The Gospels

by Sarah Ruden

  *52 The word for “living” in Greek was applied to inanimate things that had power and motion, such as a blazing fire, a bubbling spring, or a flowing river. A deep well’s water, probably only seeping up through the sand at the bottom, does not seem to fit well into this category. Proto-Christian baptism such as John practiced was done in running water, which was associated with divine power, purity, and eternal life.

  *53 In the Near East, water shortages have always fallen most heavily on women, who may spend hours a day hauling water for basic household uses from distant wells.

  *54 See “husband” in the Glossary: the word used for her household partner can be ambiguous. Bereavement, abandonment, and poverty were the commonest circumstances to push a woman into an arrangement outside the law.

  *55 The Mount Gerizim location of the Samaritan temple, which was now destroyed.

  *56 See “S/spirit” in the Glossary.

  *57 The Israelite community was not divided around the time of David, God’s anointed king, so all its descendants share the Hebrew scripture references to this kingly rescuer and guardian of his people.

  *58 As a woman, a stranger, and a member of a despised group, she is normally to be avoided on triple grounds.

  *59 A large, watertight jar was no trivial part of a household’s equipment; nor will water fail to be missed at home; the woman is treating this encounter as a piece of urgent news.

  *60 Apocalyptic imagery. The previous workers are probably the scriptural prophets.

  *61 Accepting the Samaritans’ hospitality and eating their food, Jesus must commit prolonged violations of the Jewish purity laws, as well as outraging national prejudice.

  *62 In the other Gospels (Mark 6:4, Matthew 13:57, and Luke 4:24), Jesus’ remark about honor is made understandably in the course of insulting treatment by his hometown neighbors. Here the remark is at odds with the narrative.

  *63 Literally a “kingly man,” this is probably a functionary from the court of Herod Antipas, who was then king of Galilee and a client of the Romans.

  *64 The first was turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana (2:1–11 above).

  *65 This could be any of the three pilgrimage festivals.

  *66 This is the area northeast of the Temple. The gate was very likely for the animals being brought in for sacrifice.

  *67 An explanation added into some versions of this passage later (in the excised Verse 4) is that an angel was thought to stir the water, after which the first person entering it would be cured. The man has no servant or family member to bring him there in time.

  *68 In Greek or Roman literature, these words would be the insulting menace of a beating.

  *69 See below in Chapters 13–17 for more analogies to the traditional father-son relationship. In Verse 20 here, the verb fileō is used for the father’s love of the son, suggesting a bond more special and purposeful than an ordinary paternal one. See “love” in the Glossary.

  *70 See this page of the Introduction. This use of “son of mankind” here is particularly puzzling.

  *71 This passage contrasts sharply with the Hebrew scriptures, the Mishnah, and other sources concerning the rules of forensic evidence, insisting on the validity of testimony that is not only from a blood relative, and not only hearsay, but also invisible and inaudible to everyone but the person it favors. More generally, the claim of the exclusive right to interpret scripture, let alone in connection to a critical matter, outrages tradition. But apocalyptic literature does vividly posit final, divine judgment of large categories of people.

  *72 The Greek reads “of Galilaia of Tiberias.” Tiberias was a new town on the Sea of Galilee’s western shore, named for the Roman emperor Tiberius; the name Tiberias was sometimes applied to the sea as well.

  *73 Matthew 20:2 shows a single denarius as a worker’s daily wage.

  *74 Greco-Roman mores resisted women’s assuming the same relaxed dining posture as men. Women also might literally not count in the reckoning of the size of groups.

  *75 The stade is a variant measurement, but they appear to be near the middle of the lake.

  *76 The seal functioned as a modern signature does, creating a unique image that carried personal legal authority.

  *77 The manna (Hebrew for “What is it?”) was a special food God sent to be collected morning and evening, so that the Israelites wandering in the wilderness after their escape from Egyptian slavery would not starve before they could reach the Promised Land of Canaan. The quotation is from Psalms 78:24.

  *78 Jesus’ language reflects that of filial obedience and inheritance throughout ancient literature. The “last day” is the end of ordinary history, as depicted in apocalyptic literature; resurrection of the body was a belief of the Pharisees.

  *79 Quoted loosely from Isaiah 54:13.

  *80 See the note at Verse 31 above.

  *81 See “flesh” in the Glossary.

  *82 The repeated, emphatic prescription here of drinking blood is particularly shattering. Jewish law forbade the consumption of blood from sacrifices.

  *83 See “S/spirit” and “flesh” in the Glossary.

  *84 I reluctantly translate rēmata as “words”; See “W/word” in the Glossary.

  *85 See “devil” in the Glossary.

  *86 That Judas’ second name is shown as inherited argues against the claim that the name marks him as an insurgent.

  *87 Again, there is no difference in Greek between Judeans and Jews: Judea means either the Jewish heartland and home of the Temple, or the whole Roman province, including the remote and restive Galilee. If Jesus’ alienation from Ioudaioi in the Gospel of John is at least in part geographical, it makes more sense.

  *88 This is the festival of Booths or Tabernacles, or Sukkot, an autumn harvest celebration, named for the huts made for holding it outdoors, huts that also commemorate the wandering of the Israelites in the desert after the escape from Egypt.

  *89 Whether the distinction between the crowds and those they feared, if historically valid, would be due to geography, class, or rank, is unknown; in any case, the phrasing sounds strange.

  *90 The whole of the Torah is the “Law of Moses,” but the divine decree of circumcision was given to the original patriarch, Abraham, generations before Moses (Genesis 17:10–14).

  *91 Circumcision is prescribed for the eighth day of a Jewish male infant’s life, so the Sabbath regulations against work yield to the ritual.

  *92 The idea of the “hidden Messiah” is witnessed, for example, in the Apocryphal work 2 Esdras (13:51–52).

  *93 The Romans allowed the Temple hierarchy policing powers within the religious sphere.

  *94 “Greeks” could signal Gentiles generally, or assimilated Jews of the Diaspora (“scattering”).

  *95 The wordplay and symbolism involve the running or “living” water of baptism, and possibly also the fluid that runs (here, literally) “from his abdominal cavity” from the spear puncture at the crucifixion (John 19:34). There are several Hebrew Bible passages echoed here.

  *96 The prophecy of birth at Bethlehem is at Micah 5:2. The very geographical problem that the nativity stories of Matthew and Luke seek to solve is cited here.

  *97 See “curse” in the Glossary.

  *98 See above at 3:1–21.

  *99 It is actually not clear how many prophets came from Galilee, other than the buffoonish Jonah.

  *100 The relevant statutes are found at Leviticus 20:10 and Deuteronomy 22:22, where the offense named is only sex between any man and someone else’s wife. The moral lopsidedness seems extended to this present scene. Where is the woman’s partner in crime? Why is she so conveni
ently available as an object lesson? Why is Jesus suddenly appointed judge?

  *101 This story occurs only in John, and a number of the earliest extant manuscripts leave the passage out. The wordplay is heavy-handed. The word for what the leaders wish to do to Jesus is katagoreō, literally “make a speech [in the marketplace] down.” The prepositional prefix kata adds emphasis, so that the verb means a formal prosecution. Jesus then stoops “downward”—katō, an adverb—and “writes a summons”—the verb is katagraphō, for formal legal writing, including summoning by written order. Play on kata- continues in verses 8, 9, 10, and 11, and I have reproduced it in English as best I could there too.

  *102 The symbolic and religious purport of light in John has a practical angle: you can’t go out in the thick darkness of the ancient world at night if you don’t have a light with you.

  *103 The Jewish establishment claimed that Jesus was born out of wedlock and falsely propagated a story of divine parentage. Such a story would have been far less offensive outside pious circles in Judea. The Roman emperors, among others, portrayed themselves as descended from divinity; and when a god mated with a mortal in mythology, the first generation was nearly always illegitimate.

  *104 Jesus’ is a sophistic take on the Jewish law at best. (Compare 5:30–46 above.) For example, though Deuteronomy 19:15 requires two witnesses to establish the truth of testimony, a person’s own testimony on behalf of himself plainly does not count. John seems in these passages to play to a widespread and long-standing admiration of the Jewish legal system, but his use of it is an outsider’s.

  *105 The Jews and the pagans differed markedly in their attitudes toward suicide. The Jews developed a prohibition, though there is no explicit scriptural basis. Some Roman Stoics staged elaborate suicides in line with their position on virtuous independence of mind.

  *106 Given the poor state of the text, it’s far from definite that Jesus makes (for the second time in five verses) such an extreme claim of divinity as to refer to “I AM THAT I AM,” God’s pun on his cult name Yahweh in Exodus 3:14. “Lifting up” as wordplay for crucifixion is a repeated gambit in John.

  *107 If these Jews are speaking about slavery in terms of their scriptural tradition, they are of course mistaken: not only is Egyptian slavery remembered as a defining trial for Abraham’s descendants, but the divided kingdoms were conquered repeatedly during the historical period, and enslavement was a normal consequence of defeat. If they mean, on the other hand, that absolute chattel slavery, in which a person could be treated as an object, was not part of their inherited law or culture, they are correct. In any event, Jesus’ remarks have one obvious force: the son is the heir; it will be his house. He can then free slaves or servants at will.

  *108 I.e., the devil, on whom see the Glossary.

  *109 The gist of this contention is that traditional Judaism understands God’s fatherhood only symbolically. If what Jesus says is blasphemous, the punishment is stoning (Leviticus 24:13–15).

  *110 In late antiquity, the hyper-learned Alexandrian school of literature touted the motif of diligent late-night study by lamplight; ordinary people worked only by natural light.

  *111 See Mark 7:33 and 8:23 for other instances of saliva, which had magical associations, being used for healing.

  *112 This pool in the southwestern part of Jerusalem was fed by a spring and was used for ritual purification.

  *113 Moses is the purported author of the Pentateuch or Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

  *114 Euphemistically: You are a bastard.

  *115 See this page in the Introduction; this man may be confused as to what “son of mankind” means.

  *116 The kurie of Verse 36 must be “sir,” but two verses later, it seems to mean “lord,” a divinity in the flesh. See “lord” in the Glossary.

  *117 This characterization of a responsible leader is much older even than the Twenty-Third Psalm. Very early Middle Eastern leaders used the same kind of expression, and their staffs were analogous to the combined tool and weapon some shepherds still carry.

  *118 See “thief” in the Glossary. Judas of Galilee had led a major rebellion against the imposition of tax registration by the Roman governor Quirinius in 6 C.E. The insurgents stole animals and burned homes of those who did not withhold their registration.

  *119 The most reliable herder would be the only son of the house, who expected to inherit all the animals.

  *120 At the time of the Gospel of John’s appearance, Christianity was a multiethnic religion spreading through much of the Roman Empire.

  *121 Hanukkah, the eight-day celebration commemorating the Maccabean rededication of the Temple after it had been profaned by the Greek ruler Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century B.C.E..

  *122 This was on the eastern side of the Temple’s outer court, a public place where even women were permitted. It is named after Solomon, but the original Temple attributed to him was built in the tenth century, whereas the basis for Herod’s recent renovation dated from the sixth century.

  *123 Again, the pragmatic analogy would be a father and only son’s equal material interests; the motif will be developed at length in the discourse of Chapters 13 through 17.

  *124 See Leviticus 24:16 concerning blasphemy.

  *125 One relevant verse is Psalms 82:6, but the next verse confirms the distance between the deity and mortals in traditional Jewish thought. The two verses read: “I say, ‘You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you; nonetheless, you shall die like mortals, and fall like any prince.’ ” Exodus 7:1 reads (with my emphasis), “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh…”

  *126 See the note at Mark 1:5 concerning the general geography.

  *127 See 12:3–8 below.

  *128 Daylight hours are normally the only time for active life. But Jesus, being the light, is not restricted in his activities by time and place.

  *129 Are Thomas’ words here sarcastic? See below at 14:5 and 20:24–29.

  *130 The West Bank village al-Eizariya has been identified with Bethany; the distance is perhaps two miles.

  *131 Martha has expressed a belief in the afterlife apparently both embraced by mainstream sectarians (the Pharisees) and purveyed by existing apocalyptic literature. Jesus, with an extra, emphatic pronoun (egō for “I myself”), declares that he personally—God is not mentioned—embodies the afterlife.

  *132 These two verses apparently reflect a generational problem that is also addressed by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4: since the Second Coming has proved to be long delayed, assurance is needed that both those who are living when it eventually happens and those who are deceased can be resurrected.

  *133 This echoes the beginning of the Gospel of John, at 1:9, and has messianic overtones.

  *134 This three-word, shortest verse of the Bible employs a verb that depicts the tears on his face, whereas the verb used elsewhere in the episode, and familiar in scenes of mourning and other suffering, is for ordinary crying or wailing. Even Jesus’ expressions of grief are special. In Verses 33 and 38, he makes a rare, animal-like sound, and the verb is in an intensive compound form.

  *135 From at least the time of Abraham, caves, because of their rarity and the large spaces some could provide, were prestigious family burial places. (See Genesis 23.)

  *136 The Sanhedrin.

  *137 Caiaphas’ tenure is verified by the later historian Josephus, and this account confirms the highly politicized nature of the high priesthood at this time. Nonetheless, prophetic power is here attributed to this priest because of his position. The speech seems to allude to the Jewish Diaspora (literally “scattering”), which was a major incubator of early Christianity—but this stage was apparently over by the time the Gospe
l of John appeared.

  *138 If Ephraim is the modern Taybeth in remote hill country, it would have been a one- or two-day journey northeast of Jerusalem, in the direction of Galilee.

  *139 At least since the Temple was rebuilt in the sixth century B.C.E., essential religious obligations were concentrated there; those who did not conform through periodic attendance could be ostracized.

  *140 At least among the Greeks and Romans, a well-to-do lady of the house would never serve (or help serve) the meal (though among the Romans she could be included as a diner). This may be Martha’s special gesture of thankfulness for her brother’s resurrection.

  *141 See the note at Mark 3:19.

  *142 Fertility, victory, and eternal life were among the things that evergreen palm branches symbolized.