Living water, the Holy Ghost, and Jesus as Elisha (Notes on John 7:37-39)

Jesus is in Jerusalem during the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles. His attendance at the feast was a surprise -- he had told his brothers he wasn't going to attend, let the Judaeans spend a few days asking, "Where is he?" and then finally made a public appearance on or around the fourth day. Now, on the seventh and last day of the feast, he makes another appearance.

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[37] In the last day, that great day of the feast,

The seventh and last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) is Hoshana Rabbah, the Great Supplication. On this day (according to Mishnah Sukkah 4:5-6), worshipers would circle the altar seven times, to the accompaniment of trumpet blasts, and recite Psalm 118:25, "Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity." This was supposed to recall the miraculous fall of the walls of Jericho, and also the seven Hebrew words of Psalm 26:6, "I will wash mine hands in innocency: So will I compass [i.e., circle] thine altar, O Lord." Furthermore, "There was a unique custom on the seventh day. They would bring palm branches to the Temple and place them on the ground at the sides of the altar, and that seventh day of Sukkot was called: The day of the placing of palm branches."

I mention all this by way of background, in case it should turn out to have any symbolic relevance to Jesus' words and actions on this day.

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Jesus stood and cried, saying, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. [38] He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

No passage in the Old Testament says anything about living water flowing from the belly of the believer, so what is Jesus referring to here? Well, the lack of punctuation in the Greek original allows for quite a few different readings.

Reading A: "'If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink,' he that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said. Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

Reading B: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. 'He that believeth on me,' as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

Reading C: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink, he that believeth on me. As the scripture hath said, 'Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.'"

In Reading A, the "scripture" Jesus is referring to is presumably Isaiah 55:1 -- "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters" -- of which v. 37 is a tolerably close paraphrase.

In Reading B, the scripture reference is simply "he that believeth on me," which could be a paraphrase of any number of Old Testament passages. If Jesus had one in particular in mind, my best guess would be Jeremiah 17:5-8, which says that those who trust in men will be thirsty, but those who trust in the Lord will have plenty of water.

Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.

Readings A and B, as well as the King James reading, say that it is from the believer's belly that the living water will flow. Reading C allows for the possibility that Jesus is quoting a scripture about himself: "The scripture says that 'out of his (the Messiah's) belly shall flow rivers of living water.' Therefore, anyone who is thirsty can come to me (the Messiah) and drink." I can't find any scripture that actually says that, though, and overall I think we should understand the living water to be flowing from the believer himself. This is consistent with John 4:14:

But 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.

As here in John 7, the water first comes from Jesus ("If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink") but thereafter flows from within the believer himself ("He that believeth in me . . . out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."). This idea is also present to a certain extent in the Old Testament, where those who follow the Lord will be "like a spring of water, whose waters fail not" (Isa. 58:11).

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[39] (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)

This is the author's interpretation of what Jesus meant, but I think it is a plausible one. As I have said, both Chapter 4 and Chapter 7 portray the living water as something that comes from Jesus first but thereafter flows from within the believer. In the same way, the Holy Ghost comes from God but then dwells in the Christian's heart and becomes an internal source of guidance and inspiration.

This idea that the Holy Ghost could not be given until after Jesus was "glorified" (resurrected and ascended) is based on something Jesus himself says later in the Gospel:

Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you (John 16:7).

Was the Holy Ghost something new that was given after Jesus "departed" and was "glorified," or was it the return of something old that was paused during Jesus' mortal life? Does the Holy Ghost appear in the Old Testament? There are only two occurrences of "holy spirit" in the OT. The first is Psalm 51:11, quoted below in its poetic context (vv. 10-12).

Create in me a clean heart, O God;

    and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence;

    and take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation;

    and uphold me with thy free spirit.

I think it is tolerably clear in context that "thy holy spirit" is parallel with "a right spirit" and "thy free spirit," and that none of these refers to the Holy Ghost in anything like the Christian conception. The penitent (for this is one of the Penitential Psalms) is asking the Lord to make him a good person, to put a good spirit in him -- "thy" spirit because it comes from God, but still the Psalmist's own spirit, not the literal indwelling Spirit of God himself. This was apparently the understanding of the King James translators as well, as they left "holy spirit" uncapitalized.

The second reference is in Isaiah 63:10-12, which is also poetry.

But they rebelled,

    and vexed his holy Spirit:

therefore he was turned to be their enemy,

    and he fought against them.

Then he remembered the days of old,

    Moses, and his people, saying,

Where is he that brought them up out of the sea

    with the shepherd of his flock?

where is he that put his holy Spirit within him?

That led them by the right hand of Moses

    with his glorious arm,

dividing the water before them,

    to make himself an everlasting name?

In the first reference, "his holy Spirit" pretty clearly refers to God. The pronouns in the second reference are a bit ambiguous, but the most likely reading is "he (God) that put his (God's) holy Spirit within him (either Moses or Israel)."

If we include references that don't use the word "holy," we can find references to the "spirit of God" or "spirit of the Lord" entering or "coming upon" Joseph (Gen. 41:38), Bezaleel (Ex. 31:3; 35:31), Balaam (Num. 24:2), Othniel (Judg. 3:10), Gideon (Judg. 6:34), Jephthah (Judg. 11:29), Samson (Judg. 14:6, 19; 15:14), Saul (1 Sam. 10:6, 10; 11:6; 19:23), David (1 Sam. 16:13), Saul's messengers (1 Sam. 19:20), Azariah (2 Chron. 15:1), Jahaziel (2 Chron. 20:14), Zechariah (2 Chron. 24:20), and probably several others. (I have excluded ambiguous references, such as those in Job and Isaiah.)

In the Gospel of Luke, the Holy Ghost "falls upon" or "fills" John the Baptist (1:15), Mary (1:35), Elisabeth (1:41), Zacharias (1:67), Simeon (2:25-26) -- all technically before the birth of Jesus, and so consistent with the idea that the activity of the Holy Ghost was suspended during his mortal life. John the Baptist is almost certainly an exception, though. An angel tells John's father that John "shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb." This would be a strange thing to say if the Holy Ghost were going to leave John as soon as Jesus was born -- especially given that John was only about six months older than Jesus!

And of course the most obvious exception to "no Holy Ghost during Christ's mortality" is Christ himself. Luke says this most explicitly: At Jesus' baptism, "the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him . . . and Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness" (Luke 3:22, 4:1). In the other Gospels, what fell on Jesus at his baptism is called the "Spirit of God" (Matt. 3:16) or just "the Spirit" (Mark 1:10, John 1:32-33).

Only the Fourth Gospel explicitly says that the Holy Ghost could not be given until after Jesus' death and glorification, but the other three Gospels are more or less consistent with this. Acts (a continuation of Luke) relates how the disciples received the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, shortly after the Ascension -- and it is implied, if not stated directly, that this was something new, which they had not received during Jesus' mortal ministry.

Nowhere is it said that anyone other than Jesus himself received the Holy Ghost during Jesus' mortal life -- but John, having received it in the womb, before Jesus was born, presumably retained it even while Jesus was alive. Can it be a coincidence, then, that Jesus received the Holy Ghost when he was baptized by John? Was John, prior to baptizing Jesus, "full of the Holy Ghost" in some unique and unprecedented way? ("A prophet?" Jesus had said of him. "Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet." What did that "much more" mean?) And at Jesus' baptism, did this unique gift pass from John into Jesus? ("He must increase, but I must decrease.") Jesus said that John was in some sense Elijah, and one of the things Elijah is famous for is passing on "a double portion of his spirit" to his successor, Elisha (see 2 Kgs. 2) -- and this even took place at the River Jordan, the very place where Jesus was baptized! The names Elisha and Jesus have the same meaning, except that a different name of God is used. (Elisha means "My God is salvation"; Jesus means "Yahweh is salvation." Elijah, very neatly, means "My God is Yahweh.") 

The author of the Fourth Gospel writes of Jesus that "God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand" (John 3:34-35). Is this a subtle reference to Elisha's "double portion" of prophetic spirit? Elisha received a double portion of the spirit that had been in Elijah, but Jesus received the whole -- an infinitely greater portion -- of the Holy Spirit that had been in the new Elijah, John. And could that somehow be the reason that the Holy Ghost was not available to anyone else while Jesus was alive -- that he had "all of it"? This is a strange thought, as we are not accustomed to thinking of God as being limited in such ways, but it seems like a possibility worth exploring.

We are in the habit of seeing Jesus as a new Moses and a new David. A "new Elisha" is not an idea that comes readily to mind, partly because Elisha, despite supposedly receiving a double portion of Elijah's spirit, didn't really outshine Elijah in anything like the way that Jesus outshone John, and therefore seems like a relatively minor prophet. It makes perfect sense, though, that Jesus would symbolically be Elisha to John's Elijah, and I have already noted that the feeding of the five thousand, particularly as told in the Fourth Gospel, alludes unmistakably to that prophet.

I'm not sure yet where this line of thinking is going to lead. I'm just throwing out ideas and trying to connect some dots.

I was going to do the rest of Chapter 7, but I think this post is long enough as it is.

Jesus preaches the Bible in the Temple (Notes on John 7:14-24)

Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. He went to the feast secretly, after first telling his brothers that he wasn't going, and didn't make a public appearance until the middle of this seven-day celebration.

[14] Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught.

[15] And the Jews marvelled, saying, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"

From the reaction, it is clear that Jesus' teaching involved reading aloud from the Torah or other scripture.

The literacy rate among Jews of Jesus' time was very low -- estimates are generally in the neighborhood of 3% -- and was probably nearly zero in a small town like Nazareth. The Talmudic Tractate of the Scribes explains how Torah readings are to be done in a town with only one literate citizen (he reads seven times, rather than having seven people read), so that was apparently not an uncommon situation. If Jesus had been a carpenter (Mark 6:3) or a carpenter's son (Matt. 13:55), his illiteracy would have been taken for granted.

The Gospel offers no answer to the Jews' question. I suppose the text is trying to imply that Jesus was miraculously able to read without having been taught. It is also possible that he had been taught to read (perhaps by someone who recognized him as an extraordinary child) but that this was not public knowledge. Another possibility is that he was not reading at all but reciting from memory texts that he had surely heard read in the synagogue many times. (This is apparently what John the Baptist did; he quoted Isaiah, but in a way that suggests he was illiterate.)

It will of course be tempting to try to deduce precisely what text Jesus read in the temple, though this is probably a fool's errand.

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[16] Jesus answered them, and said, "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. 

Jesus says, just after surprising his audience by reading from the Bible, that his teachings are not his own but God's. This implies that the text he chose showed that the distinctive teachings for which he was being criticized were actually not new but were in the Bible.

At this time Jesus is under attack for healing a cripple on the Sabbath and telling him to pick up his mat and walk, violating the injunction to "bear no burden on the sabbath day" (Jeremiah 17:21). Worse, Jesus defended himself by saying, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17) -- a reply which seems to reject the whole principle of not working on the Sabbath and "said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18).

My best guess, then, is that Jesus read from the second chapter of Malachi.

[1] And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you.

[2] If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the Lord of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.

[3] Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it.

[4] And ye shall know that I have sent this commandment unto you, that my covenant might be with Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.

[5] My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them to him for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name.

[6] The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips: he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity.

[7] For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.

[8] But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the Lord of hosts.

[9] Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.

[10] Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?

This is one of the few possible references to God as Father in the Old Testament. My own reading is that "one father" referred to is Abraham, not God. The other reading is also possible, though, and in any case Jesus was not exactly a stickler for "original intent." Later during this same visit to Jerusalem, when Jesus calls the Jews children of the devil, they retort, "we have one Father, even God" (John 8:41). It would be appropriate if they were throwing Jesus' own proof-text back at him.

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[17] If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

A closer translation would be "If any man wants to do his will." The noun and verb translated will are forms of the same Greek word (θέλῃ τὸ θέλημα αὐτοῦ ποιεῖν). You don't have to do God's will in order to know of the doctrine, which is fortunate, since none of us consistently does God's will; you just have to want to do God's will. Once you have that sincere intention to do the will of God, God will enable you to know what that will is.

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[18] He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.

This is another reason for my choosing Malachi 2 as Jesus' probable text. Malachi has the Lord insist that the priests "give glory unto my name" (Mal. 2:2) and holds Levi up as an example because "the law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips." The word translated iniquity is ἀδικία in the Septuagint, the same word translated unrighteousness in John 7:18.

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[19] Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill me?"

[20] The people answered and said, "Thou hast a devil: who goeth about to kill thee?"

Malachi wrote, "Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" (Mal. 2:10). Jesus calls his antagonists out for breaking the Law of Moses by treacherously going about to kill him.

This is one of the few references to demon possession in the Fourth Gospel. "Thou hast a devil" clearly means something like, "You're crazy." The insincerity of this retort is evident a few verses later, when the people ask each other, "Is not this he whom they seek to kill?" (v. 25).

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[21] Jesus answered and said unto them, "I have done one work, and ye all marvel. [22] Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the sabbath day circumcise a man. [23] If a man on the sabbath day receive circumcision, that the law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the sabbath day? [24] Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."

This passage from Malachi also says religious leaders have "caused many to stumble at the law" and "corrupted the covenant of Levi." Part of the Levitical law is that when a baby boy is born, "in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised" (Lev. 12:3) -- even if the eighth day happens to be the Sabbath, even though circumcision is "work."

It is not clear if the parenthetical remark is Jesus' own or that of the author, but the fact that circumcision was not "of Moses, but of the fathers" was a key part of the rabbinical justification for performing circumcisions on the Sabbath. The command to circumcise on the eighth day, though reiterated by Moses, was originally given to Abraham as part of an "everlasting covenant" (Gen. 17:7).

And God said unto Abraham, "Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child . . . that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations" (Gen. 17:9-12).

The rabbinical reasoning was that the Sabbath was not instituted until Moses, and so the commandment to Abraham could not have included any exception for the Sabbath. Since it was an "everlasting covenant," it could not have changed later; therefore, babies born on the Sabbath could and must be circumcised on the Sabbath, even though this violated the ban on "work."

Jesus' point is that the circumcision exception shows that the Sabbath laws are not absolute and can be overridden by higher duties. Malachi has God say of Levi, "My covenant was with him of life and peace." Surely healing a man who needed healing was in keeping with the overall purpose of the Law, even if it violated some legalistic details. One should keep in mind that the original complaint was not that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, but that he had commanded the healed man to carry his mat. Jesus tries to shift the focus of attention from this insignificant point to the bigger picture.

I have to say I'm feeling pretty confident about this Malachi 2 guess. I began this post with no idea what text Jesus read and little expectation of figuring it out, but now I honestly can't think of anything that fits the context better than Malachi 2.

The "fake Jew" question

I'm never one to shy away from controversy. This post is not for the easily triggered.

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In my original Notes on John 1, I confessed to being somewhat perplexed by the way Jesus greeted Nathanael: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" (John 1:47) Even the use of the term Israelite seemed odd. "Did people still call themselves Israelites in Jesus' time?" I wrote. "The term strikes me as an archaism even the first century. Weren't they all Samaritans and Jews by then?"

A few verses later, Jesus is promising that Nathanael will see "the angels of God ascending and descending" (John 1:51; cf. Gen. 28:12), a very obvious reference to the story of Jacob's Ladder. My tentative interpretation of this was that Nathanael was a true Israelite -- a man like Jacob, who is Israel -- but one who (unlike the cunning deceiver Jacob) was "without guile."

Looking at Jesus' curious statement again, though, I don't see anything implying a but. The more natural reading is to see "in whom is no guile" as emphasizing "indeed." Jesus is saying, in effect, "Behold a true Israelite, not a deceiver" -- i.e., not a fake Israelite. He was identifying Nathanael as one truly of the blood of Israel, in contrast to others who lyingly claimed Israelite descent.

This interpretation sheds some light on the otherwise puzzling exchange that follows. Nathanael asks how Jesus knows him, Jesus says he saw him under a fig tree, and Nathanael replies with, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel" (John 1:48-49). Isn't that a bizarre response? Jesus himself jokes, "Because I said unto thee, 'I saw thee under the fig tree,' believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these" (John 1:50).

But suppose Nathanael was a true Israelite by blood, that this was not common knowledge, and that most of his fellow countrymen were fake Israelites. When Jesus declared him "an Israelite indeed," and said he knew it just by looking at Nathanael sitting under a fig tree, he was demonstrating a supernatural ability to discern true Israelites just by looking at them, without any knowledge of their family background. The "King of Israel" knew his own people by intuition -- and they him, as Nathanael's response shows.

Isn't this a rather farfetched interpretation, though? I mean, fake Israelites? And real Israelites whose identity as such was a carefully guarded secret? Bear with me.

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The clearest reference to fake Israelites in the Bible is not in the Fourth Gospel but in the Revelation of John of Patmos -- a work which obviously has some connection to the Fourth Gospel, although I do not accept the traditional idea that they are the work of the same author.

In Revelation 2:9, Jesus is made to say to the angel of the church in Smyrna, "I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." The theme is revisited in the same verse of the next chapter, addressing the angel of the church in Philadelphia: "Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee."

I had always interpreted "Jews" in these verses in religious terms, as "practitioners of Judaism," because the contrast is not with the goyim but with the "synagogue of Satan." However, I don't think this really works. The primary meaning of Jew, in Greek as in English, is ethnic rather than religious. Here's something no one would ever say: "Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud said they were Jews, but they lied; they were atheists." A Christian who becomes an atheist is no longer a Christian, but a Jew who becomes an atheist -- or even a Satanist -- is still a Jew.

In Galatians 2, ethnic Jews who have converted to Christianity are still referred to as Jews. Paul says to Simon Peter, "If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?" (Gal. 2:14). Peter is still clearly considered to be a Jew even though he "lives after the manner of Gentiles" -- that is, no longer practices the Jewish religion.

With this in mind, I think we have to interpret Rev. 2:9 and 3:9 ethnically -- as referring to those who falsely claim to be Jewish by blood. The "blasphemy" in this, I suppose, has to do with the Jews' special status as God's covenant people.

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In John 8:31-44, the fake Jew question comes up again.

They [the Jews] answered him, "We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, 'Ye shall be made free?'"

Jesus answered them, " . . . I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father."

They answered and said unto him, "Abraham is our father."

Jesus saith unto them, "If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father."

Then said they to him, "We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God."

Jesus said unto them, "If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

Talk about hard sayings! Although Jesus does, confusingly, concede "I know that ye are Abraham's seed," in the rest of his speech he seems to say that the father of his interlocutors is neither Abraham nor God, but the devil. The reference to their father being "a murderer from the beginning" seems to allude to Cain -- who, according to Jewish tradition, was the son of Satan or of a fallen angel and thus only half-brother to Abel.

1 John 3:10-12 (probably by the author of the Fourth Gospel) also connects Cain with the idea of being a child of the devil.

In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.

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If many of the "Jews" of New Testament times were not really Jews at all, then what were they? Roger Hathaway proposes that they were Idumaeans, or Edomites -- that is, descendants of Jacob's brother Esau.

Edom’s descendants settled a region south of the Dead Sea, whose capital was Petra, and whose famous mountain was named Mt. Seir. About 312 BC, the Nabateans evicted the Edomites from that region, so they migrated not very far to the region of Idumea (named after Edom, also) which was in southern Judea (the land of the tribe of Judah). The Edomites created such problems for the Judeans that in 132 BC, the king of Judea, John Hyrcanus, compelled them to be circumcised and join the Jerusalem Temple religion of Judaism. They responded enthusiastically. In less that a century the Edomites had taken political control of Judea under their own Herod (appointed by Rome in 47BC), and they took over the Jerusalem Temple. They oppressed the Israelite Judeans and forced many into suburbs of poverty and small nearby towns. When Jesus was born, it was Edomites who ran the Temple and the priesthood and the entire political scene.

It was the Edomite oppression that the true Israelites from Galilee (Jesus’ home) and Samaria complained about. The word Judean is translated into English Bibles as Jews. The Edomites became the Judeans, and by following Jesus, the true Israelite sheep became Christians, never to be called Judeans again.

This more or less checks out. It is true that the Edomites were forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus in 132 BC, and it is true that the Herods were an Edomite family. It is certainly possible that a large percentage of the "Jews" of Jesus' time were at least partly of Edomite ancestry.

If what Jesus meant in John 8 was that his "Jewish" interlocutors were in fact Edomites, there remains the question of why he would say that they were not the children of Abraham, since Esau/Edom was no less a grandson of Abraham than his twin brother Jacob/Israel. The Edomites would be less purely Abrahamic than the Israelites, though, since Esau married foreign wives, while Jacob married within the Abrahamic family. Well, Jesus did concede, "I know that ye are Abrahams' seed," while maintaining that they were more truly the sons of their other ancestor, the devil (presumably by way of Cain).

Roger Hathaway speculates that Esau's foreign wives were of Cainite descent, but I think there is a case to be made that Esau himself may have been the son of a Cainite, and perhaps even of Cain himself. Certainly Jacob and Esau were very different physically, suggesting that they were only half brothers. When Esau was born, he "came out red all over like an hairy garment" (Gen. 25:25). Later, when Jacob wished to disguise himself as Esau in order to steal his blessing from their blind father Isaac, he faced the problem that "Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man" (Gen. 27:11) -- a problem he solved by covering parts of his body with hairy goatskin.

There is a persistent legend -- I had thought it peculiar to Mormonism until I encountered it in the Divine Comedy also! -- that Cain was cursed to be "a fugitive and a vagabond" forever and that he still lives today. Most Mormons will have heard the story of early Mormon apostle David Patten's 1835 encounter in Tennessee

with a very remarkable personage who had represented himself as being Cain who had murdered his brother Abel. I suddenly noticed a very strange personage walking beside me for about two miles. His head was about even with my shoulders as I sat in my saddle. He wore no clothing but was covered with hair. His skin was very dark … He said he had no home, that he was a wanderer of the Earth. He said he was a very miserable creature, that he earnestly sought death, but could not die and his mission was to destroy the souls of men … I rebuked him in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the virtue of the Holy Priesthood and commanded him to go hence and he immediately departed out of my sight.

From this story -- quoted by Spencer W. Kimball in the once widely read Miracle of Forgiveness -- comes the Mormon folk belief that Bigfoot is Cain. I do not believe that Patten made up the story. If he had, he would have described Cain rather differently, in keeping with the then-current belief that Cain was the ancestor of the Negroes. Although Patten does say that "his skin was very dark," being "covered with hair" is scarcely a feature one associates with that race. (As Joe Biden famously pointed out, black kids find "hairy legs" something of a novelty!)

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Coming back to Nathanael, I have said that one interpretation of his conversation with Jesus in John 1 is that Nathanael's identity as "an Israelite indeed" was a secret, and that Jesus' seemingly supernatural ability to discern Nathanael's ancestry is what convinced Nathanael that Jesus was the Son of God and the King of Israel.

I have discussed a similar case, of Israelite ancestry as a carefully guarded secret, in my 2014 post "Lehi's people." In the Book of Mormon, the patriarch Lehi does not know his own ancestry until he obtains the brass plates from Laban. So important are these brass plates that Lehi's son Nephi eventually resorts to murder to obtain them. Here is the secret they contain:

And it came to pass that my father, Lehi, also found upon the plates of brass a genealogy of his fathers; wherefore he knew that he was a descendant of Joseph; yea, even that Joseph who was the son of Jacob, who was sold into Egypt, and who was preserved by the hand of the Lord, that he might preserve his father, Jacob, and all his household from perishing with famine.

And they were also led out of captivity and out of the land of Egypt, by that same God who had preserved them.

And thus my father, Lehi, did discover the genealogy of his fathers. And Laban also was a descendant of Joseph, wherefore he and his fathers had kept the records (1 Ne. 5:14-16).

We are not told how closely related Lehi and Laban were, only that they were both descendants of Joseph -- something that Laban knew but Lehi did not. It appears that Laban's family had kept genealogical records not only for their own line of descent from Joseph, but for other branches of the family as well. They knew Lehi's ancestry better than Lehi himself did -- and were willing to go to extreme measures to keep that information out Lehi's hands!

And [Lehi's son Laman] desired of Laban the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, which contained the genealogy of my father.

And behold, it came to pass that Laban was angry, and thrust him out from his presence; and he would not that he should have the records. Wherefore, he said unto him: Behold thou art a robber, and I will slay thee (1 Ne. 3:12-13).

Just as Laban was willing to kill to keep the secret out of Lehi's hands, so were Lehi's children willing to kill to obtain it. In one of the most shocking scenes in the Book of Mormon, Nephi decapitates the unconscious Laban and steals the plates, believing that God has justified him in so doing.

In my post about Lehi, I point to evidence that both he and Laban were Egyptians, descendants of the half-Egyptian sons of Joseph, and that their ancestors were left behind in the Exodus. Lehi's family apparently later converted to Judaism without realizing that they were Israelites by blood, whereas Laban's family had kept careful records and knew who they were and who their kinsmen were. Lehi's family would have remained ignorant had Lehi not had a dream from the Lord telling him that Laban had a record of their ancestors and that they needed to obtain it.

All this happened about 600 years before Christ, centuries before the forced conversion of the Edomites, and in that way is not directly relevant to Nathanael's situation. Still, the similarities are striking. Nathanael, like Laban, seemed to be privy to secret information about his own Israelite ancestry.

Why would Israelite ancestry need to be kept secret? And why, like Laban, attempt to keep the secret even from fellow Israelites? And does it really matter that much who's an Israelite by blood and who isn't? I don't have answers to those questions, but they're certainly worth thinking about.

Hard sayings (Notes on John 6:59-71)

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son."
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on!"

-- Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"

Jesus has just announced, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you" (John 6:53). Since the most basic meaning of son of man is just "man" (the singular of children of men), this essentially means, "Except ye eat human flesh and drink human blood . . . ." That he later clarified that he meant himself, not just any old human, doesn't really make this statement any less disturbing. He concludes, "he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is that bread which came down from heaven: . . . he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever" (John 6:57-58).

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[59] These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. [60] Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, "This is an hard saying; who can hear it?"

When I started this blog, I actually considered "Hard Sayings" as a possible name.

The disciples' complaint could be translated as, "This is difficult; who can understand it?" or, "This is offensive; who can listen to it?" The latter seems a more likely reading to me. As Mark Twain famously quipped, "It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand." Cannibalism, even as a metaphor for something spiritual, is pretty shocking -- and let's not forget that for much of Christendom even today, it's not a metaphor at all; that many of the faithful participate in a ceremony in which they believe they are literally eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus of Nazareth.

Even Jesus' own disciples balk at such an outrageous statement -- as he must have known they would. And, as usual, Jesus makes no attempt to explain himself or to couch his teachings in more acceptable terms. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that he was intentionally being offensive and confusing, that these "hard sayings" were a sort of test -- not nearly as extreme as God's commanding Abraham to murder his own son (Gen. 22) or Nephi to decapitate an unconscious man (1 Ne. 4), but not really qualitatively different. His disciples face a stark choice: accept the unacceptable, or stop following Jesus.

Nephi actually committed the commanded murder; Abraham was spared by a last-minute "just kidding" from God. Had the angel not stopped him, would Abraham have gone through with it? Should he have? I don't want to rewrite Fear and Trembling here, but these are extremely important questions. Trying to put myself in the sandals of Jesus' early disciples, I can think of five possible reactions.

1. Jesus has already shown himself to be good and trustworthy. Therefore, if he says cannibalism is good, cannibalism is good. Pass the human blood.
2. Jesus has already shown himself to be good and trustworthy. Therefore, he can't possibly mean what he appears to mean here. I can continue to follow him, confident that he will never really ask me to eat his flesh or drink his blood.
3. Cannibalism is so obviously evil that this proves Jesus was a fraud all along and that his "miracles" were from the devil. I should stop following him immediately.
4. This shows that Jesus is a complex character, capable of both great good and great evil. I can still learn what I can from him but clearly need to take everything with a grain of salt.
5. This shows that Jesus is beyond good and evil, embodying the extremes of both -- and that's, like deep.

Option 1 is exemplified by Nephi and perhaps Abraham.

Option 2 is generally how I have been approaching Jesus and his teachings on this blog. If the Gospel represents him saying or doing anything clearly wrong, I assume that I have misunderstood or that the text is corrupt.

Option 3 is my usual approach to contemporary religious leaders and institutions. Say or do as much good as you like, but you fail one litmus test and I'm writing you off as a servant of Satan.

Option 4 is my attitude to certain historical figures such as Moses, David, and Joseph Smith.

In my hot youth, when George the Third was king, I would have found Option 5 dangerously attractive. I remember how fascinated I was, when I started reading Stephen King's The Green Mile, by the character of John Coffey -- a seemingly gentle man who had mysterious healing powers but was, equally mysteriously, capable of murdering children -- and how disappointing it was to discover that Coffey was innocent and that the murders had actually been committed by the novel's least relatable character. (It was extremely naïve not to have seen that coming a green mile away.) That was my first and last Stephen King novel. I felt cheated. I think Judas Iscariot may have been an Option 5 guy.

It seems clear, then, that there is no "rule" for dealing with hard sayings; they call for spiritual discernment on a case-by-case basis. That was perhaps Jesus' purpose in saying such things: to jolt his listeners out of their respective dogmatic slumbers and force them to exercise their spiritual discernment.

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[61] When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, "Doth this offend you? [62] What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? [63] It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Jesus' retort -- "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?" -- reminds us that the murmurers have been saying not only, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" (v. 52) but also, "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?'" (v. 42).

Jesus then proceeds to flatly contradict his other hard saying. He has just said, "If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh" (v. 51) and, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man . . . ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh . . . hath eternal life" (vv. 53-54). Now he says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth [i.e. gives life]; the flesh profiteth nothing."

Is Jesus explaining his hard saying? One way of interpreting v. 63 would be, "I obviously didn't mean flesh literally, since it is the spirit that gives life. The words that I speak are spirit and life, so when I said 'eat my flesh' I really just meant 'hear my words.'"

But then why mention flesh in the first place? If all he wanted to say was that his words, not the manna of Moses, had the power to give life, why not just say so? He could have quoted Deuteronomy, as Matthew (4:4) and Luke (4:4) say he did when tempted by the devil:

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live (Deut. 8:3).

Again, Jesus is deliberately being offensive and hard to understand, and his purpose is apparently to challenge his disciples. He is demonstrating what he had said earlier (John 6:29): that believing the messenger of God is work and requires active thinking and wrestling, not mere passive assent. Again, one thinks of a Zen master propounding koans.

"To live forever," said the Master, "you must eat my flesh and drink my blood."

"Eat your flesh!" said the student. "But how can we do that?"

"And why would you want to?" said the Master. "Only spirit can make you live forever. Flesh is useless."

At that moment, the student was enlightened.

I'm not enlightened yet, at least not about this.

Another thought: Is Jesus' confusing statement in v. 63 -- about flesh, spirit, life, and his words -- related to the prologue to this Gospel (1:14) -- "the Word was made flesh"? Not that that really clears anything up.

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[64] "But there are some of you that believe not." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. [65] And he said, "Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father."

The assertion that Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him is the author's inference, not something Jesus himself said. Judas was not, I think, one of those "that believed not."

Again Jesus emphasizes that only God -- only the divine spark in man, intuiting and responding to the divine in Jesus, deep calling to deep -- can cause a man to follow him. These hard sayings -- offensive, self-contradictory nonsense by any human standard -- are proof of that. Anyone who had been following Jesus for empirical or intellectual reasons ("the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom") would have been put off by them, leaving only those guided by spiritual intuition.

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[66] From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.

[67] Then said Jesus unto the twelve, "Will ye also go away?"

This is the first mention in this Gospel of "the Twelve," who are introduced without explanation. As so often, the reader is assumed to have basic background information about Jesus. Since there is no explanation, we are left to guess what made the Twelve different from the other disciples.

Mark says that "he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have power to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils" (Mark 3:14-15), and Matthew and Luke say essentially the same thing. The Fourth Gospel says nothing like this. One possible reading of vv. 66-67 is simply that almost all of his disciples left him, so that only twelve remained.

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[68] Then Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. [69] And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God."

[70] Jesus answered them, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?"

[71] He spake of Judas Iscariot the son of Simon: for he it was that should betray him, being one of the twelve.

Ignore v. 71 for a moment, since it is the author's interpretation of what was said. Jesus asks the Twelve a question, one of them (Simon Peter) answers, and Jesus' reply is, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?" The most Gricean interpretation of this would be that Jesus is referring to Peter, not Judas, and presumably expressing disapproval of his answer. If it seems fantastic that Jesus would have called one of his closest disciples "a devil," keep in mind that the Synoptics record the same thing: "But he turned, and said unto Peter, 'Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men'" (Matt. 16:23, see also Mark 8:33). The author, writing with the benefit of hindsight after Judas's betrayal, may have read into Jesus' remark a meaning that was not intended.

There is a similar ambiguity in John 13:10-11, when Jesus says to the Twelve, "Ye are clean, but not all [of you]"; the author offers the gloss, "For he knew who should betray him; therefore said he, 'Ye are not all clean'" -- but Jesus was once again responding to Simon Peter and not to Judas.

Or the author may have been right, and Jesus may have been referring to Judas in these two instances. After all, it's hard to find anything offensive or "Satanic" in what Peter says in vv. 68-69. I merely bring it up as a possible alternative reading.

Whether or not Jesus had Judas in mind, Judas himself would certainly have understood it that way. In fact, I would assume that each of the Twelve would be thinking to himself, as at the Last Supper, "Lord, is it I?" (Matt. 26:22). This is what I was getting at earlier when I said "Judas Iscariot may have been an Option 5 guy" -- that is, may have embraced Jesus' hard sayings because of their shocking nature. Judas may have heard, "You are a devil, Judas, but I have chosen you. Yes, I have knowingly chosen a devil as one of my associates, for devils too have their role to play in the work of God."

Could Jesus actually have meant that? No, I don't think so. While Jesus certainly needed to die in order to complete his work, I don't believe it was necessary for him to die in the precise manner that he did, and so I don't believe Judas was in any sense doing the work of God by betraying him. What did he mean, then? Well, this may have been one more hard saying, one more unanswerable riddle for the disciples to chew on. I think it's possible that Jesus had no particular disciple in mind at all, but that the purpose of his statement was to make each of the disciples suspect himself as the "devil" and do a little soul searching.

I wonder also what the author -- the unnamed "beloved disciple," apparently one of the Twelve -- thought at the time. Did he think, "Oh, he probably means Judas. I never liked that guy" -- or did he think, "Lord, is it I?"

Walking on water (Notes on John 6:15-25)

Yongsung Kim, Walking on Water

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

 -- William Cowper, "Light Shining out of Darkness"

I mentioned in my last post that the feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle to show up in all four gospels. However, Jesus' most iconic miracle is perhaps the one that follows: walking on water. (Luke is the only gospel to omit this one.) Even today, if we want to express the idea that someone is saintly and can do the impossible, we don't say he can raise the dead or turn water to wine, but that he can walk on water. The lizard Basiliscus basiliscus is commonly known as the Jesus Christ lizard -- because it can run across water, and because walking on water is one of the most salient connotations of the name Jesus Christ.

The Fourth Gospel often contrasts Jesus with his greatest predecessor, Moses of Egypt. Moses turned water to blood; Jesus turned water to wine. Moses brought plagues; Jesus healed. Moses produced water from a stone and manna from heaven; Jesus offered living water and the bread of life. And what is Moses' most iconic miracle? Parting the Red Sea.

Chosen as instantly recognizable examples of miracles
(Two of them really happened!)

This parallel and contrast -- that Moses and Jesus both miraculously crossed the sea on foot, but in strikingly different ways -- has to be part of the meaning of this episode in the Gospel and must be borne in mind as we attempt an interpretation.

And here we go.

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[15] When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.

Ironically, they wanted to make him a king because they recognized him as the Prophet like unto Moses (considered by many to be the same person as the Messiah) -- and so Jesus went and made the Moses parallels even stronger by going up into a mountain by himself! They must have expected him to return carrying two stone tables.

Can you force someone to be a king? Well, yes, I suppose you can. If everyone's following you, then you're their leader whether you like it or not.

What would "making him a king" have entailed? Assuming the Jews would have done things by the book, it would mean taking him to Jerusalem to be anointed (the equivalent of being crowned) by the high priest. They were apparently confident that the high priest would be willing to do this, so they must have thought they had rock-solid proof that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. Of course, openly declaring a King of the Jews would invite immediate and merciless reprisal from the Romans, so they must have been confident that Jesus could defeat them. This is further evidence that the feeding of the five thousand was not the "miracle" of everyone sharing their food but rather a miracle in the strict sense of an apparent violation of the laws of nature. After seeing it, they believed that Jesus could do anything -- including calling down fire from heaven on the Roman forces or whatever should turn out to be necessary. They thought he was unstoppable.

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[16] And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, [17] And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.

Apparently they waited for several hours for Jesus to come down the mountain -- and when he didn't, they just left without him! Why did no one go up into the mountain to look for him? Superstitious dread, I would assume. When Moses -- or a second Moses, which amounts to the same thing -- goes up a mountain and tells you not to follow him, you don't follow him. Just leaving seems strange, too, but what else could they do? Sleep there in the open air, with no food and no magical loaf-multiplier? And for all they knew, Jesus was going to be up on that mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. So they went home.

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[18] And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew.

[19] So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

The distance they had rowed from the shore was about three or four miles. The Sea of Galilee is 13 miles long and 8 miles wide -- so, depending on the direction they were going, they may have been near the center of the sea, as far from shore as possible.

The "great wind" mentioned in v. 18 must be kept in mind. Jesus was not walking across a calm sea as across a frozen lake but was negotiating an ever-changing landscape of churning waves. Even with a magical ability to walk on water without breaking the surface, this would have been extremely difficult. Think of covering three or four miles that way!

The question is why Jesus chose to travel in this extraordinary way. Why not fly? Why not teleport? For that matter, why not just take a boat like a normal person? Why work a miracle at all? It seems out of character for Jesus to work a miracle for his own convenience, one that seemingly helps no one but himself. Therefore, it wasn't for his own convenience and was for the benefit of others. This is confirmed by the fact that he didn't just walk across the sea to Capernaum but to the ship where his disciples were. The whole point was for them to see him walking on water. This wasn't just Jesus using his super powers to devise a more efficient means of transportation; this was "prophetic theater" in the tradition of his great Hebrew predecessors. Walking on water was symbolic. It meant something. And, as I have said, what it meant surely had some reference to Moses and the parting of the Red Sea.

So what did the parting of the Red Sea mean? It must have symbolized the Creation, as told by Moses himself.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. . . . And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. . . . And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so (Genesis 1:2, 6, 9).

Moses' Creation story drew on -- and radically reinterpreted -- the Mesopotamian creation myth, in which Marduk fought and triumphed over the salt sea, personified as the monster Tiamat (cognate with Hebrew tehom, "the deep," and cousin to the biblical monsters Rahab and Leviathan). After defeating Tiamat, he "split her in two like a dried fish" (Enuma Elish IV.137) and divided the waters from the waters, creating a space between them where men and cattle and creeping things could live.

The salt sea, for the Mesopotamians as for all ancient peoples, represented pure chaos. Marduk created a space in the midst of this chaos where order could be established. This triumph of order over chaos is taken to its logical conclusion in Revelation 21, where John of Patmos sees the New Jerusalem descend from heaven in the form of a crystalline cube, spotless and geometrically perfect, to a purified earth where "there was no more sea" (21:1).

"The earth is full of thy riches," sings the Psalmist. "So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein" (Ps. 104:24-26). For Jesus' other great forerunner, King David, the great sea-monster of chaos was not necessarily something to be killed and filleted.

"Man," says Jesus as Luke (12:14) tells it, "who made me . . . a divider?"

I've read a fair bit of kooky channeled material in my day, and one of these books -- I believe it was, ahem, Pleiadian Perspectives on Human Evolution by the late Amorah Quan Yin -- featured the arresting image of Jesus and Mary, during their sojourn in Egypt, crossing the Nile by walking across the backs of swimming crocodiles. Moses never did that! Neither, of course, did Jesus, but the image captures some of the inner meaning of walking on the sea.

Jesus was at home on the sea, had no quarrel with Tiamat. He walked, sure-footed, across the living flux of Creation. He embodied "the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Cor. 3:3). Doesn't this image of him walking calmly across the raging waves capture succinctly the difference between him and Moses, and how incomparably greater than Moses he was and is?

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[20] But he saith unto them, "It is I; be not afraid."

[21] Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.

They had been between four and ten miles from their destination, but after Jesus entered the ship, they were there immediately.

Is this just a hyperbolic way of saying that the remainder of the voyage went quickly and smoothly, that they reached their destination "in no time"?

Did Jesus magically make the ship move with preternatural speed, or even teleport? If so, it underscores my point that walking on water was prophetic theater, not Jesus' most efficient way of getting from Point A to Point B.

Or was this something more along the lines of the "missing time" phenomenon reported by those who have had close encounters? They let Jesus into the ship, and the next thing they knew, there they were at their destination, with no conscious memory of what had occurred in the intervening time. How like a dream it had been! And yet there they were, on the other side, and Jesus was with them.

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[22] The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereinto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone; [23] (Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:)

[24] When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.

[25] And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, "Rabbi, when camest thou hither?"

Tiberias was in Galilee, on the west side of the sea, but some distance to the south of Capernaum.

Verse 23 may also be translated, "Then some boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks" (NRSV, emphasis mine). The people saw the disciples leave in the only boat (or ship; the author seems not to distinguish very clearly between the two), without Jesus, and yet they couldn't find Jesus, either. So later, when some ships from Tiberias arrived, they took those ships to Capernaum.

It's interesting that the site of the feeding of the five thousand is referred to as "The place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks" -- as if his giving thanks were the most salient aspect of the whole story!

Jesus in Samaria (Notes on John 4:27-42)

Continuing on from the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman:

[27] And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?

Since none of the disciples witnessed Jesus' conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, the account in the Gospel must be based on information from either Jesus or the woman, or else on hearsay. Since the disciples were astonished to see Jesus conversing with a Samaritan, we can assume that they themselves would never do such a thing, and that the Gospel account is therefore not based on a direct interview with the woman. We are also told here that the disciples didn't ask Jesus any questions about his conversation with the woman. It's possible that Jesus later told them the whole story, but it seems more likely that the account we have is hearsay, based on rumors circulating in Samaria about how he "told her everything that ever she did." Some of the more sensational details, then, such as the five husbands, may be nothing more than rumor, but I would assume that the author of the Gospel, who knew Jesus and his ideas well, would have captured the latter fairly accurately in his record. Whether or not the actual conversation was much like the Gospel account, I think we can be fairly confident that the statements about living water, Mt. Gerizim and Jerusalem, etc. represent actual teachings of Jesus.

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[28] The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, [29] Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? 

[30] Then they went out of the city, and came unto him.

Remember that the Samaritans acknowledged no prophets other than Moses and the Messiah (Taheb), and many held that even the Messiah would not be a second prophet but would be the second coming of Moses himself. From the Samaritan point of view, if Jesus was a prophet -- as his paranormal knowledge of the woman's life would suggest -- he could only be the prophet, the Messiah himself.

I have discussed elsewhere the Samaritan expectation that the Messiah would "tell us all things" -- which apparently derives from an alternative reading of Deuteronomy 18:18.

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[31] In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.

[32] But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.

[33] Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?

[34] Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

"Meat" here just means food, with no connotation of animal flesh.

Was Jesus really like this in conversation? It seems like it would have been rather maddening! I guess the justification for this mode of discourse -- deliberately confusing his interlocutors, letting them talk among themselves for a minute trying to figure out what he mean, and then explaining -- is that it would have engaged the disciples' attention more fully and made the final epigram more memorable.

The characterization of the Father as "he that sent me" is distinctively Johannine. The string "sent me" occurs 34 times in the Fourth Gospel and only 7 times in the other three Gospels combined.

Finishing God's work sounds like a once-and-for-all thing -- but Jesus calls it his food. Eating food is not the grand culmination of one's life's work; it is something we have to do again and again, day after day, for as long as we live. It is interesting to juxtapose this saying with the prayer, attributed to Jesus in the Synoptics, "Give us this day our daily bread"; also with the line from Deuteronomy supposedly quoted by Jesus when tempted by Satan, "man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."

Elsewhere in the Gospel it is suggested that God's work can be "finished" more than once. Shortly before his execution (apparently at the "Last Supper") Jesus says "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4), even though few would be willing to say Jesus had already finished his work before his death. Later, on the cross, his last words are "It is finished" (19:30), but I think it's safe to say his work wasn't really finished until the resurrection -- or, for those who expect a Second Coming, not until then. Come to think of it, if we believe Moses, God's work had already been pronounced "finished" long before the time of Jesus: "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work" (Genesis 2:1-2). The belief that, pace Moses, God's work wasn't really finished until the resurrection is probably what underlies the longstanding Christian custom of keeping Sabbath on Sunday rather than on the seventh day.

Is the work of God ever really finished? The Book of Mormon prophet Nephi criticizes those who would say, "behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work" (2 Nephi 28:5). "There is no God today" is rather a striking way of putting it -- Joseph Smith anticipated Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead" by some 50 years -- but isn't a God who is done, who is never going to do anything ever again, world without end, the functional equivalent of one who no longer exists?

If the work of God can ever be completely finished, what then? An eternity of nothing to do, of hanging around, of resting on laurels? But on the other hand, supposing the work of God can't ever be finished, doesn't that reduce everything to a sort of Sisyphean futility? The only solution that works for me comes from combining the Book of Mormon with Spinoza: "Men are that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2:25), and "Joy is man's passage from a lesser to a greater perfection" (Ethics, 3, defs. 2 & 3). There is no endpoint of absolute perfection such as the Classical Theist imagines God to enjoy, but the lack of a finish line does not make the race an exercise in futility, since the joy in the passage to a greater perfection, not in the static enjoyment of absolute perfection. Another way of expressing the same point is to say that God's definitive role is not "Supreme Being" but rather Creator -- characterized not by static perfection but by continuous making-things-better. "The knowledge and power of God are expanding," says a Mormon hymn to which many a Christian might object. But of course they are; otherwise, how could he have joy?

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[35] Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. [36] And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. [37] And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. [38] I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours.

The harvest of wheat and barley (the crops being alluded to by "the fields are white") was typically in April or May, so this episode apparently took place four months earlier, in December or January.

This was a favorite passage of Joseph Smith's, alluded to again and again in the Doctrine & Covenants, apparently with reference to the work of proclaiming the gospel and "harvesting" converts. It's hard to be sure whether or not that was also the meaning originally intended by Jesus.

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[39] And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. [40] So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days.

[41] And many more believed because of his own word; [42] And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

This is one of only two places in the Bible where the title "Saviour of the world" is used; the other is in the anonymous First Epistle of John (4:14) -- called "of John" because it is almost certainly by the author of the Fourth Gospel, for whom the name John has become conventional. It seems highly likely that the author is here putting his own ideas in the mouths of the Samaritans. Neither the Jews nor the Samaritans were anticipating a savior of the world; the Taheb and the Messiah were only expected to save Israel.

The Samaritan understanding of the Messiah

My post on Jesus and the Samaritan woman raised the question of whether the Samaritans really used the term Messiah, and if so what they meant by it. A bit of digging led me to what I was looking for: a slim volume entitled The Messianic Hope of the Samaritans, consisting of a 1906 letter by Jacob ben Aaron, High Priest of the Samaritans, together with his responses to some specific questions put to him by his Protestant correspondents. I quote some relevant passages.

The reference concerning the establishment of the Second Kingdom, affirming the appearance of "THBH" [Taheb] or a Prophet at the end of time of whose appearance we have a promise, is found in Ex. xx, in the last verses, which are not found in the Torah of the Jews. It reads, "They said well. Let their consciences uphold my fear, and the keeping of my commandment, all the time: so that it may be done well unto them and their children. I shall set up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and I shall put my words into his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that the man who harkens not to the words which he speaks, I shall make him thereto responsible." These words concern the prophet in whose coming we believe. Again, "The prophet who dares to address words in my name and speaks what I have not commanded him, and he that speaks in the name of foreign gods shall be killed." The same is stated again in Deuteronomy, as also one may find in the Torah of the Jews, Deut. xviii. 15.

This passage from Deuteronomy (duplicated, apparently, in the Samaritan version of Exodus), is the sole scriptural basis for the belief in the Taheb.

The High Priest explains, with numerous scriptural quotations (and some rather strained interpretations!) that the primary role of this prophet will be to restore Israel to power in their ancestral lands, where they will rule over everything from the Nile to the Euphrates. He then lists the signs by which the prophet -- or Messiah -- may be known.

As to the Messiah, with whose coming we are promised, there are proofs and demonstrations in regard to his coming. As our learned men have explained in their voluminous commentaries, he will rise and perform miracles and demonstrations; he will uphold religion and justice. Among other proofs he will produce the following three:

1. The production of the ark of testimony, which is the greatest attestation for Israel. [. . .]

2. He will produce, at his hand, the staff which was given by the Creator (who is exalted) to our lord Moses (upon him be peace), about whose attribute a reference is made as follows: "And this shall be to thee as a sign," in order that miracles be performed thereby.

3. He must produce the omer of manna which our fathers ate, while in the wilderness, for forty years. This is the greatest proof, because, after all this period, it will be found to have undergone not the slightest change. 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. Thus the people of the second kingdom might see it and confess reverently and increase in exalting and glorifying the Creator (who is exalted), for the power of producing such a marvel.

These three proofs must be verified by the Prophet; and without them his claim would be considered illegal.

The title Messiah was used, then, for the Taheb, at least by the Samaritans of the early 20th century. The three signs generally amount to an expectation that the Messiah would do what Moses did.

The quotations that follow are from William E. Barton, reporting some questions that were put to the High Priest and his answers.

In the little treatise the Messiah was depicted as a prophet. But the Christian Messiah is spoken of as "Prophet, Priest and King." It seemed an interesting question whether the Messiah of the Samaritans were to be more than a prophet. The High Priest answers this inquiry:

"There is nothing in prophecy to say whether he will be of the priestly line or not. Some of our learned men say he will come from the children of Aaron, and be a priest. Others say that he will be of the children of Joseph and 'like unto his brethren.' My own private opinion is that he will be of the children of Joseph."

Of course the Samaritan hope is not colored by any of the Jewish memories of the throne of David, and the treatise gave no hint as to any kingly role. Asked concerning this, the High Priest answers:

"The Messiah will be a prophet, and will be acknowledged as a prophet. That will be his title, as the prophecies give it. But he will also be a king."

Asked about Genesis 3:15 and 49:55, generally understood by Christians to be Messianic prophecies, the High Priest replied that they had "no Messianic significance whatsoever."

Barton reports the High Priest's replies to several more questions.

To Christians it will be interesting to know whether the Samaritan Messiah is expected to be in any sense divine. The High Priest answers: 

"The Messiah will not be in any sense a Son of God. He will be a prophet like Moses and like his brethren, as it is told in Deut. xviii. 15-22 [. . .] This is the passage of the Torah which tells us what the Messiah will be, and I hope you will read it with a clear eye, as you always read everything." 

Another thing was asked of the High Priest, namely, what would be the attitude of the Messiah toward Christians and other nations. He answers: 

"The Messiah will be a prophet, as I have told you, and will no doubt work signs to prove his mission. There will be unusual signs and wonders, which I described in the little book. But he is to be a king, and rule the earth from Shechem, the ancient seat of power, and from his holy mountain, Gerizim. He will call all the world to acknowledge him, and they will do so. He will bring blessings to all nations that acknowledge him." 

Still one thing more was asked the High Priest as he sat in his tent while the fires were heating the ovens for the sacrifice of the lambs for the Passover, Will the Passover continue after the Messiah comes? 

He answered: 

"The Passover will continue after the Messiah comes. It is a perpetual feast. It has no reference whatever to the Messiah."

 Barton closes the volume by summarizing what the High Priest has said thus:

So far as the treatise indicates, the Samaritans do not look for any vicarious sacrifice on the part of their Messiah. His career, when he comes, would appear to be one of victory and tranquil rule, primarily religious, but with some political significance. The sacrifices are declared not to be prophetic of his mission. The passages quoted by Christians from the Pentateuch as Messianic are held not to refer to him. Practically the whole content of Samaritan Messianic prophecy appears to be derived from Deut. xviii. 15-22, in which the Messiah is a prophet like unto Moses, raised up from among the people, and one of their own brethren.

Assuming (and, yes, it is a bit of an assumption) that the beliefs of the 1st-century Samaritans were transmitted more-or-less intact to their 20th-century descendants, these comments by the High Priest help us understand what the Samaritan woman would have understood Jesus to be claiming when she said, "I know that Messias cometh," and he replied, "I that speak unto thee am he."

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.