Earth accuses earth: The Pericope Adulterae (Notes on John 7:53-8:11)

I have been ruminating over this passage for quite a long time without reaching any very firm conclusions, but I think it's time I posted what I have, in the hope that others may have some useful comments, and so that I can move on with the rest of the Gospel.

Since this is a narratively simple episode, best discussed as a gestalt, I shall depart from my usual practice of interspersing the text with my commentary. Instead, the text is reproduced at the beginning for the reader's convenience, and my commentary, organized by topic rather than by verse, follows.

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The text

[53] And every man went unto his own house.

[8:1] Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

[2] And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

[3] And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, [4] they say unto him, "Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. [5] Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?"

[6] This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him.

But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

[7] So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

[8] And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

[9] And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

[10] When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, "Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?"

[11] She said, "No man, Lord."

And Jesus said unto her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

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Does this episode belong in the Fourth Gospel?

This passage is of dubious authenticity. A very large number of the oldest manuscripts exclude it entirely, while many others mark it as questionable. Some include 7:53-8:2 but exclude 8:3-11, or vice versa. A handful relocate it to a different part of the Fourth Gospel (after 7:36, 8:12, or 21:25) or even to the Gospel of Luke (after 21:38 or 24:53). The broad consensus of scholars is that it was not part of the original text of the Fourth Gospel, though it may still be an authentic story about Jesus. Of course, another possible explanation for its inclusion in some manuscripts but not others is that it was in the original but was removed by later editors.

I will say first of all that John 7-8 flows better if this pericope is not included. In 7:14, Jesus appears in the Temple and begins to teach; in 8:59, he leaves the Temple. The text between those two verse is presented as a sort of dialogue, with Jesus' teachings interspersed with reactions from the Pharisees and others. Right in the middle of this we have the Pericope Adulterae. The Pharisees bring the woman to Jesus, but in the end they all leave, one by one, until "Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst" (8:9). He then tells the woman to "go, and sin no more" (v. 11), and so she apparently leaves as well. So now Jesus is all alone in the Temple, but the very next verse begins, "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying . . ." Okay, so maybe it was only the Pharisee accusers who left, not the other people in the Temple -- but in v. 13 Jesus is immediately answered by "the Pharisees," and the dialogue continues! It would almost make more sense if 7:52-8:2 (where everyone goes home, Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives, and they meet again at the Temple the next morning) were placed after 8:3-11 rather than before it, but no manuscript has this, and anyway in 8:20 Jesus is still in the Temple, not on the Mount of Olives.

Placing the pericope after John 8:12 is even worse, since v.13 not only has the Pharisees responding (after they had all just left) but pretty clearly responding to what Jesus said in v. 12. Those manuscripts that put the pericope at the very end of the Gospel, after the epilogue, are obviously including it as a sort of appendix ("here's one more story about Jesus we found") rather than as part of the text itself. The only attested Fourth Gospel position for the pericope that seems to work fine textually is after 7:36 -- but there is virtually no support for this placing, which occurs only in a single manuscript dated 1192.

As for the content of the pericope, I find it to be more Synoptic than Johannine in nature.

For example, the story begins (for unclear reasons, since nothing happens there!) with a reference to Jesus going to the Mount of Olives -- a place mentioned three times each in Matthew and Mark, and four times in Luke, but nowhere else in the Fourth Gospel. In all three Synoptics, for example, the Mount of Olives is where Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested; in the Fourth Gospel, this takes place "over the brook Cedron, where was a garden" (John 18:1). Since Jer. 31:40 specifies that the brook Kidron was in a valley, these are not two ways of referring to the same place, despite the tradition of conflating them into a non-biblical "Garden of Gethsemane." (Only the Fourth Gospel mentions a garden; Gethsemane is a "place" on the Mount of Olives, mentioned in Mark and Matthew.)

This is also the only place in the Fourth Gospel where we read of the Pharisees "tempting" Jesus (cf. Matt. 16:1, 19:3, 22:18, 22:35; Mark 8:11, 10:2, 12:15; Luke 10:25, 11:16, 20:23) "that they might have to accuse him" (cf. Matt. 12:10; Mark 3:2; Luke 6:7, 11:54). This is clearly more of a Synoptic trope, as is the portrayal of the Pharisees as "hypocrites" (a word that does not appear in the Fourth Gospel) who accuse others of sin without being sinless themselves. The refusal to punish the adulteress is also broadly consistent with the "resist not evil" morality of Matthew. In contrast, the only arguably "Johannine" content I can find in this episode is limited to the expressions "Moses in the law" (cf. John 1:45) and "sin no more" (cf. John 5:14).

Based on these considerations, I would assume that this pericope does not really belong to the Fourth Gospel and should be treated the way we treat material from the Synoptics or the non-canonical Gospels -- accepting it only tentatively, and only to the extent that we judge it to be consistent with the message of the Fourth Gospel. I take the other Gospels seriously and consider them valuable -- traditions about Jesus must have come from somewhere, and the default hypothesis is that they came from things Jesus really said and did -- but they must be interpreted in light of what the Fourth Gospel tells us was Jesus' central message. I obviously do not read the Fourth Gospel "in isolation" as Bruce Charlton does in Lazarus Writes -- but I do, per my blog title, insist on putting it first.

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The nature of the Pharisees' test

Moses said that "the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death" (Lev. 20:10) but did not technically specify stoning as the method of execution. That was the form the Mosaic death penalty generally took, though, and can be inferred in this case, too.

What was the catch-22 here? If Jesus had disagreed with Moses, that would obviously make him a heretic and a false prophet -- but if he had agreed to have the woman stoned? I don't think the first-century public would have found that shockingly cruel or anything; rather, the plan was to get Jesus into trouble with the Romans.

When Jesus was taken to Pilate, Pilate said, "Take ye him, and judge him according to your law," to which the Jews replied, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death" (John 18:31). When Pilate finds Jesus not guilty and declines to execute him, the Jews protest, "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die" (John 19:17). Therefore, when they said it was "not lawful" for them to execute anyone, they were referring to Roman law, not the Law of Moses. The Romans gave the Jewish leaders some authority to govern and police their own, but they did not have the right to impose the death penalty. The scribes and Pharisees were trying to goad Jesus into defying Roman law. (This again marks this episode as belonging more to the Synoptic tradition, with its "Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar?" stories, than to the Fourth Gospel.)

Jesus' options (as intended by the Pharisees) were (1) to stone the woman in defiance of Rome, in which case the Jews would report him and have him arrested; (2) to let her go unpunished, or with some lesser punishment, in which case he could be accused of not following Moses; or (3) to accuse her before the Romans, in which case he could be accused of collaborating with the pagan occupiers. This third may not even have been a real option, since the Romans did not generally punish adultery with death anyway. Honor killings by family members were permitted in some circumstances, but courts typically punished adultery with fines or exile; perhaps non-citizens would have been treated differently, though.

But if this was a catch-22 for Jesus, why would it be less so for the Jewish authorities? How did they deal with cases of adultery? I would assume that, not wanting to anger the Romans, they went with option two and let it go unpunished or with a lesser punishment. The handful of references to stoning in the Gospels (Luke 20:6; John 8:59, 10:31-33) suggest that it was a sort of mob violence, not a punishment formally imposed by the Jewish leaders, although Jewish leaders did participate in the attempted stoning of Paul and Barnabas at Iconium (Acts 14:5). Subject to Roman compulsion, they had no choice but to let certain aspects of the Mosaic Law go unenforced. Why was this okay for them but not for Jesus? Why couldn't he just throw the question right back at them and ask whether they thought the woman ought to be stoned?

Because he was supposed to be the Messiah, and they weren't. The Messiah was supposed to throw off the Roman yoke and make the Law of Moses once more the law of the land. Faced with the same question they posed to Jesus, the Pharisees could say that the Roman occupation regrettably made it impossible to implement the teachings of Moses as fully as they should like, but that all this would be rectified when the Messiah came and assumed the Throne of David. For Jesus to say anything like that, though, would be tantamount to admitting he was not the Messiah.

"This they said tempting him," the author writes, meaning testing him. It is possible that this was, at least to some extent and for some of the Pharisees, a genuine test proposed in good faith. The real Messiah would not be afraid of the Romans but would fearlessly execute the law of Moses. So, was Jesus the real Messiah?

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The meaning of Jesus' writing on the ground

"As though he heard them not" is not in the original text but was considered by the King James translators to be implied by the context.

What did he write? Why did he write it instead of saying it? Why does the Gospel not tell us what he wrote? The medium must in some important way have been the message here; the fact of his writing on the ground with his finger was at least as important as the content of what he wrote.

A extremely clever, though of course entirely speculative, medieval tradition holds that he wrote, "Earth accuses earth." 

Jesus writing "Terra terram accusat" (Codex Egberti, 10th century)

This is such a perfect proposal that I wish I had thought of it myself! First, it succinctly expresses one of the main meanings of the pericope: the hypocrisy of those who accuse others of being what they themselves are -- in this case, mortal men and sinners, "of the earth, earthy." Second, by writing it on the ground instead of saying it, Jesus figuratively makes the earth itself accuse them of this hypocrisy. Earth accuses earth -- Heaven, represented by the Son of God, will not. Finally, the story ends when each of the accusers "being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one." Jesus had accused no one of sin; each accused himself. Earth accuses earth.

One hesitates to argue with perfection by proposing anything else that Jesus may have written instead -- but, well, rushing in where angels fear to tread is pretty much what we do on this blog, isn't it? I have no hope of coming up with anything as lapidary as "Earth accuses earth," but I'm not going to let that stop me from exploring the question.

"Earth accuses earth" focuses on the fact that Jesus wrote his message on the ground, but the other relevant point is that he wrote it with his finger. Doesn't that call to mind the "two tables of stone written with the finger of God" (Deut. 9:10, Ex. 31:18), the very source of the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery"? Was Jesus' action meant to remind them of this? Was he subtly claiming to be the very God who gave Moses the Law? Is it possible that Jesus wrote on the ground, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," endorsing the Mosaic precept while simultaneously claiming to be its Author, at whose discretion it is enforced?

Also of possible relevance is Jeremiah 17:13.

O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.

The juxtaposition of "written in the earth" with "the fountain of living waters" is very interesting because in the Fourth Gospel as we have it now, the Pericope Adulterae comes just a few verses after Jesus says, "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water" (John 7:38). This is evidence that the story does belong here after all.

The most common interpretation of Jeremiah's "written in the earth" is that it refers to impermanence -- that those who forsake the Lord will disappear like words written in the dust. A minority view is that it means "recorded in the underworld" or "listed among the dead." Whatever the precise meaning of the phrase, the point is that those who are "written in the earth" are those who "have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters." The Pharisees knew the prophetic literature very, very well and would surely have understood the allusion, particularly if Jesus had just recently been talking about rivers of living water. Could he have written the names of the Pharisee accusers in the earth -- with all Jeremiah had made that imply?

"Written in the earth" also contrasts with "written in stone" -- the latter expression meaning, with reference to the stone tables of Moses, that something is fixed, unalterable, and non-negotiable. What is "written in the earth," in contrast, can be read now but will have disappeared by tomorrow. This may be a reference to the idea that "the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). As I said of this passage in my notes on John 1:

Mosaic "truth" was limited by its character as a set of laws -- that is, generalizations derived by abstraction and implemented by ignoring most of the specific details of any given situation. Laws as such can only aspire to be rough approximations of the truth, which is ultimately individual, specific, personal. Christ -- at least the Johannine Christ -- brought both grace and truth by transcending law.

Jesus' choice to respond to the Pharisees' question by writing in a medium designed to be temporary and ephemeral may have meant that he did not intend to establish a law or set a precedent to be followed rigorously in all future cases.

More generally, this episode highlights the fact that Jesus was able to write but, unlike a Moses or a Muhammad, chose not to deliver his message in the form of a new sacred text. "New Moses" though he may have been, he had no interest in producing Torah 2.0. The fact that we have multiple Gospels, all of uncertain authorship, all somewhat mutually contradictory, may have been something Jesus positively intended, a feature rather than a bug. Like Socrates, who also famously left no written works, Jesus brought not a new body of doctrine to be accepted on authority, but a new way of thinking and living -- written, as Paul of Tarsus would later put it, "not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Cor. 3:3). It is ironic that mainstream Christendom has nevertheless come to treat four of the Gospels, and even the epistles of Paul, precisely as the Pharisees treated the carved-in-stone pronouncements of Moses. (Socrates was spared this fate, which instead fell to his grand-disciple Aristotle.)

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Jesus' response as a rhetorical riposte

Considered only as a clever way of getting out of the trap that had been set for him, Jesus' response is pretty good. In theory, he is endorsing the Mosaic punishment and calling for it to be executed -- but the way in which he calls for it ensures that no stoning will actually take place, and thus no trouble with the Romans. Furthermore, he pretty much forces the accusers to admit that they themselves are sinners and unworthy judges. I'm sure the real reason many of them left was that they were afraid of the legal consequences if they took it upon themselves to carry out a vigilante execution -- but after what Jesus had said, it could only look as if they had left due to their guilty conscience. Rhetorically, this was a successful move.

A possible rejoinder from the Pharisees would have been to ask why Moses allowed sinners to cast the first stone. But perhaps he didn't. At a time when sin was strictly defined by 613 highly specific commandments, there may have been quite a few people who could say they were "without sin" -- just as many of us today can honestly say we have no criminal record. Jesus' rhetorical demand that a sinless person cast the first stone served to highlight how Man's understanding of sin had changed and deepened since the days of Moses -- yes, even among the legalistic Pharisees. In Mosaic times, when sin and crime were interchangeable, it would have been perfectly reasonable to insist that the law be enforced by those who were not themselves criminals. But to the people of Jesus' time, who understood that everyone was a sinner, the Mosaic approach no longer made sense.

Going by our stereotype of the Pharisees, we would expect one of them to have confidently stepped forward and said, "I keep all 613 commandments faithfully and even tithe mint, anise, and cumin. Hand me a stone." Why didn't they? Two reasons, both of which I have already mentioned.

First, they were afraid to defy Rome by carrying out a vigilante execution. Second, they really were "convicted by their own conscience"; human consciousness had changed a lot since the days of Moses, and even the Pharisees -- living after Isaiah and all the others -- realized that sin was something deeper and broader than the Mosaic list of thou-shalt-nots. Even the rich young man who confidently said of the Mosaic commandments, "All these things have I kept from my youth up," immediately added, "What lack I yet?" (Matt. 19:20). People understood that sin was universal, that no one could claim to be morally perfect. If nothing else, some of the Pharisees must have realized that being unwilling to defy Caesar to obey Moses -- fearing man more than God -- was itself a sin.

One possible weakness of Jesus' answer, as a rhetorical strategy, is that after inviting the one without sin to cast the first stone, he himself didn't cast the first stone, either. Wouldn't the Pharisees have used this against him, saying that Jesus had implicitly admitted to being a sinner and could therefore not be the Messiah? In theory, they could have, but they obviously didn't. If they wanted to argue that Jesus was a sinner, it was much easier and less embarrassing to bring up his Sabbath-breaking and such, rather than this episode.

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Jesus' response as a precept of criminal justice

I have said that Jesus' writing in the earth may have been meant to show that he was not proposing some timeless principle to be applied in all cases. Nevertheless, we never expect Jesus to engage in mere rhetorical tricks; he must also have been teaching and exemplifying some concept of more general applicability -- but the message he appears to have been conveying is a difficult one to accept: that only those who are themselves "without sin" have the right to punish criminals -- meaning that no one has the right to punish criminals, except God, who generally refrains from doing so in this life, as does Jesus in this story. This is a hard saying; who can hear it? It is certainly understandable why the pericope has been so controversial. It is in broad harmony with Jesus' other teachings in the Synoptics and particularly Matthew -- resist not evil, turn the other cheek, give to him that asketh thee, put up again thy sword into his place, do good to them that despitefully use and persecute you -- but how could human society function if people lived by such a maxim? We have all heard a million times how all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing; and how we first pity, then endure, then embrace -- and many of us have observed in real time what happens when laws are not enforced, and just how swiftly the seeds of decriminalization and tolerance blossom into mandatory celebration and moral inversion.

To be clear, Jesus is certainly not saying that adultery is not blameworthy -- his "neither do I condemn thee" is immediately followed up with "sin no more," implying that the woman is guilty of sin -- but, human nature being what it is, wouldn't a policy of not punishing adultery encourage people to think that adultery is acceptable? It is not practical or desirable for all sins to be criminalized and punished, whether by society at large or by the Church -- but this naturally leads into the trap of paying less attention to sins that are not formally "against the rules," or thinking of them as not really being sins. This is analogous to the tendency of methodological naturalism in science to slide into metaphysical naturalism: We begin by excluding something from consideration for a particular practical purpose and end by excluding it from consideration altogether. Haven't we seen how hard it is for people to distinguish between "You will not be punished" and "You have done nothing wrong," between tolerance in the sense of mercy and tolerance in the sense of "diversity is our strength"? I mean, look what a slippery slope the decriminalization of sodomy turned out to be!

I don't have an answer to this. It is an observed fact that God, with very few exceptions, does nothing to stop people from doing bad things. That is to say, God does not enforce a moral law. (He seems to have done so more in the past, whether by direct intervention or indirectly through the Mosaic theocracy, but this is no longer the case and was already no longer the case in the time of Christ.) One possible interpretation of this is that we should imitate God in this -- "that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). Another is that God doesn't enforce laws for the same reason that he doesn't provide food, shelter, and clothing for us: because he expects us to do it ourselves. Jesus' initial silence in response to the Pharisees could be interpreted as supporting the latter view: Don't ask me how or whether to punish adultery; that's for you mortals to work out. His later, verbal reply, though, seems to imply the opposite: that for mortals to pass judgment on mortals is hypocritical and unjust.

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Jesus' response as a spiritual precept

Most of us to whom the Gospel has come are not political or religious authorities in a position to punish or pardon sins, and so we are inclined to interpret "let him who is without sin cast the first stone" figuratively, as being about psychological attitudes of condemnation and forgiveness and about "being judgmental."

When the story is approached in this way, I think it is best understood in conjunction with the very similar saying about the mote and the beam (Matt. 7:3-4, Luke 6:41-42). "First cast out the beam out of thine own eye" -- not because it's "not fair" for one sinner to pass judgment on another, but because "then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." This matter of seeing clearly is the central point of the mote-and-beam saying, and is why sin is referred to with the rather unusual metaphor of having something in your eye. Judgment, condemnation, and punishment may in many cases be right, necessary, and good -- but the human desire to punish is very rarely pure. Adultery is wrong and should have consequences, but those who pounce on one of their fellow sinners, haul her before the authorities, and howl for her blood are very rarely motivated by love, or even by a lofty passion for justice in the abstract. Their -- our -- vindictiveness much more often flows from a half-conscious congeries of insecurities, projections, overcompensations, and other such psychological phenomena for which we have the benefit of a much richer technical vocabulary than did Jesus' contemporaries, and they -- we -- desire the punishment of the sinner not so much despite as because of their -- our -- own guilty conscience.

This is not to say that stones must never be cast -- not at all -- but that the more sinful we are, the less we can see clearly when they should be, and at what targets -- and those who can see clearly see, as often as not, that stone-casting is not the answer. Overall, any enthusiasm for casting stones is a symptom and tends to disqualify one to do so.

Jesus lived and taught during the reign of Tiberius, and -- well, so do we. That is, we, too, live in a time of grotesque wickedness and depravity in high places, and not only in high places; and dwelling on the moral horrors all around us, and on precisely what those people deserve, is a constant temptation. Even when our moral judgments are right -- as the condemnation of adultery is right -- the thoughts, and the emotions that drive them, often do us little credit. "I hate them that hate thee, O Lord, . . . with perfect hatred" (Ps. 139:21-22) is an Old Testament stance. Jesus, we are told in the Gospel of Thomas, said rather, "Become passersby."

I once had a colleague who had a maddening but ultimately very helpful habit. Any time I made any negative comment on the behavior or character of anyone else, he would always say, "Yes, you're absolutely right. In fact, he's just like you that way!" and then, unfailingly, come up with some specific example of something I had once done that was in some way similar to what I was complaining about. He was remarkably, almost supernaturally, good at this, and you can imagine how annoying it was! He never did this when he himself was criticized, only when people criticized others to him. And he never actually defended the person; he would always enthusiastically agree: "Wow, what an asshole! It reminds me of that time you . . . ." And he could always think of something, something specific and true. I don't know if that means we tend to complain most about the things that remind us of our own faults, or if it just means that pretty much everyone has the same sorts of failings, differing only in degree, but at any rate his skill at finding such parallels was remarkable and remarkably infuriating. He never volunteered criticisms, either, except in response to hearing someone else criticized; he was like a living, breathing embodiment of "Judge not that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7:1).

Matt -- I'll call him Matt -- obviously didn't win any friends this way, but he did influence people. As you might imagine, I quickly learned to check myself before criticizing anyone else in his presence. At first I'd just think, "No, I'd better not say that, or he'll say something about me," but soon enough I was doing Matt's work for him and imagining specifically what he might say. In other words, I developed the habit of, before criticizing anyone else, thinking about the question of how I myself might be guilty of something similar. I may have gotten a little rusty in the years since I worked with Matt, but I think it was a worthwhile habit to develop. The Rosary prayers serve as a sort of reminder, with all their first person plural pleas for mercy: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" -- "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners" -- "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins; save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy." That last is particularly effective: praying for "those in most need of thy mercy" -- those one is naturally inclined to "hate with perfect hatred" -- but to word it as a prayer for us rather than for them. After all, we're only ordinary men.

When someone we know falls gravely ill or dies, our thoughts naturally turn to our own mortality and to the shortness and unpredictability of life. We should have a similar reaction when someone is "taken in adultery, in the very act," or anything similar. Rather than being occasion for gloating or vindictiveness, such incidents should turn our thoughts to our universal human frailty and remind us to "consider your ways. . . . Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways" (Hag. 1:5, 7).

Revisionist speculations about the “doubting Thomas” story

This is extremely speculative, and it casts more doubt on the straightforward reading of the Fourth Gospel than my notes usually do, but I wanted to put it out there and see what people think. The idea came to me quite suddenly as a sort of epiphany, which is why I’m posting it now rather than saving it for my notes on John 20.

One of the strange things about the “doubting Thomas” episode is that Thomas insists specifically on touching Jesus’ crucifixion wounds before he will believe. Isn’t that weird? Wouldn’t you take it for granted that the body of a resurrected person would be restored to its perfect condition, with no wounds? Herod Antipas reportedly believed that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead — even though John had been beheaded, and Jesus presumably had his head firmly attached, without so much as a scar around his neck. And I’m sure it never occurred to Herod to see that as evidence against his belief. People rising from the dead still wounded or maimed as they were when they died — with all due respect to St. Denis of Paris, that’s really more the stuff of zombie movies than of divine miracles.

What I was taught in church (the Mormon Church, but I suppose other churches must say something similar) was that in general people are resurrected with perfect bodies, but that Jesus himself was an exception. He chose to keep the wounds from his execution so that he could show them to his disciples as a sign. Isn’t that still weird, though? Why would they need or expect such a sign? Again, Herod didn’t expect the risen John to have decapitation wounds. If Thomas had seen and touched the risen Jesus, but a risen Jesus whose wounds had been healed, would he really have refused to believe? On what grounds?

Well, suppose Jesus had an identical twin brother. Then Thomas’s request would make sense. The wounds would be the proof that this was really Jesus who was crucified, not his never-crucified brother who looked just like him. Well, as it happens, there are (non-canonical) stories about Jesus having a twin brother! Does that explain Thomas’s request? Well, no, not in any straightforward way, because the identity of this possible twin is none other than Thomas himself! I believe this is made explicit only in the Gnostic Book of Thomas the Contender, but we can connect the dots in other sources as well.

For starters, Thomas isn’t actually a name but the Aramaic word for “twin”; the Fourth Gospel adds that he was also called Didymus, which is “twin” in Greek. Now that is definitely not a normal nickname; twins come in pairs, making “the Twin” a uselessly ambiguous designation. It might work, though, if the other twin were someone extremely famous and important — like, oh, I don’t know, Jesus Christ.

What was his real name, then, if it wasn’t Thomas? The canonical Bible doesn’t say, but both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas say that his name was Judas. And what do you know, both Mark and Matthew say that Jesus had a brother named Judas. In the Fourth Gospel, “Judas, not Iscariot” is considered a sufficiently clear descriptor, so apparently there were only two Judases among Jesus’ close associates, and Thomas must have been one of them. (Against this, we have Luke's list of the Twelve Apostles, which includes both Thomas and two other Judases.)

Okay, so let’s tentatively accept as a working hypothesis that Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother Judas. How do we reconcile that with what I was saying before, about how Thomas may have been demanding proof that Jesus was Jesus and not his twin? This is where I had my eureka moment.

In the Fourth Gospel, Jesus appears to the disciples, “but Thomas . . . was not with them when Jesus came” (20:24). Jesus therefore appears again, when Thomas is among those present, and lets him touch his wounds. In Matthew, in contrast, we are told that the eleven remaining disciples (the twelfth, Judas Iscariot having hanged himself) all “saw him [and] worshipped him, but some doubted” (28:17).

In the Fourth Gospel, it’s clear enough why Thomas doubts: because Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus appeared. In the Matthew account, though, even some of the disciples who saw Jesus doubted. Why? Same reason: Because Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus appeared. Without seeing them both in the same room, they couldn’t be sure that this seemingly risen Jesus wasn’t really just Judas the Twin. Jesus resolved this problem by appearing again and letting them touch his wounds, proving that he was the crucified twin and not the uncrucified one.

Now imagine that this story gets passed on — that Jesus appeared to his disciples but some doubted because Thomas wasn’t there — but at some point the key fact that Thomas was Jesus’ twin brother is lost. Wouldn’t it be the most natural thing in the world for people to assume that Thomas, the one who wasn't there, was the one who doubted, and for the story to morph into the form in which we now have it in the Fourth Gospel?

The next question to ask, then, is why Thomas wasn’t there. Was he just busy that day? Had a bar mitzvah to go to or something? It's possible, I guess, but it doesn't seem likely. Note, though, that Matthew specifies that only eleven of the twelve disciples were present, and that the one who was absent was a fellow named Judas. We have been assuming that Judas the Twin, a.k.a. Thomas, was the disciple the Fourth Gospel calls "Judas not Iscariot" -- but supposing he were the other one? What if Judas Thomas were that Judas, and Jesus was betrayed by his own twin brother? That would certainly put a new spin on John 7:1-5, where Jesus' brothers seem to be pushing him to go to Judaea and be killed by the Jews.

One obvious objection to the proposal that Jesus and Judas Iscariot were twin brothers is that the Fourth Gospel repeatedly refers to the latter as "Judas Iscariot, Simon's son." Jesus' father wasn't called Simon, which would seem to rule out the two men's being brothers. This objection is easily dealt with, though. In every case, the Greek says Ἰούδας Σίμωνος Ἰσκαριώτου, "Judas of Simon Iscariot," and the assumption that the genitive means "son of" in this case is only an assumption. In Acts 1:13 and Luke 6:16, the grammatically parallel Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου, "Judas of James," is rendered "Judas the brother of James" in the King James Version and many other translations, although some translations go with the "son of" reading. And the same passages in Mark and Matthew (Mark 6:3, Matt. 13:55) that tell us Jesus had a brother named Judas also tell us that he had another brother called Simon. So "Judas of Simon" could well have been Jesus' brother.

I'm not sure yet how far I want to entertain this line of speculation -- it's a departure from my usual practice of taking the Fourth Gospel pretty much at face value -- but I'll be keeping it in the back of my mind for a while and seeing if it sheds light on anything else.

When Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is (Notes on John 7:25-27)

Jesus is in Jerusalem, having made a surprise visit in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles, despite his general policy of "not walk[ing] in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him" (John 7:1). He is preaching in the Temple and has just read a biblical text, possibly Malachi 2:1-3:1.

[25] Then said some of them of Jerusalem, "Is not this he, whom they seek to kill? [26] But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? [27] Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is."

When Jesus said the Jews were trying to kill him, he was ridiculed: "Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?" (John 7:20). Here we see that they did in fact know that people were trying to kill him. The fact that Jesus does not seem to be afraid, and that no one is doing anything to stop him, makes them think that perhaps he is the Messiah and that the rulers know it.

What was the scriptural basis for the belief that "when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is"? Commentaries generally cite Isaiah 53:8, Daniel 7:13, and Malachi 3:1 as possible sources.

Isaiah 53:8 says of the Suffering Servant figure, "who shall declare his generation?" The word translated as generation is at least as vague in Hebrew as in English. It could mean his ancestry, his contemporaries, or his descendants; or it could refer to an "age" or period of time, either in the past or the future. "Who can say who his ancestors are?" is one possible reading among many. More importantly, though, the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 was not generally understood by Jews to be the Messiah, who was expected to be a triumphant king. The Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 thought Isaiah might be referring to himself; the medieval rabbi Rashi thought the nation of Israel as a whole was the Suffering Servant. Not until the Christians reinterpreted the idea of the Messiah in the light of Jesus' actual life did anyone think of the Messiah as someone who would suffer. I don't think the Jews of Jesus' time would have disqualified an otherwise promising Messiah claimant for not fitting the description in Isaiah 53.

Daniel 7:13 reads in part, "I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven" -- implying that the Son of Man would just appear out of the clear blue sky, rather than being born, growing up, etc. However, Daniel's Son of Man, like Isaiah's Suffering Servant, was not universally understood to be the Messiah. The text of Daniel 7 itself seems to interpret the Son of Man -- the last of five symbolic figures that represent kingdoms -- as "the saints of the Most High" rather than as a specific individual. Some rabbis, including Rashi, do interpret the Son of Man as the Messiah, though.

What did Jesus' contemporaries think about the Son of Man? This passage from John 12 perhaps sheds some light on the question.

[23] And Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. [24] Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. . . ."

[34] The people answered him, "We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, 'The Son of man must be lifted up?' who is this Son of man?" (John 12:23-24, 34)

Jesus strongly implies that the Son of Man will die, and the people protest that "Christ abideth for ever" -- so they apparently assumed that the Son of Man was identical to the Messiah. Their final question, "Who is this Son of man?" -- not "How can the Messiah die?" -- suggests that they were also open to other interpretations of Daniel's prophecy, though. They're saying, in effect, "Well, if the Son of Man is going to die, he can't be the Messiah. If he's not the Messiah, who is he?"

Because the Son of Man prophecy is not unambiguously about the Messiah, it seems that failure to fit its description would also not be disqualifying.

That leaves -- how appropriate! -- Malachi 3:1. Those who have read my last couple of posts will know that I first speculated, based on indirect textual evidence, that Jesus might have read part of Malachi 2 (I suggested vv. 1-10) in the Temple.  Later, after rereading Malachi and realizing how appropriate the rest of the chapter and Malachi 3:1 were, I revised my hypothesis to include those verses. This speculation had nothing to do with John 7:27, and I did not connect the two at all. Then as I was writing the present post, I checked several Bible commentaries and discovered that Malachi 3:1 just happens to be one of the three verses commonly cited to explain the expectation that "when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is."

Here is the text of the verse in question:

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord (ha-adon), whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts (YHWH sabaoth).

The King James Version, and many other translations, translates the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) as "the LORD," using all capitals to distinguish this from the common noun lord (adon), which can refer to human lords as well as to God. For example, Psalm 110 begins, "The LORD (YHWH) said unto my Lord (l'adoni) . . . ." In the KJV, both instances of Lord in Malachi 3:1 are in all caps, so I had always assumed that it was the Tetragrammaton both times. But in fact the first instance is literally "the Lord," ha-adon. There are only six instances of adon with the definite article ha in the Bible. The other five are all in Isaiah, and are all used in the phrase ha-adon YHWH sabaoth (KJV "the Lord, the LORD of hosts"). Malachi 3:1 is the only reference to ha-adon which does not immediately identify him with the Lord of Hosts. The Lord of Hosts also appears in this verse, but as if a separate figure: "he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts" -- not "I shall come." The characterization of ha-adon as "the messenger of the covenant" also seems incompatible with his being the Lord of Hosts. Men and angels can be messengers of God, but how could God himself be anyone's messenger?

On the other hand, who else could ha-adon be but the Lord of Hosts? The two titles are inextricably linked, the former never occurring without the latter; and of whom but God himself could we say that the Temple was "his temple"? As for the "messenger" reference, we might compare it to the Old Testament concept of the "theophanic angel" ("angel" and "messenger" being the same word in Hebrew), the "angel of the Lord" which is somehow also the Lord himself. There are many instances of this in the Bible, but the most famous is in Exodus:

And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. . . .

God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said,  ". . . I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God (Ex. 3:2, 4, 6).

From a Christian perspective, Malachi 3:1 is a supremely appropriate verse to apply to Christ -- who was both the Messiah, the messenger of God, and in some sense God himself -- one with God and yet distinct from God -- an ambiguity which Malachi seems to capture perfectly. And since this whole conversation is taking place after Jesus suddenly appeared unexpectedly in the Temple, it would be supremely ironic if the Jews' reason for dismissing him was that he did not fulfill Malachi 3:1 -- the very verse he was at that moment fulfilling!

That's from a Christian point of view, though. The question is whether the Jews of Jesus time would have seen Malachi 3:1 as a Messianic prophecy at all. Rashi understands ha-adon to be God himself, not the Messiah (only in Christianity are the two in any sense one and the same), but Rashi lived centuries after Christ. Might Jesus' contemporaries have understood ha-adon to be the Messiah?

Let's go back to Psalm 110, which I briefly referred to above. In the Synoptics, Jesus apparently takes it for granted that the Jews will understand "my Lord" (adoni) to be the Messiah.

[35] And Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, "How say the scribes that Christ is the son of David? [36] For David himself said by the Holy Ghost, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. [37] David therefore himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he then his son?" (Mark 12:35-37; cf. Matt. 22:42-45, Luke 20:41-44)

Normally, if David said "my Lord," we would assume that a sovereign king could have no lord but God himself. Here, though, "the LORD" and "my Lord" are clearly separate characters, and so the Jews of Jesus' time took the latter to be the Messiah. Might they have assumed the same about Malachi 3:1? Doesn't "he [ha-adon] shall come, saith the LORD of hosts" imply a distinction in much the same way that "the LORD said to my Lord" does?

I'm undecided, but I do find it very attractive to think that at this point in the Gospel, Jesus has just quoted Malachi 3:1, is fulfilling Malachi 3:1, and is being dismissed because of Malachi 3:1!

The Bread of Life (Notes on John 6:26-58)

Jesus is speaking to the crowd that has been following him back and forth across the Sea of Galilee. He has recently fed 5,000 of them miraculously in the Golan Heights and encounters them again in Capernaum. Not knowing that he got there by walking on water, they ask, "Rabbi, when camest thou hither?"

[26] Jesus answered them and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.

This seems unfair. These people had already been following Jesus around for some time before he fed them, and many of them very likely came from as far away as Jerusalem. We are told that originally they "followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased" (John 6:2; emphasis mine) and it seems unlikely that their motivation changed after the feeding of the 5,000. If they just wanted bread, surely there were easier ways of getting it than following Jesus around, over seas and up mountains, in the hope that he would happen to work that particular miracle.

What did Jesus mean to convey by making what, taken literally, is an unjust accusation? I suppose his purpose was to make the people ask themselves why they were following Jesus around. They started following him after seeing him effect paranormal healings, but why? It seems unlikely that any of them literally thought, "This guy can heal the sick; I bet he can produce food out of thin air, too!" but perhaps they were thinking something like that. Perhaps some were sick and wanted to be healed. Perhaps some had sick relatives or friends and wanted them to be healed. Perhaps others, seeing that Jesus had preternatural powers, hoped that he would be able to grant them some other material benefit. They were interested in the miracle-worker, not because the miracles were evidence of his divinity, but because they hoped to be the beneficiaries of some particular miracle. In essence, Jesus is asking whether their following of him is disinterested.

How many of us do follow Jesus disinterestedly, at least in the beginning? Don't people generally turn to God because of some urgent need? Not in my own case, I think. I was quite happy as an atheist and have embraced Christianity only because I find it interesting and true. Oddly, I feel a little bad about saying that, as if it could only be a pose, as if I must really have some deep need that I am ashamed to admit. Or, if it is true, how dare I not need religion? How dare I take up Christianity as if it were geometry or something? Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst! Nevertheless, here I am, with such motives as I have. God knows if they deserve credit or blame.

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[27] Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed."

As always in the King James Version, meat means "food," not specifically animal flesh. No material benefit lasts and is thus not worth working for; only eternal life is of ultimate consequence. This may also prefigure the references to manna which follow, as manna was proverbially perishable.

The "son of man" is, as usual, spoken of in the third person, but Jesus makes it fairly clear later in this chapter that he is referring to himself: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life" (vv. 53-54).

This is the only occurrence of the phrase "God the Father" in the Gospels.

What is meant by the statement that God has "sealed" the Son of Man? There are no other references to people being "sealed" in the Gospels or in the Old Testament, though the expression does occur in some of the Epistles of Paul and, most famously, in the Revelation of John. (In Mormon usage, sealing refers to ceremonially making familial or spousal relationships permanent, but it is hard to read the Bible as using the word in that sense.)

Paul writes that Abraham "received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised" (Rom. 4:9). Apparently this means that circumcision was outward or visible sign "certifying" Abraham as faithful and righteous, just as an official seal serves to certify the validity of a legal document. Elsewhere, Paul writes "Am I am not an apostle? am I not free? have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord" (1 Cor. 1:9). Again, seal seems to refer to a sign or certification. Paul's status as an apostle is disputed, but the Christians of Corinth -- apparently taught and led by Paul -- are living proof that his claim to the title is legitimate. In both of these instances, seal seems to mean something like "visible proof."

Elsewhere, Paul speaks of God sealing people, coming closer to the language of Jesus: "Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor. 1:21-22). The meaning of sealed is not entirely clear here, but "marked us as his own" (as if with his signet ring) seems a probable reading.

This connection between sealing and the "earnest of the Spirit" (earnest meaning something like "down payment" or "security deposit") occurs again in Ephesians. "Christ . . . in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory" (Eph. 1:12-14). "And grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption" (Eph. 4:30). These passages suggest that when 2 Cor. says "sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit," the meaning is "sealed us, that is to say, given the earnest of the Spirit." The expression "sealed unto the day of redemption" possibly alludes to Daniel: "But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end" (Dan. 12:4). However, if so, there must be some shift in meaning; Daniel is speaking of sealing a scroll (with sealing wax) so that it cannot be opened until "the time of the end," and it does not make much sense to apply that to a person. What Paul appears to be saying is that God has marked us as his own by putting his Spirit in our hearts, and that this is a sign that we will be saved in the end.

Finally, there is the famous sealing of the 144,000 in Revelation: "And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, 'Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads'" (Rev. 7:2-3). The context suggests that seals are to mark the faithful, much as lamb's blood marked the doorposts of Moses' people, so that they may be spared the destruction about to be unleashed on the world.

If Paul and John of Patmos are any guide, then, Jesus likely means that God has marked him as his own, possibly (but not necessarily) in some way that would be visible to others. Given the context, in which Jesus seems to say that the people should have sought him simply because he worked miracles (rather than for the results of those miracles), it may be that Jesus' miracles are the "seal" referred to. By miraculously effecting physical healings and multiplying physical bread, Jesus demonstrated that he had the power of God and could therefore do far more significant things than that.

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[28] Then said they unto him, "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?"

[29] Jesus answered and said unto them, "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent."

Jesus has just told the crowd to "labour . . . for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life" (v. 27). When they ask how they might "work the works of God," they are using the same Greek word -- which Thayer says "is opposite to inactivity or idleness."

Jesus answers that the work of God is to believe in Jesus. How is that work, though? We think of belief as the passive having-of-opinions, scarcely "opposite to inactivity or idleness." Real belief involves thinking, though, and that is work, as the painter Joshua Reynolds said in his 1784 address to the Royal Academy:

In the practice of art, as well as in morals, it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry, will lull to sleep all suspicion of our want of an active exertion of strength. A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite enquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour, -- the real labour of thinking.

(Ironic, isn't it, that I should present Reynolds's words here undigested, by means of "the mere mechanical labour of copying"!)

Jesus calls us to active, not passive, belief. (See Bruce Charlton's post on this subject.) That is the work of God.

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[30] They said therefore unto him, "What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work? [31] Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

Wait, "What sign shewest thou?"? Seriously? Aren't they following him because they've already seen him work miraculous healings in Jerusalem and then magically feed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread? I wasn't exaggerating when I wrote (and the end of this post) that the Jews and Samaritans had a very specific set of expectations, above and beyond a generic demand for "miracles." The Prophet like unto Moses was supposed to "produce the omer of manna which our fathers ate, while in the wilderness, for forty years," and if Jesus couldn't do that, he wasn't the Prophet. Sure, sure, lots of nice miracles, very impressive, but where's the manna?

Manna was, as I have said, proverbially perishable, which was part of the point of this promised miracle. As a Samaritan high priest of the early 20th century put it, "When our ancestors, in the days when manna used to fall, would keep some of it till the morrow, it would become rotten and wormy. Therefore, it would be a proof none could deny if it should appear sound after this long interval and remain in its sound state."

The scripture they refer to about "bread from heaven" could be Nehemiah 9:15 or Psalm 105:40, both of which refer poetically to manna in that way. Real manna was not much like bread at all, but is described as being "like coriander seed, white" (Ex. 16: 31), "a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground" (Ex. 16:14). Various theories as to its identity exist, many of them involving insects.

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[32] Then Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven; but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven. [33] For the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world."

[34] Then said they unto him, "Lord, evermore give us this bread."

Jesus is telling them that he's not going to do what Moses did, except in an ad hoc metaphorical sense. While he poetically appropriates the Messianic prophecies and draws some of his key metaphors from them (the good shepherd, for example), Jesus fundamentally offers new wine in new bottles and is not interested in shoehorning himself into a precast role. Those who seek to validate his mission by ticking fulfilled prophecies off a checklist are sure to be disappointed, and those who fight this disappointment will drift further and further from the path of intellectual honesty.

In the King James Version, Jesus seems to be saying clearly that the "bread of God" is a person ("he which cometh down"), implicitly himself, which makes the response ("give us this bread") sound stupid, but the original Greek does not imply that the bread is a person and can also be translated as "that which cometh down." The people's response shows that they still understand Jesus to be talking about some improved Manna 2.0 he's going to produce, not about himself. He hasn't dropped that bombshell yet.

What distinguishes the True Bread from mere manna is that the former "giveth life unto the world." Moses' manna gave life, or sustained it anyway, so the distinguishing feature seems to be that "unto the world" bit.

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[35] And Jesus said unto them, "I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.

This clearly ties in to Jesus' statement to the Samaritan woman at the well, "whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life" (John 4:14).

In that earlier episode, Jesus never explains what this "living water" is, instead changing the subject and never returning to it. Here, he seems to say that "drinking of the water" Jesus gives means believing in Jesus himself, and that he himself is the living water, a title that apparently has the same significance as "bread of life."

Drink the living water, and it will become a well inside you; that's why you will never need water from an external source again. In the parable of the sower in Mark 4, "the sower soweth the word" (v. 14), symbolized as corn. Those who receive this corn do not eat it, though, but plant it in their hearts, where it grows up to "bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred" (v. 20). This directly parallels the water that becomes a wellspring in the one who receives it. In Mark, what is sown is "the word" -- which can mean either Jesus' teaching or (as in John 1) Jesus himself as the embodied Logos. Elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel, Jesus says, "He that receiveth whomsoever I send receiveth me" (John 13:20), but the Greek word translated as whomsoever does not necessarily refer to a person; whatsoever would also be a possible translation.

Those who truly receive Jesus do not merely accept him as an authority and give passive assent to his pronouncements. They do the work of believing -- the work of God. They internalize Jesus' word and thereby Jesus himself. They receive the Holy Ghost. Instead of merely eating the bread and drinking the water they are given, they create within themselves a field of corn and a well.

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[36] But I said unto you, That ye also have seen me, and believe not.

As I have already noted, the Gospel is rather unclear on whether and to what extent these people did believe in Jesus. We are told that they started following him because of the miracles he worked, and Jesus accuses them of being after a free meal, hoping for a repeat performance of the feeding of the 5,000. They seem to view him as a religious authority, asking "What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?" -- but when Jesus answers that the work of God is to believe in him, Jesus, they say, "What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee?"

It is to this ("that we may see, and believe thee") that Jesus is perhaps responding here: "Ye have seen, and yet believe not." Although they have seen him work miracles, they still demand further signs -- some proof that will overwhelm them and make doubt impossible. They are passively waiting to be wowed. Although they "believe" in a sense, it is not the sort of belief Jesus is trying to elicit, the sort that -- precisely because it is active and not passive -- he called "the work of God."

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[37] All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Jesus' followers are those who actively come to him -- and yet in the same breath, they are also described as being passively given to him by the Father. Both divine grace and the personal exercise of free will play a role. Choosing to follow Jesus is sufficient; no one who makes that choice will be rejected.

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[38] For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. [39] And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. [40] And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day."

I'm not why such emphasis is put on this distinction between Jesus' own will and that of the Father who sent him. Surely they want the same things?

The expression "the last day" is unique to this Gospel (with the exception of Nehemiah 8:18, where it refers to the last day of a seven-day feast), and the intended meaning is not obvious. Does it mean the end of the world? Each individual's dying day? Does it just mean "in the end," a generic way of referring to the final result?

Most of the "last day" references are here, in the Bread of Life discourse, but another prominent occurrence is in this dialogue between Jesus and Martha, in the lead-up to the raising of Lazarus (John 11:23-26):

[23] Jesus saith unto her, "Thy brother shall rise again."

[24] Martha saith unto him, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

[25] Jesus said unto her, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: [26] And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"

[27] She saith unto him, "Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."

The most natural reading of this is that Martha misunderstood Jesus' first statement as a reference to the Jewish belief that the dead will be raised in the future, when the Messiah comes. (According to Acts 23, this was accepted by the Pharisees but not the Sadducees. Later it became a universal Jewish tenet and was included in the Jewish "creed" formulated by Maimonides.) This is reinforced when Jesus says, "I am the resurrection," and she replies, "Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ" -- the beginning of a dawning realization that Jesus is the Messiah, that this is the Messianic age, and that the resurrection of Lazarus can occur now.

But if "the last day" is used by Martha to mean the future Messianic age, and if Jesus corrects her and points out that their own time is the Messianic age, then what can the expression mean here, in John 6? Is this a reference to the "second coming" (a doctrine of which I am skeptical, and which I do not find clearly expressed in this Gospel) or to the end of the world?

Anyway, whatever time frame is intended by "at the last day," the thrust of this passage is that all those who believe in Jesus will be resurrected, because they have been "given" to him by the Father. I am not sure what exactly this "giving" refers to, or what the Father's role in this is.

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[41] The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven." [42] And they said, "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?'" 

 [43] Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, "Murmur not among yourselves. 

There is no hint of a virgin birth in the Fourth Gospel. Jesus is simply "the son of Joseph."

What is the answer to this question of the Jews'? If Jesus was born in the ordinary human way, why did he say he "came down from heaven"?

Well, if you accept the doctrine of the premortal life (as I do), then every human being is a spirit which came down from "heaven" to incarnate in a mortal body. Perhaps Jesus had gained access those premortal memories and remembered coming down from heaven.

Another possibility is that this has to do with John's statement that "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him" (John 1:32). If a Spirit from heaven came down and remained on Jesus, permanently, becoming part of him, then there was an aspect of him that came down from heaven rather than being born.

Jesus' only response to this is "Murmur not among yourselves," and then he goes right back to what he was saying, offering no answer at all to their question. He is being deliberately provocative here, saying things that sound impossible and refusing to explain himself. (This will become even more obvious shortly, when starts talking about cannibalism and alienates even many of his own followers!) The method appears to be akin to that of a Zen master, whose koans -- seemingly absurd riddles -- force the student to engage his own thinking and intuition rather than passively accepting the pronouncements of the teacher.

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[44] No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. [45] It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall be all taught of God.' Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.

Again, no response to the "murmuring." Jesus picks right up where he had left off at the end of v. 40.

The quotation, attributed only to "the prophets," is apparently a paraphrase of Isaiah 54:13, "And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children." In both texts, the use of of in the King James is archaic and potentially confusing. The meaning is not "taught about God" but rather "taught by God." Similarly, "hath learned of the Father" means "has learned from the Father."

Those who come to Jesus have been "taught" to do so by God himself (perhaps because it is the divine spark within that responds to Jesus?). Therefore they have been "given" to Jesus by the Father, and Jesus cannot reject them.

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[46] Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.

This reads like an interpolation -- or rather two successive interpolations -- added to grind theological axes that were not Jesus' own.

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[47] Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. [48] I am that bread of life. [49] Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. [50] This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. [51] I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world."

[52] The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

[53] Then Jesus said unto them, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. [54] Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

The "bread of life" metaphor becomes more graphic and upsetting now, as Jesus tells people they must eat his flesh. When the Jews ask, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" Jesus offers no explanation and makes no concession to their sensibilities, instead repeating the offending statement and adding that they must also drink his blood!

I don't have any deep insight at this point on the intended meaning of this symbolism. It's easy to say it refers to Communion, but that's not really an answer. What does the symbolism of Communion really mean? (Also note that there is no Last Supper in the Fourth Gospel.)

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[56] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

If you eat and drink Jesus, then Jesus is in you -- but why are you also in Jesus? This has the same paradoxical nature as a couplet attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 7):

Blessed is the lion which a man eats, making the lion human.

Cursed is the man which a lion eats, making the lion human.

If a man eats a lion, the lion becomes human, because the matter that had been part of a lion is now part of a man instead. If a lion eats a man, the lion also becomes human, because human matter is now incorporated into the body of the lion.

By the same logic, if you eat Jesus, you are transformed by incorporating Jesus into yourself, and Jesus is transformed by becoming part of you. (Or Jesus could eat you, of course -- but assuming Jesus is the "lion" of the Thomas saying, this Soviet-Russia version of Communion is to be avoided.)

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[57] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. [58] This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever."

This seems to refer back to Jesus' earlier statement, "My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work" (John 4:34). Does "eating" Jesus just mean doing his will, then, and finishing his work? Certainly I think we are meant to connect these two passages, especially given the reference in vv. 38-40 to Jesus' doing the Father's will.

Witnesses to Jesus (Notes on John 5:31-47)

Notes on the text

For reasons given in the previous post in this series (qv), I view John 5:19-47 with a certain degree of suspicion because it appears to have been inserted into the text where it does not belong. That does not necessarily mean it is not authentic material about Jesus, though.

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[31] If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. [32] There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true.

What Jesus says in v. 31 is not his own idea; he is referring to a maxim generally accepted by the Jews of his time. In John 8:13, it is the Pharisees who say it: "Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true" -- and Jesus' reply shows that he himself does not accept that princple: "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true" (8:14). We should therefore think of John 5:31 as being prefaced with an implied "Perhaps you will say . . . ." Jesus is anticipating an objection from his audience.

Here, as in Chapter 8, the substance of Jesus' response is that, while his testimony alone may be deemed untrustworthy, it is corroborated by the testimony of others. In John 8:17, he cites the Torah in his defense: "It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true," perhaps alluding to these verses of Deuteronomy.

At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death (Deut. 17:6).

One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sinneth: at the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall the matter be established (Deut. 19:15).

While the Torah never says in so many words "that the testimony of two men is true," that is certainly what is implied by these verses. Jesus himself seems to have believed that the testimony of one man is in some cases sufficient to establish truth, but he accepted as valid the demand for multiple witnesses.

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[33] Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth. [34] But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved. [35] He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.

Jesus is presumably referring to the incident recorded in John 3:22-30, when there was a dispute "about purifying" between John's disciples and "the Jews" and they went to John himself to have it resolved. At that time, John reaffirmed his earlier statement (that Jesus was "the Lamb of God") and strongly implied that Jesus was the Messiah.

Again, Jesus is responding to his audience's anticipated demand for multiple human witnesses, though he himself does not accept the necessity of such. John did indeed testify of him, but that sort of testimony should not be considered necessary or sufficient.

The reference to John in the past tense implies that by this time John had already been executed. The statement that the Jews "were willing for a season to rejoice in his light" may mean that many who had accepted John as a prophet, and as possibly being the Prophet, later abandoned him, perhaps when he was cast into prison for accusing Herod Antipas of incest.

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[36] But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.

Jesus' own actions are a stronger witness to his identity than the testimony of John or anyone else could be. Jesus may be thinking of his miracles, or perhaps of his exemplary behavior. Both of these mark him as an extraordinary person, though I would think not necessarily as the Son of God. I suppose something like C. S. Lewis's trilemma is implied here. If you claim to be the Son of God, and you are observably a good person with extraordinary powers, then "Lord" is probably a better bet than "liar" or "lunatic."

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[37] And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. [38] And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.

What does Jesus mean by saying that the Father himself has borne witness of him? The Fourth Gospel does record one instance (in John 12:28-30) of Jesus addressing the Father in prayer and being answered by a voice from heaven.

[28] "Father, glorify thy name."

Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."

[29] The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others said, An angel spake to him.

[30] Jesus answered and said, "This voice came not because of me, but for your sakes."

The Father does not directly bear witness of Jesus here -- does not say "This man is my Son and the Messiah" or anything like that -- but obviously an audible voice from heaven answering his prayer would tend to confirm his status as Someone Very Special. But of course this incident did not occur until near the end of his life and cannot be what he is referring to here.

The Synoptics record that at Jesus' baptism "there came a voice from heaven, saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:11, Luke 3:2; Matt. 3:17 has "This is my beloved Son"), and that at the transfiguration "a voice came out of the cloud, saying, 'This is my beloved Son: hear him'" (Mark 9:7, Luke 9:5, Matt. 17:5). Neither of these events is mentioned in the Fourth Gospel, which indeed does not directly mention Jesus' baptism or transfiguration at all. Jesus could still be referring to one or both of those incidents, though; we have already seen how this author often assumes the reader has a certain amount of background knowledge and does not always state everything explicitly.

If we assume Jesus is referring to one of these "voice from heaven" incidents, though, why does he say "Ye have neither heard [the Father's] voice at any time, nor seen his shape"? Well, if John 12:29 is any indication, these voices from heaven were not always heard as such; some people heard, or thought they heard, only thunder. Or perhaps the people Jesus is talking to here were not among those present at his baptism and know of the voice only secondhand.

More likely, though, Jesus means that he is not talking about voices or apparitions at all when he says the Father has borne witness of him. He says that those who disbelieve in him do so because they "have not [the Father's] word [λόγον] abiding in" them. He also says, in 12:30, that voices from heaven are, like the witness of John, concessions to people's expectations and are ultimately unnecessary. Jesus himself knows he is God's son, not because John told him so or because he heard a voice, but because of the divine Logos abiding in his heart. In my notes on John 1, I proposed that "the creative Word is the combined Primary Thinking of God himself and of all those who think in harmony with him." Those who participate in the Word, whose thinking is (at times, and imperfectly) in harmony with the divine, can recognize divinity when they encounter it. Having that, no other witness is necessary. Lacking that, no other witness is sufficient, and even an actual voice from heaven is likely to be explained-away as thunder.

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[39] Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.

I find this to be a very curious statement. In what sense did the Jews think they had eternal life "in the scriptures"? What does that even mean? "Eternal life" in the Christian sense was not and is not really a Jewish doctrine. I am open to correction on this, but I believe the only unambiguous reference in the Old Testament to human beings receiving eternal life is in Daniel 12 -- where, interestingly, it is connected with an unidentified "book."

[1] And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.

[2] And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

[3] And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

[4] But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.

Although the reference is to "the book," as if we should know which book is intended, nothing in the immediate context makes this clear. However, there are intriguing references to books elsewhere in Daniel. In Chapter 9, Daniel recounts his dream of the four beasts. After the beasts, he sees the Ancient of Days and then the Son of Man.

[9] I beheld till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire.

[10] A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

This "Ancient of Days" is typically understood (in the Revelation of John, for example) to be God himself, but Joseph Smith associated the title with someone else: "Michael, or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days" (D&C 27:11). Smith believed that Michael the archangel had lived on earth as Adam, and it is because of his status as the first man that he is called the Ancient of Days. This is interesting because Michael is also mentioned in the "everlasting life" passage in Daniel.

In Daniel 10, Daniel is visited by someone who is apparently an angel, and who again associates books or "scripture" with Michael: "But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth: and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince" (Dan. 10:21). This is in fact the only occurrence of the word scripture in the King James Version of the Old Testament.

Is this what Jesus is alluding to? Did the Jews of his day understand the "book" of Daniel 12:1 to be the Bible and believe that they would have eternal life if they were somehow "written in the book"? Obviously most people's names are not literally written in the Bible, but the Bible contains many descriptions of "the righteous" and so on, and perhaps conforming one's life to those descriptions would qualify one as being "written in the book." One obvious problem with this interpretation is that in Daniel 12:4 the prophet is commanded to "seal the book, even to the time of the end" -- implying that the book referred to is not the Bible but rather a different book which cannot be read by anyone until "the end."

(There is obviously much that could be written about how the author of Revelation adapts and interprets this material from Daniel, but it is not directly to our purpose, since we are concerned with the beliefs of the Jews before Revelation was written.)

In any case, whatever belief about scripture and eternal life is being referenced here, Jesus seems to distance himself from it -- "in them ye think ye have eternal life."

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[40] And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. [41] I receive not honour from men. [42] But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you. [43] I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. [44] How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?

I think the point of this passage is that Jesus was rejected specifically because he claimed to be God's son and representative. If he had made no claim to divinity but simply "come in his own name" as a rabbi, he would have been more warmly received.

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[45] Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. [46] For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. [47] But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

Jesus again claims to be the Taheb, the prophet like unto Moses whose coming is prophesied in Deuteronomy 18:15-19. This idea that those who do not believe Moses will not believe Jesus either also occurs in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16.

[29] Abraham saith unto him, "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them."

[30] And he said, "Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent."

[31] And he said unto him, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

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A somewhat-related digression

The main thrust of this passage in John 5 is that whatever evidence people require that Jesus is who is is, God provides -- even though none of it is necessary and none of it can ever be sufficient. You want the testimony of holy men? Miracles? Voices from heaven? The words of the prophets? The words of Moses himself, the man of God? Granted, all granted -- but the only true ground for belief is the divine Logos abiding in you.

It is hard not to be reminded of this wonderfully lyrical episode from the Book of Kings (1 Kgs. 19:9-12).

[9] And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, and he said unto him, "What doest thou here, Elijah?"

[10] And he said, "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away."

[11] And he said, "Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord."

And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind:

and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake:

[12] And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire:

and after the fire a still small voice.

It is worth keeping in mind that this statement, "the Lord was not in the fire," comes shortly after the famous episode in which, having first challenged the 450 prophets of Baal to do the same, Elijah calls down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones of the altar. "And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God" (1 Kgs. 18:29). Well, we see how long that lasted! In the very next chapter, Elijah is once more all alone in his faith and is praying for the Lord to take away his life. The Lord, despite the people's immediate reaction to the miracle, was not in the fire.

"The Lord was not in the wind" -- but he was, wasn't he? "The Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord." The text is not saying that the wind had nothing to do with the Lord -- it was apparently caused by him, directly and miraculously, just like the fire from heaven that consumed the altar. But it was not him; he was not in it -- and those who saw it did not really see him and were not really converted. I discussed this in my notes on John 1, commenting on the seemingly false statement that "no man hath seen God at any time."

God as such cannot be seen even in principle, because divinity has nothing whatever to do with being a physical object that produces or reflects light. Even those who saw Jesus Christ face to face saw just that: his face, and other parts of his physical body. That is, they may have seen directly that he was a man, but they could not have seen, in the same direct sense, that he was God. That in him which made him God could not be seen. Even those who saw him work miracles saw only that: a man with paranormal powers, which is not at all the same thing as God. . . . No conceivable sort of empirical observation could ever, even in principle, amount to an observation of God qua God.

"He be not far from every one of us . . . for we are also his offspring" (Acts 17:27-28). "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation . . . for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21). We can know God as God only because -- and only to the extent that -- his nature resonates with something in our own, with the spark of divinity within. "He called them gods, unto whom the word of God came" (John 10:35), because ultimately the divine Logos can come to none other. "Deep calleth unto deep . . . and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life" (Ps. 42:7-8).

William Blake alludes to 1 Kings 19 in the dedication of The Ghost of Abel -- a dedication that cut me to the quick when I first read it years ago, back when I was a bloviating atheist, because the phrase "Lord Byron in the Wilderness" punctured with voodoo-doll precision the rather ridiculous self-image I was then entertaining.

To Lord Byron in the Wilderness:

WHAT doest thou here, Elijah?
Can a Poet doubt the Visions of Jehovah? Nature has no Outline,
But Imagination has. Nature has no Tune, but Imagination has.
Nature has no Supernatural, and dissolves: Imagination is Eternity.

William Blake was always right. Change my mind.