Was Jesus acting as King of the Jews during the Feast of Tabernacles?

In John 7:14-15, we are told that "about the midst of the feast [of Tabernacles] Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, 'How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?'" From the reaction, it is clear that Jesus' teaching involved reading from the scriptures, and I have argued that the passage he read was likely Malachi 2:1-3:1.

Today I became aware of another possibility: Every seven years, during the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot), the king -- when there was a king -- was supposed to stand up in the temple and read from Deuteronomy. We are told in Mishnah Sotah 7:8 that Herod Agrippa (who reigned AD 41-44, just after the time of Christ) did this.

How is the portion of the Torah that is read by the king recited at the assembly, when all the Jewish people would assemble? At the conclusion of the first day of the festival of Sukkot, on the eighth, after the conclusion of the Sabbatical Year, they make a wooden platform for the king in the Temple courtyard, and he sits on it, as it is stated: “At the end of every seven years, in the Festival of the Sabbatical Year” (Deuteronomy 31:10).

The synagogue attendant takes a Torah scroll and gives it to the head of the synagogue that stands on the Temple Mount. And the head of the synagogue gives it to the deputy High Priest, and the deputy High Priest gives it to the High Priest, and the High priest gives it to the king. And the king stands, and receives the Torah scroll, and reads from it while sitting.

King Agrippa arose, and received the Torah scroll, and read from it while standing, and the Sages praised him for this. And when Agrippa arrived at the verse in the portion read by the king that states: “You may not appoint a foreigner over you” (Deuteronomy 17:15), tears flowed from his eyes, because he was a descendant of the house of Herod and was not of Jewish origin. The entire nation said to him: Fear not, Agrippa. You are our brother, you are our brother.

And the king reads from the beginning of Deuteronomy, from the verse that states: “And these are the words” (Deuteronomy 1:1), until the words: “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4). And he then reads the sections beginning with: “Hear, O Israel” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9), “And it shall come to pass, if you shall hearken” (Deuteronomy 11:13–21), “You shall tithe” (Deuteronomy 14:22–29), “When you have made an end of the tithing” (Deuteronomy 26:12–15), and the passage concerning the appointment of a king (Deuteronomy 17:14–20), and the blessings and curses (Deuteronomy 28), until he finishes the entire portion.

The same blessings that the High Priest recites on Yom Kippur, the king recites at this ceremony, but he delivers a blessing concerning the Festivals in place of the blessing concerning forgiveness for iniquity.

Is it possible that Jesus read from Deuteronomy in the Temple during the Feast of Tabernacles, thus implicitly taking on the role of King of the Jews?

The first thing is to consider is the date. Was it a Sabbatical Year when Jesus taught in the Temple? Well, John 2:20 tells us that the first Passover of Jesus ministry was the 46th year of the construction of the Temple of Herod, which historians estimate to be around AD 27-29. This was after Jesus was baptized by John, and Luke 3:1-2 tells us that John didn't begin baptizing until the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, which year began in September of AD 28. Passover is in March or April, so the best estimate for the first Passover of Jesus' ministry would be AD 29. After that, one more Passover is mentioned (John 6:4) and then the Feast of Tabernacles we are presently considering. Assuming there were no other intervening Passovers left unmentioned by the author, we can estimate that Jesus preached in the Temple in the fall of AD 30.

The Sabbatical Year in Agrippa's reign ended in AD 42, so the previous two Sabbatical Years would have ended in AD 35 and AD 28. Thus, based on such (admittedly spotty) chronological information as we have, it was not a Sabbatical Year when Jesus preached in the Temple.

Turning to the details in the Mishnah, we are told, rather confusingly, that the Torah reading took place "at the conclusion of the first day of the festival of Sukkot, on the eighth." What does "on the eighth" mean here? Sukkot is a seven-day festival, running from 15 to 21 Tishrei, so there is no eighth day of Sukkot, and no day of Sukkot is on the eighth of the month. And in any case, how could the eighth come "at the conclusion of the first day"? Anyway, we are told that Jesus appeared in the Temple "about the midst of the feast" -- and whatever the Mishnah is trying to say, it pretty clearly isn't talking about the middle of the festival. So even if it had been the right year for the king to read from Deuteronomy, it wasn't the right day.

Finally, the Mishnah describes a rather elaborate ceremony: The attendant gives the Torah scroll to the deputy high priest, who gives it to the high priest, who gives it to the king. In the absence of a king, some other "leader of the Jews" (someone of Nicodemus's class) would do the honors. It seems highly unlikely that some random Galilean rabbi would have been able to waltz in, take the Torah scroll, and read -- at least not on this special day.

I'm not sure how access to the scrolls would have been managed on other days. The Jews' surprise at discovering that Jesus is literate makes sense only if he has just read from the scriptures. Quoting bits of scripture from memory -- well, any Jew could do that, even John the Baptist, who lived in the desert and ate bugs.

In Luke 4:16-21, Jesus stands up in a synagogue, and "there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias," from which he proceeds to read. This was a local synagogue in Nazareth, though, and even there someone had to "deliver" the scroll to him. Would it have been as easy as that in the Temple itself, during a major festival? I guess the answer to that must be yes, since Jesus did read from the scriptures in the Temple. Perhaps during the less important middle days of the feast, the scrolls were made available to any rabbi who wished to preach.

All in all, I think Jesus' reading from the scriptures in the Temple during Sukkot was supposed to hint at his identity as Messiah -- but only in a broad way. Since it was not the correct year, nor the correct day, I don't think there would be any need for him to read from the correct book, Deuteronomy. I therefore stand by my earlier proposal that the book he read from was Malachi.

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 arrives late for the Feast of Tabernacles (Notes on John 7:1-13)

I find this episode confusing, which is one of the reasons I've delayed writing about it for so long. I'll give it my best shot.

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[1] After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.

"These things" -- feeding the 5,000, walking on water, the Bread of Life discourse -- all took place in Galilee, not "Jewry" (Judaea), but the crowd that witnessed these things apparently included "Jews" (Judaeans) who had followed him from Jerusalem after witnessing his miracles there. They would not try to kill him in Galilee, where he was among his own people and they themselves were strangers, but they would be bolder if he returned to Judaea.

Or perhaps "these things" refers to earlier miracles wrought in Jerusalem. Later, when Jesus does after all return to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, he says to the hostile crowd, "I have done one work, and ye all marvel" (7:21), and what follows makes it clear that he is referring to his healing of a man at Bethesda on the Sabbath.

Although I don't know enough Greek to suggest this with any confidence, perhaps μετά is here being used in the sense of "with, among" rather than "after." Perhaps the correct reading is, "As he was doing these things (feeding the 5,000, walking on water, etc.), Jesus walked in Galilee, for (ever since the healing at Bethesda) he would not walk in Judaea, because the Judaeans sought to kill him (for breaking the Sabbath)."

Or perhaps this whole verse has been transposed from its proper place in the text? As I have noted before, John 5 ends with Jesus in Jerusalem (and the Jews there seeking to kill him), and then John 6 begins with his crossing the Sea of Galilee, which is nowhere near Jerusalem.

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[2] Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand.

[3] His brethren therefore said unto him, "Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. [4] For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world."

[5] For neither did his brethren believe in him.

The Feast of Tabernacles was (together with Passover and Pentecost) one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, when all Jews who were able were expected to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The advice to "go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest" seems strange, since John 6 (which takes place in and around Galilee) is full of references to Jesus' disciples being with him. (Simon, Andrew, Philip, and Judas are mentioned by name.) It seems that his disciples "followed" him in a very literal sense, accompanying him in all his peregrinations. He must have had other disciples as well who stayed in Judaea, and his brothers must have meant "that they disciples there also may see" -- and I see that many modern translations insert that word.

As Mark tells the story, when Jesus began preaching, working miracles, and drawing crowds, his friends and family "went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself" (Mark 3:21). Not believing that Jesus was who he said he was, they very understandably wanted to stop him from embarrassing the family by making a public spectacle of himself. In the Fourth Gospel's account, we have the opposite situation: Jesus is lying low in Galilee, and his unbelieving relatives are urging him to make more of a public spectacle -- to "go into Judaea" and "shew thyself unto the world."

What could their motive have been in urging this? I can think of three possibilities:

1. They just wanted to get rid of him. They lived in Galilee, and their brother was embarrassing them, so they wanted to get him out of Galilee. I don't think this is a plausible reading. First, they must have known that the Judaeans wanted to kill him, and it seems unlikely that they would have sent their own brother to his death. Second, they were encouraging him to go to Judaea during the feast, at a time when all the Jews went to Judaea -- "shew thyself unto the world," they said. If it was embarrassing to have Jesus raising a ruckus in Galilee, how much more embarrassing to have him do so before all Jewry -- including all their friends and neighbors, who would come back to Galilee full of talk about Jesus! Finally, they themselves also intended to go to Judaea for the feast; they were urging Jesus to go with them. If their motive was to save face by hushing up their brother's scandalous claims about himself, they would have said the opposite of what the Gospel records them saying; they might have said something like, "I know you're supposed to go to Jerusalem for the feast, but the Judaeans want to kill you. I think you'd better just stay here in Galilee and keep a low profile, and we'll go to the feast without you."

2. They were calling his bluff, or trying to use reverse psychology. They were trying to cure Jesus of his "delusions" by pushing them to their natural conclusion and forcing him to realize that he didn't actually believe what he was saying about himself. "You're the Messiah, are you? Well, in that case, you should have no problem waltzing into Jerusalem and announcing that fact to the Pharisees and the Roman governor, right? What's that, you're afraid they might kill you? You don't actually believe you're the invincible Messiah after all? Yeah, that's what we thought." I can't rule out this reading, but it doesn't sit well with me.

3. They believed, at least tentatively, that Jesus was the Messiah and were genuinely troubled by his reluctance to go to Jerusalem. They were urging him to do what they thought the Messiah ought to do, and to prove thereby that he was in fact the Messiah. In this reading, "neither did his brethren believe in him" might be better translated as "even his brethren had doubts," or "even his brethren lacked confidence in him." They didn't disbelieve him in the sense of thinking he was an impostor or mentally ill, but they couldn't understand why he was hanging around in some Galilean backwater instead of going to Jerusalem to announce his identity and claim the throne of David.

It is this third reading that seems most likely to me. Although we never hear anything else about Jesus' brothers in the Fourth Gospel, his brother James is later referred to as an apostle (Gal. 1:19); and Jude, the author of the epistle, may also have been Jesus' brother (see Jude 1:1, Mark 6:3); so it appears that his brothers were not out-and-out unbelievers but merely struggled with doubt at times, when Jesus' behavior seemed inconsistent with what the Messianic prophecies had led them to expect.

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[6] Then Jesus said unto them, "My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready. [7] The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. [8] Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast: for my time is not yet full come."

[9] When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. [10] But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.

This is the second time in this Gospel we see Jesus refusing to do as requested, saying it is not his time yet, and then almost immediately doing it after all. The first instance of this in in John 2; when Jesus' mother informs him that there is no wine, he replies, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come" (v. 4) -- a reply which his mother ignores, telling the servants to do whatever Jesus says, and Jesus proceeds to provide wine miraculously. Did he work this miracle despite the time not being right, because his mother had asked him to? Or was his idea of "the right time" so specific that hours or even minutes after his mother's request the time was right?

As we read later in this chapter (v. 14), Jesus finally appeared "about the midst of the feast" -- meaning around the fourth day of this seven-day festival. Is that because his time was "full come" by then? What difference could it possibly make whether he showed up for the festival on time or three days late?

My best guess is that the delay had to do with the fact that Judaeans sought to kill him for healing on the Sabbath. The first and last days of the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles were Sabbath-like observances on which all work was forbidden, but work was permitted on the other five days. If Jesus, with his reputation as a healer, had arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the feast, there would doubtless have been people there in need of healing, and he would have to heal them or else refuse to do so. Refusing to heal on the first day of the feast would look like a concession that the Pharisees were right, that it had been wrong to heal on a day when work was forbidden by the Law of Moses. On the other hand, healing on that day, brazenly repeating the offense for which "the Jews sought to kill him," could have put his life in danger -- and, as Bruce Charlton has recently discussed, it was important for Jesus to die at the right time, staying alive until his mission had been accomplished. Jesus may have judged that he was relatively safe during the feast -- in the Synoptics, those who plot his death say, "Not on the feast day, lest there be an uproar of the people" (Mark 14:2, Matt. 26:5) -- but openly healing on a mandatory day of rest might have been pushing his luck a little too far.

Against this interpretation, we have the fact that Jesus did again heal on the Sabbath during this visit to Jerusalem (John 9:14). This was after he had already been in Jerusalem for several days, though, publicly saying provocative things and defending his earlier Sabbath healing. That he was able to get away with this was taken as evidence that he was the Messiah: "Then said some of them of Jerusalem, 'Is not this he, whom they seek to kill? But, lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?'" (vv. 25-26). When, days later, Jesus finally provoked the Jews to the point that they took up stones to stone him (John 10:31), he "escaped out of their hand" (10:39). This escape was probably possible in part because in the preceding days he had impressed the crowd and built up enough good will that a substantial portion of the citizenry were on his side. If he had appeared on the first day of the feast and immediately started flagrantly breaking the Law of Moses, the reception might have been rather different.

This is all speculative, of course, but it is the only interpretation that makes sense to me. I think Jesus was constantly walking the razor's edge, pondering precisely how provocative he could afford to be and going that far and no further, at least until his mission was accomplished and he could submit to death.

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[11] Then the Jews sought him at the feast, and said, "Where is he?"

[12] And there was much murmuring among the people concerning him: for some said, "He is a good man": others said, "Nay; but he deceiveth the people."

[13] Howbeit no man spake openly of him for fear of the Jews.

Here is more evidence that it was important for Jesus to make his appearance at precisely the right time and in the right way. Everyone was anticipating his arrival and wondering what he would say and do. He delayed his arrival, letting the anticipation build up, and then appeared in the Temple preaching from the Bible -- an appearance calculated to defuse the accusation that he flouted the authority of Moses.

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.

A healing in Galilee (Notes on John 4:43-54)

As we resume our story, Jesus has just passed through Samaria en route from Judaea to his homeland of Galilee.

[43] Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee. [44] For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. [45] Then when he was come into Galilee, the Galilaeans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast: for they also went unto the feast.

Mark (6:1-5; cf. Matthew 13:54-58) also quotes Jesus as saying, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country," but does so in a context that makes more sense.

[1] And he went out from thence, and came into his own country; and his disciples follow him.

[2] And when the sabbath day was come, he began to teach in the synagogue: and many hearing him were astonished, saying, "From whence hath this man these things? and what wisdom is this which is given unto him, that even such mighty works are wrought by his hands? [3] Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us?" And they were offended at him. 

[4] But Jesus, said unto them, "A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house." 

[5] And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.

In Mark, Jesus says this just after being dismissed by the people of his own country, and we are then told that he could do few miracles there ("because of their unbelief," Matthew adds). In John, there is no such context, and no indication that his countrymen were dismissive; on the contrary, it appears that they welcomed him as a known worker of miracles. (They had seen him work miracles at the Passover in Jerusalem, as mentioned in John 2:23.)

In John, v. 44 reads at first like a non sequitur. Jesus went into Galilee, for he said a prophet has no honor in his own country -- for? Is that bit about a prophet having no honor supposed to be the reason he went into Galilee? At first I found this so puzzling that I was almost ready to assume that something had been excised from the text between vv. 43 and 44, but on second thought it actually makes sense.

Why was Jesus traveling from Judaea to Galilee? According to John 4:1-3, it was because he "knew how the Pharisees [in Judaea] had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John." Jesus had become too famous in Judaea and was apparently trying to escape from that. One might have supposed he would have been left in peace in Samaria, where the locals had no dealings with the Jews and had stubbornly rejected every prophet since Moses -- but even there he unexpectedly became a celebrity, proclaimed the Messiah even by the unbelieving Samaritans. Then he passed on into Galilee. Surely there he would not be welcomed as the Messiah, since Jesus himself had said that a prophet has no honor in his own country. No such luck, though. The Galilaeans had been at the feast at Jerusalem and seen his miracles, and so his fame had preceded him.

Why was Jesus running from his fame, trying to find a place where the people would not enthusiastically welcome him as the Messiah? Didn't he want people to "believe on his name"? We can only speculate as to his reasons. Perhaps, as I suggested in my notes on John 4:1-26 (qv), he left Judaea so as not to appear to be competing with John the Baptist. Perhaps he was ambivalent about being received as the Messiah because he knew he wasn't the Messiah, not really, not the Davidic figure the Jews were expecting. (See my post on Jesus and the Messianic prophecies.) Perhaps, as suggested in John 2:23-25, he was not interested in attracting disciples whose "faith" went no deeper than a capacity to be wowed by miracles. Certainly he wanted to avoid becoming the center of a political movement. Anyway, whatever his reasons, Jesus' desire to keep a low profile is attested in all four Gospels, most particularly in Mark, where the secrecy of Jesus' Messianic mission is a central theme.

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[46] So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. [47] When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judaea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death. 

[48] Then said Jesus unto him, "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe."

What first crossed my mind when I read this was Herod's song from Jesus Christ Superstar (the scriptural basis for which is Luke 23:8): "So you are the Christ / You're the great Jesus Christ / Prove to me that you're divine / Change my water into wine / That's all you need do / And I'll know it's all true / C'mon, King of the Jews!"

Why did that, of all things, come to mind? Because that's the sort of request Jesus seems to think he's responding to. A desperate father comes to beg him to save his son's life, and Jesus responds as if he'd said, "Prove to me that you're no fool / Walk across my swimming pool." It seems almost narcissistic of Jesus to assume that the request is about his proving himself rather than about saving the child. It's as if a physician were to say to a distraught patient, "What, now I've got to cure leukemia to prove I'm a competent doctor? You people!"

Could Jesus really have responded like this to a heartfelt plea for help? Be it far from thee, Lord! Something else must be going on here.

Is it possible that the nobleman's request really was an attempt to put Jesus to the test, or even an expression of idle curiosity, and that his son's illness was just a convenient pretext? That seems highly unlikely. He made a special trip from Capernaum to Cana -- about 24 miles one way (or so; the exact location of Cana is disputed) -- just to see Jesus, leaving behind his son who "was at the point of death." It's hard to imagine what but sincere desperation could have motivated such a trip under such circumstances.

Is it possible that by "signs and wonders" Jesus meant not the anticipated healing but rather the unspecified miracles he had wrought in Judaea at the Passover? The Galilaeans, we are told, had been at the feast and seen those miracles, and that is why this time around they "received him." Last time he was in Cana, people certainly weren't coming from far and wide to request healings -- but now, after witnessing signs and wonders in Judaea, suddenly everyone's a believer. It still seems like an unnecessarily sarcastic thing to say, but at least it would not be questioning the sincerity of the nobleman's request.

Is it possible, even though the Gospel reads "Then said Jesus unto him," that Jesus' comment was actually intended more for onlookers than for the nobleman himself? He did use ye, a pronoun which in the King James Bible is always plural. Perhaps we may imagine that a crowd of sign-seekers had gathered around the two of them, waiting to see if and how this Messiah claimant would rise to the challenge of healing a terminally ill child. And perhaps he intentionally gave the nobleman what he wanted, by healing the child, while at the same time refusing to give the crowd what they wanted, by carrying out the healing in the least showy, most plausibly-deniable way possible -- just "Go home, your son will be fine," with no hocus pocus.

Finally, is it possible that Jesus' statement was not criticism or sarcasm at all, but a simple statement of fact and an explanation of why he agreed to work the requested miracle? He perceived that the nobleman would believe if he saw a miracle, and wouldn't if he didn't, and so he healed his son -- not for the sake of healing him, but in order that the father might believe. People tend to be dismissive of the idea that genuine faith might be occasioned by something as crass as a miracle, but it does happen. And it must be kept in mind that Jesus' mission was spiritual, not medical, in nature. He presumably could have snapped his fingers and healed everyone in the world if that had been what he wanted to accomplish -- but apparently it wasn't.

We rarely ask why Jesus healed people, taking it for granted that of course that's what a good and loving person would do -- but if you think about it, it's fairly obvious that if God didn't want anyone to get sick or die, he would have created a very different sort of world from the one he did in fact create. Sickness and premature death are apparently not always (net) bad things from God's point of view, so Jesus presumably did not want to heal as many people as possible just for the sake of healing. He healed when, and only when, that would lead to the best result -- "best" by spiritual, not necessarily medical, criteria.

In short, perhaps Jesus' statement was not meant to imply that this nobleman was just like the Pharisees, or like Herod in the song, but precisely that he was not like them. The Pharisees would not have been converted by a miraculous sign, but would have explained it away or latched onto how it was a violation of the Sabbath or whatever, and so Jesus generally did not perform signs for them. This nobleman, in contrast, was the sort of person who could be -- and, as it turned out, was -- converted by a sign, and so Jesus gave him one. I find this an attractive reading; the only thing that makes me unsure about it is Jesus' use of the plural pronoun ye, implying that he was generalizing about a group rather than talking about the nobleman as an individual.

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[49] The nobleman saith unto him, "Sir, come down ere my child die."

[50] Jesus saith unto him, "Go thy way; thy son liveth." 

And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.

"Come down" because Capernaum was a low-elevation town on the Sea of Galilee, whereas Cana was up in the hills.

Whatever was intended by Jesus' comment about not believing without signs and wonders, the nobleman does not engage with it at all but simply asks Jesus again to heal his child -- and Jesus does, simple as that, and sends him on his way. Nothing else is needed, not so much as a "Thy faith hath made him whole." And so, after walking 24 miles to Cana and having this maybe 15-second conversation with Jesus, the nobleman turns right around and walks the 24 miles back to Capernaum (or maybe not; see below).

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[51] And as he was now going down, his servants met him, and told him, saying, "Thy son liveth." 

[52] Then enquired he of them the hour when he began to amend.

And they said unto him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."

[53] So the father knew that it was at the same hour, in the which Jesus said unto him, "Thy son liveth": and himself believed, and his whole house.

The son's recovery was apparently sudden enough that an exact hour could be pinpointed. The nobleman's desire to know the exact time is understandable. If his son had recovered before the conversation with Jesus, Jesus' statement would be evidence only of paranormal knowledge ("remote viewing") rather than healing ability. The coincidence of times makes it more probable (but of course does not prove) that Jesus somehow caused the son's recovery rather than merely reporting it.

Hours were counted from dawn, so the conversation with Jesus took place at approximately 1:00 in the afternoon. The nobleman must have arisen before the sun and begun his journey to Cana very early in the morning in order to arrive so early in the day. Understandably, he would have wanted to avoid traveling in the heat of the afternoon. He did not meet his servants on the road until the next day, so he apparently did not after all head back to Capernaum immediately. He must have stayed in Cana at least to wait out the hottest part of the day, and he probably spent the night there as well.

Given that the nobleman apparently did not set out for home immediately, I find it curious that he "went his way" directly after the brief conversation with Jesus. Since he had some time to kill in Cana, and since Jesus' visit was probably about the most interesting thing going on in that little village, and since he apparently already believed that Jesus had miraculously healed his son -- wouldn't it have been more natural for him to stick around, hear what Jesus had to say, and try to find out a bit more about this extraordinary person? I wonder what he did instead.

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[54] This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judaea into Galilee.

I'm not sure why the miracles are being counted in this way. This is not the second miracle that Jesus did, since we know that he performed several miracles in Judaea during the Passover. Neither is it the second miracle that he did after coming out of Judaea into Galilee, since his first miracle in Galilee (turning water into wine, also in Cana) was performed before the trip to Jerusalem. At any rate, it is the second of the seven miracles that this Gospel chooses to emphasize, and perhaps that is all that matters.

Notes on John 3:22-30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes on John 3:9-12

Rembrandt, Head of Christ (Philadelphia Museum of Art)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This curious statement implies at least the following:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Coming to Christ (1927)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

. . . 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Charlton expresses this idea well in a recent post:

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

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

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