John Chapter 9:1-7

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A thousand pardons for the length of time between posts. John is proving to be by far the most difficult of the gospels to provide commentary. Not only are there few logical breaks in the chapters themselves, but as I hope I pointed out in the summary to Chapter 8, the themes carry on between the chapters. A cursory glance ahead shows that we might be entering into a phase in which the topics are more episodic, but time will tell. We begin with a story about a Sign. As we do so, please remember that the word miracle* does not appear in the NT as written. Jesus is about to perform a sign.

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1 Καὶ παράγων εἶδεν ἄνθρωπον τυφλὸν ἐκ γενετῆς.

2 καὶ ἠρώτησαν αὐτὸν οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ λέγοντες, Ῥαββί, τίς ἥμαρτεν, οὗτος ἢ οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἵνα τυφλὸς γεννηθῇ;

And proceeding along, he saw a man blind from birth. (2) And his disciples asked him saying about (the man), “Rabbi, who sinned? Was it he, or his parents, so that he was born blind?”  

Let’s start with the most obvious point here; it’s so obvious that it’s easy to overlook. “And (they were) proceeding along”. “Proceeding along…” where? At the end of the last chapter Jesus was going on the lam to escape the wrath of “The Jews” in the Temple. Is this part of that flight from justice–as imposed by Temple authorities? Are they still in Jerusalem? We don’t know. To call this intro “abrupt” is rather an understatement. 

However, that’s all beside the real point. To some degree, the question about sinning seems a bit off. It has the feel, almost, of an anachronism, as if this attitude that illness/disability = sin has become outdated by this time. But then, in the wider world, there are several pagan temples that functioned as sort of a combination of hospital and Lourdes, where the sick and afflicted gathered and prayed for a cure, often delivered in the form of a dream and taking the form of a sacrifice. So, while there is a very real difference between an illness/affliction being caused by sin, and offering a sacrifice in thanksgiving for a cure. It doesn’t matter. The point is that the idea of a physical affliction being caused by sin is hardly an odd one in the ancient world. BUT, this just feels a bit too…perfect. It’s a set-up for what comes next. In addition, if the man was blind from birth, how could the sin have been his? IIRC, the idea of the sins of the father being visited on the sons, or children, is part of Hebrew/Jewish/Canaanite tradition, so again this question is not surprising in any generalized cultural sense, but it does seem a bit…odd.

But now let us circle back to the first point, about the abrupt opening. The combination of that opening with the too-perfect question leads me to suspect that John encountered this story as a complete unit in one of his oral sources. Like Luke’s story of the Widow of Nain, it had developed amongst one or some of the groups that followed, or at least paid attention to Jesus. That is how the legends of Jesus developed, and it is how legends in general develop: stories sort of spring up organically. To say that they are concocted, or made up, or fictional is rather to miss the point. No, the stories did not occur in anything resembling factual reality, but that was not necessarily seen as a problem. Again, we’re talking Truth, not factual accuracy. The latter has nothing to do with the former. It was believed that it could have been accurate as well as True, and that was what mattered in the long run; it was the sort of thing that could have been True, just as Thucydides wrote speeches that were the sort of thing that woulda/coulda been said at the time and place and by the speaker in question. At the risk of offending, the word we’re looking for here is myth. If you read Joseph Campbell–which I cannot recommend highly enough–you will understand that myth does not mean “fairy tale”, or deliberate lie. It’s a story that illustrates a very essential aspect of our lived reality. So this is the sort of thing Jesus would have done, so it becomes True. 

1 Et praeteriens vidit hominem caecum a nativitate.
2 Et interro gaverunt eum discipuli sui dicentes: “Rabbi, quis peccavit, hic aut parentes eius, ut caecus nasceretur?”.

3 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς, Οὔτε οὗτος ἥμαρτεν οὔτε οἱ γονεῖς αὐτοῦ, ἀλλ’ ἵνα φανερωθῇ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ.

4 ἡμᾶς δεῖ ἐργάζεσθαι τὰ ἔργα τοῦ πέμψαντός με ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστίν: ἔρχεται νὺξ ὅτε οὐδεὶς δύναται ἐργάζεσθαι. 

5 ὅταν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ὦ, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου.

Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned, but (he was blind) so that the works of God may have been made manifest in/through him. (4) You must do the works of the one having sent me until it is day. Night comes that no one is able to work. (5) Whenever I may be in the kosmos, I am the light of the kosmos.   

Here is the real proof that we are in the realm of myth. The man is not blind due to sin, but so that he may make manifest the works of God. Think about that for a moment. It sort of takes us into the outer ambit of the moral realm of Predestination. This man was not born only to be damned upon his death, but he still spent a chunk of his life blind so that God could show mercy by making him whole. Now, the attitude I’ve just expressed is very much the attitude of an era much later than the time of Jesus. The horrors of life were much more obvious back then. As proof I offer the tombstones of 17th Century Boston. In the burying ground next to Old South Church on Tremont street are very grim tombstones, with carvings of skulls and skeletons that are depicted snuffing out the candle of life. As time progressed and some of the grim aspect of life had been ameliorated the skulls grew wings and morphed into angels, a much more positive image. So I suspect we feel the grim aspect of this man’s fate more keenly than he did. And even if this particular man is “fictional”, there were scores of others in the same or worse condition scattered throughout the towns of Judea. So here is where the myth aspect really comes into play: I doubt anyone hearing this story at any point prior to the Reformation thought of the man’s circumstances as I have. It was a story that imparted a Truth about life. People were born blind. But this man was actually fortunate to have encountered Jesus who (spoiler alert!) will restore his sight. He is one of the lucky ones, and we should rejoice in his good fortune. But these sorts of implications, many of them probably unforeseen by the authors of the NT, raised the sorts of questions that led to the development of theology as something apart from philosophy. Stories like this led to debates among churchmen, starting in the Second Century, proceeding through Augustine in the 4/5th Century and raging throughout the Middle Ages. And the questions that cropped up are still valid, even if we have come to some sort of consensus about them.

Finally there is Jesus’ pronouncement in Verse 6. “I am the light of the kosmos/world”. Having even rudimentary background in astronomy and Hermeticism and Gnosticism that I do, the choice of “world” really matters, and I wonder how someone in the Second Century would have understood the term kosmos, which is the word John used here. When we hear “light of the world” we think of our terrestrial home and its daystar, AKA the sun. And really, that is the image John means to evoke as he compares and contrasts against night, when no one is able to work since it is dark. Here is where one wonders how familiar John was with Matthew and the Sermon on the Mount. In particular I think of Mt 5:14 & 16, and 6:23. In Verse 5:14 Jesus tells his audience that “you are the light of the world”; in 5:16, they are admonished to let their light shine before men through their good example. Finally in 6:23 he says that if one’s eyes are evil their body will be full of darkness. Similar sorts of implications, but still distinct. Did John sort of remember his Matthew, more or less, but not quite get the nuances right? Or did he remember his Matthew and adapt to different circumstances? Did John develop the theme of light from the ideas of one of his predecessors?

It’s impossible to answer that question. Of course the light/dark dichotomy can be traced back to Paul in the NT, and all the way back to Zoroaster in Near Eastern thought. I mentioned Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Paul; light/dark was prominent in Gnostic belief, and I will suggest that the rise in the popularity of Gnosticism would have led to this theme to spill into the culture as a whole. It would have been something of a commonplace, at least in some circles. These circles would have been comprised of educated individuals, since this is the prime market for beliefs that value knowledge of any sort. John was educated, as is demonstrated by the fact that he could write. As such, I would suggest that John conceived the idea of the light of the world in some sort of semi-Gnostic understanding. Now, I have just unloaded a whole pile of unsubstantiated speculation, so don’t be too eager to quote me. With that caveat in mind, however, I believe my suggestion is eminently plausible given a certain amount of diffusion of Gnostic thinking and belief. In such a system, the idea of the Light of the Kosmos–not “the world” as we understand it–is well in keeping with the high claims John has made about who Jesus is. I am suggesting that if John is writing under Gnostic influence, he is likely not talking about the mundane, physical world of our common understanding. He is more concerned about the kosmos, the cosmic realm of all creation. Can I prove that? Of course not. All I can do is make the suggestion as a reminder that this gospel that we have been reading an commenting on for a couple of millennia is not a settled fact. It is a consensus–at best.  We need always to bear in mind that the NT was part of a much larger milieu, which is why I so vehemently insist that there is no such thing as “NT Greek”. It’s an artificial creation, a circumscribing, or a cordoning off of the authors of the NT from the wider world around them, and this will lead to an overly narrow understanding of the words they wrote. As such I fully believe that John could easily have had something well beyond what shows up on a globe when he had Jesus say, “I am the light of the world”.

But let’s reel this back in a bit. Or a lot. Even to be the “light of the world” as it fits on a globe is one heckuva claim to make. Jesus is the light that shines to show us eternal life, and this clim is the culmination of the train of thought first put forth in Matthew. We all know Matthew’s birth narrative; many of us probably heard it read in church in the past week or two (I write this on 1/2/24) We are all familiar with the Star of Bethlehem that was observed by astrologers in the East who came to pay homage to the Infant King. We call them “Three Kings of Orient”, but “kings” covers up the term “magi”, which is the Latinized form of magoi, which is the Greek word borrowed from the Persians that meant, among other things, “astrologer”, and is the root of “magic” and “magician”. They observed a star, a new star that announced the birth of the new King. Having had an interest in astronomy as a lad, I can assure you that a new star is A Big Deal. A Very Big Deal. In 1054 the light of a stellar explosion in the constellation Taurus reached the earth, and was recorded by Chinese astronomers and other observers. This was a “new star”, something that appeared in the sky where there had never been a star. Technically, this wasn’t a star, but a supernova, one of the most spectacular events in the heavens. The star appeared in July of 1054 and then disappeared from view by the naked eye in April 1056; however, it is still visible with the aid of a smallish telescope as the Crab Nebula. It is the first object in the Messier Catalogue, a listing of non-cometary celestial objects such as galaxies or nebulae. The French astronomer Charles Messier found it while looking for Halley’s Comet, and he mistook the nebula for the comet. To avoid confusion in the future, M Messier created the catalogue of such objects, and this catalogue–greatly expanded–is still used by astronomers. The objects are listed in the catalogue with the letter M (for Messier) and a number, which are sequential in order of discovery. The Crab Nebula is M 1 in the catalogue.  

All of this is meant to demonstrate just how much of a Big Deal a new star is. We have seen nothing of the sort since 1054, and I will let you do the math on that. Given that Jesus’ birth was marked by a new star, we can understand that Matthew saw this birth as an event of cosmic significance. That is the term I used when we read Matthew, but I did not fully understand the implications of what I said at the time. By introducing a New Star, Matthew was beating us over the head with implications of just how big a deal the birth of Jesus was; however, at this point, the Star of Bethlehem is just part of the wallpaper of Christmas, something mentioned in a song, or that decorates a creche. So when John says Jesus claimed to be the “light of the kosmos”, φῶς εἰμι τοῦ κόσμου, I think we need to sit back and take notice that John had something in mind that goes way beyond our humdrum earth, our globe. Betcha don’t find that in another commentary.

3 Respondit Iesus: “ Neque hic peccavit neque parentes eius, sed ut manifestentur opera Dei in illo.
4 Nos oportet operari opera eius, qui misit me, donec dies est; venit nox, quando nemo potest operari.
5 Quamdiu in mundo sum, lux sum mundi”.

6 ταῦτα εἰπὼν ἔπτυσεν χαμαὶ καὶ ἐποίησεν πηλὸν ἐκ τοῦ πτύσματος, καὶ ἐπέχρισεν αὐτοῦ τὸν πηλὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς

7 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Υπαγε νίψαι εἰς τὴν κολυμβήθραν τοῦ Σιλωάμ {ὃ ἑρμηνεύεται Ἀπεσταλμένος}. ἀπῆλθεν οὖν καὶ ἐνίψατο, καὶ ἦλθεν βλέπων. 

Saying this Jesus spat on the ground and made mud from the spittle, and smeared mud upon his eyes. (7) And Jesus said to him (the blind man). “Withdraw, wash to the pool of Siloam {which translates as “Sent”}. So he went away and washed, and he came seeing. [Usually rendered as “he came back seeing”.]  

OK. A couple of things to get us started. First, the construction “he came seeing” is odd. Changing this to “came back seeing” makes sense in English, but it is not what the Greek–nor the Latin, for that matter–says. This doesn’t really affect the narrative, but one wonders at the clumsy nature of this. Second, the words in the {brackets} are almost certainly interpolated. Mark has a number of Aramaic expressions that he translates into Greek, but they are translated much more smoothly than what we get here. This just screams “Marginal Note!” In fact, it screams it so loudly that I wonder if the “he came back seeing” is not also an interpolation. After all, without it, we are not exactly informed that the cure occurred. But, in the grand scheme, the insertion of a couple of phrases is not a big deal one way or another. 

What is a big deal, in my opinion, is how we are thrown back into Mark, and the way Mark described what I termed the magical practices of Jesus. Twice in Mark we are told that Jesus used his saliva to cure people; the first time in 7:31-37, it was a man who could not hear or speak, the second time in 8:23-25 it was a man who was blind. These are the only three instances where the Greek word ptuō, “to spit” is used. (Ptuō is a wonderful example of onomatopoeia, IMO.) I have been paying attention to such things because I have a theory that Jesus may have been executed for practicing magic. This position is not a common one, but it’s not entirely unusual, either. It crops up more in discussions of pagan magical practice than in Christian writing, and it has been suggested more than once. It bears mention that Jesus’ name occurs in incantations of pagan magicians; Jesus is invoked as a magician of some power. And then Jesus’ later contemporary, Apollonius of Tyana, was also accused of sorcery. The comparison of the biographies of the two men provide some really interesting parallels, to the point that Christian writers up until, say, Augustine, would go apoplectic at the mention of Apollonius. If you have never heard of him, then you can appreciate how successful the Christians between John and Augustine were in extirpating the memory of Apollonius, but the latter’s memory survived in no small part to imperial patronage of his status. Back when we discussed Matthew and Luke, I made sure to point out how these two evangelists neatly omitted those parts of Mark in which these magical practices of Jesus were described. 

We will discuss this further as the chapter progresses. I would like to close this section with two comments. First, it’s amazing how long some of these can drag out. Until I got to it, the idea of explaining about the Crab Nebula had never occurred to me. Now, one hopes that this sort of context adds value. There are a lot of cross-currents swirling about in the First Century, just as there are in any period. And I do suspect that you will not run into this sort of explanation elsewhere. Or maybe you will. Second, this whole magic bit is curious, to say the least. Third, it appears that there is no mention of a “sign” in this chapter. That is also curious.

6 Haec cum dixisset, exspuit in terram et fecit lutum ex sputo et linivit lutum super oculos eius
7 et dixit ei: “ Vade, lava in natatoria Siloae! ” — quod interpretatur Missus —. Abiit ergo et lavit et venit videns.

*I published a post called Miracles back at the end of June explaining the etymology of “miracle”, which is a Latin word. As such, it does not appear in the Greek original; nor in the Vulgate, for that matter. The term was coined by later Christian writers.