The Gospels

by Sarah Ruden

  *143 See Psalms 118:25–26. Hōsanna means “Rescue, please,” in Hebrew.

  *144 See the note at Matthew 21:5.

  *145 See “soul” in the Glossary.

  *146 See the note at Mark 3:19 concerning the Greek names of certain disciples as possible indicators of Hellenistic cultural influence. Here two disciples with such names are go-betweens for “Greeks” who seek a meeting with Jesus. Are these Diaspora Jews or pagan admirers of Judaism, known elsewhere in the New Testament as “God-fearers” and “God-worshippers”?

  *147 The ruler of most of the known world at this time was the Roman emperor Tiberius, but when the Gospel of John was completed, it may have been the tyrannical emperor Domitian (assassinated in 96 C.E.), whom some ancient authors implicate in major persecutions of Christians. However, the deposing of earthly authority was a commonplace of apocalyptic literature. This passage could also refer to a supernatural being.

  *148 Once again, wordplay for “raising [on the cross/to the sky].”

  *149 The Messiah as David’s successor was expected to reign on earth forever to protect and glorify his people. See, for example, Psalms 89:35–37, Ezekiel 37:24–25, and Daniel 7:13–14.

  *150 Isaiah 53:1; the arm of God stands for his strength.

  *151 Isaiah 6:10.

  *152 Meros is a word for a share of an inheritance.

  *153 This cannot be a species of proper Jewish ritual washing before eating, because that did not single out the feet, and this meal has already begun. Peter tries at least to move Jesus’ ministrations to more respectable parts of his body. (Note that “feet” is a Hebrew euphemism for the penis; and Jesus’ word choices may allude to instructions in Leviticus 15 for cleansing in the case of a male genital discharge.) Thematically, the focus moves from the “whole” body (holos: my “all over”) to the whole community of Jesus’ followers (pantes: “every one of you”), with the exception of Judas.

  *154 Psalms 41:9; the meaning is probably a kick or a contemptuous turning of the back.

  *155 Possibly (another) reference to Exodus 3:14, “I AM THAT I AM,” God’s naming and definition of himself.

  *156 The Greek- or Roman-style dining couch was wide enough to allow two diners to lie parallel, on their sides, the one in front leaning on the chest of the one behind. (The kolpos mentioned in Verse 23 is the “bosom,” where a baby was held and nursed.) By tradition, the “beloved disciple,” John, is the purported author of this Gospel. See also Chapter 21 and the note at its end.

  *157 Bread would be dipped in relishes, condiments, gravy, or stew in common bowls.

  *158 Merchants and beggars alike would not be available at this late hour, especially on a holiday. Beyond this, the little sentence is sinister; ancient authors tended to agree that any business transacted at night was likely to be criminal or conspiratorial.

  *159 It does not seem to be a new commandment at all, as the Synoptic Gospels all indicate (Mark 12:28–31, Matthew 22:35–40, and Luke 10:25–28).

  *160 These are almost certainly dedicated guest quarters, not mere rooms; in any case, the King James Version’s “mansions” is an outdated term for a place to stay.

  *161 Jesus speaks here and in Verses 26 and 16:7–11 below of a being sometimes referred to in English as the Comforter, but the Greek word paraklētos usually means an advocate, which suggests defense during persecutions or a role in the apocalyptic final judgment. These are important passages underlying the theology of the Holy Trinity (from the Latin for “three in one”), consisting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I will not dilate on the final formulation, which probably would have made no sense to the Gospels’ authors, let alone to people in the time and place where the story happens. But I do state that to Jews of the Second Temple period, the world was richly populated with supernatural functionaries, and a divine helper and supporter of pious mortals would not have needed any explaining.

  *162 This is a key passage concerning the Second Coming, or the parousia (“presence” or “arrival”), Jesus’ return to the world at the end of ordinary history.

  *163 Many of Jesus’ assertions in this speech would have sounded more worldly and familiar to contemporary readers. For a young man to claim that none of his friends could approach his powerful father (especially as guests), except through him, is mere common sense. The passage concludes with the mention of another essential feature of the father-son relationship, obedience. There was no age of majority or expected assertion of independence.

  *164 Verbs for pruning: airō and the emphatic kathairō; the similar-sounding adjective for “clean” or “pure”: katharos. The semantic connection is that the useless branches are cleaned away by a thorough pruning—but the rhetorical figures are not about any accurate description of vine-dressing. A branch is a klēma, and fruit is karpos, so the alliteration is piled on.

  *165 The imagery of cutting down to size also underlies the idea of hubris in Classical tragedy; “hubris” began as a technical term for the excessive leafy growth that saps a fruit-bearing plant’s productivity. The protagonist of tragedy has typically acquired too much power, which unbalances him and leads to disaster. Violence operates on him to restore the whole society through a process analogous to pruning.

  *166 See 13:35 and the note.

  *167 Here, it is close friends, filoi, who are the objects of agapaō, the verb for less privileged love—not the cognate verb fileō, as might be expected. It is as if family and nonfamily relationships are merging.

  *168 The language is playful. The preposition ek, “out of,” is used first for being “a part of.” Then it appears in the compound verb eklegomai, “choose out of,” and then in the sense of “apart from.”

  *169 Above, 13:16.

  *170 Psalms 35:19 and 69:4.

  *171 See the note at 14:15–17.

  *172 See 14:17 and the note. Here the helper sent fills an explicitly forensic function but also acts as a messenger, which suggests that he is a kind of angel (on which see the Glossary). See 12:31 and the note concerning “the ruler of this world.”

  *173 The Greek word lupē covers both emotional and physical suffering. The Septuagint uses the plural of the word for the curse of difficult human childbearing.

  *174 The verb fileō indicates that because the disciples have a privileged, special relationship with Jesus, they have it with God too.

  *175 “Son of destruction” is a distinctly Hebrew- or Aramaic-like epithet.

  *176 See “evil” and “devil” in the Glossary.

  *177 The specification of a “grove” or “garden” in John calls to mind the famous “groves of Academe” for teaching philosophy in Athens.

  *178 John is the only Gospel writer who records Roman involvement in the arrest. See the note at Mark 14:43. It is absurd that Judas is shown with Roman soldiers at his disposal.

  *179 John 6:39 and 17:12.

  *180 Annas, the father-in-law of the chief priest Caiaphas, and—according to Josephus, a historian a couple of generations later—deposed in favor of him, is shown acting in close coordination.

  *181 The man who knows the priest may be Judas, but it could be someone else, in parallel to the streaking young man mentioned in Mark (14:51–52), who is also not named. Or it might be Jesus’ follower John (to whom this Gospel is attributed), repeatedly but discreetly depicted in important roles.

  *182 See the note at Mark 15:16.

  *183 I.e., a second evening’s celebration, but this appears only ever to have been a Diaspora custom.

  *184 See the note at Mark 15:1.

  *185 Perhaps the Jewish leaders are alluding to the latitude allowed them under the Roman regime, as the death penalty is pr
escribed in the Torah for a number of offenses, including blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), and the Book of Acts (7:58) shows a stoning for blasphemy being carried out in roughly the prescribed manner. But nowhere do the Hebrew scriptures prescribe crucifixion. A “lifting up” execution must therefore be carried out by the Romans according to Jesus’ prediction.

  *186 See the note and the note at Mark 15:6 and 7.

  *187 The verb indicates that small sharp objects are attached to the whip’s thongs.

  *188 A garland, not a metal crown, signified honor in Greek and Roman culture.

  *189 See this page of the Introduction concerning this famous statement.

  *190 See the note at Mark 15:13.

  *191 That is, Pilate, but not Judas, is part of the providential plan for the crucifixion.

  *192 Again, the emperor Tiberius. Ironically, he was a morose, reclusive, scholarly man who likely would have viewed these events in Judea with boredom and exasperation.

  *193 Bēma (“thing you step up on”; my “platform”) and gabbatha (“raised place”; as usual, an Aramaic word is identified as Hebrew) are essentially the same thing. The stone pavement, however, would be the floor of the room, and was probably a striking mosaic. There is a good archaeological contender for this exact place.

  *194 This does not look correct; that would have been the day before. Again, the Second Seder or repeated celebration is a Diaspora tradition.

  *195 Pilate is shown handing Jesus back to the Jewish authorities, whereas nothing is conceivable but that he kept him in his own custody, to be executed at his command in the Roman manner.

  *196 The condemned person might carry only the horizontal crosspiece.

  *197 Traditionally identified with the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and next to a busy road even during antiquity.

  *198 This is the titulus, or sign of shame, posted at the top of the cross.

  *199 The quotation is from Psalms 22:18. Jesus, about to be crucified naked, was presumably arrested in a tunic, a cloak, and sandals. It is unlikely that the soldiers each took a quarter of the cloak and half a sandal, before considering the valuable tunic. Another reason to doubt the account here is that the other executed men’s clothing would have come into the reckoning from the start.

  *200 It seems impossible that two sisters have the same given name, but to show this more clearly I have had to massage the editors’ version of the text, adding “and” after “mother’s sister.” In either case, there are three Marys, not the kind of situation found in fiction, except comedy.

  *201 The “beloved disciple,” representing the pseudoauthorial “John” (see 13:23–25 and the note) is again in a special position, as the only male follower near the cross. The adoption of Jesus’ mother is not historically likely, as Jesus appears to have had several siblings. (See, for example, Mark 6:3.)

  *202 The scripture is Psalms 69:21: “They gave me poison for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Vinegar was the on-duty, nonalcoholic drink of Roman soldiers. The hyssop plant had medicinal and ritual uses. The manner of death is clinically convincing: as soon as the head drops at a sharp angle, the airway closes.

  *203 Breaking the legs of the crucified on their stand could be an act of mercy, hurrying death, because the body could not then be held straight enough to breathe. John uniquely testifies that this measure was taken, for ritual reasons, at Jesus’ crucifixion; the bodies could not be removed and buried on the Sabbath (and especially not on Passover falling on a Sabbath, as depicted in John). Also Deuteronomy 21:22–23 forbids corpses of the executed ever to be hung on display overnight.

  *204 The author of the Gospel of John is again identified as the disciple who was present at the cross. See above at Verses 26–27.

  *205 Exodus 12:46 forbids the bones of the Passover sacrifice to be broken. See Psalms 34:20 for an allusion in a human connection. Zechariah 12:10 is the source of the second quotation.

  *206 See 3:1–21 above.

  *207 This passage shows the body not merely anointed, wrapped up, and placed in an exclusive tomb, but also encased with an amount of chemically active substances that might have weighed half as much as the body did. (The Roman pound was about eleven and a half ounces.) Though Jews acculturated to Egypt (and a large and influential community lived there) may have practiced the elaborate, laborious local type of embalming, I can’t find that this was ever the case in Judea. And what about the considerable evidence that washing and anointing a corpse for interment was, among the Jews, a women’s job?

  *208 See the end of the previous chapter, and the note. What is left for Mary to do here? Her “we” suggests that this scene is adapted from versions in which several women make the visit.

  *209 Peter and the “beloved” John (both the disciple and the purported author of this Gospel) are at it again, in detailed competition. There is more forensic detail here than in the Synoptic Gospels. If mischievous persons removed the body, why did they bother to neatly roll up and put aside the face covering?

  *210 There are a number of such spoken predictions in the Gospels, but of course within this present narrative economy, nothing at all has yet been written down about Jesus directly and specifically. Perhaps the author is thinking of Job 19:25, about the resurrection of a redeemer.

  *211 Again, it was difficult and expensive to make and keep cloth pure white. (Woolen togas were whitened with chalk in Rome to mark out the “whitened ones,” or candidati, in elections.) White linen robes were associated with royalty, grandeur, and ritual.

  *212 See Luke 24:16 and the note concerning normal hooding for protection from the sun that hides the face outdoors.

  *213 See “rabbi” in the Glossary. Rabbouní (or rabbōní) occurs elsewhere in the Gospels only at Mark 10:51. In other sacred literature, it can be an epithet for God. “Hebrew” can, as usual, refer to the Aramaic dialect Jesus and his circle very likely spoke.

  *214 There are several nonridiculous theories for why Jesus tells Mary not to, probably, “hang on to” him, rather than the traditional “touch.” To me, it seems commonsensical that Jesus is extricating himself from her embrace so that he can ascend to God.

  *215 Taking someone’s dying breath in one’s mouth was a folk ritual of the time. Here the resurrected Jesus seems to reverse such a ritual, and of course his breath partakes of immortality. The verb is the same as for playing the flute.

  *216 This looks a lot like the ending of one version of the book, an ending that is, unlike that of the other Gospels, explicitly authorial.

  *217 The same as the Sea of Galilee.

  *218 See the note at Luke 24:15, and 20:14–15 above.

  *219 See 13:23–25 above, and the note.

  *220 Working naked or seminaked was normal, but putting on the heavy outer garment for a plunge into the water—unless it is done for decorum’s sake—looks odd.

  *221 About three hundred feet, if this is a Roman cubit.

  *222 There appears to be a joke in this passage involving two nouns: prosfagion (apparently “little eatable,” or a relish; my “anything to nibble”) in Verse 5, and, to follow that word up, opsarion (“little cooked food,” also a relish, and I call it that in my translation). The food designated by both words is commonly, but not necessarily, fish. Jesus visibly offers food that is in accordance with both words’ strict meanings: the food is prepared, and in the proper limited amount, and to be eaten with bread. Peter, a step behind events as usual and never the most subtle disciple, hears only the loose and colloquial meaning of both words, “fish,” and so can prankishly be sent to the netful of large raw fish, as if they were needed for breakfast.

  *223 That is, only the two appearances to the male disciples i
n the previous chapter count.

  *224 The humor here hangs on the difference between the verbs agapaō (more about benevolence, the quality of the famous 1 Corinthians 13) and fileō (more about personal attachment). One or the other of these very verbs has been applied to the apostle John at critical moments: 13:23–25 (agapaō), 19:26–27 (agapaō), 20:2 (fileō). Now Jesus first seems to be describing fileō as a superior sort of agapaō, and to be offering Peter this role, but when Peter repeatedly uses the verb fileō of himself, trying to pin down the distinction, Jesus keeps trivially changing the metaphoric terms of the missionary assignment. It is as if Jesus is asserting in a roundabout way that the kind or degree of affection an associate has for him makes no difference—which was hardly the usual attitude in the ancient world, so naturally Peter is confused and hurt. By the time Jesus uses the verb fileō of Peter, Peter loses his temper, only to hear the language of shepherding changed again. It sounds like a mercilessly teasing lesson that personal feelings do not matter, a lesson from a leader who has shown another follower striking personal favoritism.