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

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

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

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The text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Does this episode belong in the Fourth Gospel?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The nature of the Pharisees' test

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The meaning of Jesus' writing on the ground

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Also of possible relevance is Jeremiah 17:13.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jesus' response as a rhetorical riposte

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

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

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

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

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

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Jesus' response as a precept of criminal justice

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

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

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

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Jesus' response as a spiritual precept

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me (Notes on John 7:28-36)

Jesus is preaching in the Temple at the Feast of Tabernacles. The people of Jerusalem have cast doubt on his Messianic claims because "we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is" (John 7:27).

[28] Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught, saying, "Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. [29] But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me."

It is not clear if the people were audibly criticizing Jesus while he was teaching, or if we are to understand that he knew their thoughts be supernatural means.

We are told that Jesus is widely believed to be the son of Joseph (John 6:42), born in Nazareth and not Bethlehem (John 7:42). When the people say "we know this man whence he is," Jesus agrees -- "Ye both know me, and ye know whence I am." This strongly implies (contra Matthew and Luke) that Jesus really was the son of Joseph, born in Nazareth.

Jesus seems to concede that they know his parentage and place of birth, but that they still do not know fully "whence he is." This is because he was sent by God and is therefore "from" God. Since they do not know God, they cannot truly be said to know where Jesus is from. This is how Jesus reconciles the facts about himself with the expectation that "when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is": the Messiah is sent by God, and comes in a time when no man truly knows God.

This rejoinder seems to rely very heavily on the specific wording of the criticism, playing on a possible ambiguity of "whence he is." It does not address the possible biblical sources of the criticism, about being of unknown "generation" (Isa. 53:8), coming "with the clouds of heaven" (Dan. 7:13), or coming "suddenly . . . to his temple" (Mal. 3:1). This makes me think that the belief that "no man knoweth whence he is" had some other source -- perhaps an oral tradition, or perhaps some biblical text modern commentators have not yet noticed.

The Jewish expectation that the Messiah would be "unknown" is put in the mouth of Justin Martyr's Jewish interlocutor in the Dialogue with Trypho (c. AD 155-160). It is unclear whether the dialogue really took place and how closely the "Trypho" character reflects the views of the historical rabbi for whom he is named, but it seems likely that an apologetic text would, for practical reasons, address current beliefs, even if the dialogue itself is a fictional device.

In Chapter 8 of the dialogue, Trypho says,

But Christ -- if he has indeed been born, and exists anywhere -- is unknown, and does not even know himself, and has no power until Elias come to anoint him, and make him manifest to all. And you, having accepted a groundless report, invent a Christ for yourselves, and for his sake are inconsiderately perishing.

This is interesting -- the idea that the Messiah would not even know himself until he was anointed by Elijah. The Synoptics identify John the Baptist with Elijah. This identification is not present in the Fourth Gospel (in fact John specifically denies being Elijah in John 1:21), but it is interesting in the context of this Jewish expectation that John first says "there standeth one among you, whom ye know not" (John 1:26) and then later identifies this person as Jesus, saying, "I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water" (John 1:31). John believed that his role was to make the unknown Messiah known -- perhaps even to himself?

Was anointing part of John's baptismal ceremony? It is never explicitly mentioned as such, but ceremonial washing and anointing go hand in hand in the Old Testament (e.g. Ex. 29:4-7).

Later, in Chapter 44, Trypho makes this curious comment (the brackets are not mine but the translator's).

For we all expect that Christ will be a man [born] of men, and that Elijah when he comes will anoint him. But if this man appear to be Christ, he must certainly be known as man [born] of men; but from the circumstance that Elijah has not yet come, I infer that this man is not He [the Christ].

According to Trypho here, the Jewish expectation was not that the Messiah was to be of unknown birth or parentage; on the contrary, "he must certainly be known as man born of men." It seems likely that this was a genuine Jewish expectation, since Justin (a proponent of the Virgin Birth) would have gained nothing by putting it in the rabbi's mouth.

If the Dialogue with Trypho is any guide to the beliefs of Jesus' contemporaries, "when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is" means not that the Messiah would be a man of mysterious origin, that no one would know where he was born or who is parents were; but that until Elijah actually anointed him, no one would be able to predict who he would be. It would come as a surprise to everyone, including the newly anointed Messiah himself! The meaning of the criticism may have been: This man (presumed not yet to have been anointed by Elijah and thus not yet the Messiah) is already famous, and there are already lots of rumors that he may be the Messiah; but we know that the true Messiah will "come out of nowhere," a previously unknown figure suddenly elevated to that position by Elijah.

Why was it believed that Elijah would anoint the Messiah? The only hint of this I can find in the Old Testament is in Malachi.

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. . . . and he shall purify the sons of Levi (Mal. 3:1, 3).

There are two messengers here: The first prepares the way for the second, and this second is "the Lord" (ha-adon), possibly the Messiah. Later in Malachi, we read,

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Mal. 4:5-6).

Reading these two passages in light of each other, it is natural to conclude that the first messenger is Elijah, and that "the great and dreadful day of the Lord" is the coming of the second messenger, the Messiah.

Which of the two "shall purify the sons of Levi"? Perhaps it is Elijah. (I discuss this vis-à-vis the idea that Elijah would baptize in my notes on John 1.) Malachi 2 holds up the patriarch Levi as an example of righteousness and enjoins the priests (a subset of the "sons of Levi") to return to the ways of their great ancestor. Thus, purifying the sons of Levi could involve turning "the heart of the children to their fathers," which is what Elijah is to do. In the Torah, mere Levites (descendants of Levi but not of Aaron) were purified by water, but priests (descendants of both Levi and Aaron) were both washed and anointed. Thus we might conclude that Elijah will be washing and anointing people and preparing the way for the Messiah. Since the Messiah must himself be anointed (that being what the word messiah means), it is natural to assume that Elijah would do it.

Since Malachi 3-4 is the source of this whole "return of Elijah" thing, Malachi 3:1 remains the only convincing source of the idea that the Messiah would appear "suddenly" and not be known in advance.

As usual, Jesus is not really interested in "Bible-bashing" or refuting his critics on their own terms. He could have said, "Actually, no one knew who I was until Elijah -- who is John -- discovered me, and here I am appearing suddenly in the Temple just as prophesied." Instead, he only uses the criticism as a point of departure, and zeroes in on what is really important: You don't accept me because you don't know God.

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[30] Then they sought to take him: but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.

The Greek could mean that they tried to seize him but couldn't, or that they wanted to seize him but didn't dare. I think the latter reading is more probable. Jesus continues teaching after this, apparently still in the Temple. There is no indication that he ran away, or that anything happened to stop those who were trying to take him. My reading is that they wanted to arrest him right away but thought, as the chief priests are reported to have said on another occasion in the Synoptics, "Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people" (Matt. 26:5, cf. Mark 14:2).

The author adds, though, that the real reason Jesus was not yet arrested was providential: "his hour was not yet come." Only the Fourth Gospel has these references to Jesus' hour or time not yet having come. In John 2:4, Jesus is at first unwilling to provide wine for wedding guests because his "hour is not yet come"; however, he ends up providing the wine miraculously anyway, seemingly right away. In John 7:6-8, he says he's not going to the Feast of Tabernacles because his "time is not yet come," but he ends up going anyway a few days later. Here (John 7:30) and in John 8:20, Jesus' arrest and execution are providentially postponed until his hour has come.

It is evident that the timing of everything Jesus did was extremely important, and that a few days (going to the feast) or even hours or minutes (providing wine) could make a difference.

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[31] And many of the people believed on him, and said, "When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done?" 

[32] The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things concerning him; and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take him.

The basis of the people's belief was simple: He did lots of miracles, so he must be the Messiah. Why did the Pharisees so confidently disbelieve? Because they were steeped in scripture and the interpretative traditions that had grown up around it, and they had a long list of highly specific expectations regarding the Messiah. We saw this in John 6:30, where they could still say "What sign showest thou?" after witnessing miraculous healings and the feeding of the 5,000, because Jesus had not yet produced the omer of manna their fathers ate in the wilderness, a specific requirement derived very indirectly from Deuteronomy.

I feel this has the makings of a good bell curve midwit meme.

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[33] Then said Jesus unto them, "Yet a little while am I with you, and then I go unto him that sent me. [34] Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come."

It seems inarguable that v. 33 refers to Jesus' coming death and subsequent ascent to Heaven. What, then, is meant by v. 34?

Since recent references to the Jews "seeking" Jesus (vv. 1, 25, 30) have referred to their seeking to kill or lay hands on him, the most natural reading is, "I'm going somewhere where you won't be able to catch me." As William W. Phelps wrote after the assassination of Joseph Smith, "Traitors and tyrants now fight him in vain . . . Death cannot conquer the hero again." Upon reflection, though it's a pretty strange thing to say before one’s death, to the very people who are going to have one killed. "You'll never be able to kill me -- I mean, you will, but only once! After that, you'll never be able to kill me again!" More to the point, why would anyone even be seeking to kill Jesus after he had already been publicly executed and was known to be already dead? He rose from the dead, true, but his enemies didn't believe that. He made several private appearances to his disciples after his resurrection, but he wasn't waltzing around Jerusalem as a public figure, inviting a second round of attempts on his life. There were plots to kill the risen Lazarus (John 12:10) but none to kill the risen Christ.

Another possible reading is that the same Jews who now want him dead will later have a change of heart and seek him as disciples, to follow him and be saved -- but that it will be too late. That can't be right, though. Repentance is always possible, and "he that seeketh findeth" (Matt. 7:8, Luke 11:10). Also, empirically, it doesn't appear that any of the Jews who plotted against Jesus had a change of heart after his death and resurrection. And if they had, the example of the anti-Christian Pharisee Saul of Tarsus, who became Saint Paul, suggests that they would have been forgiven and accepted as disciples.

Perhaps Jesus means that they will not seek him, Jesus of Nazareth, as such, but rather "the Messiah" (who is Jesus, though they do not recognize him as such). In the catastrophes to be poured out on Judaea in the decades after Jesus, particularly the sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the Jews will cry out for the Messiah to come and save them -- but no Messiah will come, because he already came, and they rejected him. This interpretation is strengthened when Jesus repeats this statement in the next chapter: "I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. . . . for if ye believe not that I am he" -- i.e., that I, Jesus, am the Messiah -- "ye shall die in your sins" (John 8:21, 24).

Jesus later says much the same thing to his own disciples: "Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, 'Whither I go, ye cannot come'; so now I say to you" (John 13:33). The crucial difference is that he only says, "ye shall seek me" -- without adding "and shall not find me" or "and shall die in your sins."

In fact, "Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me" may well be an allusion to Jeremiah.

For thus saith the Lord, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place. . . . Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart. And I will be found of you, saith the Lord: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive (Jer. 29:10-14).

In Jeremiah, "seek me and find me" refers to the Israelite exiles in Babylon praying to be returned to their homeland and God answering their prayers. After the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the Jews must have prayed similar prayers, and their hope must have been that "the Messiah" would deliver them -- but those prayers were not answered.

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[35] Then said the Jews among themselves, "Whither will he go, that we shall not find him? will he go unto the dispersed among the Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles? [36] What manner of saying is this that he said, 'Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me: and where I am, thither ye cannot come?'"

Roger Hathaway maintains that the word gentile in the Bible never means "any non-Israelite" and often specifically refers to the Israelites.

The Greek word, "ethnos" (,θvoς) means exactly the same as the Roman word, "gens." When "ethnos" (,θvoς) was used by Jesus or others, they didn't mean "non-Jews;" they meant "those of our own ethnic group: Israelite tribes." Occasionally the word referred to some other specific ethnic group, but it never meant "all nations of the world other than the Jews!"

When I first read v. 35 above, I thought it was a bit of evidence in favor of Hathaway's theory. If we understand gentile in the usual way, as meaning "non-Israelite," then the Jews are wondering if Jesus will go the those Israelites who are dispersed among the non-Israelites -- and teach the non-Israelites! Surely he would teach the dispersed, not the gentiles themselves; and if not, why mention the dispersion at all? Using Hathaway's understanding of gentile, though, they are wondering if he will go to those among their own Israelite ethnos who are dispersed and teach them. A much easier reading!

This led me back to Hathaway's article, linked above, to see if he mentioned John 7:35. Au contraire, it turns out.

The Gospel of Mark uses the word "gentile" only two times and those passages are already covered above, in Matthew. Luke uses the word five times and most are repeats of uses in Matthew. John never uses the word in his Gospel.

Checking the original Greek, I see that this is true. The word translated Gentiles in the KJV is Ἕλληνας -- "Greeks," a word which definitely can't mean "Israelites." So much for that idea!

Reference works say that the word was used broadly to refer to anyone who spoke Greek, even those who were not ethnic Greeks. Some dictionaries specify that it referred only to Greek-speaking non-Jews, but it doesn't seem as if that can be true. The only way v. 35 makes sense is if Greeks included Greek-speaking Israelites of the diaspora. (Even in Palestine, there seems to have been a great deal of Greek influence. We find plenty of Greek names in Galilee and Judaea -- Andrew, Philip, Nicodemus -- and of course the New Testament itself was written in Greek.)

It is interesting that these skeptics would have guessed that Jesus was going to go abroad and teach the dispersed Israelites in Greece and elsewhere. This suggests that they were thinking in Messianic terms despite themselves, since bringing the dispersed back to Israel was supposed to be one of the main missions of the Messiah.

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.

References to God as Father in the Old Testament

In my recently posted notes on John 5:1-18, I said, "I do not believe the Old Testament contains a single unambiguous reference to God as the Father." Having now done the tedious work of checking every single occurrence of the word "father" in the Old Testament, I find that this is a bit of an overstatement. There are possibly as many as 13 (but in my judgment only 11) verses in the Old Testament which call God "father."

God as the father of the Israelites

• "Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?" (Deut. 32:6).
• "Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting" (Isaiah 63:16).
• "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand" (Isaiah 64:8).
• "Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?" (Jeremiah 3:4).
• "They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn" (Jeremiah 31:9).
• "But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me" (Jeremiah 3:19).

God as the father of Solomon

• "He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son: and I will not take my mercy away from him, as I took it from him that was before thee" (1 Chronicles 17:12-13).
• "He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I will be his father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel for ever" (1 Chronicles 22:10).
• "And he said unto me, Solomon thy son, he shall build my house and my courts: for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father" (1 Chronicles 28:6).

God as the father of the fatherless

• "A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation" (Psalm 68:5).

God as the father of David

• "He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth" (Psalm 89:26-27).

Other possible references that I reject

• "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6). This is not a direct reference to God but the prophetic name given to a child: Pele-joez-el-gibbor-abi-ad-sar-shalom. The elements el and abi mean "God" and "father," respectively, but the name hardly amounts to an assertion that God is the Father. (There are also two minor biblical characters named Abiel, "my father is God"; I don't consider their names to be theological claims, either.)
• "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?" (Malachi 2:10). Malachi is condemning the priests for showing partiality in their ministry. I read him as saying that partiality is inappropriate for two reasons: we all have one father (i.e., we are all Israelites, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and one God has created us all. There immediately follows a reference to "the covenant of our fathers," confirming that he is talking about human ancestors rather than God.

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So references to God as father do occur in the Old Testament. Nevertheless, I consider Jesus' use of "Father" to be both quantitatively and qualitatively different from anything in the Old Testament.

The quantitative difference is glaringly obvious. God is called "father" just 11 times in the whole 23,145 verses of the Old Testament. In contrast, the Fourth Gospel alone (879 verses) calls God "Father" 122 times -- and "God" only 83 times.

The qualitative difference is that the Old Testament never uses "Father" the way it uses "God" or "Lord," as a straightforward name/title for the Deity. There are in the Old Testament such statements as "God is my rock" and "the Lord is my light" -- but these are nonce metaphors; they're not what God is called. We don't see any expressions like "keep the commandments of the Light" or "the Rock spake unto Moses" or anything like that. "Father," as used in the Old Testament, is no different in this way from "light" or "rock" or any of the other figurative designations which may from time to time be applied to God, and the King James translation reflects this by not capitalizing "father" even when it is referring to God (except in Isaiah 9:6, where the translators are confused). In the New Testament, on the other hand, "Father" is capitalized because it is what God is called -- particularly in the Fourth Gospel (122 uses of "Father" for God, vs. 67 in the other three Gospels combined).

The healing at Bethesda (Notes on John 5:1-18)

From a video of this episode by the CJCLDS

[1] After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

The text does not specify which feast it was, but the fact that Jesus went up to Jerusalem suggests that it was one of the three festivals -- Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles -- for which the Israelites were expected to made pilgrimages -- the Samaritans to Mount Gerizim, and the Jews to their own holy site, the Temple in Jerusalem. Since this Gospel elsewhere mentions by name "the Jews' passover" (John 2:13) and "the Jew's feast of tabernacles" (John 7:2), we might tentatively guess that this unspecified "feast of the Jews" was the other one, Pentecost. Pentecost is also the next festival after Passover, which fits the narrative. Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover, stayed for a while after the feast, went back to Galilee for an apparently brief stay, and then returned to Jerusalem for another feast. Pentecost, so called because it is the 50th day after Passover, seems to fit this chronology.

The fact that the author doesn't bother to name the festival, and the constant reminders that these were all festivals "of the Jews," would seem to suggest that he was writing for an audience that was not particularly Jewish. (The author himself, on the other hand, plainly was Jewish and knew the Hebrew Bible inside and out.)

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[2] Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. [3] In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. [4] For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

The passage I have italicized (vv. 3b-4) is widely considered to be an interpolation. It is absent from some of the Greek manuscripts and from the Vulgate, and many modern English translations relegate it to a footnote. However, most of the content of this interpolated passage is implied by v. 7, where we learn that the paralyzed man thought he would be healed if someone put him in the pool "when the water is troubled," but only if no one else got into the pool before he did. The only thing that v. 4 adds to this is that the troubling of the water was caused by "an angel."

What was really going on here? Judging among the possibilities is largely a matter of guesswork, but some seem more plausible than others. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind.

First, the archaeological consensus is that this pool was a manmade reservoir, fed by rainwater, which would seem to rule out hot-spring activity as the cause of the troublings and healings, and would also make it less likely that any sort of nature spirit was involved.

Second, the fact that the blind, lame, and paralyzed all confidently expected to be healed here strongly suggests that something more potent than minerals or the placebo effect was at work.

Third, the "rule" -- that only the first person to enter the water after it is troubled gets healed -- sounds like something out of a fairy tail and smacks more of the economy of faerie and the pagan world than of Heaven. To me this counts as evidence against the hypothesis that the healings were the work of an "angel" in any conventional sense of that word. (There is apparently some archaeological evidence that the pool was associated with a temple of Aesculapius -- in Jerusalem! -- which sounds about right to me.) Alternatively, this "last one in is a rotten egg" rule could just be a bit of ignorant folklore. Apparently there were scads of invalids hanging about just waiting for the waters to be troubled, so it seems likely that there would normally be several people entering the waters roughly simultaneously. If a given person was healed, he would take that to mean he had been first; if not, that someone else must have entered just a split-second before him. This would give God (or the angel, or whomever) considerable leeway to choose whom to heal while still maintaining the pool's reputation for working every time.

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[5] And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.

[6] When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, "Wilt thou be made whole?"

[7] The impotent man answered him, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me."

Jesus' question means something like, "Don't you want to be healed?"

The nature of the man's infirmity is not specified, but he apparently had some limited mobility. When he later takes up his bed and walks, this means he has been healed; but even before being healed, he was able to enter the pool unassisted, albeit not quickly enough.

It seems strange that the man was at the pool alone. Did he stagger or crawl there himself from wherever his home was? Did someone bring him there and then just leave him? Or was he attended after all, but by someone (a wife, children, elderly parents) who lacked the physical strength to put him into the water?

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[8] Jesus saith unto him, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk."

[9] And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the sabbath.

[10] The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, "It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed."

[11] He answered them, "He that made me whole, the same said unto me, 'Take up thy bed, and walk.'"

[12] Then asked they him, "What man is that which said unto thee, 'Take up thy bed, and walk?'"

[13] And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place.

It is interesting, and surely deliberate, that the healing pool so carefully established as the backdrop for this episode plays no role at all in the healing, and that Jesus never so much as mentions it. Part of the message of this episode is that whatever was going on in that pool -- whether angels or Aesculapius or just good old-fashioned superstition -- it had been superseded by Jesus and was no longer relevant.

"Bear no burden on the sabbath day" (Jeremiah 17:21). It seems pretty clear that Jesus broke the sabbath deliberately, and for no pressing reason. This man had been suffering from his condition for 38 years. What possible difference could it have made if his healing had been delayed one more day out of respect for the Law? Or Jesus could even have healed him then and there, on the sabbath, and then told him to come back for his bed the next day. Is it possible that Jesus just didn't think about the fact that it was the sabbath? He was, after all, from "Galilee of the gentiles," where they must have been less strict about such things. This seems highly unlikely to me. It's not like it was his first time in Jerusalem or interacting with "the Jews." He knew exactly what he was doing. He deliberately told the man he had healed to break the sabbath, knowing that this was a capital offense under the Mosaic law.

What about the man who was healed? Why was he so ready to obey and take up his bed? Wasn't he afraid to openly break the sabbath in the heart of Pharisee country? Perhaps he was a gentile, in Jerusalem for the (possibly pagan) healing pool rather than for Pentecost. His response to his Jewish accusers was simply that the one who had healed him had also told him to carry his bed; as an outsider, he would have assumed that whatever a Jewish holy man had told him to do would obviously not be in violation of the Jewish law. It is also suggestive that the Jews did not try to kill this man for the crime of bearing a burden on the sabbath, but they did later try to kill Jesus for telling him to do so. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the man was a gentile and pardonable in his ignorance, whereas Jesus clearly knew better.

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[14] Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, "Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee."

[15] The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole.

The fact that Jesus found the man "in the temple" does not disprove my suggestion that he may have been a gentile. The atrium gentium, open to non-Jews, was considered to be part of the Temple.

We are not given enough information to guess the nature of the man's sin or its connection with his healing. Some commentators have taken Jesus' admonition as implying that the man's original ailment had been the result of sin. (Syphilis can cause partial paralysis, but it had not yet been brought to the Old World in Jesus' time.) I don't think any such inference is necessary, though. Jesus was simply saying that, now that his body had been made whole, it was high time he turned his attention to the state of his soul.

The man's departing and immediately reporting Jesus to "the Jews" seems like the action of an ingrate and informer. I suppose it is possible that he wanted to spread the word about this great holy man, Jesus, but in context it seems much more likely that his primary aim was to deflect the blame for sabbath-breaking to Jesus and away from himself. Perhaps his anger at being called a sinner played a role in this decision.

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[16] And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.

While it is true that Moses decreed the death penalty for sabbath-breaking, the Jews of Jesus' time had no authority to execute that penalty. Judaea was under Roman rule, and only the Romans could put a man to death. (That is why later, when Jesus was executed, the sentence had to be pronounced by the Roman governor Pilate.) If the Jews nevertheless "sought to slay him," that could mean they attempted to murder him, in the sort of religious vigilantism one today associates with Islam, or that they attempted to convince the Roman authorities that he should be executed. Since it is hard for me to imagine anyone thinking the Romans would agree to execute a man for the "crime" of telling someone else to carry a bed on Saturday, I would tend to favor the former possibility.

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[17] But Jesus answered them, "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."

This is perhaps not the sort of defense we might have expected. Jesus does not say that carrying a "bed" (probably just a mat) hardly counts as "bearing a burden" and is not a violation of the sabbath. He does not say that, while keeping the sabbath is important, healing a man who needs healing is even more important. Instead, he says, "God is still working, and so am I." God, contrary to what Moses said, never rested from his labors, and neither should we. Rather than argue that his apparent sabbath-breaking was justified in this particular case, Jesus denies the whole idea of the sabbath.

If you search the Gospels, I think you will find not a single instance of Jesus keeping the sabbath or encouraging anyone else to do so. Even when he rattles off some of the Ten Commandments in response to the rich young ruler's query (Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20), he is careful to omit that one. The only time the sabbath ever comes up in connection with Jesus is when he is breaking it, which he does repeatedly and deliberately. 

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[18] Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God.

Centuries of Christianity have made it so natural to think of God as "Our Father" that it is easy to forget that the fatherhood of God is not a Jewish doctrine and was among Jesus' more controversial teachings. Although I am open to correction on this point, I do not believe the Old Testament contains a single unambiguous reference to God as the Father. (Update: see details and partial retraction here.)

There's Malachi 2:10: "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?" But in context, I think the "one father" refers to Abraham or Israel, not to God.

There's also Isaiah 63:16: "Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting." But again this is accompanied by references to Abraham and Israel, and God is poetically playing their role; the identification is no more literal than when Elkanah said to Hannah, "Am I not better to thee than ten sons?"

It may seem a small thing to say "Father" rather than "Creator," but I think Jesus' would-be murderers were right to regard it as revolutionary and to equate it with "making himself equal with God." If a man builds a house, the house is never going to be anything like the man who created it -- but begetting a son is another thing entirely. A son is fundamentally the same sort of being as his father and is destined to become like him. To call God one's Father is to make an astonishing claim about oneself, and the Jews are not to be faulted for finding it shocking in the extreme.