saying the child was only sleeping. Rather, it follows the course of Matthew’s version of the centurion’s slave wherein Jesus effects the healing from a distance. Here is yet another reason to infer that John was deliberately conflating the two stories, I believe.  The whole part about asking when the fever broke just adds another layer of mystery, of the enhancement of Jesus’ divinity to the process. 

What is particularly interesting is that this event caused the man and his entire household to believe; that is, they became followers of Jesus. And here is where Jesus getting huffy about needing a sign comes in. For, we are told, this was the second sign that Jesus performed in Galilee. The first of course was at the wedding in Cana, which is in Galilee. And while we’re on the topic of Galilee, we should note that John is very explicit to tell us that the official came from Caphernaum, and was returning there when met by his slaves. Here, I think, is additional evidence that John rather supposes that Jesus was not from Galilee, but recognizes the strong ties of Jesus to that land, and specifically to Caphernaum, that are present in the Synoptics. As we saw above in the previous section, the Galileans welcomed Jesus and believed (in) him because they had seen what he did at the festival. This 

*Begging the question. This expression has become horribly misunderstood and misused. It refers to a specific fallacy of informal logic, and means assuming the truth of the answer in the way the question is phrased. Might suggest a Google search. This is the sort of thing about which I get pedantic. Dangling participles is another.

49 Dicit ad eum regius: “Domine, descende priusquam moriatur puer meus”.

50 Dicit ei Iesus: “Vade. Filius tuus vivit ”. Credidit homo sermoni, quem dixit ei Iesus, et ibat.

51 Iam autem eo descendente, servi eius occurrerunt ei dicentes quia puer eius vivit.

52 Interrogabat ergo horam ab eis, in qua melius habuerit. Dixerunt ergo ei: “ Heri hora septima reliquit eum febris ”.

53 Cognovit ergo pater quia illa hora erat, in qua dixit ei Iesus: “ Filius tuus vivit ”, et credidit ipse et domus eius tota.

54 Hoc iterum secundum signum fecit Iesus, cum venisset a Iudaea in Galilaeam.

John Chapter 4:24-32

Jesus is talking to the Samaritan woman at the Well of Jacob, which is outside the chief city of Samaria. At one time this city apparently had been the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. As such, the Samaritans claimed that their Temple was the true temple of YHWH. Of course, this did not sit well with the Judeans, so they held the Samaritans in contempt probably, as I’ve suggested, out of jealousy over the superior claim of the Samaritans.

24 πνεῦμα ὁ θεός, καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ δεῖ προσκυνεῖν. 

25 λέγει αὐτῷ ἡ γυνή, Οἶδα ὅτι Μεσσίας ἔρχεται, ὁ λεγόμενος Χριστός: ὅταν ἔλθῃ ἐκεῖνος, ἀναγγελεῖ ἡμῖν ἅπαντα.

26 λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Ἐγώ εἰμι, ὁ λαλῶν σοι.

“…God is spirit, and those worshipping him must worship him in spirit and truth.” (25) The woman said to him, “I know that the anointed one (text = messiah) is coming, the one called the christ (text = christos). When he may come, he will proclaim to all of us.” (26) Jesus said to her, “I am (he), the one you speak of.”

First of all, we have carried over Verse 24 for context.

Second, I went back to the previous post and changed/corrected my translation of the first three words in Verse 24. It originally read “the spirit of God”. This is not only wrong, but it makes no sense with the rest of the sentence. Apparently i was rushing to complete the post. My apologies. Fortunately, I was able to correct it because of including it here.

All this is pretty damning proof that I did not give the verse sufficient attention.

So let’s give it some attention. The construction, with the definite article attached to God, and spirit having no definite article, we can take “spirit” as a predicate noun: “God is spirit”. There is no controversy there; it’s the standard/consensus translation. The rest of the sentence is almost universally rendered as “in spirit and truth”. What does “in spirit and  truth” mean? What does it mean to worship in spirit and in truth? My initial thoughts was that this was a reference to eliminating the animal sacrifice prevalent in both Temples. That seems pretty obvious. Worship God in spirit as opposed to in the flesh by way of sacrifice. Okay, fine. What happens when we come to the “truth” part? This is very abstract, no? Of course we speaking metaphorically, at least to some degree, or in some way, no? If not, then we’re left with the absolutely literal meaning that we worship in truth because God is the True God. That’s fine, but kind of obvious. Not that there is any reason why John should not be writing in an obvious manner. No?

Now I’ve been round this mulberry bush many times since writing that last sentence trying to figure out, or feel out, how to take the en (ἐν). Now, to start, the KJV and the NIV render this as “in spirit and in truth”. There is no grammatical reason this cannot be accurate; the single use of en (ἐν) can be taken in a partitive, or distributive sense, which has the same grammatical impact as repeating the preposition. The ESB, NASB, RSVP, and NABRE render as “in spirit and truth”. This is fine; there is no real logical difference between the two translations. Strictly speaking I suppose the second is the the more literal, but that’s about it. Now we have to decide how we are to understand this.

Are we in, as in inside the spirit and the truth? Does that feel right? Of course one may question whether it’s really important to suss this out; OTOH, Jesus is describing the way we should be, or will be, worshipping God, so it seems like this is kind of important. Here is where the wicket gets sticky for me. Worshipping in spirit makes perfect sense. In the most literal sense, this could simply mean refraining from animal sacrifice: worship a Spirit in our own spirit rather than by sacrificing flesh. More, the emphasis is especially true if we consider the larger context in which this gospel was written. This is the period of the fluorescence of what we lump together as “Gnosticism”, and the idea of spirit was very important for these “Gnostics” and a lot of pagan thinkers. It seems naïve to doubt that John was influenced by this ambient thought. So “in spirit” feels right. In can be interpreted in various ways such as weighing the influence of the ambient thought vs a more strictly Jewish attitude. 

But what about “in truth”? Now perhaps I’ve spent too much time counting the angels dancing on the heads of pins, but this doesn’t really work for me. In truth? Inside or upon truth? That’s more or less a truism. Of course we worship in truth. Who is going to worship in falsehood? I suppose that could be a shot at ritualists, who are concerned with outward forms without concern for what is in the heart. This is, after all, a standard description of the way Judaism was practiced at the turn of the millennium, but there is a legitimate question of how accurate this depiction is; there is a certain degree of bias in the charge. It may not quite cross into anti-Semitism, but it’s on that spectrum. Reading parts of the NT have shown me that the charge is unfair. And in his book Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox convincingly demonstrates that the pagans were experiencing something of a religious revival in the First Century CE. As a result, I’m not sure we can wholly ascribe “in truth” to an attitude of sincerity to be held by the believer. Then what? It might raise eyebrows were you to realize how much time I’ve spent on this verse, now seemingly without resolution. The commentaries I’ve checked are no help; they go on and on about God as spirit, and worshipping a spirit as a spirit, & c., but gloss over the idea of worshipping in truth more or less completely. Perhaps the inference to be drawn is that, perhaps, this is not as important as I seem to think it is.  

So much for Verse 24. Then we come to the core of this passage, if not of the whole chapter. Heck, while we’re at it, perhaps the entire gospel if not the NT as a whole. Jesus informs her that he is the Messiah, the Christos, the Anointed One. John is rather clever about how he works in both the Hebrew and the Greek terms so that everyone is able to understand what Jesus is saying. Now, in line with the odd speaking-of-himself-in-the-third-person construction that began already in Mark, and was even hinted at in Paul, Jesus does not say “Christos sum“; he chooses circumlocution and says “I am he, the one to whom you speak”. Now, this is actually more direct than many other times when he talks about the Son of Man as if it’s someone else. The purpose of this is clear enough: John wants us all to know that Jesus is the Anointed One, using the woman as a proxy audience. And this is probably the earliest in any of the gospels when Jesus himself makes this announcement. But why not? May as well get down to business. Matthew and Luke, of course, make the proclamation during the birth narrative, but this is coming from Jesus himself. 

The most interesting aspect of this is the audience hearing it: a single, Samaritan woman. That it was made to a woman is, in some ways, shocking, given the low regard in which women were held in that time and within that cultural background. I’ve been reading a fair bit of Roman history of late, and women there attained a much higher degree of social status and respect, but this is not Rome. Women and children were the most vulnerable members of society and this is reflected numerous time in the Hebrew Scriptures. In fact, societal admonitions to consider the welfare of “widows and orphans” in our own society has its genesis in the HS. Of course, the admonitions are not always–or even frequently–not practiced, but the existence of these exhortations are a very clear sign of the need for them. For example, Mediaeval Handbooks of Penance, meant to provide guidance to the priests hearing confession provide keen insight into of the sort of behaviour that was actually occurring. These were meant to be practical rather than theoretical, addressing real-world situations rather than acting as theological, or even credal, position statements. But she was not only a woman, but a Samaritan woman. From the perspective of Jewish society, that Jesus is even talking her is beyond the pale, something that she noted back in Verse 9. Here, I suspect, is where John is putting Jews on notice that they are no longer at the front of the line for salvation. Each gospel has its own method of putting this message across. There are pointed stories about how pagans such as the Centurion display faith not seen in any of the children of Israel, or that Jesus could manufacture descendants of Abraham from rocks and stones. So the message is not new, but perhaps it would have been particularly galling to Jews to find themselves below Samaritans in stature.

The point here, IMO, is that John is confirming that a new order and a new way of doing things–like worshipping–has come into being. We are, as Jesus says, on the verge of a new way of worship centered neither on the Temple in Jerusalem nor the Temple in Samaria. The woman seems to understand that this new manner of worship will be possible upon the coming of the Messiah. Again, is this an allusion to the lack of such perception in Jews? By the time of this gospel, the message of Jesus was more than sixty old. By this point it was obvious that the Jews had not accepted, nor even acknowledged that Jesus was the Anointed One. Of course, to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah would have compelled them to accept him. As for the Samaritans, we’ll pick this up below in the next section of this post. 

24 “…Spiritus est Deus, et eos, qui adorant eum, in Spiritu et veritate oportet adorare”.

25 Dicit ei mulier: “Scio quia Messias venit — qui diy recitur Christus C; cum venerit ille, nobis annuntiabit omnia”.

26 Dicit ei Iesus: “Ego sum, qui loquor tecum”.

27 Καὶ ἐπὶ τούτῳ ἦλθαν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἐθαύμαζον ὅτι μετὰ γυναικὸς ἐλάλει: οὐδεὶς μέντοι εἶπεν, Τί ζητεῖς; ἤ, Τί λαλεῖς μετ’ αὐτῆς;

28 ἀφῆκεν οὖν τὴν ὑδρίαν αὐτῆς ἡ γυνὴ καὶ ἀπῆλθεν εἰς τὴν πόλιν καὶ λέγει τοῖς ἀνθρώποις,

29 Δεῦτε ἴδετε ἄνθρωπον ὃς εἶπέν μοι πάντα ὅσα ἐποίησα: μήτι οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστός;

30 ἐξῆλθον ἐκ τῆς πόλεως καὶ ἤρχοντο πρὸς αὐτόν.

31 Ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ ἠρώτων αὐτὸν οἱ μαθηταὶ λέγοντες, Ῥαββί, φάγε.

32 ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Ἐγὼ βρῶσιν ἔχω φαγεῖν ἣν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε.

And upon that point his disciples came, and marveled that he spoke with the woman; However, no one spoke, (asking) ‘what do you seek’, or ‘what are you talking about with her’. (28) So the woman handed over the water to him, and she went away to the city and said to the persons, (29) “Come, see the man to whom I spoke who has done all these thing for me. Is he not the christos?” (30) They went out of the city and came to him. (31) His disciples said in the meantime, “Rabbi, eat”. (32) He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know.”

There are two points here. The first connects to what we spoke of before, that the Jews have been superseded by other peoples in the search for salvation. Recall that this chapter follows the Baptist instructing his disciples to clarify a discussion about purification they had had with “a Jew.” Then at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus departs Judea because the Pharisees had become aware that Jesus’ disciples–but pointedly not Jesus himself–were baptizing. We don’t know why this presented a problem, but apparently it did. So coming to a conclusion where the Jews find themselves being shouldered aside in the queue is not a surprising turn in the narrative.

The second point is a bit more obscure. Earlier in the chapter Jesus told the Samaritan woman of water that would never leave one thirsty; here Jesus talks about special food of which the disciples have no knowledge. This brings to mind the treatment of the disciples we encountered in Mark. They were not, on the whole, the sharpest bunch. So here, too, Jesus is sort of pointing this out to us at their expense. It’s not at all clear why we are told this in the manner that we are. After all, if the disciples don’t know about this food, isn’t that because Jesus hasn’t told them about it? So doesn’t Jesus have to shoulder some of the blame on this? So the point of this exchange is not entirely clear to me.

(27) Et continuo venerunt discipuli eius et mirabantur quia cum muliere loquebatur; nemo tamen dixit: “Quid quaeris aut quid loqueris cum ea?”.

28 Reliquit ergo hydriam suam mulier et abiit in civitatem et dicit illis hominibus:

29 “Venite, videte hominem, qui dixit mihi omnia, quaecumque feci; numquid ipse est Christus?”.

30 Exierunt de civitate et veniebant ad eum.

31 Interea rogabant eum discipuli dicentes: “Rabbi, manduca”.

32 Ille autem dixit eis: “Ego cibum habeo manducare, quem vos nescitis”.

John Chapter 4:15-24 (edit included)

Note: a minor edit in the translation was done on Verse 24 below. I changed it from the spirit of God” to “God is spirit”. This was an absolute rookie mistake, confusing the nominative case for the genitive. I was just flat not paying attention. Wonder how many more of these mistakes are littered through my translations. I shudder to think!

As we did for Chapter 3, I’ve included the last verse from the previous post to provide continuity.

Text

15 λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ γυνή, Κύριε, δός μοι τοῦτο τὸ ὕδωρ, ἵνα μὴ διψῶ μηδὲ διέρχωμαι ἐνθάδε ἀντλεῖν. 

16 Λέγει αὐτῇ, Υπαγε φώνησον τὸν ἄνδρα σου καὶ ἐλθὲ ἐνθάδε.

17 ἀπεκρίθη ἡ γυνὴ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Οὐκ ἔχω ἄνδρα. λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Καλῶς εἶπας ὅτι Ἄνδρα οὐκ ἔχω:

18 πέντε γὰρ ἄνδρας ἔσχες, καὶ νῦν ὃν ἔχεις οὐκ ἔστιν σου ἀνήρ: τοῦτο ἀληθὲς εἴρηκας.

19 λέγει αὐτῷ ἡ γυνή, Κύριε, θεωρῶ ὅτι προφήτης εἶ σύ.

The woman said to him, “Master, give me this water, so that I never thirst, nor have to come here to draw water”. (16) He said to her, “Arise and call you husband (literally = your man) and come here”. (17) The woman answered and said to him/her/it, “I do not have a husband”. Jesus said to her, “You speak well, that ‘I do not have a husband’. (18) For you had five husbands, and now the one you have is not your husband. This you speak truly.” (19) The woman said to him, “Master, I behold that you are a prophet.” 

This bit seems a tad strange, like a bit of a non-sequitur. The two of them were having a discussion about living water, and suddenly Jesus is lecturing her on her loose morals. I confirmed the last part from some of the commentaries. In fact, Matthew Henry goes so far as to say that Jesus showed his human nature here, first teasing her about living water in a riddle that she did not understand, and then drawing her out on her husbands. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a reference to serial marriages, or that she has just shacked up with these men, or at least with the current man who is not her husband. Matthew Henry says that Jesus has fallen into sin due to being tired from his journey, which causes him to provoke her. Interesting.

Of course the takeaway here is that the woman realizes Jesus as a prophet. Perhaps he is even greater than their father Jacob, who was, after all, not a prophet. One aspect of the exchange and her conclusion that catches my attention is that she comes to this realization only after he provides a detailed description of her domestic arrangements. This is different from interactions that Jesus has with other non-Jews in the other gospels. Naturally we are all aware that John is the author of “blessed is he who has not seen, and yet believes”. We have the example of the Centurion who knows that Jesus has but to say the word and his slave will be healed. This woman only comes to her understanding after Jesus has demonstrated his power. This makes him little different from a carnival huckster who makes “reads peoples’ minds” to convince them of their “ability”. At this point I’m not entirely sure what this means, so let’s read on.

15 Dicit ad eum mulier: “ Domine, da mihi hanc aquam, ut non sitiam neque veniam huc haurire ”.

16 Dicit ei: “ Vade, voca virum tuum et veni huc ”.

17 Respondit mulier et dixit ei: “ Non habeo virum ”. Dicit ei Iesus: “ Bene dixisti: “Non habeo virum”;

18 quinque enim viros habuisti, et nunc, quem habes, non est tuus vir. Hoc vere dixisti ”.

19 Dicit ei mulier: “ Domine, video quia propheta es tu.

20 οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ προσεκύνησαν: καὶ ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἐστὶν ὁ τόπος ὅπου προσκυνεῖν δεῖ.

21 λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Πίστευέ μοι, γύναι, ὅτι ἔρχεται ὥρα ὅτε οὔτε ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ οὔτε ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις προσκυνήσετε τῷ πατρί.

22 ὑμεῖς προσκυνεῖτε ὃ οὐκ οἴδατε: ἡμεῖς προσκυνοῦμεν ὃ οἴδαμεν, ὅτι ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐστίν.

23 ἀλλὰ ἔρχεται ὥρα, καὶ νῦν ἐστιν, ὅτε οἱ ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταὶ προσκυνήσουσιν τῷ πατρὶ ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ: καὶ γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ τοιούτους ζητεῖ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτόν.

24 πνεῦμα ὁ θεός, καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ δεῖ προσκυνεῖν.

[the woman is still speaking:] “Our fathers on the this mountain prostrated themselves. And you (pl) say that in Jerusalem is the place where you were to grovel (or) you will grovel (or) where it is necessary to grovel. 

Let me stop to explain this. The first (or) indicates the ambiguity of the text that I have presented. The form could be an aorist subjunctive or a future indicative active. The first is impossible to render cleanly in English because it denotes both uncertainty, or obligation in the past, but it’s a simple past. English would require something like “where you should have worshipped”, using the perfect to imply continuous action rather than a single, one-and-done action as “where you worshipped”. I tend to believe that this is the tense and mood of the verb intended, to put across the idea of obligation that has occurred in the past. Now, “where you will worship” also works, but obviously we lose the concept that this is what has been happening (perfect progressive) up to this point. The final choice “where it is necessary to worship” is a completely different tense & mood, and it comes from a different mss tradition than the first choice of readings. The construction is impersonal, and “it is necessary + infinitive” is pretty much the direct translation. Personally, I would guess that the first tradition of the first two choices is apt to be the more accurate due to the ambiguity of tense/voice. It was, I suspect, precisely this that led a later copyist to clarify the reading by changing the text to “it is necessary to”. Even more interesting is that the Latin also reads the impersonal “it is necessary to”. I’m curious which came first: the Latin or the Greek? By rights, it should be the Greek, but this would mean that the textual change occurred very early, prior to 382 CE. That strikes me as rather too early for divergent mss traditions, but I say that in complete ignorance of said traditions. 

One other point to be made concerns “prostrate themselves”. This is invariably translated as “worship”, but that does not begin to capture the tone of the Greek verb. The verb is a compound of the preposition pros and kynēsis which means something like “act like a dog”. Put together, you get a verb that means “act like a dog in front of (someone)”. The implication is to adopt a submissive posture, like a dog lying on its back and exposing its belly. That is the literal meaning. In practice the concept is “to prostrate”, or even “to grovel”. Note that the word is the same in both places, but I have chosen to render the one as “prostrate” and the second as “grovel”. This word has a deep history in Greek language and thought, dating from the time of Alexander the Great. While he was king of Macedon, he was more or less looked upon as a primus inter pares, a first among equals. He was due respect, but his subjects treated him like a human and did not kneel in his presence. That is, they showed respect, but did not venerate him. However, as his armies moved east and conquered the Persians they ran into an entirely different set of customs. Before the Persian King, the Great King, one fell upon one’s face, one prostrated oneself in the King’s presence. This tradition was very old in the ancient Near East, dating back to the kings of Mesopotamia, such as the Babylonians and Assyrians and even prior. This is the action implied, or captured by the term proskynēsis. When he had the assumed the throne of Persia and becoming the Great King, Alexander accepted this form of behavior from his Asian subjects, for whom it was standard practice that dated back centuries. This is one of the things that Greeks despised about the Asian kings such as Xerxes, that such groveling was required of their subjects. For the Greeks, this was not proper behaviour for a human to show before another human. However, at some point after becoming Great King, Alexander began to encourage, and finally to require that his Graeco-Macedonian subjects perform this ritual in his presence. This greatly offended Greek sensibilities, and this sort of attitude is one of the reasons put forward by those who argue that Alexander was murdered, poisoned. I tend to doubt this because the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings of Egypt and the Near East made such groveling standard practice in the presence of the king. 

Anyway, the point is that the word has a very negative connotation in Greek. Even in English, grovel is rather an ugly word; and whether it’s less offensive than prostrate oneself, the latter does not provide quite the visceral gut-punch that grovel has. This being established, we have to ask what the word brought to mind for those who wrote or heard this word in this context. One one hand, this gospel was written in that part of the world where the practice of proskynesis had been in use for a very long time. OTOH, if anything, Jews were probably more appalled by the practice than Greeks of the time were. By the First Century I would guess that most pagans in the Eastern half of the Empire had come to terms with the practice; it would take a bit longer in the Wester half. Did the same change of attitude affect the Jews as well? Or the other possibility is that the word had become more or less neutralized, at least to some extent, losing the sense of groveling and replacing it with the sense of worship, as a more neutral term? We in the modern world more or less accept the idea of worshipping a deity even if there are those who find the idea debasing. 

In the final analysis, this word is used quite frequently in the NT, and it is almost (?) always translated as “worship”, which we interpret through our modern lens. Not sure why I haven’t brought this up before; the opportunity has certainly presented itself, but there you are.

As a final word, this dispute about where one must worship really supports my contention, I think, that the enmity between Jews and Samaritans was based on politics in the final analysis. The politics was expressed in religious terms, but the clear compartmentalization of these two realms had scarcely begun to start. “The Reformation was not wholly, or even primarily, a religious event”. (That may not be the exact quote, but it’s darn close.) That is the opening sentence of a book I read while working on Martin Luther. I no longer remember the author or the title, but I do remember the publisher: Eerdmans, of Grand Rapids, Mich. I remember these because I am from Michigan, and I went to school with a family or two whose last name was Erdman. Grand Rapids is a center of the Dutch Reformed (i.e. Calvinist) Church, and Eerdmans is a prominent publisher of Protestant academia. IOW, the sentiment expressed was not that of a Catholic acting as an apologist for the Roman Rite. I mention this quote for two reasons. First, it is a terribly important realization for understanding both the Reformation and everything that came after it. The separation of Church and State was a very new idea when Luther posted his 95 theses. It had only arisen in the later Middle Ages as the nascent nation-states of France and England sought to curb the political influence of the Pope; thus, the concept of this separation was created by the secular side of the coin. Second, arising from the profundity of the insight, we need to be careful about how we as moderns view the religious issues of previous eras. This has not happened in the discussion of the enmity between Jews and Samaritans. It was a religious dispute. End of story. But I don’t believe this. And there is more. 

Now, we hear about the dispute from the Jewish side. Samaritans, after all, more or less vanish from the historical record even more thoroughly than Israel. After Simon Magus, he of Acts who was reputed to be the founder of Gnosticism by several ancient authors, there are no prominent Samaritans, or even anyone recognized as such (well…maybe don’t take that entirely literally…) So what we get is the Jewish side, and we know the antipathy of the Jews, that it was profound and deep. Why? To my mind it arises from Judea’s fundamental realization that Samaria, as part of the erstwhile Israel, actually had the superior claim to being the proper location of the worship of the national God/god–whether or not that god/God was YHWH. Or perhaps the more accurate statement would be that the Samaritans, who supposedly were not forced into relocation by the Assyrians had the oldest continuous site for the worship of YHWH. Part of my suggestion is that Samaria, tucked away into the NW corner of the ancient state, remained loyal yo YHWH while the more cosmopolitan urban centers reverted to the pervasive worship of the Canaanite gods. IOW. It’s something of a defensive attitude Of course, demonstrating this one way or the other would require large amounts of research that likely would demonstrate that the proposition cannot be validated in either direction. The date of the founding of the Judean kingdom as a breakaway province from the larger Israel would have to be examined as well. This would include considering evidence of when, or if, Judea was a focus of the worship of YHWH from the origin. 

So there you have it. Rank, rampant speculation. But, once again, the point is not my suggested solution, but the asking of the question.

20 Patres nostri in monte hoc adoraverunt, et vos dicitis quia in Hierosolymis est locus, ubi adorare oportet ”

21 λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Πίστευέ μοι, γύναι, ὅτι ἔρχεται ὥρα ὅτε οὔτε ἐν τῷ ὄρει τούτῳ οὔτε ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις προσκυνήσετε τῷ πατρί.

22 ὑμεῖς προσκυνεῖτε ὃ οὐκ οἴδατε: ἡμεῖς προσκυνοῦμεν ὃ οἴδαμεν, ὅτι ἡ σωτηρία ἐκ τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐστίν.

23 ἀλλὰ ἔρχεται ὥρα, καὶ νῦν ἐστιν, ὅτε οἱ ἀληθινοὶ προσκυνηταὶ προσκυνήσουσιν τῷ πατρὶ ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ: καὶ γὰρ ὁ πατὴρ τοιούτους ζητεῖ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτόν.

24 πνεῦμα ὁ θεός, καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας αὐτὸν ἐν πνεύματι καὶ ἀληθείᾳ δεῖ προσκυνεῖν.

Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, that the hour comes that neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father. (22) You will worship (perform proskynesis) what you do not know, we will worship what we do know, which is the salvation of the Jews. (23) But the hour comes and it is now, that the faithful ones/the ones following truth (who are) worshipping, worship the father in spirit and truth; for the father seeks them worshipping him. (24) God is spirit, and his worshippers in spirit and truth must worship (i.e., must worship in this way).

First, every translation of “worship” comes from the Greek proskynesis. I think it’s worthwhile keeping in mind what the underlying implication is. Just as it’s important to remember that doulos means slave, and not “servant”. Paul was not the “servant of God”; he was the slave of God.

Second, he’s telling the Samaritan woman that she, and all her kin, will be worshipping what the Jews currently worship, i.e. the salvation of the Jews. IOW, the Samaritans will soon find out they were wrong. Does this mean that the Samaritans will join in the salvation of the Jews? That is, will they more or less convert by giving up their erroneous worship and merging with the Judean worship in Jerusalem? At least one of the commentators I checked did ascribe this statement being put the way it is to a certain amount of anti-Samaritan bias, and that is easy to believe. I also learned that the Samaritans accepted the Torah, but not the books of the prophets, so there were new things that the Samaritans would be worshipping. So, in effect, the Samaritans would become Jews. Of course, this would soon give way to a wider circle of worshippers, those who would worship in “spirit and truth”. The father himself would search out such worshippers. Interesting to note that this idea of the initiative coming from On High is a foreshadow of the later idea of Predestination, where God takes the initiative for our salvation. 

Now let’s talk about that for a moment. Salvation. What does the word mean? First, let us be aware that our word derives from Latin rather than Greek. In Greek, the term is sōtēr. But for this exercise, we’re going to start with the later history of the word. In Latin, the base word is salveo, the meaning most closely tied to health; aside from that, it was sort of a generic used for greetings or such. However, other forms of the word did come into existence, but later, and most of them were tied to the writing of the Vulgate. That is, the words are Christian in origin, so trying to go back to the older meaning of the word doesn’t really do us much good. It comes to be a term for deliverance, or a saviour, as we understand the term. When this happens, however, there is a very important caveat to bear in mind: we know what some of these words mean by triangulating* various uses and then extrapolating meanings that are meaningful and so building up a lexical field for a given word. When the word is late, and only appears in one source, what happens is that the meaning of the word will start to change over time. So the definition, or understanding of what a salvator is will depend on the theology of the person reading word at the time of the reading. Someone in the 4th Century could read the word and understand one thing, but another person reading the word 300 years later will likely have a different understanding of the word because the ideas implied by salvation, and saviour, will have changed in the interim. And let’s be clear that this sort of evolution of religious terms did happen. The best example is pneuma, or spiritus. In the earlier English translations the word often became ghost, from the German geist; obviously, a word from an entirely different language will have very different connotations. But even before that, the pneuma evolved into spiritus–which is fine, lots of similarities. At some point, however, it became Spiritus, and Spirit, and the capitalization matters a lot. So, if pneuma underwent this transition, we would be foolish to assume that other words did not.

This is a genuine concern because the transition from sōtēr to salvator saw a change in the concept expressed. Hellenistic kings such as the Seleucids and the Ptolemies often adopted the term Sōtēr as part of their royal title. Now, one would think that a secular, royal saviour is rather a different concept than the Christian saviour. But here, I think, is where we get tangled up in the idea of the resurrection of the body. I need to provide some evidence for this, but we have come across times and places in our readings where the kingdom to come sure seems like it’s going to happen here on earth. That is, it would be our body that would inhabit the kingdom having come rather than our immortal soul as became the common understanding. As used in pagan Greek, a sōtēr generally saves a person’s life, or way of life or something such. The idea of saving the immortal soul of someone else was probably an alien concept. The Egyptians certainly held beliefs of differential treatment in the afterlife based on an individual’s actions in the current life, but there was no saviour figure i. either Egyptian pr Greek myth. That is an innovation of Christianity. Given that, it is impossible to say with certainty what John–or Paul or any of the others meant by the term. Obviously, we know what it came to mean, but maybe not so much in this instance in John.

Whoa! Stop the presses! I just looked at Strong’s words and found that sōtēr and sōtēria are words that are not found in either Mark or Matthew and only once in in John. Since this has already gone on too long, I’m going to stop and publish. Then I’m going to write up special posts on Samaritans and salvation/saviour. These may end up as one post if Samaria doesn’t go on too long; otherwise, they will be separate. 

Your patience and indulgence is appreciated! 

(* Triangulate: Literally implies three points, but the more common words have well more than three occurrences. But I have yet to see dodekahedroning–12–a position. Just so you know that I know.)

21 Dicit ei Iesus: “Crede mihi, mulier, quia venit hora, quando neque in monte hoc neque in Hierosolymis adorabitis Patrem.

22 Vos adoratis, quod nescitis; nos adoramus, quod scimus, quia salus ex Iudaeis est.

23 Sed venit hora, et nunc est, quando veri adoratores adorabunt Patrem in Spiritu et veritate; nam et Pater tales quaerit, qui adorent eum.

24 Spiritus est Deus, et eos, qui adorant eum, in Spiritu et veritate oportet adorare “.

 

John Chapter 4:9-15

(1/22/23: now includes minor edits for narrative clarity)

The first post on this chapter described the scene. Jesus, traveling from Judea/Jerusalem to Galilee passes through Samaria. While there, at Jacob’s Well, he asks a Samaritan woman to give him a drink of the water. The conversation ensues below. There are really no natural breaks in the conversation, so the commentary may end up being a bit disjointed by this. My apologies in advance. 

Text

9 λέγει οὖν αὐτῷ ἡ γυνὴ ἡ Σαμαρῖτις, Πῶς σὺ Ἰουδαῖος ὢν παρ’ ἐμοῦ πεῖν αἰτεῖς γυναικὸς Σαμαρίτιδος οὔσης; {οὐ γὰρ συγχρῶνται Ἰουδαῖοι Σαμαρίταις.}

10 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ, Εἰ ᾔδεις τὴν δωρεὰν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τίς ἐστιν ὁ λέγων σοι, Δός μοι πεῖν, σὺ ἂν ᾔτησας αὐτὸν καὶ ἔδωκεν ἄν σοι ὕδωρ ζῶν.

So the Samaritan woman said to him (Jesus), “How is it you being a Jew ask to drink from me, being a Samaritan woman {for Jews did not have dealings with Samaritans.} (10) Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and what I am saying to you, ‘Give me to drink’, you asked for it and I gave you living water”.   

I have to stop to comment on the grammar. Notice that I rendered the verbs in Jesus’ reply as past tense, and notice how this doesn’t make a lot of sense in English. But there it is. The two verbs are aorists, connoting a single action completed in the past. All of the English translations include “would”, as in “if you would have asked for it and I would have given you living water”. That is, these are conditional verbs, meant to indicate a state of unreality. She/he would have asked/given, but indeed they did not. While you may recall my speculation about the Ancient Greeks having a different sense of time than we have, this is not actually an issue of time, such as past vs present; rather, it’s a distinction of reality, what did happen vs what may have/could have happened. At present, I’m really not able to puzzle out what the implication is. Honestly, it may just be a situation where our evangelist wasn’t quite up to snuff in his Greek. 

As for the actual content of the conversation, I will reserve comment.

9 Dicit ergo ei mulier illa Samaritana: “ Quomodo tu, Iudaeus cum sis, bibere a me poscis, quae sum mulier Samaritana? ”. Non enim coutuntur Iudaei Samaritanis.

10 Respondit Iesus et dixit ei: “ Si scires donum Dei, et quis est, qui dicit tibi: “Da mihi bibere”, tu forsitan petisses ab eo, et dedisset tibi aquam vivam ”.

11 λέγει αὐτῷ [ἡ γυνή], Κύριε, οὔτε ἄντλημα ἔχεις καὶ τὸ φρέαρ ἐστὶν βαθύ: πόθεν οὖν ἔχεις τὸ ὕδωρ τὸ ζῶν;

12 μὴ σὺ μείζων εἶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν Ἰακώβ, ὃς ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν τὸ φρέαρ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἔπιεν καὶ οἱ υἱοὶ αὐτοῦ καὶ τὰ θρέμματα αὐτοῦ;

[The woman] said to him, “Lord, you do not have a bucket for drawing water and the well is deep. How do you have living water? (12) Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave to us this well and himself drank from it and his children (sons) and his cattle?

This brings up a point. “Our father Jacob” is the statement of the belief held by both Jews and Samaritans that they shared a common ancestor. Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, had twelve sons. In the language of ancient legend, this means that a number of people(s) traced their ancestry back to him. Before going any further, we need to be clear that the terms Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew(ish) should not be considered as synonymous. To do so is the major crime committed by historians of the ancient Near East. Until about 40 years ago, it was taken as given that the Hebrew Scriptures are essentially historically accurate; as such, writing the history of this area consisted mainly of re-writing said Scriptures. This was aided and abetted by the habit of conflating a lot of things into a pre-ordained mold. For example, there are mentions of a House of Omri, and even a House of David in non-biblical sources. The two or three examples are scant mentions in a longer text, usually listing a number of peoples and/or kingdoms. They provide very little context other than to establish a terminus ante quem, a point after which we can talk about either of these (presumably, or at least possibly) royal houses. What these mentions do NOT do is to validate anything other than the bare existence of such a house at a given time. Just because there was a House of David, we cannot take this as proof of the Unified Monarchy under David and Solomon that then split into the two states of Israel and Judah. However, this is precisely what historians have been doing for the last five or six centuries in which history has come to exist as a bona fide academic subject. 

But wait, there’s more. This extrapolation of the entire HS from a handful of names on a list is the basis; what makes it work to some degree is the conflation I have been discussing. “Hebrew” is the term for a group of Semitic-speakers who coalesced into a more or less distinctive group within the broader group of Semitic speakers. “Israelite” refers to members of a specific political entity, the State of Israel. “Jewish” is a bit tougher to pin down; the root is “Judean”, which is a political designation in the same way as Israelite. Judeans were the citizens of the political entity known as Judea. It is likely that the great majority of Israelites and Judeans were Hebrews, but there is no reason to believe that all Hebrews were those who coalesced into the two states mentioned. The term “Hebrew” crops up a number of times in Egyptian texts, some of them dating back, perhaps, to the end of the Bronze Age, but certainly to the Iron Age. The etymology and the precise meaning of the word is debated. It seems to imply people who are not native to Egypt, ones that are passing through, or perhaps enemies, or maybe even just “foreigner”. That is, the term is imprecise. This vagueness can explain the occurrence of the term in the Second Millennium BCE, before there was a state of Israel. The use of the term does not necessarily mean we are talking about Semitic-speakers, although that may be pushing it too far. From the scant evidence I’ve seen, the Egyptians used the word to mean “those people over there”, i.e., on the other side of Sinai.  The use of the term in this way could indicate that those dwelling across the Sinai actually used the term of themselves and the Egyptians took their name as a generic for “foreigner”. Based solely on probability, it is somewhat more likely that the term originated with the (proto-)Hebrews than with the Egyptians. This is why we cannot find a group of people calling themselves “Peoples of the Sea”; the term is a label imposed by Egyptians. 

Some Hebrews did settle into the areas that came to be the states of Israel and Judah/Judea. The members of the two states were likely connected to some degree by language and ethnic background, of which language is the key marker. However, this does not mean that they shared a common religion, let alone that both states should be considered as being forebears of what became Judaism. Indeed, the very term “Jewish” indicates that this term originates in Judah and not Israel. The state of Israel seems to have been of some consequence, hence the reference to the House of Omri. However, it disappeared after its conquest by Assyria in 721. Doubtless refugees fled and settled in Judah, where a common language was helpful The Assyrians did not continue to conquer Judah, whether because unrest in the homeland drew them back, or they decided that it was not worth the time an effort to conquer a rather poor, small kingdom situated in hills making it easily defensible. It was, IMO, sometime after this that the Judeans came up with the story of the United Monarchy. By absorbing refugees from Israel, they attempted to absorb a claim to the lands of the State of Israel. The United Monarchy was a great way to legitimize such a claim, and such pretexts were important in traditional societies where heritage and, well, tradition mattered.

The reason the Assyrians and Babylonians and other ancient empires relocated conquered peoples was to break the latters’ connexion to their ancestral soil. This meant the land where their forebears were interred, and usually meant the connexion to the local/tribal deity. It is important to recognize that many deities were, in fact, local, in the sense that they were tied to a specific location. We find this in Book 1 of Livy, where Aeneas becomes Iuppiter Indiges, the Local Jove. Many (most) of the Greek deities have an epithet that ties them to a specific place, such as Athene Alea, a town in the Peloponnese. By removing conquered peoples from their native locations, the idea was to assimilate them into the larger empire. For the most part, this is what seems to have happened to the Israelites. Aside from their prominence in the HS, Israel and her people pretty much vanish from the historical record. [Note: I have not yet worked out the whole of history as presented in the HS; that is a major undertaking that will take some time.] Suffice it to say that neither Greeks nor Romans (nor Persians?) mention Israel. The denizens of Judah, however, did not suffer this fate and arguably came back stronger than ever. I would in fact argue that it was likely that the Babylonian Captivity was the event that created Judaism. Whereas Israel had remained largely pagan and so was more easily persuaded to abandon their local gods, the Judeans rallied ’round YHWH, disassociating YHWH from a specific place and raising him to the status of a universal God. I would suggest that when Ezra read the Law to the denizens of Jerusalem as told in the book of Nehemiah, this was the first reading of the Torah and prophets to a people who could probably now properly be called Jewish. 

However, that’s a long digression to the main point: Jews and Samaritans recognized a common ancestor.  Note that Samaria is geographically part of what had been the State of Israel. A quick Google tells me that they claimed they had not been deported by the Assyrians. As such, their claim to have the “correct” spot for the Temple carries some prima facie validity. However, this all goes back to the question of whether, or perhaps when the Samaritans, as descendants of Israel, did in fact worship YHWH. According to the theories I’ve just expounded they did not, so their claim to primacy of the worship of YHWH throws a monkey wrench into my argument. That’s OK. It’s why I added the caveat that I have not worked all of this out. But it does certainly explain why the Jews were so adamant in their dislike of Samaritans. As the  true descendants of Israel, it was they–and not the Judeans–who had the claim to the extensive lands of the former state. Now, in practice, this amounted to little since a claim is just words until it’s backed up by force, but the “balkanization” of the various states of the former Yugoslavia, which fought a series of bloody wars in the 1990s should remind us that the claim itself has consequences. The different place of worship is a symptom of the situation, not the cause itself.

There is so much more to this but we need to get back to the actual subject at hand. I was going to discuss the significance of the common ancestor being Jacob, but time has told me it’s not that important. It just remains to be noted that, of course, the woman does not understand what Jesus is saying, or implying. Rather, she takes him literally. Of course she does; she is the set-up person for the coming punchline. But let’s not be so flippant about this. Yes, the formulaic nature of the text is, well, a formula*, but that’s not to say it has no value, or no validity. The function is to be instructional; so by presenting a “blank slate” interlocutor, the evangelist is able to allow Jesus to present his lesson in a clear manner.

*I’ve never quite gotten the value of form-criticism, either. As far as I can tell, the primary benefit of this is to create another diversion that allows scholarly discussion about anything other than the text at hand.

11 Dicit ei mulier: “ Domine, neque in quo haurias habes, et puteus altus est; unde ergo habes aquam vivam?

12 Numquid tu maior es patre nostro Iacob, qui dedit nobis puteum, et ipse ex eo bibit et filii eius et pecora eius? ”.

13 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῇ, Πᾶς ὁ πίνων ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος τούτου διψήσει πάλιν:

14 ὃς δ’ ἂν πίῃ ἐκ τοῦ ὕδατος οὗ ἐγὼ δώσω αὐτῷ, οὐ μὴ διψήσει εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀλλὰ τὸ ὕδωρ ὃ δώσω αὐτῷ γενήσεται ἐν αὐτῷ πηγὴ ὕδατος ἁλλομένου εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον.

15 λέγει πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ γυνή, Κύριε, δός μοι τοῦτο τὸ ὕδωρ, ἵνα μὴ διψῶ μηδὲ διέρχωμαι ἐνθάδε ἀντλεῖν.

Jesus answered and said to her, “All who are drinking this water will thirst again; (14) but he who may have drunk from the water which I give to him/her/it (gender is indeterminate; ending can be any of the three), he will not thirst forever, but the water which I give to him/her/it will become in the presence of that well springing into eternal life”. (15) The woman said to him, “Master, give to me that water, so that I will not thirst nor pass through there to draw water.”

The grammar of that last passage is a bit tortured, but the meaning is clear enough. No amount of messing with prepositions or verb tenses or moods is really going to obscure what is being said. One quibble I have is with the translation of kyrie as “Sir”. The word means “lord” or “master”. For those of certain traditions, kyrie eleison is familiar from church services. Lately I’ve been attending a Very High Church Episcopalian service, replete with incense and bells, that has a truly excellent choir that sings in Latin, or in the case of the kyrie, Greek. My biggest problem with “sir” is that it is grossly anachronistic. The title, heck the concept of “sir” was not invented until more than half a millennium after these words were written. It’s Mediaeval, used for knights, and neither existed until sometime around the 9th Century. There is a whole study on the introduction of the stirrup around the time of Charlemagne, an invention that made what is called “shock combat” possible on a horse. Prior to the stirrup, it was impossible to ride at someone with a leveled lance or spear and stab the opponent without being thrown off your own horse. Without stirrups, it is necessary to grip the horse’s body with the inside of the rider’s legs, and a sudden jolt such as the one caused by running into another person would push the rider delivering the blow from his own horse. If you want the whole story on this, see a book called Mediaeval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White. It is probably impossible to overstate the value of this book regarding the introduction of the stirrup and the invention of the heavy plough in the centuries around Charlemagne (give or take). The book is absolutely thorough. Published in 1962, it is still THE standard work, the last word, on these two subjects. 
So yeah, “sir”…no. Just no.

I’m going to post without comment on the actual content. I think it’s still best to wait until we’ve gotten a bit more of this behind us. 

13 Respondit Iesus et dixit ei: “ Omnis, qui bibit ex aqua hac, sitiet iterum;

14 qui autem biberit ex aqua, quam ego dabo ei, non sitiet in aeternum; sed aqua, quam dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam ”.

15 Dicit ad eum mulier: “Domine, da mihi hanc aquam, ut non sitiam neque veniam huc haurire”.

John Chapter 4:1-8

This chapter poses some logistical problems. Most of it consists of a conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. As such, there are effectively no natural breaks between topics, places where we can end a post without losing the continuity too badly. So please forgive any perceived disjointedness in my narrative.

This first section is really just setting the scene. It provides the context for the conversation that begins in Verse 9, which will be the beginning of the next post. There may not be much commentary here, but I often think that and I’m even more often wrong, so time will tell if I have much–or little–to add.

Text

1 Ὡς οὖν ἔγνω ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι ἤκουσαν οἱ φαρισαῖοι ὅτι Ἰησοῦς πλείονας μαθητὰς ποιεῖ καὶ βαπτίζει ἢ Ἰωάννης

2 καίτοιγε Ἰησοῦς αὐτὸς οὐκ ἐβάπτιζεν ἀλλ’ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ

3 ἀφῆκεν τὴν Ἰουδαίαν καὶ ἀπῆλθεν πάλιν εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν.

As Jesus came to know that the Pharisees heard that Jesus made many disciples and immersed more than John, (2) (though Jesus himself was not dunking people, but [it was rather] his disciples) (3) he departed Judea and again came to Galilee.

The verbs in Verse 1 are aorists. Simple past. In English, the “heard” would more properly be a pluperfect: Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard… The pluperfect situates the two verbs into a relative timeline: “Jesus learned” is the action just completed, and the “Pharisees had heard” which fixes the occurrence of a completed action before the “learned”. Obviously, Jesus could not have learned of something that had either not happened, or was happening simultaneously. All of the English translations use the past tense/pluperfect construction. It makes sense in English, but it is not what the Greek says. I may have alluded to this before, but the Greek conception of verb tenses does not neatly line up with our own. At some point I would like to study this a bit to see what I might see. In the meantime, I am very often very imprecise about sticking to the verb tense used in the Greek. I don’t know, but I do wonder, if this fluidity of verb tenses–historic present, aorist in the present tense, and perhaps more–masks a real difference between the Greek conception of time and/or reality and our own.

Verse 2 presents its own related-but-different issues with verbs and verb tenses. I would point out that there is no punctuation at all in these three verses until we get to the period after “Galilee”; however, that is true of any section of the NT as written in Greek. There is no punctuation between Matthew 1:1 and…anywhere. Not even after the last word of The Apocalypse (which term I prefer to Revelations; no surprise there, really). Punctuation was added later, and I’m not sure how much later. I believe it was not until the Third, or even Fourth Century CE–and it may have been later. Regardless, the first word of Verse 2, καίτοιγε is classified as a particle. It could also be called a compound word, καί-τοι-γε, “and these other things indeed” or something such. L&S gives it as “and indeed”, or “and further”; I chose “even though” because the first root, kai, is mostly “and”, but it can also be “but”. So I’m going to pretend to know more, or know better that Liddell and Scott and posit this as a disjunctive to show a contrary condition; but then, most modern translators agree with me so I’m not exactly on an island, or being all that bold, either. Of course, “and indeed Jesus himself…” works, gets the point across, even though the contrast or contrariness is not quite as heavily stressed. 

Of course the really interesting point is that we are pointedly told that Jesus himself did not baptize; this was done by his disciples. There are several explanations put forward for this, the most common being that this was something the ministers did, not the man himself. The comparison to Paul’s attitude in 1 Corinthians is then made. At the time I commented on Corinthians, I was not aware of this passage so I speculated on possible reasons for his disdain. And I use that term because that’s how I thought the text felt. Now in Acts 10:48 we are told that Peter gave the order for new disciples to be baptized, implying that he did not do it himself. However, despite Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 1:14, in Acts 19:6, we are told that when Paul laid his hands on them, they were filled with the sacred breath. Now, the plain reading of the latter text is that this occurred after the baptism. It may be that Paul performed the baptism, but the text really does not tell us one way or the other. And we must also bear in mind that the author of Acts differed wildly (or not) from Paul’s account of his conversion. As such, we are justified–indeed prudent–to be skeptical about taking the details of Acts with too much certainty. In fact, there may be good reason to suspect a lot of the narrative of Acts, but that is a discussion for another day. 

The point is that there was, apparently, some internal…disagreement (?) about baptism amongst some groups of Christians. I tried to choose that word carefully: dissent is definitely too strong, and even disagreement may be too strong as well. Let’s say there may have been different attitudes about baptism. Recall that Paul was grateful that he had not personally baptised many of the Corinthians; he names only two. That’s why I described his attitude as akin to disdain; one gets–or I got it anyway–the impression that he does not think highly of the act. And think back to John’s description of the baptism of Jesus: he does not waste words on the performance, to the point that he almost elides the entire process. He only describes what happens after Jesus is coming out of the water. That carries a certain amount of de-emphasis. And the very sharp declaration that Jesus didn’t do the baptising himself rather puts him at arm’s length from the process. In fact, what the Evangelist is doing here is providing doctrinal and/or scriptural cover for any Christian group that may not fully embrace baptism. It’s rather the reverse of Peter’s dream in Acts that all animals are clean to eat. To be fair, one of the commentators I read suggested that Jesus deferred from the performance in order not to create any sort of hierarchy among the recipients, that those who were baptised by Jesus would claim a degree of priority because they had been baptised by The Man himself. And such airs, or squabbles, are only too human and too probable to dismiss this idea. OTOH, we are talking about a period at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Was he likely to have segregated himself from what was an act of initiation at this early stage? I’m not so sure. More likely in my opinion is that baptism came from very Jewish roots; was the Evangelist attempting to dissociate Jesus from this descent? I pointed out that the Baptist has a large role in this gospel, but that role consists of self-abnegation and self-deprecation; the Baptist spends most of his time (figuratively) beating his breast to proclaim how unworthy he was compared to Jesus. So perhaps those who were cool to the rite were also those who did want to sever ties with the Baptist and his Jewish milieu. Does such an attitude trace back to Paul? It’d not out of the question. I took a look at Strong’s Words. Paul uses some form of baptizõ in a couple of different passages in 1 Corinthians, twice in one verse of Romans, and once in Galatians. It apparently did not play a major part in Paul’s thinking; however, the mention in Galatians 3:27 certainly sounds very positive and accepting. So the evidence may point to a degree of ambiguity towards the practice, but it obviously became a standard belief in the Early Church.

Really seems like I should say something about the removal from Judea to Galilee as presented in Verse 3. All the gospels do this: have Jesus “return” to Galilee. Ergo, all of the gospels assume that Jesus was from Galilee, but that he removed himself to seek out the Baptist. I know I’ve not given that much consideration of any kind. First, can we take this as something that actually happened in an historical sense? Corollary to that, would the likelihood of historicity be enhanced since all four gospels mention it? The answer to the latter question is quick and easy: No. Despite heroic attempts, there is no reason to accept the independence of any of the last three gospels, namely Matthew, Luke, and John. All of these derive, ultimately, from Mark. He produced the outline of the narrative which was preserved–and with a high degree of faithfulness–by all subsequent gospels. They don’t all included the same information, but there are very few glaring inconsistencies or contradictions. The biggest discrepancy is between the Synoptics and John regarding the day Jesus was executed. The first three set the day as the first day of Passover, having eaten the seder the night previous. John, OTOH, sets the date of execution as the day before that, on Preparation Day, to make explicit the link between Jesus and the Paschal lamb that was sacrificed to be eaten at the seder the next night. Such a high degree of correlation all-but excludes the probability of independent sources. 

Wait, let me clarify that. Of course there were independent sources. Many of them. The problem arises, however, when we try to suggest, or argue, that any of theses sources trace back before Mark, let alone to the time of Jesus. Or let me clarify that further. Jesus was an itinerant wonder-worker who may–or may not–have preached a message in addition. He is the sort of person who comes into contact with a lot of different people, and some of this latter group would be impressed enough to tell stories about him. Different people told different stories about different things. Certainly some of these stories predate Mark, because these are the stories that Mark collected and knitted into the initial gospel. And yes, Luke, Matthew, and John would have encountered different sets of stories; I’m thinking of Zaccheus and the Widow of Nain, e.g. But–and this is the crucial part–there is no reason to suppose that any of these stories actually traced back to the time of Jesus, or even the Apostles in the era of Acts. In fact, the radical change in the presentation of Jesus between Mark’s gospel and that of Matthew pretty much precludes any sort of continuity back to the original. The conception of Jesus that we recognize is the creation (?) of Matthew, which was prolonged by his successors. All trace of the wonder-worker is gone by the time Joseph, Mary, and Jesus flee to Egypt to escape Herod. In his place we have a miracle-worker, and the two are very different things. 

All of this is by way of saying that the fact that the same set of details is presented in four different gospels in no way indicates four–or three, or two–separate sources. The great likelihood is that rather this represents four tellings of the same story. Jesus was from Galilee. Maybe. It bears to recall that Bethlehem is not in Galilee, and Matthew and Luke went to enormous pains to create a narrative that put Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem rather than Nazareth. Or, more likely IMO, in Caphernaum.  

1 Ut ergo cognovit Iesus quia audierunt pharisaei quia Iesus plures discipulos facit et baptizat quam Ioannes

2 — quamquam Iesus ipse non baptizaret sed discipuli eius —

3 reliquit Iudaeam et abiit iterum in Galilaeam.

4 ἔδει δὲ αὐτὸν διέρχεσθαι διὰ τῆς Σαμαρείας.

5 ἔρχεται οὖν εἰς πόλιν τῆς Σαμαρείας λεγομένην Συχὰρ πλησίον τοῦ χωρίου ὃ ἔδωκεν Ἰακὼβ [τῷ] Ἰωσὴφ τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ:

6 ἦν δὲ ἐκεῖ πηγὴ τοῦ Ἰακώβ. ὁ οὖν Ἰησοῦς κεκοπιακὼς ἐκ τῆς ὁδοιπορίας ἐκαθέζετο οὕτως ἐπὶ τῇ πηγῇ: ὥρα ἦν ὡς ἕκτη.

7 Ἔρχεται γυνὴ ἐκ τῆς Σαμαρείας ἀντλῆσαι ὕδωρ. λέγει αὐτῇ ὁ Ἰησοῦς, Δός μοι πεῖν:

8 οἱ γὰρ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ ἀπεληλύθεισαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ἵνα τροφὰς ἀγοράσωσιν.

And indeed it was necessary to travel through Samaria (to get from Judea to Galilee). (5) He came to a Samaritan town called Suchar near the land which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. (6) There was there the Well of Jacob. Thus Jesus being wearied from the walking so he sat down upon (by) the well. It was about the seventh hour. (7) A woman  from Samaria drew water. Jesus said to her, “Give me to drink”. (8) For his disciples had gone off to the town, to purchase food.

I chose this point to break this post because we have now reached the end of the setting of the scene. Jesus is at the well, and has begun to interact with the Samaritan woman by asking for a drink. The detailed setting about being in Samaria together with the Well of Jacob helps point out the common heritage of Jews and Samaritans. The latter were more or less Jews as well, but the two groups disagreeing on where the site of God’s Temple should be. The Jews, of course, insisted on Jerusalem whereas the Samaritans believed the proper place was Mount Gezerim. Each built their own temple after the return from the Babylonian Exile. This dispute has interesting historical implications. I have come to suspect that the state of Israel that was destroyed by Assyria was likely ethnically Hebrew, that they spoke Hebrew, but they were not Jews per se. This is one of the main points of the Books of Kings, of how Omri and his forebears and progeny were forever doing evil in the sight of YHWH by worshipping foreign gods, like Ba’al, or Moloch, holding worship in high places. Well, the Israelites were doing this because they had not accepted YHWH as their tribal god, so naturally they did not worship him, sticking with the Canaanite gods. That those returning from exile who settled in Samaria, by choosing a site other than Jerusalem is a powerful indication that the rump “state” of Israel did not accept the primacy of the Jerusalem cult, which probably means they never considered Jerusalem as their capital city. IOW, they did not accept that they had ever been part of a state that had its capital in Jerusalem. That is to say, they were never subjects of David or Solomon, but a separate political entity that, in fact, overshadowed the much less rich and populous backwater state ruled from Jerusalem. Sometime during the Exile, I suspect, the Judeans formulated a history that co-opted the history of Israel in order to give Judea a (semi-)legitimate claim to be the rightful rulers of the territory that had once been Israel. THIS is the sort of thing that creates a true hatred between peoples, the sort of conditions that tore apart the Balkans on the collapse of Yugoslavia, or the attitudes of Ukrainians to Russian claims of sovereignty. Of course, the dispute about the temple is proffered as the real sticking point; which, in truth it is, but not so much for the physical location of the temple, but for the attendant claim of being the true representative of the worship of YHWH. [Note: I’m a tad vague, possibly even inconsistent on when/how the Samaritans adopted the worship if YHWH, but give me time.] Modern commentators will throw out the location of the Temple as THE reason because to do otherwise would be to call the Dynasty of David and Solomon into serious question. This is a wonderful piece of legerdemain; the location of the temple is the issue, but the location is subsidiary to the political implications.

The detail about the being around the 7th hour sets the time of day towards late afternoon or evening, which puts the other detail about the disciples having gone to town to marketplace food into context as a reasonable thing to do. Just a word on that “marketplace”. In a Greek polis, the central square acted as the marketplace as well as a gathering place. (This was true for other the towns of other nationalities or ethnic groups as well; the Greeks were hardly unique about this.) The term for this place was the agora. It was also where social interaction took place; as such it forms the root of agoraphobia, the fear of being out in public. What is interesting is that agora became a verb: to agora, which meant the act of purchasing food. One went to the agora to agorizein. If you happen to read the Anabasis of Xenoophon, which I recommend for a lot of reasons, one of the chief points of negotiation between the Ten Thousand and the native populations was that the locals should provide an agora for the Greek soldiers. That is, they should have a situation where the soldiers could purchase food from the locals. So it is here. But, there’s not much more to say about this, so perhaps we shall exit, stage left…

4 Oportebat autem eum transire per Samariam.

5 Venit ergo in civitatem Samariae, quae dicitur Sichar, iuxta praedium, quod dedit Iacob Ioseph filio suo;

6 erat autem ibi fons Iacob. Iesus ergo fatigatus ex itinere sedebat sic super fontem; hora erat quasi sexta.

7 Venit mulier de Samaria haurire aquam. Dicit ei Iesus: “ Da mihi bibere ”;

8 discipuli enim eius abierant in civitatem, ut cibos emerent.

Summary John Chapter 3: Part 2

Finally finished!

Having discussed Verses 1-21 in the first part of the summary, we move on to the final section, Verses 22-36. These revolve around John the Baptist having a conversation with his disciples. It just occurred to me that both halves of this chapter are set up as conversations, but end up as extended (by NT standards) speeches, by Jesus in the first part and by the Baptist here in the second. What is truly interesting here is that the topic of the conversation ends up being the same.

In this section the Baptist’s disciples ask him about Jesus. They don’t mention the latter’s name. This would seem to be some sort of rhetorical/dramatic device. It captures the feel of how it must have been for the Baptist’s disciples: the man they followed has been superseded by another, so this is unsettling for them, as it would be for all of us. Of course, this is all a set-up, providing the cue for the Baptist to explain the succession, which he does in a most humble fashion.

Before getting into that, let’s just say a quick word about John not having been imprisoned. Here is one of the rare overlaps of this gospel and the Synoptics. The Evangelist dismisses the topic with rather a terse aside. Mark and Matthew told the story at some length (by NT standards), and Luke provided the Cliff/Spark Notes version. One possible implication of the Evangelist’s summary treatment is that the story was sufficiently familiar and did not need to be retold. This conflicts with my theory that the gospels were not written for believers, but as a tool to spread the good news (= eu-angelion). That’s fine; my theory needs some refining. A different possibility for the curt brush-off is that he did not want to tell the story in order to avoid giving the Baptist more publicity. However, since the Evangelist does dwell on the Baptist at some length, that doesn’t seem likely, in which case we’re back to the first explanation. There may be other possibilities, but none occur to me at the moment. Recall that we discussed the publication of Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews within the decade that this gospel was written. Josephus also told the Baptist’s story, so maybe this was another reason the Evangelist didn’t feel the need to re-tell the whole story. Josephus had a following amongst some educated pagans, so the word had gotten out about the Baptist.

While not retelling the story of the Baptist’s arrest and execution, the Evangelist devotes more attention to the career of the Baptist than any of the Synoptics, possibly save Luke. We have discussed this while progressing through the gospels: how each gospel devotes an ever-increasing amount of attention to the Baptist. This is a direct and–in my opinion–very effective refutation of the notion that the Baptist was an embarrassment for those first Christians; this was supposedly especially true as the disparate groups of Jesus’ followers–or Jesus-followers–began to coalesce into The Early Church. Had those acolytes of Jesus truly embarrassed by the Baptist, by Jesus’ apparent subservient, or inferior role, beginning as a follower of John, the latter’s presence in each subsequent gospel would have shrunk rather than expanded. By the time we got to Luke, the dunking of Jesus would have taken place, but the emphasis would have been on the descent of the sacred breath and the name of the Baptist may not even have been mentioned. And Luke certainly would not have expanded the Baptist’s importance by creating a backstory wherein the Baptist was kin to Jesus.

Note that I made the distinction that the Fourth Gospel devotes more attention to John’s career; the tale of the Baptist’s parentage is not short. In discussing the Baptist in previous gospels, we noted how Matthew invented circumstances in which the Baptist openly demurred from dunking Jesus, pleading that Jesus should be the one who should be dunking the Baptist. I cite Matthew because his account makes the intention of the middle two gospels most plain: the purpose is to show how Jesus was, in fact, superior to John the Baptist even though the latter came first. The process of course was there at the outset shown by the inclusion of the quote from Isaiah stating that John is the voice in the wilderness; however, the subservience of John to Jesus is not truly explicit in that quote. Yes, John wants to prepare the Way of the Lord, but Jews would have understood “the Lord” as a reference to God the Father, so this is by no means a conclusive demonstration of the Baptist’s secondary role, the role of herald to the Greater One. As such, Matthew and Luke create narratives designed to make the role of herald more manifest. BTW, “herald” is angelos, in Greek; IOW, the Baptist was the angel of Jesus. Think about that the next time you see reference to an “angel”.Matthew’s technique is John’s demurral; Luke does it by having the babe in Elizabeth’s womb leap for joy upon Mary’s arrival. The Fourth Gospel takes it to a much, much higher level.

This is the purpose of the last section of Chapter 3 Verses 23-36. In these verses the Evangelist creates the conditions in which the Baptist himself can explain how this all works. In Verse 22, we are told Jesus is out baptising; this unsettles the disciples of the Baptist. The scene is reminiscent of Mark 9, in which it is Jesus’ disciples who are questioning the right of others who are not part of the group to exorcise demons in the name of Jesus. While it seems apparent that the Evangelist made use of this literary technique, I doubt that he had any ulterior motive in using similar circumstances to make the point; I simply expect that John found the method useful as an author. As I started to describe these remaining verses, my first impulse was to refer to them as a dialogue between the Baptist and his disciples; however, a second glance shows this to be an inaccurate characterization. It’s not a dialogue; it’s more or less a set-piece speech by the Baptist. It may very well be the longest speech by someone other than Jesus in all four gospels.

Whether or not that last statement is accurate, the purpose of the speech is clear: this is John the Baptist definitively stating that Jesus is the more important one. In fact, John goes on about this at some length. The first point he makes is an important one. It sets the tone, and it echoes what Jesus told Nikodemos in the first part of the chapter. No one can give the things from above except for one from above. Perhaps the interesting thing about this is that one of the principles of Hermeticism is “As above, so below”. Hermeticism refers to the group of 12-18 texts that collectively are known as the Corpus Hermeticum. This is a collection of texts that purport to date from really ancient Egypt, back to the god Thoth (close enough to Hermes to merge the two), but were in fact probably written not before the 2nd, or even 3rd Century CE. Theses texts overlap, to some degree with Gnosticism, but the differences well outnumber the similarities. For our purposes the relevance of CH is to demonstrate a mindset present in the early 2nd Century that extended beyond Christianity. These overlaps of Christianity with Gnosticism, Hermeticism, or any of a number of other sects make it difficult to determine who influenced whom. So when the Evangelist is relating the two, positing the necessity of movement down (anōthen) from above, he is expressing an attitude and/or belief that would have made sense to a lot of pagan thinkers of various stripes.

“The sky hung low in the ancient world. Traffic was heavy on the highway between heaven and earth. Gods and spirits thickly populated the upper air, where they stood in readiness to intervene at any moment in the affairs of mortals.”

The quote is from Shirley Jackson Case, from his (yes) book The Origins of Christian Supernaturalism, published 1946. And the Evangelist in Chapter 3 is discussing such a world, in which the sky hung low. And note that this is an excellent time to point out that the lack of distinction between “sky” and “heaven” in both the Greek ouranos and the Latin caelum really matters. There are not two different words for two different concepts; there is one word which I’ve started calling “skyheaven” for a single. unitary concept. 

Here s a good time to point out that in their respective speeches, both Jesus and the Baptist refer back to John 1:1. The Logos was with God, which means that the Logos was among those populating skyheaven. It also bears mentioning that the Hermetic text Asclepion describes a kosmos composed of tiers. The lesser non-corporeal entities are within the orbit of the moon, they inhabit the sublunar sphere whereas the greater entities dwell much higher in the skyheaven. Presumably both God and the Logos are resident in that highest sphere; this presumption is borne out in subsequent Hermetic and Gnostic writings. Thus while John is not describing a tiered skyheaven, he is consistent with the broadest outline of Gnostic/Heremetic teachings. To be fair and honest, there is little difference in the concept of skyheaven among the various pagan beliefs; after all, Greek Olympus is really not much different from a more accessible version of Christian heaven as the “home” of God/the gods. The multiplicity of superhuman, non-corporeal beings is something that comes into existence somewhere around the last part of the pre-Common Era, and the plethora of entities of different capability then sort of required tiers of skyheaven to house them all. This range of various superhuman entities had “always” existed, but the attempted systematization of these beings is something of a hallmark of Gnostic sects; they spend a lot of time working out the various emanations.

What is significant for us is the reification of Logos. Greek philosophy turned abstract concepts into semi-existent beings for centuries; the personification/reification of Panic is a great example of this, but even earlier, dating back to Homer, we find the Child of Morning, Rosy-Fingered Dawn in The Iliad. There is discussion of Logos even amongst the Pre-Socratic philosophers, but logos didn’t truly become The Logos until a time much closer to the Common Era. John the Evangelist actually provides one of the earliest examples of this concept, which was taken up by many Gnostic groups. Did John influence later Gnostics? Or did John and the Gnostics tap into an idea that was gaining currency among thinkers of the time? The question almost beggars solution, requiring that so many definitions of terms be formulated. Was Gnosticism pre-Christian or a Christian heresy. Well, that depends on how broad or narrow one’s definition of Gnosticism that one takes as given. At this point, suffice it to say that the idea of the Logos is not unique to Christianity, even if John was the first to conceive it. Which I heartily doubt. There is too much prehistory of the concept in pagan thought.

This is the sort of thing that NT scholars should consider, but they don’t. It matters when we discuss the text as historical information set in an historical context. This rarely happens. JD Crossan, the “Dean” of historical Jesus research never talks about stuff like this. At least, I’ve never encountered such a discussion in any of the 5 or 6 books of his I’ve read. Comparison of canonical writings to pagan writings can help pin down the dates for both of them. The date of a text is often a constant source of argument in Classical scholarship, but the debates on textual dating of the NT does not follow the same script, seeming to hinge more on language and arbitrary and subjective judgements about “alternating primitivity”. Neither the Gospel of Thomas, nor any of the canonical gospels are discussed in such terms, as a piece from a particular time. How does Thomas compare to non-Christian beliefs in the 50s? Not very well. The more Gnostic-sounding verses express thoughts that pagans are not said to have uttered before the end of the First Century. Bear in mind that Hippolytus Romanus more or less establishes Simon Magus–of Acts fame–as the philosophical genesis of what became Gnoticism. And much of the material that is supposedly in Q fits better into conditions of the 80s than the 50s, let alone before that. The story of the centurion and his slave dates from a time when the message was being disseminated to pagans, which means no earlier than the 70s, the 80s being more likely. Even on internal evidence, the story does not fit well with Acts, or even Paul. It was, after all, Paul who began to reach out to pagans. A even if we believe that the stories of Jesus interaction with pagans actually happened–which I don’t–Jesus’ contacts with pagans are presented as limited and incidental.

To summarize, Chapter 3 seems to be the thesis statement of the gospel. It provides the key to salvation based on the identity of Jesus as the Logos, and the interaction between the skyheaven and the material world. The good things, wisdom, salvation, etc had to come from ABOVE, because that is the source of these good things. That is the reason we have to be born anōthen, born from above, or be born again, in order to gain eternal life. We have to raise ourselves to this higher level, so that we can rise to meet Jesus as he comes down on a cloud as Paul describes in 1 Thessalonians 4.  The 3rd Century Neo-Platonist philosopher said much the same thing, and the 2nd Century (?) Asklepion contained related ideas even if not expressed in exactly these terms. Both of them stressed that humans could elevate themselves to the level of the divine. The point is that these ideas were circulating, and that the sky did hang low in the ancient world. However, more or less beginning with St Augustine, the concept that humans were hopelessly depraved and did not merit salvation under any circumstances except God’s infinite mercy, this enormous gulf between humanity and God was dug. The Church in the Middle Ages was particularly responsible for this excavation. The result of this was a huge moat that pushed the sky much, much further away than it ever had been. One of the results is that demons or daimons were no longer seen as denizens of the air; rather, they had been shoved underground, down into the fiery depths of Hell.

As I see it, we need to be reminded of the very different circumstances that pertained when the gospels were written. Life, attitudes, and general outlook diverged wildly from what we experience.

Summary John Chapter 3: Nikodemos

In my intro to the final post of this chapter, I wondered aloud why I have so much to say about the content of this gospel and/or this chapter. Having provided no answer, perhaps a bit of speculation is allowed here. The posts I published often covered 3-5 verses, which is a record low. Looking at the index, it’s hard to validate exactly because I had to overlap verses throughout most of them. There were almost no natural breaks, so it was necessary to include the last bit of the previous post just to maintain some level of continuity. Well, it looks like I’ve run into much the same problem with the Summary: I am going to break it into two sections. The first will cover Verses 1-21, Jesus discussion with Nikodemos. Again, apologies for the lack of continuity, but this has proven to be a very rich and deep chapter with lots of theology.

Some of the explanation why this gospel evokes so much commentary arises from the fact that John’s gospel is just different from the other three. This is a commonplace, since the others fall under the collective term “The Synoptics”, and John is not in that group. As such, John’s approach and his material do not provide much overlap to his predecessors, so we have to take it all as new rather than as something that can be waved away with a reference to Mark or Matthew. Some of it, though, may have something to do with the theology, or the theological content. I have referred to Mark the Journalist with his terse style; Matthew the Rabbi with his copious references to the HS; Luke the Novelist with his backstory and and narrative. I have called John the Theologian. That is perhaps a knee-jerk reaction to his “In the beginning was the Logos”, which is the most theological statement in the entire NT. Of course, that is debatable, but even if it’s not the most, it’s in the conversation. Your mileage may vary. Is this why I couldn’t finish posts in Chapter 3?

The chapter falls into two distinct sections: Jesus and Nikodemos, and John the Baptist with his disciples. This first half of the commentary will deal with Nikodemos.

The discussion between Jesus and Nikodemos ultimately deals with God sending his son to save the world. He is clear that the intent was not to condemn the world, but to save it. From whom is never addressed, nor is why this was necessary. This is the great Unanswered Question at the core of Christian belief: why was Jesus’ sacrifice necessary? Paul described it either as ransom, or as redemption, this latter word having very different connotations from those that Christians derive from the word. Rather than redemption into eternal life, the word in Greek is closer to redeeming a pawn ticket. In the final analysis, this is not a terrible analogy in one sense. We are to be redeemed from the tyranny of Death, the price paid to get us out of hock to that terrible despot who enslaved the human race after the Fall of Adam. But it fails to address–or even consider, actually–to whom this ransom, or redemption, was paid. God is All-Powerful, an entity that cannot be compelled, on which all creation depends, so why does God have to pay a price at all? Yes, there have been reasons put forward over the past two millennia, and yes, at least some of these reasons have a degree of theological coherence and plausibility; in the final analysis, however, they really don’t work due to internal inconsistencies at a logical level. At this point the teaching of the Roman Rite was to shrug one’s shoulders and say “it’s a mystery” and then move on to the next topic. That is actually coherent, given certain assumptions on how it all works.

Anyway, we get nothing of this debate in Verses 1-21. Rather, we get the need to be born from above. Of course, this translation, no matter whether it’s accurate or not (it is) contravenes a few thousand years of Christian teaching. More, it undercuts an entire interpretation of Christianity, the “Born-Again” Christians. I mean no disrespect, and I don’t use the quotes to indicate the illegitimacy of the belief, but one can’t derive “born again” from either the Greek word anōthen, or the Latin desuper. Not directly, anyway. However, there is another aspect to this that I completely overlooked in the initial commentary to Verses 4-9. Nikodemos asks how it is possible for an old person to re-enter the womb. This certainly seems to indicate the translation as “born again”; that is obviously how Nikodemos understood what Jesus said, so where do I get off with “from above”? Because that’s what the Greek and Latin words mean. In the commentary I suggested that the meaning of “born again” arose in the Renaissance/ Reformation era, when the Bible was being translated into vernacular languages. French and German, as well as English, also follow Nikodemos’ lead render the phrase as “born again”. What gives? It seems more or less impossible to disregard the notion of re-entering the womb just to maintain a “correct” translation of anōthen as meaning “from above”.

My answer is that I’m not entirely sure what gives with this. The word anōthen is not common, so we can’t appeal to other usages in other parts of the NT.  One the other hand, being reborn–“born again”–was a not uncommon religious belief or practice in the ancient world. The dying and resurrecting god was widespread, and the god who died and was reborn existed in many places under many names: Attis, Adonis, and Osiris are the three most widely recognized, but Dionysios and Persephone need to be added to the list as well. Of course this dying-and-resurrecting symbolise the vegetative cycle of the seasons. There is supposedly evidence–which I have not assessed–that the initiate in the Eleusinian Mysteries, probably the most famous of the “mystery” religions, took place underground and so involved the symbolic death and rebirth of the initiate; in a sense, the initiate was being “planted” like a seed by being buried, to rise again in the new spring. We do not know this with any certainty, but it does make sense. The Greeks and Romans took the secret nature of the “mystery” quite seriously, and no written description of the rite exists. However, other cultures have conducted similar ceremonies, so it does not strain credulity in the least.

The concept of dying/rebirth would have been familiar to most pagans of the First Century, perhaps especially in the Eastern Mediterranean. This familiarity could have provided the easy on-ramp for pagan converts; they would not have had to wrap their head around a strange notion. One suspects it may have been more difficult for Jews to accept; after all, their early history and identity was formed as a reaction to the pagan agricultural/fertility religions of the area as the tale of Cain and Abel ably demonstrates. Is this part of the reason that Jews resisted the siren call of Christianity? Because the idea of rebirth was too alien, or struck too close to the root? Was it too much opposed to a core part of their mythos? Interesting question, no?

Then let’s add the next part of anōthen; the part where it means “from above”. The tradition of magic and demonology is very rich in Judaism, or at least in the scholarly, or occultist corners of the religion. The magic supposedly traces back to Solomon himself, and the lists of demons seem to be part of the  Near Eastern milieu, something that a number of cultures participated in and contributed to. At this point, demons were not consigned to the fiery furnaces of Hell; that would come later. Rather, demons, or daimons, or incorporeal creatures of a spiritual nature lived in the air, generally the space between the earth and the moon, which was considered (accurately) to be the celestial body nearest the earth. Being incorporeal, they were lighter than humans who trod the solid earth, but the essence of these creatures was not fine enough to admit them to the super-lunar world. So they existed in the air*. So one could be born again by being entered by a spirit “from above”.

(*As an aside, please note that the cosmology was never firmly fixed; there were numerous variations and interpretations regarding the abode of these non-corporeal entities, but that they moved through the air was generally believed.)

We need to point out that being “born again” in a pagan mystery was something that occurred while one was alive. Indeed, the common Christian usage of the term is a description of a process that takes place while we are alive. We are born again to achieve a state of blessing that will occur after we die. For a pagan, rebirth was a spiritual event that occurred while alive. It was meant to imply–or even to cause–a spiritual awakening; as such it was not dissimilar to the Christian idea of being born again. Thus, while Nikodemos clearly describes a state of birth that is meant to replicate precisely the act of our initial, physical birth, we have this spiritual aspect lurking in the background. Think about it for a moment.  What happened on Pentecost? Those gathered in the upper room were infused by a spiritual entity, or essence, that descended upon them from above. Could we say they were reborn at that moment? They awakened spiritually, able to speak in tongues and to master their fear of persecution and to go out and preach the good news to the multitudes, traveling to the ends of the earth. For that matter, what happened at Jesus’ baptism? The skyheavens opened and a spiritual entity that took on the image of a dove and descended upon, onto, or into Jesus.

As Jesus then explains to Nikodemos, the point is that unless one is born from water and the spirit, one cannot enter the Kingdom of God. The process of birth via water and the spirit is exactly what all four gospels say happened to Jesus. He was born of the water of the Jordan and the Spirit which descended from above. In the vocabulary of the First Century, what the Evangelists describe is that Jesus was infused by a spirit descending from above, a spirit that probably dwelt in the air between earth and moon. Obviously, this is a very different understanding of the text than the orthodox Christian interpretation. In two of the four gospels, this most theological one included, we are told the spirit (ho pneuma) descended. Matthew says it was the spirit of God, while Luke calls it the holy spirit/sacred breath (hagios pneuma, or spiritus sanctus in Latin). So in Mark and John, the first and last gospels, the term is ambiguous, despite what you’ve been told/taught, or what you’ve read for your entire life. Of course, that is exactly why I’m mentioning this: to demonstrate that there is a broader context that needs to be considered. See, here’s the odd thing that I suspect doesn’t get a lot of consideration. Heck, I thought of this only as I was writing the last few sentences, the words that came after “demonstrate”. Here goes:

The gospels were not necessarily written for Christians. They were written as teaching materials for pagans. 

Think about that for a minute. Think about the circumstances. There were very few established Christian communities scattered throughout the Mediterranean relative to the overall population, so the idea was to keep finding recruits. Those are the circumstances of The Didache, with its admonitions and instructions about dealing with itinerant preachers. Such communities that had been established were full of people who had only barely been converted. Some, perhaps, could trace their pedigree back to the communities founded by Paul but the number of epistles under the name of Paul can be counted on two hands. So the rest were likely composed of persons who were not raised in the faith the way we have been for the past 2000 years; they probably learned the faith as adults. As such they likely had spent most of their life as a pagan life and probably saw the world in mostly pagan terms. Even those whose conversion dated back perhaps ten years needed further instruction on what it meant to believe in Jesus. This could also help explain why there were so many gospels, most of which never became canonical. Perhaps each author was looking for a way to couch the story so that it made sense for their intended audience. So the way to look at this passage about rebirth is not from the back end of two millennia of teaching and study, but from the front end of crafting a message that would make sense to, and resonate with, persons who were still very much pagan in their outlook.

There is actually one more aspect of anōthen that needs some comment. It’s one that I completely missed in the commentary. This is the part about Moses raising the serpent in the desert, which is offered as a parallel to what must happen to the “Son of Man”. This designation of Jesus as the Son of Man is not common in John, and in none of the gospels is it as common as it is in Mark. Recall that Mark is decidedly ambiguous about Jesus’ divinity, so for his successors to move away from the term is not surprising. So why does John choose to use it at all, and especially why does he choose it in this particular instance, at this particular spot? The Son of Man, he says, must be raised up. What does he mean by this? My first instinct was to think about the Ascension, the Son of God/Man being lifted bodily into skyheaven. Rather than coming down from above as at baptism or Pentecost, he goes up above.

Such a concept is not unfamiliar to anyone who has read the Asklepios of the Corpus Hermeticum. There, humans who attain the proper level of gnosis are effectively raised up to the level of the gods, thereby gaining divine power to create life. And here The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges refers to the Ophite sect of gnostics. The term “ophite” means “related to serpents/snakes”. Hippolytos Romanos says that the Ophites are the first sect to refer themselves Gnostics. The Cambridge Bible also helpfully points out that this passage provides a clue to the timing of the writing of John. Given that the Ophites were not orthodox Christians, John would not have used this analogy from the Exodus had he known about this sect. This pushes the writing of this gospel back in time, or pushes the Ophites forward in time. Or it simply indicates that the image of the serpent was common to both as both this gospel and the name Ophites grew out of the same temporal setting. This would allow circumstances in which the Ophites were not yet considered as unorthodox because they were largely unknown to other Christian groups. Or, as I would suggest, they were simply looked upon as just another pagan group who did not warrant much consideration from the  “orthodox” Christians, a term still highly problematic. Disputes about the Shepherd of Hermas(e.g.) would carry on well into the Second Century. So perhaps we would not be far wrong to see some of the ambient culture seeping into the gospel. The same ideas that led to portions of this gospel were also embedded in groups that later came to be considered heretical.

The point of all this discussion is to illustrate that “the sky hung low in the ancient world, and the traffic between the earth and sky was heavy”. (Paraphrased; unable to locate the quote. This was quoted by Pelikan in Volume I of The Christian Tradition.) For no one can explain the things of skyheaven except one who has descended from skyheaven, and Jesus implies–but does not state–that he has done this, assuming that he is referring to himself as “The Son of Man”. And please note my use of past tense here; the Greek includes an aorist participle (having come down) and an aorist infinitive (it is necessary to have [already] been raised up). The English translations do not reflect this latter. As the Logos, it makes sense that the anointed was in the skyheaven previously, and that he was raised back to the skyheaven as Luke described. For it only someone from the skyheaven can explain eternal life.

Let’s be very clear from the start. The belief in some sort of eternal life predates Christianity by millennia, originating with the Egyptians–assuming they didn’t  get it from someone before them; but whatever its provenance, belief in eternal life was foundational to, and ubiquitous in, Egyptian religious beliefs. The concept of a judgement on merits after death is also very widespread, but it may not span back to the 3rd Century BCE as does belief in eternal life. So eternal life based on a post-mortem judgement is not a Christian idea in any sense of the term. It is, and has always been, a borrowed concept. It penetrated throughout the Eastern Mediterranean to a greter or lesser degree amongst the various cultures. I would suspect, but I don’t know, that the Pharisaic idea of a resurrection of the body had its ultimate origin in Graeco-Egyptian ideas. This would serve as an intermediary step between the full-blown concept of an eternal soul while offering Jews a prospect of eternal life, albeit one that required a physical body. I’m sure there is a significant body of scholarship on this; personally, I’ve never seen any of it, but no doubt it exists; and it’s equally doubtless that this scholarship is stored next to the literature that does the compare/contrast studies of the Synoptics that don’t rely solely–or nearly so–on matters of word choice, language, and location of a pericope within a gospel narrative.

And it’s also high time to recognize that the gospels are probably closer to the Jewish conception of an eternal life of the body rather than one of the immortal soul. The Apocalypse of John describes the bodies rising from their graves/tombs on that Last Day; the hymn says “I will raise you up…on that Last Day”. That is a description of bodily resurrection. In the Roman Rite the teaching is (was, at least) that at death our soul stands outside of time so we are immediately transported (?) to Judgement Day when our soul will be reunited with our risen, but skyheaven body. However–and this is a big caveat–with time the theology moved towards Neoplatonism. As converts accrued, as the various ekklesiai merged together and evolved into the proto-Church, more educated pagans joined. They brought with them their Classical educations and began to try to fit a morality/lifestyle set of beliefs together with Greek philosophy. The fit has never been a good one. Be that as it may, the influx of Greek thinking turned the focus of the idea of eternal life away from the resurrection of the body and more towards the immortal soul. The result is that passages like 1 Thessalonians 4, with believers being lifted–seemingly bodily–while Jesus floats down are a bit odd. Or is that just me since I have such a background in Classics? I don’t think so; I have the impression I learned the soul aspect from my years as a Catholic, educated for seven years in a Catholic school. Had I been raised in a Protestant tradition–High-Church Episcopalianism perhaps excepted–my impressions no doubt would have been different.

As we discussed, Verse 16 seems to imply that what matters is our belief. This verges on sola fides, faith alone, or at least faith as the most important thing, perhaps prima fides or something such. Again, having been raised Catholic with the enormous compendia of sins that I commit every few milliseconds, I have to admit that I don’t entirely get this position. I mean, I do, but it doesn’t have the logical impact of a works-based redemption. But this isn’t about me. It’s about John the Evangelist. Unfortunately, we have not read Romans, which was the base text for Luther to argue sola fides. I don’t recall if this text played into the argument but it’s been a long time since I grappled with that question. And the rest of the chapter actually supports this contention about believing, rather than doing. This is something of an anomaly amongst religious creeds in the Ancient World. In fact, most religions were based on a set of prescribed actions to be taken to honour the gods in proper fashion. The code of the Jews, as a great example, is set out in some detail in the Torah. And yet John here is saying explicitly that what matters is belief. In fact, this idea of prima fides (I’ve coined a new term) doesn’t entirely mesh with at least some of Jesus’ message about loving one’s neighbor. In no way do the two messages contradict each other, or even conflict; it’s perhaps more of a case of them running in parallel closely beside each other, but without ever actually crossing. (That’s an extreme statement, of course, more rhetorical than literal.) But then, in a sense prima fides is attuned to the Baptist’s message of metanoiete, of repenting. These are attitude adjustments rather than a code of conduct, but then Jesus does spend a certain amount of time chastising the Officious Jews who count their cumin seeds but take no concern over oppressing the weak.

As we finally finish this first half of the commentary to Chapter 3, just bear in mind two things: That the gospels were not necessarily written for believers. Indeed, there is good reason to suppose that they were written to explain Jesus to nonbelievers. Now, this is obviously not a hard binary choice; I am not saying they were written solely for non-believers, but that this latter group loomed large in the minds of the evangelists. Jesus was a new phenomenon fighting for purchase in an alien environment. Most Christian symbols and imagery that we recognize had not yet been invented. The Cross was not ubiquitous; indeed, it did not become a common symbol for a few centuries. It was not good PR.

Which leads to the second thing: The different evangelists likely wrote for different audiences. There are the obvious place differences; an audience in Rome may not be receptive to a message that resonated in Antioch. But there was also a temporal displacement. Conditions in the early 70s, with the wounds of the Jewish Revolt still raw were different from conditions in the 90s with the Church existing as a semi-established body and the more or less final break with Jesus’ Judaic roots. I do not propose to posit a date for this; it was a gradual process that I believe was mostly complete by the time of John’s gospel. However, this is a topic that would require some serious investigation, and I do not presume to have a worthwhile opinion.

Actually there is a third thing. The message presented in the gospels likely changed to some extent as conditions evolved. The conversation with Nikodemos is a bit of a novelty in that it more or less sets down the basic doctrine of salvation in more or less formal terms. It may not introduce any new concept, but it sums up, or perhaps codifies, or makes explicit what the other gospels have been suggesting.

OK, let’s get on to Part 2.

John Chapter 3:27-36

Again, had to make a unplanned split in the posts. At first glance, I had thought it possible to wrap up the last 10 verses or so in one fell swoop. That, alas, proved impossible; but even worse is that every time I believe I’ve got it down to manageable proportions, even the slimmed-down sections have proven unwieldy. There is much more in these verses than meets the eye at first. Offhand, I’m not sure why.

Text

27 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰωάννης καὶ εἶπεν, Οὐ δύναται ἄνθρωπος λαμβάνειν οὐδὲ ἓν ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ δεδομένον αὐτῷ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ.

28 αὐτοὶ ὑμεῖς μοι μαρτυρεῖτε ὅτι εἶπον [ὅτι] Οὐκ εἰμὶ ἐγὼ ὁ Χριστός, ἀλλ’ ὅτι Ἀπεσταλμένος εἰμὶ ἔμπροσθεν ἐκείνου.

29 ὁ ἔχων τὴν νύμφην νυμφίος ἐστίν: ὁ δὲ φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου, ὁ ἑστηκὼς καὶ ἀκούων αὐτοῦ, χαρᾷ χαίρει διὰ τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ νυμφίου. αὕτη οὖν ἡ χαρὰ ἡ ἐμὴ πεπλήρωται.

29 ὁ ἔχων τὴν νύμφην νυμφίος ἐστίν: ὁ δὲ φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου, ὁ ἑστηκὼς καὶ ἀκούων αὐτοῦ, χαρᾷ χαίρει διὰ τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ νυμφίου. αὕτη οὖν ἡ χαρὰ ἡ ἐμὴ πεπλήρωται.

30 ἐκεῖνον δεῖ αὐξάνειν, ἐμὲ δὲ ἐλαττοῦσθαι.

(27) And having answered John said, “A human is not able to receive neither one if it is not given to him from the father. (28) You yourselves have witnessed me saying (that) ‘I am not the anointed, but that he following me, I am sent before (him)’. (29) The one having the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, the one having stood and hearing him, rejoices in gladness on account of the voice of the bridegroom. In this way the joy that is mine fills me. (30) He must increase, while (but) I must diminish.”

The commentary on the image of the Bridegroom is to be found in the previous post that was updated to include Verse 22-29. 

While we discussed the bridegroom image in the last post, the verses framing that were overlooked or not addressed. Verses 27 & 28, together with Verse 30, all stress what the Baptist is not. He cannot give what was not given him by God, so he is not the anointed. The result is that, once again, the Evangelist is very concerned with making sure that we know that Jesus was the important one rather than the Baptist. In historical writing, going out of one’s way to disprove something is generally a good indication that belief in that something was fairly common or widespread; as a result this belief had to be swatted down. Forcefully. This is what led me to go into the discussion of Josephus as a possible source for the Evangelist’s continued and rather extensive attention to the Baptist. The latter plays a much bigger role in this gospel than he did in the Synoptics. There, we had the Baptism and then the account of the Baptist’s arrest by Herod the Tetrarch. This latter episode is absent from the Fourth Gospel. The three vs one need not have deeper implications than that John the Evangelist felt no need to retell a story that had already been sufficiently covered by his predecessors; however, then why the need to expound at some length on the insignificance of the Baptist here in this gospel? I have long suggested that, far from trying to hide the connexion between Jesus and his predecessor John, the latter became more important as time passed. Is this passage in this gospel intended to be the final break between Jesus and the Baptist? Is that why the Baptist states that he “must diminish”? Obviously, the question cannot be definitively answered; very few such questions can be so answered. Regardless, we should ask. The Evangelist included Verse 30 for a reason. My suspicion is that the Evangelist is telling the Baptist to diminish into nothing.   

27 Respondit Ioannes et dixit: “Non potest homo accipere quidquam, nisi fuerit ei datum de caelo.

28 Ipsi vos mihi testimonium perhibetis, quod dixerim: Non sum ego Christus, sed: Missus sum ante illum.

29 Qui habet sponsam, sponsus est; amicus autem sponsi, qui stat et audit eum, gaudio gaudet propter vocem sponsi. Hoc ergo gaudium meum impletum est.

30 Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui”.

31 Ὁ ἄνωθεν ἐρχόμενος ἐπάνω πάντων ἐστίν: ὁ ὢν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἐστιν καὶ ἐκ τῆς γῆς λαλεῖ. ὁ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐρχόμενος [ἐπάνω πάντων ἐστίν:]

32 ὃ ἑώρακεν καὶ ἤκουσεν τοῦτο μαρτυρεῖ, καὶ τὴν μαρτυρίαν αὐτοῦ οὐδεὶς λαμβάνει.

33 ὁ λαβὼν αὐτοῦ τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἐσφράγισεν ὅτι ὁ θεὸς ἀληθής ἐστιν.

34 ὃν γὰρ ἀπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ θεοῦ λαλεῖ, οὐ γὰρ ἐκ μέτρου δίδωσιν τὸ πνεῦμα.

35 ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ τὸν υἱόν, καὶ πάντα δέδωκεν ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοῦ.

36 ὁ πιστεύων εἰς τὸν υἱὸν ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον: ὁ δὲ ἀπειθῶν τῷ υἱῷ οὐκ ὄψεται ζωήν, ἀλλ’ ἡ ὀργὴ τοῦ θεοῦ μένει ἐπ’ αὐτόν.

The one coming from above is above all (things, people); the one being of the earth is of the earth and speaks from the earth. The one coming from the sky [is above all]. (32) The one having seen and heard this one gives this witness, and no one accepts this witness of him. (33) For the one accepting sealed the witness of him that God is truth. (34) For the one God sent speaks the words of God, for the spirit does not give from the measure. (35) The father loves the son, and he has given all by his hand. (36) The believer in the sone has life eternal; the non-believer in the son does not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.”

Just to note that the [is above all] in Verse 31 is bracketed to indicate it is not present in some of the mss traditions.

Here we get the dualism of sky and earth; and “sky” of course, is perhaps over-literal. Whether to render “sky” or “heaven” is often a choice based on nothing more than personal attitude. Yes, there are times when the Greek obviously, or most likely, means one or the other, most of the time there is not a clear indication. But this is true in English, too. The words “the sky” and “the heavens” are synonyms. I tend to favor “sky” in my translations because I want everyone to remember that we may or may not be talking about Heaven. I note that my crib translations all choose “heaven” with a lower-case “h”, but even the lower-case version of “heaven” is full of implication for speakers of English. Throughout this exercise, I have tried to stress that it’s important to remember that the Greek may mean something different from what we have come to think of as obvious and inevitable. Of course, in this case, one could easily argue that the distinction with “the earth” would make “heaven” the obvious choice here, and that argument carries weight. Regardless, assuming it means “heaven” is the result of the meanings we have overlaid on the Greek and Latin over the last two millennia. The issue is that we have two words where Greek and Latin have but one. Choosing between “sky” and “heaven” is to create a choice that does not exist in the Greek. As such, it’s something of a false distinction. To get this point across in English, we’d have to give it as something like “skyheaven”, just as we have come to call it “spacetime” to remove the false implication that the two are separate entities. So given that the Greek does not allow a choice, insisting that the word should be translated as one or the other is misleading. Or something. Nevertheless, the distinction between earth and skyheaven is real and legitimate. For the Greeks, the “refined” or “rarefied” elements were more godly, while the gross elements were not. Air/fire vs earth, and water to a lesser extent. The rarefied elements were lighter, and so rose while the gross, heavy element of earth sank to the bottom. 

Given this, we have to ask just how dualistic this distinction was in the mind of the Evangelist as he put the words into the mouth of the Baptist. Again, let’s bear in mind that this gospel was written at a time when dualism, whether Gnostic or not, was becoming an issue. Personally, I believe that the necessary association of Gnosticism and dualism is overdone, perhaps even anachronistic in the early First Century. When reading the texts, what strikes me about Gnostic teaching is the description of the emanations, from the highest creator down through the lowest dirt. There is the sense that the higher emanations are more refined, more rarefied, so the spirit/earth division is appropriate so long as it’s not overdrawn. After all, “spirit” or pneuma are at root “breath”, and breath is nothing but air. There is, I think, too much emphasis on the taxonomy of these belief systems, the attempt to split them up into separate and distinct entities when the most appropriate model is a continuum. So it’s probably sufficient to say that John the Evangelist does see a real and clear division between earth and sky, just as Paul did between spirit and flesh. It’s also probably accurate to equate these two pairings as more or less identical. That is to say that sky = spirit and earth = flesh, and that the first pair is good and the second is at least not-so-good. Calling the earth/flesh “evil” is going too far in most cases, for that is what has come to be known as “radical dualism” where the distinction is absolute. Here, I think, it’s more a question of “good” and something like sub-optimal.

What is more pertinent is the notion that the one having seen and heard the one from above is not accepted. This idea of the rejection of Jesus’ message goes all the way back to Mark, where I saw it as a means of explaining to the greater world why Jews still existed, why they had not all converted to become followers of Jesus. Now, if this passage represents the final break between Jesus and the Baptist, do Verses 32 & 33 represent the final break with Judaism? It’s tempting to see the connexion, because that would help explain these verses to some extent. OTOH, the distinction and the break may just be between those of the earth and those of the sky. Of course, this could be stretched to include Jews vs Christians, but this is probably not the most plain reading of the text. John is positing a distinction between those who believe in the Son, and those who do not. That is the ultimate bottom line IMO. However else one wishes to distinguish between the two groups is up to the individual. The believers are those following the one who is from the sky. This group will “see” the life, a novel way to describe the gaining of eternity. This is not exactly the first time we get the pairing of eternal life with the wrath; that was way back in Paul somewhere. A quick check indicates that it was in 1 Thessalonians, but not in Galatians or 1 Corinthians. Interesting. And glancing at the occurrence of “wrath” in the various books, it seems to crop up quite a bit in the Deutero-Pauline works as well as in Romans. So it was there early, and it was there late, especially in the Apocalypse. 

Well, this actually could have been appended on to the previous post, but oh well.

31 Qui de sursum venit, supra omnes est; qui est de terra, de terra est et de terra loquitur. Qui de caelo venit, supra omnes est;

32 et quod vidit et audivit, hoc testatur, et testimonium eius nemo accipit.

33 Qui accipit eius testimonium, signavit quia Deus verax est.

34 Quem enim misit Deus, verba Dei loquitur; non enim ad mensuram dat Spiritum.

35 Pater diligit Filium et omnia dedit in manu eius.

36 Qui credit in Filium, habet vitam aeternam; qui autem incredulus est Filio, non videbit vitam, sed ira Dei manet super eum.

John Chapter 3:22-29 updated

The intent was to push ahead to the end of the chapter in this section; however, there has been much more to discuss than I ever imagined possible. Then as I tried to split this up, some of the editing got a bit muddled. So, once again, I will include the last 2-3 verses of this section in the next, so there will be overlap. As always, my apologies for any confusion, but this Gospel is proving to be extremely difficult to break into sections that aren’t extremely long. The stories told seem to be of longer duration, and less episodic, than the stories in the Synoptics. Part of the problem is that I got off on the Bride of Christ image, and did not want to comment on the other verses that had not been addressed.

Anyway, the last post dealt with eternal life; this section deals with John the Baptist once more. I had not realized the extent to which John the Evangelist spoke about John the Baptist. Interesting.

Text

22Μετὰ ταῦτα ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς καὶ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν Ἰουδαίαν γῆν, καὶ ἐκεῖ διέτριβεν μετ’ αὐτῶν καὶ ἐβάπτιζεν.

It’s very interesting to not how infrequently baptism is mentioned in the gospels. In all four gospels, the narrative action centers on baptism essentially twice. One of these, of course, is the baptism of Jesus by John in the very early stage of the respective gospel. Mark describes the death of the Baptist in Chapter 6, so the word occurs there. It also occurs in Mark Chapter 10 and Luke Chapter 11 when we are told the Pharisees baptize the food they purchase in the marketplace. This is a terrific example that baptizein was not a special word in Greek. In some NT lexica, the translation of baptizein is “to baptize”, which is not exactly helpful, and it’s even less accurate. Generally, the other reference to baptism is Jesus asking his disciples whether they can accept the baptism he must face, a reference to his coming suffering. Then if we thunk back to 1 Corinthians, we may recall Paul’s rather disparaging remarks about baptism, how he felt fortunate that he had not been the one to baptise very many of the members of the community. In fact, in 1Cor 1:17, he stated that Christ had not sent him to baptize, but to preach. It’s almost enough to make one wonder how the act of baptism ever became so crucial to the Christian experience, but it no doubt did by the time of Acts, because there are numerous references there to the apostles performing baptism. This is, I suspect, somehow tied in with the thoroughly ambivalent attitude taken towards the Baptist in the gospels. He’s embarrassing since he seems to have a leg up on Jesus at the outset, but, far from writing him out of the later gospels, quite the opposite seems to occur: the Baptist takes on an ever-larger role as time passes. So it is here.

22 Post haec venit Iesus et discipuli eius in Iudaeam terram, et illic demorabatur cum eis et baptizabat.

23 ἦν δὲ καὶ ὁ Ἰωάννης βαπτίζων ἐν Αἰνὼν ἐγγὺς τοῦ Σαλείμ, ὅτι ὕδατα πολλὰ ἦν ἐκεῖ, καὶ παρεγίνοντο καὶ ἐβαπτίζοντο:

24 οὔπω γὰρ ἦν βεβλημένος εἰς τὴν φυλακὴν ὁ Ἰωάννης.

25 Ἐγένετο οὖν ζήτησις ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν Ἰωάννου μετὰ Ἰουδαίου περὶ καθαρισμοῦ.

26 καὶ ἦλθον πρὸς τὸν Ἰωάννην καὶ εἶπαν αὐτῷ, Ῥαββί, ὃς ἦν μετὰ σοῦ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, ᾧ σὺ μεμαρτύρηκας, ἴδε οὗτος βαπτίζει καὶ πάντες ἔρχονται πρὸς αὐτόν.

27 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰωάννης καὶ εἶπεν, Οὐ δύναται ἄνθρωπος λαμβάνειν οὐδὲ ἓν ἐὰν μὴ ᾖ δεδομένον αὐτῷ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ.

28 αὐτοὶ ὑμεῖς μοι μαρτυρεῖτε ὅτι εἶπον [ὅτι] Οὐκ εἰμὶ ἐγὼ ὁ Χριστός, ἀλλ’ ὅτι Ἀπεσταλμένος εἰμὶ ἔμπροσθεν ἐκείνου.

29 ὁ ἔχων τὴν νύμφην νυμφίος ἐστίν: ὁ δὲ φίλος τοῦ νυμφίου, ὁ ἑστηκὼς καὶ ἀκούων αὐτοῦ, χαρᾷ χαίρει διὰ τὴν φωνὴν τοῦ νυμφίου. αὕτη οὖν ἡ χαρὰ ἡ ἐμὴ πεπλήρωται.

And John was also baptizing in Ainon near to Salem, since there was much water there, and they came near and were baptized. (24) For thus was before (lit = ‘in front of’) John was cast under guard. (25) Thus it happened a question of one of John’s learners with a Jew about purification. (In this way a question about purification arose between one of John’s disciples and a Jew.) (26) And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, for whom you provided witness, notice (that) he baptizes and all come to him.” (27) And having answered John said, “A human is not able to receive neither one if it is not given to him from the father. (28) You yourselves have witnessed me saying (that) ‘I am not the anointed, but that he following me, I am sent before (him)’.” (29) The one having the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, the one having stood and hearing him, rejoices in gladness on account of the voice of the bridegroom.”

This is interesting. At least, I think it should be, or may be interesting. I suppose the point here is to have the Baptist, once again, disavow his role as the messiah, emphasizing that he is only the one sent prior, to make straight the way of the anointed one. Honestly can’t say I’ve ever heard this particular section read in church service as part of the gospel, and it rather makes sense that I haven’t, because there is nothing terribly salient about these verses. It has to do, one suspects (or I do, anyway) that the Evangelist feels it necessary to add this just to make sure that followers of the Baptist are told in no uncertain terms that the latter himself disavowed any claim to being the christos. Let’s go back once again to Josephus, whose book Antiquities of the Jews had come out in the decade prior to the writing of this gospel. Let us also recall that the Baptist appears to have seemed substantially more important to Josephus than Jesus did; the former got a couple of paragraphs while Jesus got a couple of sentences. Maybe. That assumes the whole piece on Jesus is not an interpolation, and this part of the Fourth Gospel here makes me wonder whether Josephus mentioned Jesus at all.

It needs to be stated emphatically that Josephus is the only–the one, the sole, the unique–reference to Jesus in any written source outside of the gospels. All of the other so-called testimonies to Jesus, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Pliny Minor all talk about Christians. They do not refer to Jesus as a person aside from oblique references to his role as the supposed founder of the Christian sect–which is an accurate description of the status of Christianity at the time these “testimonies” were written. That these pagans only speak of Christians, and not of Jesus, is almost always glossed over in the literature. No one doubts that Christians existed, but these references do not provide any substantive evidence that Jesus existed. Yes, that leaves us with the question of “how can there be a Christianity without a Christ?” but that is entirely a separate discussion. Suetonius comes closest, saying that Christians were followers of a certain Chrestus, but “Christ” is a title while Jesus is a personal name. That matters. There is so much more that needs to be said, especially about the unlikelihood of Josephus using the NT as a source; perhaps not the NT, but doubtless his source(s) was/were Christian. No one else was talking about Jesus; no one else had anything to say about Jesus.

John seems to be going out of his way to repeat and underscore his version of how the Baptist saw himself. This makes me wonder whether this is a reaction to renewed interest in the career of the Baptist. For, Josephus and the Roman historians aside, people did remember Jesus, and people did talk about Jesus. There is a very strong tradition that remembers Jesus as a powerful magician, which is certainly consistent with Mark’s portrayal. Part of the reason, I think, that Gnosticism is considered a Christian heresy by so many is that, according to Hippolytos Romanos, at least some of the Gnostics and other, similar groups incorporated Jesus into their secular pantheon of magoi. There, Jesus is mentioned by name. It is impossible to reconstruct the various traditions that grew up after Jesus died, but spring up they did. It is at least possible, IMO, that the Evangelist added this section about the Baptist as a response to some of those other traditions. Josephus may have represented one of them, but it is not necessary. We know, quite independently, that such traditions did exist. This is all very speculative, but this is here for a reason, whether or not I’ve hit on the correct explanation. Probably not, but then…why not?

Jumping back to the first two verses. The commentaries I’ve skimmed indicate that Ainon and Salem, which are the direct transliterations of the Greek, were places in the Jordan Valley, and so not far from Jerusalem. The evangelist’s specificity in naming the locations, here and elsewhere, have convinced many that our author was an eyewitness to much of this. Rather, I would derive that John was from the Jerusalem area, rather than Galilee, which leads him to situate places within that general vicinity. There is also some discussion about the phrase “much water”, which could be take as “many waters”. That, plus the fact that Ainon means “springs” has led many to conclude that this place can be identified some not large distance from the river itself, since it would be unnecessary to state that there was much water if John was baptizing in the river itself. Whatever. John’s presence in the vicinity of Jerusalem is consistent with the more general situating of the Baptist that occurs in those other three gospels. As mentioned, that the Evangelist is so familiar with Jerusalem could be taken evidence–but not proof–that John was not Galilean, which would make his identification with John son of Zebedee unlikely. Or, it could be that the Evangelist in his later life spent time in Jerusalem and so became familiar with the geography, leading him to name places where events occurred. Interesting to note that John seems more confident about these locations than he was about Nazareth, Caphernaum, and Cana. So the origin outside of Galilee may not be so far-fetched, either. 

Then in Verse 24 we are specifically told that this event occurred before John was put under guard. Please note that “prison” is a very anachronistic concept for the 1st Century, more likely to be misleading than illuminating. If anything, “dungeon” would be a better image, some hole in the bowels of the palace, or the fortress, or something such, some place where people could be put out of site and forgotten. This seems important to a number of commentators who want to claim that the Evangelist is correcting the record of the Synoptics. I am not averse to positing this as a motive; after all, I suggested several times that Luke was “correcting” Matthew by returning to a narrative closer to that of Mark. This is arguably similar; however, it rests upon the assumption–unproven and presented without argument, but simply assumed–that the Evangelist was the Son of Zebedee, and so a legitimate eyewitness to these parts of Jesus’ life. Does it need to be said that this assumption causes all sorts of problems? For example, there is no Sermon on the Mount in John’s gospel; are we to take it that John never witnessed this, and so it didn’t happen? I’d like to hear a response to that. Rather, I would suggest that the author of John took on the mantle of the follower of Jesus as a means of creating a higher degree of his credibility; as a late author, he needs it. To be considered when discussing what became orthodox scripture is the time at which the piece was written. I don’t know all the ins and outs of what was (supposedly) written when, but the Gospel of John is one of the latest texts that came to be considered canonical. It doesn’t take too much insight to conclude that a plausible connexion to the group around Jesus was a significant criterion in the final decision. Written probably a bit after 100 CE, this gospel stretches this pretty much to the limit. Of course, one wonders what sort of criteria the elders of the early Church used to determine authenticity. It’s difficult to say since this is another area where specialization is absolutely necessary.

But to pick up on the thread from the early paragraphs of this piece of commentary, the main theme is something like the relationship between Jesus and the Baptist, but in the sense of where they stand vis à vis each other rather than a relationship of personal interaction between them. It’s a question of how we are to understand the one in the context of the other’s existence. I speculated that this may have been directed at any remaining disciples of the Baptist, but also to settle any residual unease new converts may have felt about the place of the Baptist in the Jesus tradition, doubts which may have been stirred up as a result–or perhaps a reflection–of Josephus who reminded many that the Baptist was a figure of some importance. As such, the disciples of the Baptist are to be understood as proxies for us, the audience of the Evangelist’s words. The exchange is an artificial construction, a staged piece designed to let John tell us that he is inferior to Jesus. The language, or metaphor he choses is that of the bridegroom; we have encountered this before, but not quite so specifically as related to Jesus as we have here.

The marriage of Jesus to the Church became something of a commonplace in the Middle Ages, but it really sort of begins here. All three Synoptics use the he analogy of Jesus as the Bridegroom to explain why his followers did not fast while those of the Baptist did: one doesn’t fast while the bridegroom is still at the party. Our Evangelist here picks up on the metaphor and extends it to some extent. I mention this because I am tempted, based on the development of the concept, that this story was almost certainly the creation of a later time, of a time well after the days of Jesus. One must be careful here, because it would be very easy to read the Bride of Christ metaphor back into these words, and that could easily be a mistake. OTOH, the image of the Church as such came from somewhere, and here the Evangelist more or less makes the direct association of Jesus with the Bridegroom. While I doubt that this section was written with the intent of making that association, I do believe that we are heading in that direction. The implications would be drawn later, but the raw material for the analogy now exists with John’s Gospel. I want to take this further, as evidence that this section was written at a time when the body of Jesus’ followers were beginning to think of themselves as an ekklesia, probably as a single ekklesia, a group that could imagine itself as a mystical Bride of Christ, but that would be, I fear, wildly anachronistic. We’ll leave it at that.

23 Erat autem et Ioannes baptizans in Enon iuxta Salim, quia aquae multae erant illic, et adveniebant et baptizabantur;

24 nondum enim missus fuerat in carcerem Ioannes.

25 Facta est ergo quaestio ex discipulis Ioannis cum Iudaeo de purificatione.

26 Et venerunt ad Ioannem et dixerunt ei: “Rabbi, qui erat tecum trans Iordanem, cui tu testimonium perhibuisti, ecce hic baptizat, et omnes veniunt ad eum!”.

27 Respondit Ioannes et dixit: “Non potest homo accipere quidquam, nisi fuerit ei datum de caelo.

28 Ipsi vos mihi testimonium perhibetis, quod dixerim: Non sum ego Christus, sed: Missus sum ante illum.

29 Qui habet sponsam, sponsus est; amicus autem sponsi, qui stat et audit eum, gaudio gaudet propter vocem sponsi. Hoc ergo gaudium meum impletum est.