Was the prophesied Messiah really Jesus?

First, some digressions. (Actually, this post is mainly digressions. Consider yourself warned.)

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There were in the time of Elijah two rival cults in Israel. The first worshiped a God who may originally have had a name (contemporary scholarship suggests Hadad or Ishkur) but was generally known simply as "the Lord"; the second gave their God a proper name -- but, after centuries of superstitious refusal to pronounce that name or even to write it with its proper vowel points, its precise form is no longer known. Thus it has come about that, in our English Bibles, it is the second of these Gods that is called "the Lord"; while for the first -- the one that the Israelites called "the Lord" -- that Hebrew word is simply transliterated and used as if it were a proper name.

For my part, I shall use the title "Lord" as the Israelites did and deal with the uncertain name of the other God by means of the same expedient resorted to by Victor Hugo, Freud, and others when they had reason to avoid spelling out a particular proper name. Even choosing an initial presents some difficulties, since the Hebrew letter in question can be transliterated as I, J, or Y. Out of deference to Dante (see Paradiso XXVI, 133-138) and to English translations of Moses (Exodus 3:14), I have chosen the first option.

Regarding the detailed differences between the two cults, all we can say for sure is that the followers of the Lord used religious statuary in their worship, while those of I---- tended towards iconoclasm. Any other differences in religious belief or practice are a matter of conjecture.

Everyone will be familiar with the story of the showdown between these two cults on Mount Carmel, instigated by Elijah (whose name means "My God is I----"). The story is related in 1 Kings 18; except for punctuation, paragraphing, and the rectification of names explained above, I follow the King James Version.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? if I---- be God, follow him: but if the Lord, then follow him."

And the people answered him not a word.

Then said Elijah unto the people, "I, even I only, remain a prophet of I----; but the Lord’s prophets are 450 men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under. And call ye on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of I----: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God."

And all the people answered and said, "It is well spoken."

When the prophets of the Lord were unsuccessful in obtaining an "answer by fire," Elijah ridiculed them and their God.

And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of the Lord from morning even until noon, saying, "O Lord, hear us." 

But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, "Cry aloud: for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."

Elijah was, of course, more successful in eliciting from his God an apparently supernatural conflagration. (We are told that the fire consumed even the stones of the altar!)

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, "I----, he is the God; I----, he is the God." 

And Elijah said unto them, "Take the prophets of the Lord; let not one of them escape."

And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

Of course that wasn't the end of the conflict. Magic tricks never really converted anyone, nor has making martyrs ever been an effective way of stamping out an unwanted religion. Attempts were naturally made to avenge the 450 murdered prophets, and the feud between the two religions continued for some centuries. In the end, though, so complete was the victory of I---- that in modern languages it is he who is known simply as "the Lord," while his onetime rival, his cult now long extinct, is remembered only as a cartoonish devil once worshiped by idiots in the distant past.

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One or two centuries after Elijah, the prophet known as Epimenides appeared in Crete. No one really knows where he came from; the story that has come down to us is that he just emerged from a cave one day, having slept there for 57 years. Although his line "Cretans, always liars" later became the basis of a logical paradox ("If a Cretan says Cretans always lie, is he telling the truth?"), it seems highly unlikely that this tattoo-covered shaman was in fact an ethnic Cretan. We can only speculate as to his true origins, but to me such sparse information as we have suggests that he may have been of Scythian extraction. At any rate, he actually put the line "Cretans, always liars" in the mouth of Minos -- a genuine Cretan -- in one of his poems, so the paradox is saved. In the poem, Minos berates his countrymen for having dared to maintain a "tomb of Zeus."

They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being.

Zeus is supposed to have been born in Crete, and apparently he once had a tomb there as well! Could "Zeus" have been a real man who lived and died in Crete in the distant past, one of such blessed memory that he was gradually deified in the minds of those who survived him, coming to be thought of as a god, and eventually as God? It's interesting to speculate, but at any rate, by the time Epimenides came along, Zeus was God and God was Zeus, and a "tomb of Zeus" was blasphemous
nonsense.

Later, around the 3rd century BC, Aratus of Soli began his Phaenomena, a didactic poem on the rather unpromising subjects of astronomy and meteorology, with a prayer to Zeus:

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; [. . .] Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.

As readers versed in the New Testament will already have divined, the only reason such obscure figures as Epimenides and Aratus are on my radar is that they are quoted there, in Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Athens as reported in Acts 17.

Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him "we live, and move, and have our being;" as certain also of your own poets have said, "For we are also his offspring." 

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

Although Paul begins with his famous reference to the Unknown God -- implying that the true God is someone over and above the named and "known" gods of the Greek pantheon -- he goes on to quote with approval two different poems about Zeus as if they are about the true God -- which, in my judgment, they are. Where an Elijah would have held Zeus up to ridicule and insisted that his own, better God be worshiped instead, Paul took a different tack. Never did he say that Zeus was a false god, a devil, or a figment of his worshipers imagination. He did not stoop so low as to quibble over names. (As recently as the 18th century, certain French pamphleteers were maintaining that their Dieu -- etymologically, Zeus! -- was the true deity, while the English God was nothing but another name for Lucifer; before you laugh, think if you have ever been guilty of the same thing.) Paul took it for granted that the Athenians already worshiped God and attempted only to correct and expand their ideas regarding him. So Dante says of the Greek pagans not that they worshiped false gods but that "they did not worship God in fitting ways."

Paul, like Elijah, triumphed in the end. It took a century or two, but his God eventually supplanted Zeus entirely.

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Well, whose approach was right? Was Zeus God? Was Baal? Is Allah? . . . Is Yahweh?

Logically, either answer to each of those questions can be made consistent with the same facts, since there is no logical difference between believing in something that does not exist and believing false things about something that does exist. When, as often happens, I receive a letter addressed to Mr. Tychanievich or Mr. Pychonievich, is that the name of a person who does not exist, or is it my own name, spelt wrong? Is it more correct for a Yuletide spoilsport to say "there's no such thing as Santa Claus" or "You have some inaccurate beliefs about Saint Nicholas of Myra"? Should I call myself an atheist (which I am, when theism is narrowly defined) or simply say that my beliefs about God are somewhat unorthodox?

The question of which approach to take, then -- of whether to be an Elijah or a Paul -- is a practical rather than a factual one, a question of rhetorical or pedagogical technique, and different situations may call for different approaches. Looking back, and setting aside our squeamishness about mass murder, we can perhaps say that both Elijah and Paul made the choices that were strategically "right."

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Which brings me -- finally! -- to Jesus and to the question posed in the title of this post. My current understanding is that, no, the prophesied Messiah was not "really" Jesus. The Hebrew prophets did not foresee Jesus, did not write about Jesus, and did not expect the coming of anyone very much like Jesus. Nor did Jesus really do most of the things the anticipated Messiah was supposed to do -- which is why believers in his Messianic character have granted him an extension with the idea of a Second Coming.

The Messianic prophecies were about Jesus in the same sense that the poetry of Epimenides and Aratus was about God. Jesus could have said, "There's no Messiah coming. Instead you get me"; or he could with equal justice have said (and generally did say), "I'm the Messiah, but 'Messiah' doesn't quite mean what you think it does." This explains the fact that Jesus did sometimes claim directly to be the Messiah but at other times seemed to be uncomfortable with the title and to discourage its use. (Particularly in the Gospel of Mark, he seems always to be saying, "Now, don't go around telling everyone I'm the Messiah!")

I would go even farther and say that Yahweh was no more (and no less!) "God" than Zeus was -- but perhaps few would be willing to follow me quite that far from orthodoxy. If that makes me an atheist, so be it; I have never denied the charge.

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Note: Synchronicity alert: Just after writing the Epimenides part of this post, which mentions in passing the Liar Paradox associated with his name, I checked Bruce Charlton's blog and read his then-new post "Does the I Ching have a personality?" He quoted an interview of Philip K. Dick by someone called Mike, including this exchange:

Phil: No, I don’t use the I Ching anymore. I’ll tell ya, the I Ching told me more lies than anybody else I’ve ever known. [. . .] One time I really zapped it. I asked it if it was the devil. And it said yes. And then I asked it if it spoke for God, and it said no. It said I am a complete liar. I mean that was the interpretation. 

In other words I set it up. I set it up. I asked two questions simultaneously and it said I speak with forked tongue, is what it said. And then it said, oops, I didn’t mean to say that. But it had already –

Mike: Then you get a paradox. [. . .] That’s the paradox. It’s lying when it says it’s lying.

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Note added: I should make it clear that the form of my question is deliberate: not "Was Jesus really the Messiah?" but "Was the Messiah really Jesus?" I wanted it to have the same form as "Is Zeus really God?" -- where the status of Zeus is being questioned by asking if he is God, the status of God being taken for granted. In the same way, I am taking the divinity of Jesus for granted and questioning the idea of the Messiah, not vice versa.

Notes on John 3:31-36

This section could conceivably be a continuation of the quote from John the Baptist which begins in v. 27, but I think this is highly unlikely. The only real evidence in favor of that reading is the reference to the "wrath of God" in v. 36 (on which more below). Leaving aside that one line, everything in this passage echoes what has been said earlier in the same chapter by Jesus and by the author, and none of it sounds natural in the mouth of John the Baptist. I take it that this is the author writing in his own voice again, as in vv. 13-21.

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[31] He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.

The Greek word (ἄνωθεν) that is translated as "from above" here is the same one that is rendered "again" in v. 3: "Except a man be born again [or 'born from above'], he cannot see the kingdom of God." (A similar sort of polysemy exists in English, as when we speak of doing something "all over again," "from the top.") The two different translations seem right in their respective contexts, since Nicodemus's reply ("Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?") clearly has reference to being born again, whereas v. 31 is about "he that cometh from heaven." Nevertheless, v. 31 is almost certainly intended to allude both to "he that came down from heaven" (v. 13) and to the importance of being "born again" (v. 3).

A strictly literal translation would be "he that is from the earth, is from the earth, and speaketh from the earth" ("ἐκ τῆς γῆς," repeated three times), and the immediate context suggests that Jesus is being contrasted with John. As great as John is, he is still "from the earth" and speaks from that perspective.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matthew 11:11). While I use Matthew with caution, considering it the least reliable of the Gospels, I consider this to be an authentic saying, on the grounds that Matthew would never have put such problematic (from the Matthean perspective) words in Jesus' mouth. While Matthew and Luke deny that Jesus had a biological father, their fanciful nativity stories would still include Jesus "among them that are born of women" -- and thus, according to Matthew 11:11, not greater than John the Baptist.

The Fourth Gospel shows us the correct interpretation of Matthew 11:11. Jesus was "from heaven" not because there was anything unusual about the circumstances of his biological birth -- he was a son of man, born of a woman -- but because he had been born again, born from above, born of the spirit, born of God. Though John was the one who recognized this transformation in Jesus -- seeing the Spirit of God descend on him and stay -- he was apparently not "born again" himself. John represents the highest peaks of holiness attainable without being born again. In a way, we might think of him as Jesus' "Virgil" -- his role being analogous to the one given to that poet in Dante's Comedy. (In fact, if we substitute Virgil's name for John's in Matthew 11:11, doesn't it ring just as true? It is perhaps what Jesus would have said had he been born a Roman rather than a Jew.)

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[32] And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. [33] He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.

This echoes what Jesus says to Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness" (v. 11). "Testimony" and "witness" translate the same Greek word (μαρτυρίαν). This is further evidence that this passage is the author writing in his own voice; John the Baptist was not privy to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus and could not have quoted it.

Immediately after "no man receiveth his testimony" comes a statement about "he that hath received his testimony"! How to resolve this obvious contradiction?

The most natural interpretation is to read v. 32 as a bit of commonplace hyperbole, actually meaning something like "very few receive his testimony." Greek reference works (qv) seem not to countenance such a reading, though. We are told that οὐδείς (translated as "no man," but more literally "no one and nothing") "'shuts the door' objectively and leaves no exceptions," that it "categorically excludes, declaring as a fact that no valid example exists." A negation that was qualified in any way would use μηδείς rather than οὐδείς. In other words, v. 32 means "no one at all receives his testimony" -- not the sort of expression that would be used hyperbolically.

Could v. 33 be counterfactual ("Anyone who received his testimony would be setting to his seal...")? I don't think so, since it is in the indicative mood. What then can it mean?

"Set to his seal that God is true" means "confirmed that God is truthful or trustworthy." So perhaps the meaning is that Jesus' claims are so extraordinary that no one at all takes Jesus' word for it that they are true. Whoever seems to be "receiving his testimony" -- i.e., believing what he says because he says it -- actually believes not because of Jesus' testimony but because God has confirmed the truth to them directly. "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." (John 12:44; cf. Matthew 10:40, Mark 9:37, and Luke 9:48, all of which have "receive" in place of "believe on").

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[34] For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. [35] The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.

"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me" (John 7:16). The idea of Jesus having been "sent" by God is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel, occurring only in a few isolated passages of the Synoptics.

For "not . . . by measure" read "without measure." Others have been inspired, but only Jesus was fully inspired, to the extent that his words were the words of God.

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[36] He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

The first clause is simply a restatement of v. 16. The final part, about "the wrath of God" seems out of place. It is the only occurrence of the word "wrath" (ὀργὴ) in the Fourth Gospel, and one of only five occurrences in the Gospels as a whole. Mark 3:5 has Jesus look around with anger at those who would criticize him for healing a man on the Sabbath, and Luke 21:23 has Jesus speak of "great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people" as part of an apocalyptic prophecy. The other two instances quote John the Baptist execrating the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come to be baptized: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew and Luke 3:7).

All in all, this does seem to be language more typical of John the Baptist than of the author of the Fourth Gospel, and some commentators do read all of vv. 27-36 as a quotation from John. For the reasons given above, I stand by my opinion that vv. 31-36 are the author's own words and not John's, but the context does render probable an allusion to John and his distinctive way of speaking. Perhaps we should imagine quotation marks around the last clause. He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but -- as John, speaking "from the earth," would put it -- "the wrath of God abideth on him." This is the sort of thing I often do in my own writing -- quoting or alluding to someone made salient by context even when it means using phraseology with which I would normally have reservations -- so I can easily imagine the evangelist doing the same thing.

Notes on John 3:22-30

[22] After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptized.

"These things" apparently refers to Jesus' interaction with Nicodemus, which seems to have taken place in Jerusalem. At any rate, Jesus was in Jerusalem just prior to the Nicodemus incident, and there is not mention of a scene change. Jerusalem is also where we would expect to find "a ruler of the Jews."

Jerusalem, of course, is in Judaea, so I assume what is meant is that they went into "upstate" Judaea, so to speak -- into the surrounding land, as opposed to the city of Jerusalem.

Although this verse describes Jesus as baptizing, John 4:2 clarifies that "Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples." Jesus baptized in the same sense that Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar: by directing the activities of those under him.

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[23] And John also was baptizing in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized.

The places named appear nowhere else in the Bible and cannot be identified with any confidence, though of course that doesn't stop them from appearing on maps of "the Holy Land in the Time of Christ"! All we know is that "there was much water there" and -- based on John's disciples' speaking in v. 26 of "beyond Jordan" as somewhere else  -- that it was a Cisjordanian location. We might possibly assume, given that the whole length of a river has "much water," that it was some distance from the Jordan and that the "much water" had some other source. Indeed, Aenon may be derived from a Semitic word meaning "spring."

The implied need for "much water" in order to baptize has been cited as evidence that John baptized by immersion. I formerly took it for granted that this was indeed the original method of baptism, but as I explain in my notes on John 1, John 1:25 implies that the baptism of John was the sort of thing that the Messiah, Elijah, and the prophet like unto Moses were expected to do -- and the Old Testament connects all three of these figures with sprinkling rather than immersion.

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[24] For John was not yet cast into prison.

Both Mark (1:14) and Matthew (4:12-17) state that Jesus did not begin preaching until after John was cast into prison. Luke's chronology is unclear on this point. The Fourth Gospel alone has John and Jesus both preaching and baptizing at the same time, independently of one another and almost as if in competition. Which chronology is more likely to be correct?

It is a widely accepted principle of biblical criticism that, ceteris paribus, the more embarrassing an incident would be for those who recorded it, the more likely the record is to be true -- since, when people massage the facts, it is generally in order to make them more favorable and less embarrassing. By that standard, the Johannine account seems more likely to be true than the Synoptic version. It is certainly potentially embarrassing that John the Baptist, who was widely regarded as an exceptionally great and holy man, and who certainly knew of Jesus, never actually became one of his disciples. Mark (and Matthew, who relies on Mark) solve this by saying that Jesus didn't start preaching until after John was imprisoned, and that John thus never had the opportunity of becoming his disciple. The Fourth Gospel admits what was probably the truth: that John, despite having earlier hailed Jesus as the "Lamb of God," continued his own prophetic and baptismal ministry without deferring to Jesus' superior authority or becoming one of his followers.

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[25] Then there arose a question between some of John's disciples and the Jews about purifying.

The two parties to this dispute were "John's disciples" and "the Jews." Since John's disciples surely were Jews in the religious sense, I think we must read the latter designation as "Judaeans" (or "a Judaean"; the Greek is ambiguous). When we first meet the Baptist in John 1, he is baptizing "beyond Jordan" -- i.e., in Perea or the Decapolis -- rather than in Judaea, so it seems likely that he and most of his disciples hailed from those parts and were not citizens of Judaea.

The fact that John's disciples encountered Judaeans suggests that perhaps Aenon and Salim were located in Judaea. (Bible maps generally place them in Samaria or in the Cisjordanian Decapolis.) On the other hand, these "Jews" may have been a delegation of Pharisees sent from Jerusalem, like the similar delegation described in John 1.

I suppose that the question "about purifying" had to do with the baptism of John and its relationship to Jewish ritual cleansing.

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[26] And they came unto John, and said unto him, Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him. [27] John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.

"They" means John's disciples (they call him Rabbi), perhaps accompanied by the Judaean(s) with whom they had been arguing.

The meaning of John's reply -- "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven" -- is not clear (or perhaps it seems unclear to me simply because I disagree with it). The most natural reading is that everything that is done, is done, or at least countenanced, by God. If Jesus is baptizing, then God must approve of his baptizing. If all men come to him, he must deserve to have all men come to him. It would appear to be a similar sentiment to that expressed by Paul: "For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God" (Romans 13:1). Or perhaps more like that of the Pharisee Gamaliel: "Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it" (Acts 5:38-39).

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[28] Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.

When the Pharisees had implied that baptism was the prerogative of the Messiah, Elijah, and the prophet like unto Moses, John denied being any of the three. The implication was that other, greater baptists would come after him. It is therefore no cause for alarm when another baptist does in fact appear and draws greater crowds of followers even than John.

John had already said that Jesus was the "Lamb of God" and one "who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose"; here he implies more: that Jesus may be the Messiah himself.

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[29] He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. [30] He must increase, but I must decrease.

What is the meaning of the bridegroom metaphor used here? Bruce Charlton, who believes that the wedding at Cana described in John 2 was Jesus' own, takes John's statement fairly literally, as a reference to the fact that Jesus had recently gotten married. I don't personally find this a very plausible reading. Confronted with the fact that "all men" are coming to Jesus to be baptized, why would John respond by saying, in effect, "Well, you see, he's just gotten married; I haven't"? Jesus is the Messiah because he's married? Lots of people are married.

If the bridegroom metaphor has any specific meaning -- if it is anything more than just a general reference to rejoicing in another's success -- then I think Jesus' "having the bride" must refer to the fact that the people are flocking to him. (In the Old Testament, the Israelite nation is often described as the bride of the Lord, and any backsliding into polytheism is compared to marital infidelity.) "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom" seems to mean that whoever in fact has the woman thereby has the right to have her -- a restatement of John's belief that "a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven." From the fact that people are following Jesus we can conclude that they should be.

If this is in fact what John is saying, it seems obviously wrong to me. People (sufficiently large numbers of Frenchmen excluded) can be wrong and have often flocked to false teachers. I would like to think, then, that John must have meant something else, but I can't think what.

Notes on John 3:13-21

This passage consists of the author's commentary following the story of Nicodemus. (I have given here and here my reasons for holding the somewhat unconventional opinion that the conversation with Nicodemus ends with v. 12.)

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[13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

I believe this is the only direct reference in this Gospel to Jesus' ascension to heaven after his resurrection. The author asserts that, to date, only Jesus had thus ascended, despite such obvious counterexamples as Enoch, who "walked with God: and he was not; for God took him" (Genesis 5:24); and Elijah, who "went up in a whirlwind into heaven . . . and [was seen] no more" (2 Kings 2:11-12). One is reminded of the same author's insistence elsewhere that, despite what is written of Moses and others, "no man hath seen God at any time" (John 1:18).

If the exclusion of Elijah from the ranks of those who have ascended to heaven is puzzling, equally puzzling is the assertion that no one since Jesus has ascended to heaven, either. The Gospel was apparently written several decades after the resurrection, in which time we might expect that at least a few of the faithful followers of Jesus would have died and, as beneficiaries of the gift Jesus brought, ascended to heaven. Whatever happened to "where I am, there ye may be also" (John 14:3)?

There is, in short, no hint of salvation in this verse. The only man who ever made it to heaven was Jesus -- and that was because he had originally come from heaven in the first place. No one, at the time the Gospel was written, had ever actually graduated, as it were, from the earthly to the heavenly life.

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Before any of these problems can be meaningfully addressed, we must establish what is meant by "heaven." The original Greek is unhelpfully vague -- οὐρανός covers the same semantic ground as English heaven and sky put together, and can mean anything from the atmosphere to the sidereal realm to the home of God an the angels.

The Fourth Gospel gives no details of Jesus' ascent into heaven, but the other Gospels make it clear that it involved physically leaving earth -- and I emphasize physically because Jesus was in a resurrected, flesh-and-bone, fish-and-honeycomb-eating body at the time of his ascent. I have elsewhere argued in all seriousness that this means Jesus went to outer space, presumably to an earthlike exoplanet. Wherever he went, it must be a physical place, to refer to which it will be convenient to adopt the Mormon name Kolob, and which may be thought of as the Christian analogue of Asgard or Olympus, the physical home of the Gods. To Christians who balk at such an unorthodox idea, I simply reiterate the fact that Jesus ascended to "heaven" in a body of flesh and bone.

If we think of Jesus as having ascended specifically to Kolob, it becomes obvious that there is no reason to assume people like Enoch and Elijah went there as well. "The sky" covers an awful lot of ground -- literally everywhere except the surface and interior of this planet -- and we should no more assume that two people who "ascended into heaven" went to the same place than we would assume the same of two people who "went overseas."

(In fact, let's take that "overseas" analogy and run with it. In the Narnia stories, the character equivalent to God is known as the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Supposing one of the characters were to say, "No one knows what the Emperor looks like, because no one has ever been over the sea, except Aslan himself" -- it would be missing the point to object, "No one's been over the sea! What about the voyage of the Dawn Treader?" In context, "over the sea" clearly has a more specific meaning than the words themselves would suggest.)

Where did Enoch and Elijah go? Who knows? Elijah was carried away in a cyclone like Dorothy Gale and could have ended up anywhere, including somewhere else on Earth, for all we know. As for Enoch, who "was not, for God took him," it almost sounds as if he achieved Nirvana and was absorbed into God, losing his individual identity.

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As for the implication that no one since Jesus had ever ascended to heaven, either, there are many possible ways to interpret this. Perhaps the meaning is simply that no one else has been to heaven and returned to tell the tale, so that Jesus is still our only reliable source of information about that place. People who passed Dante on the street used to whisper to each other, "Look, there's the man who's been to hell!" Of course it is no special distinction to have gone to hell -- but to have been there, implying a return, is another story entirely.

Or perhaps what is meant is that no one but Jesus has ever ascended to heaven on his own steam, though many (perhaps including Enoch and Elijah) have been taken there.

Or perhaps it means just what it says: That at the time the Gospel was written, not one single soul had yet successfully followed Jesus. "Narrow is the way," after all, "and few there be that find it." This is a radical interpretation with uncomfortable implications, though, since many people universally considered to be saints had already died by that time -- John the Baptist, for example, and James the son of Zebedee. Simon Peter, too, had at least died by the time the Gospel's epilogue (Chapter 21) was added, though it's possible that he was still alive when the Gospel itself was written. In the end, I don't think this interpretation is acceptable, because it undercuts what is supposed to be a message of hope. If even John the Baptist has not made it to heaven, what chance do we have?

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The reference to "he that came down from heaven" invites the question later raised by "the Jews" in John 6:42: "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? how is it then that he saith, I came down from heaven?" Well, how is it that both he and the Gospel writer say that? Remember that there is nothing in the Fourth Gospel to suggest that there was anything unusual about Jesus' birth or that he was anything other than the biological son of Joseph. (Matthew provides one miracle-filled nativity story; and Luke, another, entirely different, one -- but I assume, from the near-complete lack of overlap between the two nativity stories, and from the absence of any such material in Mark and John, that these stories are pious fictions. It also seems unlikely that Jesus would have embraced the title "Son of Man" if he were in fact the only man since Adam not to be the son of a man!)

Of course, even if Jesus' physical body was a product of ordinary mammalian reproduction, his spirit still came down from the "heaven" where it had been before he was born -- but the same is true of all men; all of us come trailing clouds of glory from God, who is our home. (Such an explanation would be acceptable only to a creationist -- meaning, in this case, not an evolution skeptic but someone who believes that a new human soul is created from nothing each time a baby is conceived, Jesus being the one exception.)

Looking for some unique sense in which Jesus "came down from heaven," I can find only the report of John the Baptist: "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. . . . And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God" (John 1:32, 34). The Spirit of God had descended from heaven and remained upon Jesus. That is the aspect of him which came down from heaven. It was at his baptism, not his birth, that he became the Son of God. (So we infer from the other Gospels, at any rate; the Fourth Gospel never says directly that it was on the occasion of Jesus' baptism that the dove descended.)

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[14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

I would assume that most Bible readers, thinking (incorrectly) these are the words of Jesus spoken to Nicodemus, would see this as referring to the crucifixion -- in which Jesus, like the brazen serpent of Numbers, was fixed to a pole and lifted up. Jesus is saying that he must be crucified in order to save those who believe in him.

While I'm sure the author did intend to allude to the cross when he chose this particular simile, the "lifting up" of the Son of Man cannot refer primarily to the crucifixion -- or the resurrection, or the ascension -- since the author is writing in his own voice after all of these things have already taken place and yet describes the lifting up of the Son of Man as something that remains to be done.

I would guess that it probably means spreading the word about Jesus, lifting him up as a prophet lifts up his prophetic "burden," raising the cross -- as a religious symbol, not an instrument of torture -- as an ensign to the nations.

In the Moses story alluded to (Numbers 21:6-9), the Israelites were attacked by venomous snakes called seraphim (singular saraph, the same word used by Isaiah with reference to certain heavenly beings; see here for details) -- supposedly sent by the Lord as a punishment for complaining about their hardships in the desert. After many had died of snakebite, those who remained were duly penitent and asked Moses to pray on their behalf that the seraphim be taken away. Instead of taking the snakes away, the Lord instructed Moses to make a saraph of brass (or bronze, or copper; Hebrew makes no distinction) and display it on a pole. Snakebite victims who looked at this brazen serpent would live.

To the story as recorded in the Torah, the Book of Mormon prophet Nephi adds that many refused to look and be healed "because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it" (1 Nephi 17:41). A later Nephite prophet, Alma, repeats the same tradition: "But there were many who were so hardened that they would not look, therefore they perished. Now the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them" (Alma 33:20). He draws from the story the moral, "do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way" (Alma 37:46). One is reminded of the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 ("If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?"). Of course it is difficult to know whether this angle on the story represents an invention of Joseph Smith's, a midrash particular to the Nephite culture, or an authentic Old World tradition of which the author of the Gospel would have been aware.

Regardless of the provenance of the Nephite version of the story, "the easiness of the way" is certainly a prominent feature even of the biblical version, and may be part of the reason the simile was chosen. In both cases, what the victim has to do to be saved is minimal: just look, just believe.

Just as the lamb to which Jesus is compared in John 1 is not a sin-offering to secure forgiveness but rather a Paschal offering to avert death (details here), it is likewise from death that the brazen serpent saved people. The Son of Man is presented as offering the same thing: not absolution, but eternal life. Jesus is first and foremost the bringer of resurrection.

If the reference is indeed to resurrection, though, the "not perish" bit needs some explanation. (While it's true that most Greek manuscripts don't actually include "not perish but" in v. 15, that doesn't really make any difference, since the phrase is incontestably there in v. 16.) Resurrection, after all, does not mean not dying, but rather returning to life after dying. Die and perish are basically synonyms in English, but apparently the Greek word which appears in these verses (and which is distinct from the usual word for "die") denotes absolute and permanent destruction. Someone who may yet rise from the grave, then, has died but cannot be said to have perished.

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[16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The most famous verse in the Bible -- and as such, perhaps, so familiar that the strangeness of what it asserts often goes unnoticed. One would naturally expect that the gift of eternal life would either (a) be given freely to everyone who wants it or (b) be given only to those deemed worthy of it, to "good people." Instead, we are told that those who believe in the Son will have everlasting life, while (by implication) those who do not believe in him will perish. I have commented before on the Fourth Gospel's puzzling insistence on belief as such -- for example, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" (John 6:29).

Of course every teacher wants to be believed, but this generally means assenting to some particular doctrine. The Buddha, for example, wanted people to accept the validity of the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path -- specific propositions to assent to, a specific way of life to adopt. Prior to becoming enlightened themselves, people would have to accept these teachings on authority, because they trusted the Buddha as a person -- but that personal trust had only instrumental value; the real point was never the Buddha himself but rather the impersonal dharma which he taught.

In Jesus, these priorities seem to be reversed. The main thing Jesus taught was that people must believe in Jesus; whatever other moral or factual doctrines he may have touched on were strictly by-the-by. The "requisite" belief, then, is clearly personal trust rather than assent to any particular set of propositions. Creeds are -- or should be, anyway -- foreign to the community of Jesus' followers. This distinction is, I believe, reinforced by the frequent reference in the Fourth Gospel to believing on Jesus' name -- meaning Jesus as a person, as opposed to any doctrine of "Jesuism" he may be thought to have propounded.

In approaching the question of why this personal trust should be accorded such importance, I have found Bruce Charlton's post "The Good Shepherd" to be invaluable. It should be read in full, but I quote the essential parts below.

The Good Shepherd leads his sheep through death to Heaven. [. . .] What is led? The soul, after death. But why does it need to be led - why can't it find its own way to salvation? Because after death the soul becomes 'helpless', lacks agency - like a young child, a ghost, a sheep.

If unable to help itself, how then can the soul follow Jesus? Because - like a young child, or sheep - the dead soul still can recognise and love; and 'follow'.

Where does this happen? In the 'underworld'. Without Jesus, the disembodied, ghostly, demented dead souls wander like lost sheep - as described in pre-Christian accounts such as Hades of the Greeks, or Sheol of the Ancient Hebrews. 

But how does Jesus save the dead souls? Everybody has known Jesus as spirits in the premortal world, so everybody can recognise him in the underworld; but only those who love Jesus will want to follow him.

I find this interpretation compelling. A spirit which has integrated itself with a physical body (and in particular, with a brain) and is then ripped away from that body at death, is left maimed and demented. Both pre-Christian tradition and modern experience with "ghosts" confirm that shades in the underworld are severely cognitively impaired. The good news is that this damage may be undone in the resurrection, but first each shade, while still disembodied and demented, must hear and follow the Shepherd. Intellect, while of the utmost value in itself ("the glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth"), will not save us, simply because we won't have much of it at the moment when salvation is needed. Hence the emphasis on childlike faith -- not because God wants us to be (merely) childlike, but because we will in fact be reduced to a childlike state in Hades and yet still must have the wherewithal to follow Jesus to salvation. Simple love and simple trust, such as a child or a sheep is capable of, becomes all-important.

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[17] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

While it can mean "condemn" in the right context, the basic meaning of the Greek verb here is "judge" -- or, most properly, to separate or make distinctions. This reinforces v. 16's statement that Jesus is willing to save "whosoever believeth in him," without making any attempt to separate humanity into those who are worthy of salvation and those who are not. He will conduct anyone out of the prison-house of Hades -- but of course, to get out you have to trust him enough to follow him when he opens the gate and says, "Come on, let's go."

Elsewhere in the Gospel, Jesus does refer to himself as playing the role of a judge, and those passages will be dealt with in due course, but at least as far as the resurrection is concerned, Jesus offers salvation to all without judgment.

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[18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

At first this reads like a contradiction of the preceding verse: Jesus didn't come to judge or condemn the world -- but people who don't believe in him are condemned! I think the key here is the phrase "condemned already." Jesus offers salvation from death freely, without judging or condemning -- but of course if you don't trust him enough to follow him, there's not much he can do; a judgment has already been made. (I should emphasize again that "follow him" here does not mean to be his disciple or to live by his teachings, but rather something closer to the literal meaning of those words.)

So, really, no one is being judged and condemned as unworthy to receive resurrection -- but still, not everyone will be resurrected, and it strikes us as "unfair" that this should be for anything other than moral reasons. Therefore, the evangelist goes on to make the case that failure to trust and follow Jesus is indicative of moral failings.

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[19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [20] For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. [21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

Truth as something one can do is a peculiarly Johannine turn of phrase, appearing also in the First Epistle: "If we say that we have fellowship with [God], and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth" (1 John 1:6). The context is similar, too: Those who "do the truth" are drawn to the light; those who do not, prefer to walk in darkness. What is feared, I think, is not so much public exposure before others as simply being seen as one is -- by God and, worse, by oneself. Jesus brought clarity and consciousness, and is thus feared and hated by those who are in denial about themselves, who would not care to have too bright a light shined on them for fear of what they might discover. "I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

This is clearly meant as an explanation of why some have "not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God" -- but notice the absence of any language relating to belief in the sense of having opinions or assenting to propositions. Instead, it is made a question of love and hate, attraction and aversion. This confirms what I have said above, that "believing on his name" has nothing to do with creeds and everything to do with personal trust, love, and willingness to follow.

Further evidence that Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus ends with John 3:12

Below is John 3:1-21, traditionally considered together as a single "Jesus and Nicodemus" pericope. I have highlighted all first- and second-person pronouns and all occurrences of the verbs say, tell, speak, and answer.

Doesn't this make it easy to tell at a glance where the reported dialogue ends and the author's commentary begins? The dividing line is between vv. 12 and 13, the same point I had previously identified, based on entirely different textual evidence, in this post.

Notes on John 3:9-12

Rembrandt, Head of Christ (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

When I first began writing about John 3, I had planned to divide my comments into three posts -- covering, respectively, Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus about being born again (vv. 1-10), Jesus' words to Nicodemus on other subjects (vv. 11-21), and the bit about John the Baptist (vv. 22-36).

After further rereading and thought, I would now divide up the chapter differently:

1. Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus (vv. 1-12); see this post for my reasons for thinking the conversation ends with that verse
2. Commentary by the author (vv. 13-21)
3. John the Baptist's statement about Jesus (vv. 22-30)
4. Further commentary by the author (vv. 31-36)

However, I've already written a post about vv. 1-10 (qv), so now I need to tie up loose ends with a few notes on vv. 11-12 before moving on to the next major section of the chapter. I include vv. 9-10 as well, as necessary context, and take the opportunity of adding some additional notes on those verses.

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[9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

[10] Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

In English, "master of Israel" would seem to be a reference to the earlier characterization of Nicodemus as a "rule of the Jews," but in fact the word translated master is διδάσκαλος, "teacher" -- the same word used in John 1:38 to gloss the Hebrew term rabbi. Nicodemus is a rabbi, as were all members of the Sanhedrin.

"These things" refers to Jesus' earlier statements about being born again (or born from above), being born of water and the Spirit, etc. Why does Jesus expect that a rabbi, by virtue of being a rabbi, should be familiar with the concept of being "born again"? Should exposure to that concept have been part of a first-century rabbi's education?

Jesus' presumption that a rabbi should already know about being "born again" has led biblical commentators to look for the concept in the Old Testament. Several passages have been proposed. In 1 Samuel 10:6, Samuel tells Saul, "the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with [the prophets], and shalt be turned into another man." In Ezekiel 37, the Lord breathes new life into dry bones. In Job 33:25, Elihu says of the repentant sinner that "his flesh shall be fresher than a child's; he shall return to the days of his youth." While these are all suggestive, I don't think we can really say that the concept of being "born again" is explicitly present in the Old Testament.

The Talmud comes closer, stating in several places that a convert to Judaism is like a newborn child. For example, in the Yevamot tractate, which deals with questions regarding levirate marriage, it is repeatedly stated, by four different rabbis, that "a man who has become a proselyte is like a child newly born" (and is therefore permitted to enter into what would otherwise be considered an incestuous marriage, since all pre-conversion family ties have been dissolved). While the Talmud did not yet exist in the time of Christ, many of its doctrines were presumably already current as oral traditions, so Nicodemus might have been expected to be familiar with the idea of conversion as a "new birth." However, it seems pretty clear in context that, whatever Jesus may have meant by being "born again," he certainly didn't mean conversion to Judaism! (Nicodemus was already a Jew, and in any case Jesus seems not to have had a very high opinion of Jewish proselytism; see Matthew 23:15.)

All in all, I don't think Jesus is finding fault with Nicodemus's education or implying that being born again is something he should have read about. Rather, he means that, as a teacher of religion, Nicodemus should have been the sort of person who could intuitively grasp the (new) concept of being born again when it was presented to him, and that his obtuseness in this matter implies that he is not spiritually qualified to be a rabbi.

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[11] Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.

When Jesus says, "We speak that we do know," he may be speaking of himself and his disciples, or perhaps he means something like "we prophets," alluding to Israel's history of rejecting prophetic messages. ("O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee . . . ." Matt. 23:37.) As always in the King James Version, the words ye and you are plural (see this post for details), so Jesus is not reproaching Nicodemus personally with unbelief but rather speaking of a group to which Nicodemus belongs -- presumably "the Jews," or perhaps more specifically the Pharisees or the Sanhedrin. As far as we can tell, Nicodemus himself does believe in Jesus.

Nevertheless, something in what Jesus says here must be applicable to Nicodemus himself. Perhaps he understood Nicodemus's question, "How can these things be?" as an expression of skepticism rather than a request for explanation.

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[12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

This curious statement implies at least the following:

1. Jesus has thus far taught "earthly things" to Nicodemus and to those like him. (The word you is plural.)
2. He has not heretofore taught "heavenly things" (except perhaps to Nicodemus just now?).
3. Earthly things are easier to believe, such that those prepared to believe heavenly things can be expected to be a subset of those prepared to believe earthly things.

What distinction does Jesus intend when he speaks of "earthly things" and "heavenly things"? Pretty clearly not the familiar distinction between the secular and the sacred, since Jesus was a spiritual teacher from the beginning and did not impart secular learning. Unfortunately, the Gospel provides very little information about the content of Jesus' public teachings up to this point, so we can only speculate as to what he taught and in what sense it was "earthly." John 2:13-22 provides the only relevant data.

We know that Jesus taught that business transactions ought not to be carried out in the Temple. This could be considered an "earthly" teaching because it has to do with worldly commerce in a physical building -- or, more generally, because it refers to the contingent details of a particular (soon to be superseded) religious cultus and in that sense has little to do with what goes on in Heaven.

We also know that he made the enigmatic statement, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." His audience at the time understood him to be speaking literally, in which case this is again an "earthly" teaching about the fate of a particular physical building. After the Resurrection, the disciples reinterpreted this utterance as having been a reference to that event -- something not so readily classified as "earthly."  Perhaps it could be thus characterized because it describes resurrection only in the simplest physical terms -- kill me, and I will come back to life -- without getting into how post-resurrection life differs from mortal life?

What about what Jesus has just now taught Nicodemus, about being "born again"? Is this also included under the heading of "earthly things"? Both answers to that question seem defensible. In the one case, Jesus would be reacting to Nicodemus's apparent skepticism by saying, "See, even when I teach you earthly things like this, you don't believe, so I won't even bother trying to teach you heavenly things." In the other, he would be saying, "I should have known you wouldn't believe heavenly things like this; after all, you didn't even believe the earthly things I taught before." Being born again could be considered an earthly thing because it takes place during earthly (or anyway pre-Heavenly) life, Heaven being for those who have already been born again. Alternatively, it could be considered a heavenly thing because of its spiritual nature, especially as contrasted with teachings about business and the Temple cultus.

The Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world

Josefa de Óbidos, The Sacrifical Lamb (c. 1680)

When John the Baptist saw Jesus, he said, "Behold the Lambe of God, which taketh away the sinne of the world" (John 1:29).

The standard interpretation is that John is alluding to the sacrificial rites of the Old Testament -- particularly the "sin-offerings" detailed in Leviticus 4, in which animals were ritually slaughtered in order to obtain forgiveness for sins. Jesus, then, would be the ultimate sacrificial animal, and when the Romans executed him they were unwittingly playing the role of the Levitical priest who slits the victim's throat, sprinkles its blood about, and burns its fat and some of its internal organs on the altar, somehow effecting thereby the forgiveness of sins. On this view, the crucifixion of Christ was not merely an execution, nor even a martyrdom, but an act of ritual human sacrifice to appease the wrath of God. (Fortunately the Roman soldiers were not aware that they were participating in such a monstrous ritual. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.")

John, then, was saying, "Behold the sacrificial victim of God, whose death will bring about the forgiveness of all the sins committed in the world."

This interpretation of John is, I think, unacceptable. It makes no logical or moral sense to say that God's forgiveness can be obtained through blood sacrifice, whether animal or human -- or that a blood sacrifice "counts" when the victim only stays dead for a single weekend -- or that the greatest and most effective sacrificial ritual should be performed not by God's consecrated priests, but by the soldiers of a brutal pagan empire who didn't even realize that what they were doing had any religious significance. Suppose Genghis Khan sacked a village, killed all the livestock, and burned the place to the ground. Could we expect anyone's sins to be forgiven as a result of such an incident, on the grounds that it constituted an unwitting sin-offering? But we might as well believe that as that the blackguards and barbarians who put Christ to death were unknowingly officiating in the greatest priestly ritual of all time.

Any acceptable reading of John's words must do better than this.

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Bruce Charlton, who has made the Fourth Gospel a special object of study, resulting in an interpretation that is unique, insightful, and thought-provoking, has this to say about the passage we are considering.

A man emerges, Jesus - who is instantly recognised, on sight, by John the Baptist as being the Messiah: the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. When John baptises him, John perceives that the Spirit of God does not only touch and depart, as usual; but uniquely stays with this man: Jesus has become divine. 

What does it mean that Jesus would 'take away' sin? Sin seems to mean all the transitory nature of satisfaction in this world, the corruptions, the selfishness, that which contributes to the recurrent sense that life is travail and loss. Jesus will take away Mortality and all its badness, all that we know in our hearts to be intrinsically wrong about life.

I had never before considered that "the sin of the world" might mean anything other than "all the moral vices and crimes of which the people of the world are guilty," so Bruce's fresh perspective is very valuable. I think it's a very defensible reading, especially considering that John says "the sin [singular] of the world" rather than, say, "the sins of the people." A strictly literal translation of the Greek would be something like "the way in which the cosmos misses its mark" -- an apt enough description of "mortality and all its badness."

Taking away mortality and all its badness also sounds like something that Jesus could conceivably do -- a tremendous miracle, but a logically admissible one -- whereas taking away the moral shortcomings of all the people in the world does not. If I am sinful, how could anything anyone else can do, even in principle, change that fact? At best, the punishment of sins could be taken away, which is all that the sacrificial animals of the Old Testament religion were supposed to do.

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Which brings us back to John's problematic declaration. Even if we reconceptualize "taking away the sin of the world," we are still stuck with his sacrificial-animal metaphor. In what logically and morally acceptable sense can Jesus be considered the equivalent of a sacrificial victim?

Something I discovered when preparing my notes on John 1 is that male lambs -- the animals indicated by John's Greek -- were never in fact used as sin offerings.

According to the regulations laid out in Leviticus 4 for sin offerings (presumably what is being alluded to), a bullock is offered if a priest or the whole congregation has sinned; a male kid if the ruler has sinned; and a female kid or lamb if a commoner has sinned. In no case is a male lamb offered as a sin offering, and even a female lamb seems to be a sort of second option if a kid is not available. Why then did John choose a lamb? Why did he not call Jesus the Bullock of God (the closest fit for taking away the sins of the world) or the Kid of God?

In that post I merely raised the question without attempting to answer it. I think now that the answer is that, despite the bit about "taking away the sin of the world," John was not alluding to sin offerings. Instead he was (obviously!) alluding to a different sacrificial ritual -- the one that all the Gospels associate most closely with Jesus' death -- namely, the Passover (Exodus 12). The Passover victim, unlike that for a sin-offering, was a male lamb. And the blood of the Paschal lamb was shed, not to obtain forgiveness for moral misdeeds or for infractions of the Mosaic law, but to cause the destroyer to pass over. The fate of the Egyptians -- "there was not a house where there was not one dead" -- is the fate of everyone in this broken world, but the Passover made it possible to escape that fate -- to be passed over by the destroying angel, and to be delivered from that death-cursed land into a better country. This is a much better metaphor for what Jesus did than are the sin-offerings of Leviticus.

John 3 with paragraphs and quotation marks

Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus

[1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: [2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."

[3] Jesus answered and said unto him, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

[4] Nicodemus saith unto him, "How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?"

[5] Jesus answered, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, 'Ye must be born again.' [8] The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

[9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, "How can these things be?"

[10] Jesus answered and said unto him, "Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? [11] Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. [12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?"

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The author's commentary

[13] And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.

[14] And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: [15] That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. [16] For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. [17] For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

[18] He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

[19] And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. [20] For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. [21] But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.

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John the Baptist endorses Jesus

[22] After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judæa; and there he tarried with them, and baptized. [23] And John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there: and they came, and were baptized. [24] For John was not yet cast into prison.

[25] Then there arose a question between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying. [26] And they came unto John, and said unto him, "Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to him."

[27] John answered and said, "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. [28] Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. [29] He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. [30] He must increase, but I must decrease."

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The author's commentary

[31] He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. [32] And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. [33] He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. [34] For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. [35] The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand. [36] He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus ends with John 3:12.

They may have gone a little overboard with the "words of Christ in red" thing.

The people who make those red-letter Bibles generally assume that John 3:10-21 is a single long quotation of what Jesus said to Nicodemus. The New Revised Standard Version places its quotation marks in accordance with that interpretation, too, but mentions in a footnote that "some interpreters hold that the quotation concludes with verse 15." I hold that even those commentators haven't been stingy enough with the red ink, and that the quotation concludes with v. 12. Here are my reasons for thinking so.

Verse 13 reads "And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." This clearly states that the Son of Man (Jesus) has already ascended to heaven and is in heaven now. This was true at the time that the Gospel was written, but it was very obviously not true at the time of the conversation with Nicodemus -- when Jesus was, well, having a conversation with Nicodemus. You know, on earth.

"And no man hath ascended up to heaven" (v. 13) -- a blanket statement that ignores such obvious counterexamples as Enoch and Elijah -- reminds us of the similarly categorical statement in John 1:18, "No man hath seen God at any time," which ignores the obvious counterexample of Moses. John 1:18 is clearly the author writing in his own voice, not quoting Christ, so it makes sense that the same would be true of John 3:13.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (v. 16) sounds as if God had made a great sacrifice by "giving" his Son. This makes the most sense in a post-crucifixion context, when readers would understand that God so loved the world that he had allowed his beloved Son to be tortured to death.

If vv. 10-21 is a single long speech to Nicodemus, it is strange that nothing is said of Nicodemus's reaction, or how the conversation ended. The narrative just abruptly stops, and we jump to the next episode in Jesus' life. It makes much more sense if vv. 9-12 are the end of the conversation.

[9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 

[10] Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? [11] Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. [12] If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?

This certainly sounds like a refusal to teach this "unbeliever" any more, not like a prelude to further holding-forth about Moses lifting up the serpent and God so loving the world.

The content of vv. 13-21 is not clearly related to the preceding conversation about being born again; the most reasonable assumption is that it is a bit of commentary by the author (the Beloved Disciple) speaking in his own voice.

The only potential problem that I can think of for this interpretation is v. 14: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up." This "lifting up" of the Son of man is most naturally interpreted as a reference to the crucifixion -- but the author can't very well be saying "Jesus must be crucified" after the crucifixion and resurrection have already taken place. The choice of words does probably allude to the crucifixion, but the primary meaning must be something else. He must be saying something like: We must "lift up" the Son of man -- i.e., spread the word about him, preach the gospel -- so that others can believe in him and have eternal life.

Jesus and Nicodemus on being born again (Notes on John 3:1-10)

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Coming to Christ (1927)

I have been putting off tackling this chapter, thinking it too deep for me -- but if I made it through the first chapter, there's no excuse for shrinking from the third.

This post was originally going to cover all of John 3 -- but, in keeping with my decision to write shorter posts and post them more frequently, I've trimmed it down, first to the first 21 verses (the Nicodemus episode) and finally to the first 10 (the bit about being born again). As always, the text under consideration is in purple. Everything else is my own commentary.

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[1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

Nicodemus is a very obviously Greek name (Νικόδημος, "victory of the people" or perhaps "victory over the people"), so finding it here as the name of a "ruler of the Jews" in Jerusalem is a bit surprising -- more surprising than finding such Greek names as Andrew and Philip in "Galilee of the Gentiles." My first thought was to see this seemingly inappropriate name as a red flag, a possible warning that the character is fictional, but in fact I had underestimated how Hellenized even Jerusalem had become by the first century. Some translations of Josephus's Jewish War (2.17.10) mention a Jew called Nicodemus in first-century Jerusalem, though it appears that the original Greek actually has Nicomedes. At any rate, both names are equally Greek. There is also a Nicodemus ben Gorion, a first-century Jew in Jerusalem, mentioned in the Talmud, though tradition has it that Nicodemus was a punning nickname, not his original name. It is doubtful whether either or both of these Nicodemuses could be identical to Jesus' nocturnal visitor, but they do establish the plausibility of that name appearing at that time and place.

"A ruler of the Jews" probably means that Nicodemus was a member of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, which enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy under Roman rule.

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[2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God:

Nicodemus's coming to Jesus by night suggests a certain lack of courage, an unwillingness to show his interest openly. This is consistent with what we read later of Nicodemus, in John 7. When the chief priests and Pharisees say, in Nicodemus's presence, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" Nicodemus does not exactly stand up and say, "I know that he is a teacher come from God" -- though even the rather weak defense he does offer ("Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?") is enough to elicit accusations that he is "of Galilee."

On the other hand, this interview under cover of night -- like the Matthean prayer prayed in a closet -- is evidence of sincerity. Unlike the stereotypical Pharisee, who comes to Jesus with some clever and insincere question, hoping to catch him in his words and make a fool of him publicly, Nicodemus can have no other motive than to learn more of the doctrine of a teacher whom he honestly believes to be "from God." There is no element of sophistry or grandstanding. And given the fear implied by the need to come secretly, at night, it took a certain degree of courage to come to Jesus at all. Nicodemus's use of the plural -- "we know that thou art a teacher come from God" -- suggests that at least some of his Pharisee colleagues also believed but were afraid to show that belief even in private.

Moral judgments of Nicodemus have varied. The Catholics made him a saint. Calvin, on the other hand, disparaged as "Nicodemites" those Protestants who were afraid to stand up and be counted as such.

I have illustrated this post with Nicodemus Coming to Christ, painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner -- the son of a former slave who had escaped via the Underground Railroad. Art critics often mention that the figure of Nicodemus must have resonated with someone of Tanner's background, since many slaves also had to "come to Jesus by night," learning in secrecy the forbidden art of reading the Bible. It is ironic that Nicodemus himself -- a ruler, not a slave -- found himself under a similar necessity. Now the zeitgeist has apparently come full circle, and it is once again the elite who find it most dangerous to show an interest in Christianity.

Since Nicodemus's meeting with Jesus was conducted secretly, at night, how is it that it has entered the historical record? Were the disciples present at the interview? It seems unlikely. Nor can I imagine that Jesus himself would have betrayed a confidence by publishing what Nicodemus had been so careful to conceal. We can only conclude that Nicodemus himself told the story to someone, perhaps shortly before his death. Despite his caginess before the chief priests, Nicodemus did in the end make a public show of the high regard in which he held Jesus, providing an extraordinary 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes for his burial (John 19:39).

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for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

We have just read in the previous chapter that "when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did" (John 2:23), and apparently Nicodemus was one such. No account of the miracles themselves is given, so we cannot be sure what exactly Jesus had been doing or how out-of-the-ordinary it was; based on what the Gospels say elsewhere, we might assume paranormal healings of some sort (or perhaps exorcisms, though no exorcisms are described in the Fourth Gospel).

Our generation no longer believes in miracles. This is not to say that we discount the possibility of the paranormal (though of course many of us do that as well), but that we no longer consider the paranormal to be evidence of divine favor -- which is what the word miracle implies. We no longer reason, as Nicodemus did, that "no man can do these miracles . . . except God be with him." Most of can't even muster much interest in the numerous documented "miracles" of, say, Sathya Sai Baba. We assume without bothering to investigate that they represent some combination of fraud and non-denominational "psychic powers," but we feel none of the urgency that should accompany a conviction that God (or Mahadeva) must be with such a man.

Whose reaction to "miracles" is better, ours or Nicodemus's? In a way, the question is irrelevant. We simply can't react to miracles the way Nicodemus and his contemporaries did, so there's no point asking whether or not we should. Our faith must be grounded in other things.

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[3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

[4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? 

[5] Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Now we come to the nub of things. Everything depends on what interpretation is given to this being "born again" -- and Jesus declines to give the interpretation himself. When Nicodemus asks for clarification ("You obviously can't mean 'born again' literally, so what do you mean by it?"), Jesus elaborates the metaphor but does not explain it. Many simple explanations have been proposed: It means being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost; it means death and resurrection (or reincarnation); it means the personal transformation whereby one becomes a believer. Jesus could easily have given some such explanation -- Nicodemus clearly wanted one -- but he declined to do so. We are meant to puzzle it out for ourselves as best we can. The Jesus of the Synoptics will sometimes give his disciples the "key" to a parable, explaining it in a straightforward X-means-Y manner, but the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel never explains anything and rarely, if ever, gives a straight answer to a question. This should get our attention an make us ask what he's about. Did he want to communicate his message or not?

The only reasonable conclusion, I think, is that communicating a particular set of doctrines was not Jesus' purpose at all. If it was, he went about it in a very inefficient manner, saying things that were bound to be misunderstood and speaking much less clearly than he could have if he had had a mind to. His teachings were not meant to communicate, but to facilitate direct revelation. As we spend time thinking deeply about the things he said, God can speak to us -- or perhaps at times we can simply apprehend the truth directly, without the mediation even of God. The Word is not a finished product to be consumed, but an agent of creation -- or, as the Synoptic parables have it, a seed. "The sower soweth the word" (Mark 4:14). "The sages . . . must speak occasionally," says Éliphas Lévi. "Yes, they must speak -- not, however, to disclose, but lead others to discover. Noli ire, fac venire."

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So numerous interpretation of Jesus' words to Nicodemus exist, and this diversity is perhaps legitimate and even intended, the seed growing differently in different soils. I have already mentioned some of the common interpretations of "born again." As for "born of water and of the spirit," this had been taken to mean baptism and confirmation, or physical birth ("water" referring to the amniotic fluid) and spiritual rebirth. Valentin Tomberg has his own idiosyncratic interpretation based on the fact that the surface of a body of water is reflective -- hence passive and reactive, as opposed to the active spirit.

I think this passage should probably be understood in light of John 1, to which it clearly alludes. The key passages are vv. 12-13 and 33.

[12] But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: [13] Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 

. . . 

[33] And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

John 1:13 contrasts being born "of God" with being born "of the will of the flesh," which is mirrored by "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (3:6); and "born of water and of the Spirit" (3:5) parallels John's reference to being baptized "with water" and "with the Holy Ghost" (1:33). Ghost and Spirit are, of course, variant translations of the same Greek word (as is wind in 3:8). As I mentioned in my notes on John 1, the Greek expression translated "born of" is properly used to indicate a person's mother, not father. Water, the Spirit, and the flesh (and, in 1:13, even God himself) are being presented as metaphorical mothers.

Nicodemus rightly dismisses the idea of a man's entering the womb a second time in order to be born again. Even if such a thing were biologically possible, what could possibly be the point of such an exercise? Why should a fully developed organism, which is already viable outside the womb, go back in only to come right back out again? Even granting that the expression is obviously metaphorical, the metaphor can't be that, or it could only be a metaphor for something completely pointless. No, what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is this: You've emerged from your mother's uterus, but in a larger sense you're still in a womb. There's a larger womb from which you have not yet emerged, and until you do so you will never see the kingdom of God.

Assuming that "born of water" refers to the amniotic fluid of the physical womb, to be "born of" that water is to come out of it. What, then, does that imply about being "born of" the Spirit -- or of God? When Epimenides of Knossos wrote, in the voice of Minos addressing Zeus, "for in you we live and move and have our being," was he speaking as one who had not yet been born of God? Well, yes, I think so. Epimenides, who lived some 600 years before Christ, was a shaman-type character of uncertain extraction (when he died, it was discovered that his whole body was covered with very un-Greek tattoos), and although Paul would later quote this line and apply it to the God of the Christians, it expresses what is essentially a pre-Christian idea.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." When a baby is born, what had been a part of the mother's body becomes a physically independent body. In an analogous way, those who are born again become independent spirits. They are not fully independent, of course, any more than a newborn baby is fully independent of its mother, but they have taken an irreversible step in that direction. The goal is no longer to be, in Meister Eckhart's words, "a clear glass through which God can shine," but rather to become an independent "friend of God."

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[8] The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

As I have already mentioned, the same Greek word (πνεῦμα), can mean "spirit," "breath," or "wind" -- a range of meanings shared by its Hebrew counterpart רוּחַ -- and only the context can determine which is intended in a given passage. In this case, the use of the verb blow makes wind the only possible translation.

"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (or wind), and I think what Jesus is saying here is that one who has been born of the spirit is just that: an independent spirit, a free agent, an uncaused cause. The spirit does as it chooses ("bloweth where it listeth"), but "whence it cometh, and whither it goeth" are unknowable even to that spirit's own conscious mind.

Bruce Charlton expresses this idea well in a recent post:

That which does the free thinking is the Self. That which is conscious of the content of thinking is Consciousness, and Consciousness is different from the Self. Consciousness 'observes' thinking that is 'coming-out-of' the Self. [. . .] We cannot know what is going-on 'inside' the Self. If we could understand its 'inner workings', it would not be the Self, and it would not be free. Analysis must stop at the Self.

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[9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? [10] Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 

"How can these things be?" has long been my own response to the whole idea of agency and free will, so I understand where Nicodemus is coming from, but Jesus' response is the correct one. Rather than try to explain how these things can be, he says, in effect, "Come on, are you seriously trying to tell me you don't know?" In the end, everyone does know what agency is, no matter how good they may be at constructing arguments proving that they don't.