: YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE DIVINITY SCHOOL COMMENTARY GOSPEL OF JOHN" HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTION F. GODET, DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY AND PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH OF NEUCH.4.TEL. VOL. II. TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION WITH A PREFACE, INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS, AND ADDITIONAL NOTES TIMOTHY DWIGHT, PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE. Nrtn ¥orft FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY London and Toronto 1893 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, By FUNK & WAGNALLS, Ib the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. CL PREFATORY NOTE. This work of Godet, in its third French edition, is published in three volumes, one of which contains the introductory matter and the other two the Commentary. In this American translation the preface to the whole work is placed, as in the French edition, at the beginning of the first volume ; but as the translation is issued in two volumes instead of three, it has been thought best to insert the author's preface to the Commentary at the opening of the second volume, instead of placing it in the middle of Vol. I., where the Commentary itself begins. The table of contents of the Commentary, which in the original work is found at the end of Vol. III., is also placed at the beginning of this second volume. ^ The American Editor would call the attention of the reader to his own additional notes on the chapters of the Gospel (VI.-XXI.) which are included in this volume, and would ask his consideration of the thoughts and suggestions presented in them. These additional notes will be found on pages 457-542. TIMOTHY DWIGHT. New Bamem, July A&h, 1886. PREFACE TO THE COMMENTARY IN THE THIED FRENCH EDITION. It is not without a feeling of hope that I present to the Church the third edition of this Commentary, the introductory volume of which ap peared in 1881. At the time when I first published this work, the two theories of Baur and Reuss held sway over scientific thought, one in Ger many, the other in France. The former taught us to see in the Johannean narrative scarcely anything but a romance designed to illustrate the idea of the Logos and to cause it to pervade the Church. The other showed a little more respect to the history related in this book, but regarded the discourses inserted in this -framework simply as the theology of the author himself, whoever he was, John or some one else ; theology which he had himself derived from the contemplation of Jesus and from his Christian experience. When we follow attentively the progress of opinion, we are struck with the change which is -gradually taking place in the estimate of this sacred writing. To speak only of points of most importance, Renan, in the masterly dissertation which he has placed at the end of the thirteenth edition of his Vie de Jesus, has, by the soundest analysis, demonstrated the indisputably historical character of the greater part of John's narratives, and the superiority to the Synoptic story which must be accorded to them in many respects. The following, moreover, is the way in which he expressed himself, last year, in a conversation reported in the Christianisme au XIX" siecte (April, 1884) : " The historical character of the Fourth Gospel is con tinually more impressive to me. When reading it, I say to myself : It is so." If it is so, what becomes of Baur's opinion ! Hase, in his History of Jesus (1876), has given in the Introduction a very careful study of the sources of this history, especially of the Gospel of John. He decides, it is true, for its non-authenticity, but after having laid down a series of preambles which lead directly to the opposite conclusion. One feels that he must have overcome by sheer force of will all the scientific reasons which were most fitted to justify the contrary conviction. And one is easily Vi PEEFACE TO THE COMMENTAEY IN THE THIED FEENCH EDITION. convinced that the ground of this decision, which is contrary to the premises, is nothing else than the rationalistic denial of the miraculous. A judgment can be formed from these words of the venerable writer : "Through the golden breastplate of the Logos-doctrine we feel (in the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel) the beating of a true human heart which is moved by joy and grief, and in this picture we recognize the apostle with all the fulness of hisrecollec- tion." At what a distance we are from the estimates of Baur and Keim ! The two most considerable works, in relation to our subject, which have appeared in Germany in these most recent days, are the Commentary on the Gospel of John by Bernhard Weiss (in the collection of Meyer's Commentaries, sixth edition, 1880) and the Life of Jesus by the same author (1882). The historical verity of the entire narrative of John is fully recognized and proved. As to the discourses, Weiss no doubt makes partial concessions to criticism, which I cannot regard as sufficiently justified ; the readers will be able to judge of them for themselves. But the difference as compared with Reuss is nevertheless a difference toto cmlo, so that the few imported elements which Weiss allows do not in the least degree compromise, in his view, the authenticity of the book. It may well be expected that this return movement will not be unani mous. The Tubingen school has not ceased to work in the direction which was given to it by the genius of its master. We will mention here only the writing in which this tendency has, so to speak, reached its climax. It is that of A. Thoma : Die Genesis des Johannes- Evangeliums (1882) . On one point this author breaks with the tradition of the school : he acknowledges the close relations of our Gospel to Judaism and the Old Testament. But, on the other side, to what a phantasmagoria of allegorizing does the imagina tion of this writer surrender itself ! The discoveries of Baur and Reuss on this path are astonishingly surpassed. It is not a history of Jesus, it is that of Christianity itself that the author of our Gospel, an Alexandrian Chris tian of the second century, wished to write. From the condition of infancy described by the Synoptics, the new religion had arrived at the brilliant period of youth. Already all sorts of elements had arisen in the Church and were struggling in the midst of it. The personages who play a part in our Gospel are nothing else then personifications, freely created, of these different tendencies. Caiaphas is false prophecy ; the brethren of Jesus represent carnal Israel struggling against the Church. Pilate is the Roman despotism ; the Greek proselytes of ch. xii. personify paganism eager for truth. The different Christian parties are also represented, in particular by tho family at Bethany ; the party of works, by Martha ; that of faith, by Mary ; PEEFACE TO THE COMMENTAEY IN THE THIED FEENCH EDITION. Vll Christian Essenism, by Lazarus. The most skilful turn in this jeu d'esprit is the explanation of .the person of James, the brother of Jesus. It is Juda ism under its form which is hostile to Christianity. His nai le is designedly suppressed throughout the whole narrative, but is replaced by that of Judas ; nevertheless, allusion is made to its signification, the supplanter, in the passage, xiii. 18, where Jesus recalls to mind the words of Psalm xii. : "He that eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me. " One will form an idea of the author's critical method when he learns, for example, that the passage John i. 13 : " Those who are lorn not of blood nor . . . but of God," was com posed by the Alexandrian author by means of the following three passages : Rom. viii. 29 ("the first-born among many brethren") ; Heb. ii. 13 ("with the children whom God has given me") ; 1 Cor. xv. 48 ("as the heav enly, ... so the heavenly"). Such are specimens of what at the present day is called, by this party, the discovery of the genesis of the Fourth Gospel. Happily these excesses, which may be called the Saturnalia of criticism, seem also to have contributed, according to their measure, to bring the minds of men back to sobriety and good sense. We gather together, with satisfaction, testimonies like the following : Franke, a young scholar teaching at Halle, has recently published a work under the title : Das alte Testament bei Johannes, a work full of sagacity and sound erudition, in which he proves what I also have sought to prove, that the thought of the author of the Fourth Gospel penetrates with all its fibres into the soil of the Old Testament. The following is the way in which he expresses himself, as he closes his preface : "A continuous study of the writings of John has led me with ever-increasing force to the conviction that their interpretation cannot be undertaken with success except by decidedly maintaining their composition by John the apostle." Another young scholar, Schneedermann, Professor at Basle, in his work : Le judaisme et la predication chretienne dans les evangiles (1 884) , writes the following lines : ' ' When in the period of my academic course I came to the explication of the Fourth Gospel, I was uncertain respecting its origin, but determined to declare without mental reservation that I must remain undecided, and why I must remain so. . . . To my own surprise, the result of my work was the discovery, set forth in what precedes, that the cause of the Fourth Gospel and of the evangelic history is not in so bad a state as some would have us believe. . . . The impression to which I have been brought is; that there is nothing to oppose our seeing in the author of the Fourth Gospel a richly gifted Jewish thinker, of a powerful religious viii PEEFACE TO THE COMMENTAEY IN THE THIED FEENCH EDITION. enthusiasm, and our recognizing in this author, conscious of his character as eye-witness, the apostle John." These voices which rise in the midst of the younger generation and the concordant experiences which they express are of good augury ; they an nounce a new phase of criticism. This is the reason why, as I began, I ex pressed a feeling of hope. Following upon this violent crisis, there is veri fied anew that old motto which has become that of the Gospel of John : Tant plus & me battre on s'amuse, Tant plus de marteaux on y use. I hope that I have neglected nothing which could contribute to keep this Commentary at the height of the scientific work which is carried on at the present day, with so much solicitude, in relation to the Fourth Gospel. I have especially derived great advantage from the Commentaries of Weiss and Keil, which have appeared since my previous edition. There will scarcely be found a page in this book which does not present traces of work designed to improve it and to render it less unworthy of its object. May the Lord give strength and victory to His Word in the midst of the Church and throughout the world ! F. GODET. Neuchdtel, March 21.., 1885. TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE COMMENTARY. Pages Introduction to the Commentary, I. 221-239 Chap. I. The plan of the Gospel, " 221-230 Chap. II. The preservation of the text, 230-237 The Title of the Gospel, . . . . . . 238-239 Prologue, i. 1-18 240-298 First Section : The Logos, i. 1-4 243-253 Second Section : Unbelief, i. 5-11, 253-263 Third Section : Faith, i. 12-18 263-283 General considerations respecting the Prologue, . . 283-298 FntsT Part : First Manifestations op the Word ; Birth op Faith ; FrBST Symptoms of Unbelief, i. 19-iv. 54, . . . 299-447 First Oyck, i. 19-ii. 11, 300-355 First Section : The testimonies of John the Baptist, i. 19-37 300-322 The testimonies of the Forerunner, .... 322-325 Second Section : Beginnings of the work of Jesus ; birth of faith, i. 38-52 325-338 The Son of man, 338-342 Third Section : The first miracle ; strengthening of faith, ii. 1-11 342-352 On the miracle of Cana, 352-355 Second Cycle, ii. 12-iv. 54 355-447 First Section : Jesus in Judea, ii. 12— iii. 36, . . . 355-415 The brethren of Jesus, 357-361 Second Section : Jesus in Samaria, iv. 1-42, . . . 415^441 Third Section ; Jesus in Galilee, iv. 43-54, . . 441-447 Second Paet : The Development op Unbelief in Israel, v.-xii., I. 448-11. 240 Mrsl Cycle, v.-viii. , I. 451-11. 155 First Section : First outbreak of hatred in Judea, v. 1_47 I. 452-492 Second Section : The great Messianic testimony and the crisis of faith in Galilee, vi. 1-71 II. 1-52 Third Section : The conflict at its highest stage of inten sity, at Jerusalem, vii. 1— viii. 59, 52-125 ix X TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE COMMENTAEY. Pages Second Cycle, ix., x 125-169 First Section : The miracle, ix. 1-41, .... 125-139 Second Section : The first discourse, x. 1-21, . . . 139-155 Third Section : The second discourse, x. 22-42, . . 155-169 Third Cycle, xi., xii., . . 169-240 First Section : The resurrection of Lazarus, xi. 1-57, . 169-196 On the resurrection of Lazarus, . . . . . 196-201 Second Section : The last days of Jesus' ministry, xii. 1-36, 201-230 Third Section : Retrospective glance at the mysterious fact of Jewish unbelief, xii. 37-50 231-240 Third Part : The Development of Faith in the Disciples, xiii. -xvii., 241-347 First Section : The facts, xiii. 1-30 242-262 Second Section : The discourses, xiii. 31-xvi. 33, . . 262-323 Third Section : The prayer, xvii. 1-26, . . . 323-347 Fourth Part : The Passion, xviii., xix First Section : The arrest of Jesus, xviii. 1-11, . Second Section : The trial of Jesus, xviii. 12-xix. 16a, Third Section : The crucifixion of Jesus, xix. 16b-42, On the day of Jesus' death, .... Fifth Part : The Resurrection, xx. 1-29 On the resurrection of Jesus, .... Conclusion, xx. 30, 31, Appendix, xxi. 1-25, , 348-411 349-353354-382 382-398398-411 412-433 426-433434-436 437-456 Additional Notes by American Editor Introductory Suggestions on the Internal Evidence, . . . I. 493-512 Notes on Chapters I.-V., I. 513-559 Notes on Chapters VI. -XXI., ....... H. 457-542 GOSPEL OF JOHN. SECOND PART CONTINUED. SECOND SECTION. VI. 1-71. The Geeat Messianic Testimony and the Crisis of Faith in Gai/tlbe. The war is now declared in Judea ; the thread of the narrative is out wardly broken. John does not mention the return of Jesus to Galilee. But it is there that, we find Him again at the beginning of chap, vi., and Ke remains there, after this, so long and with such persistency that He even astonishes His relatives ; as we read in chap. vii. This sojourn in Galilee includes the whole interval between the feast of Purim, in March (chap, v.), and the feast of Tabernacles, in October (chap, vii.), consequently seven consecutive months, in which it is natural to place the greater part of the events of the Galilean ministry described by the Synoptics. This continued sojourn in Galilee and this long retirement in which Jesus keeps Himself away from Jerusalem, are the more striking since during this part of the year, two of the three great Israelitish feasts occurred at which the Jews were most anxious to be present, the Passover and Pen tecost. The conduct of Jesus, therefore, needed explanation. This explana tion appears from vii. 1: "And Jesus sojourned in Galilee; for He would not sojourn in Judea, because the Jews sought to put Him to death." — The ' sixth chapter is thus the continuation of the fifth, in the sense that the continued sojourn of Jesus in Galilee, the most striking event in which is related in chap, vi., was the result of the violent conflict which had brought about the removal of Jesus from Jerusalem after the miracle and the long discourse related in chap. v. Morally speaking, therefore, the thread of the story is not broken. But why, among the whole multitude of facts which filled the minis try of Jesus in Galilee, did John select this one which is related in chap, vi., and this one only ? Reuss thinks that the narrative which John gives of this scene so well described by the Synoptics is incompatible with the idea that he proposed to himself to complete them. There is an exception here, it is true, but it is explained without difficulty. For this purpose it is enough to go back to the idea which governs this whole part— that of the development of the national unbelief. The end of the 4 SECOND PART. sixth chapter will bring us to see that the point of time here described was that in which there was consummated in Galilee a crisis similar to that which occurred in Judea, with this difference, already indicated, that the unbelief in Judea is violent and aggressive, and can end only in murder, while in Galilee, where it proceeds from a simple feeling of being deceived after over-wrought expectation, it occasions only indifference : there is no killing, there is a going away and a going not to return (vv. 66, 67). As Weiss says : The Galilean half-way faith becomes unbelief. The revelation of Jesus' glory by means of the two miracles and of the discourses related in this chapter forms everywhere the basis of the narrative. But the spe cial aim of this narrative is to describe the sad result in which such great favors issue in Galilee, as in Judea. In this very province, where faith for a moment seemed to have taken root (iv. 45), the Messianic work, as such, failed; and here also, the saying had to find its fulfillment: "He came to His own, and His own received Him not." In the midst of this great disaster, however, the work of Jesus continued its peaceful and humble growth in a few; it even gained at this critical moment the most glorious tribute (vv. 68, 69). Beyschlag has set forth the way in which the miracle of the multi plication of the loaves, by provoking the sudden explosion of the political hopes which were smouldering under the ashes among the Galilean people, brought to light the complete incompatibility which existed between the common Messianic idea and that of Jesus, and made evident the moral necessity of the rupture. John alone had apprehended the historic bear ing of this decisive epoch in the ministry of Jesus ; and this is the reason why he alone was able to present it in its true light. Here is what explains for us the exception which he has made in favor of this narrative, which he found already reproduced in the writings of those who preceded him, and the reason why he thought fit to concentrate in the representation of this event the summary of the entire Galilean ministry. There are three parts in this chapter: 1. The two miracles: w. 1-21; 2. The conversations and discourses which are connected with them: w. 22-65; 3. The final crisis: vv. 66-71. l.—Tlie Miracles: vv. 1-21. 1. The Multiplication of the Loaves : vv. 1-13. Vv. 1, 2. "After these things, Jesus withdrew to the otlier side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2. And l a great multitude followed him, because tliey saw 2 the miracles which he did 3 on * the sick." — If the facts related in chap. v. really occurred at the feast of Purim, those which are reported in chap. vi. took place only a few weeks afterwards (ver. 4), and the indefi- 'KBDL some Mnn. ItPio*i»« Cop. read Se s T. R. rends -.-to. ra o-^naa. X A B D K instead of hi, k L S _i n It. Syr. Vulg. Cop. reject a_To_, 2 Instead of .copcui/, __• capw is road in A and < N reads irepi instead, of cm, f#.wpow in B P I.. CHAP. VI. 1, 2. 3 nite connecting words /-.to ravra, after these things, are very suitable to this inconsiderable interval. Meyer, pressing the meaning of /iera ravra, under stands: " immediately after this sojourn in Judea." The air^Hev, went aivay, would thus signify that He returned from Jerusalem to the country east of the Jordan ; and the multitude mentioned in ver. 2 would be that which accompanied Jesus on His return from Judea. But, observes Lut hardt, John could not have expressed himself in this way: Jerusalem was not in direct relation to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee. And how could these multitudes have accompanied Jesus to a remote distance from Judea at the very time of the Passover which called them to go to Judea. It is obvious that ver. 2 is the description of a general situation, on the basis of which the following scene is separately sketched (precisely as ii. ' 23-25 in relation to iii. 1-21, or iii. 22-24 to iii. 25-36, or iv. 43-45 to iv. 46-54). This is John's manner of narrating. This character of general picturing appearsin the imperfect rjno'KovBei, were following, iopav, were seeing, -7ro.E., was doing, in contrast with the aorist avffki^t, went up (ver. 3), which ushers in the account of the particular events which the" author has in view. John omits therefore the express- mention of the return to Galilee which is self-evident from vv. 43-45, and he means to say that Jesus began anew the Galilean work related by the Synoptics, which was marked by daily miracles, and in the course of which He was constantly accompanied by considerable multitudes. It was consequently from some point on the western side of the Sea of Galilee that He thought fit to retire to the opposite side nipav {beyond). Reuss, placing himself at the opposite extreme to Meyer, says, " All this shows us that we do not here have a strictly chronological narrative, as has been very gratuitously supposed." The truth is that John, describing the historical development of Jewish un belief, puts this scene in its true place, but without describing all the details of the events which preceded and followed. John says nothing ofthe motives which led Jesus to this step, but the word awyWev went away, seems to indicate a seeking for solitude. And, indeed, according to Mark vi. 30, and Luke ix. 10, the apostles had just rejoined their Master, after having accomplished their first mission, and Jesus desired to give them some rest and to pass a short time alone with them. Moreover, according to Matt. xiv. 13, He had just heard of the murder of John the Baptist, and, under the shock of this news, which gave Him a presentiment of the nearness of His own end, He needed to collect His thoughts and to prepare His disciples for that other catastrophe. Thus our four naratives easily harmonize. Luke names Bethsaida as the place near which the multiplication of the loaves occurred. It has been claimed that he understood thereby Bethsaida in the neighborhood of Capernaum, and, consequently, that this event occurred, according to him, on the west shore. ButLuke would, thus, put himself in contradiction, not only with the other evangelists, but with himself; for he says that Jesus with drew with His disciples into a desert place belonging to a city called Bethsaida. Now this purpose of Jesus does not allow us to think of the city of Beth saida, on the western shore, where He was in the centre of His activity and 4 SECOND PART. was always surrounded by crowds. Josephus (Antiqq. xviii. 2. 1 and 4. 6) speaks of a city which had the name Bethsaida Julias, situated at the northeastern extremity of the sea of Tiberias ; and the expression Beth saida of Galilee, by which John xii. 21 designates the native city of Peter, Andrew and Philip (i. 45), has no significance unless there really existed a Bethsaida outside of Galilee. It is this one of which Luke means to speak. Bethsaida Julias was in Gaulonitis, in the tetrarchy of Philip, on the left bank of the Jordan, a little way above the place where it falls into the lake of Gennesaret. It was there that Philip died and was magnificently interred. (Furrer, Schenkel's Bibellex., I., p. 429.) If John had written in Galilee, and for Palestinian readers, he would have contented himself with the ordinary expression : sea of Galilee. But as he was writing outside of Palestine, and for Greeks, he adds the explanation : of Tiberias. The city of Tiberias, built by Herod Antipas, and thus named in honor of Tiberius, was well known in foreign countries. Thus the Greek geographer, Pausa- nias, calls the sea of Galilee : Up>i. Tiflepiq. Josephus uses indiscrimi nately the two designations here united by John. The imperfect i&puv, they were seeing, depicts the joy which this ever-renewed spectacle afforded them. The reading of the T. R. iapuv is supported by the Sinaitic MS. and even by the barbarism, ideiipuv, of the Alexandrian. Weiss ob serves that if the mission of the Twelve took place during the journey of Jesus to the feast of Purim (chap, v.), as Gess has supposed, the narra tive of John accords very well with that of Mark, who places the multipli cation of the loaves immediately after the return of the Twelve. Vv. 3, 4. "And Jesus went up1 into the mountain, and there he sat down2 with his disciples. 4. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand." The expression, the mountain, denotes not a particular mountain, which was in the region (for the locality has not been designated), but the mountainous country, in contrast to the level of. the shore. Jesus had sought a solitary place there, and was conversing in it with his disciples. John's expression has some resemblance to that of Matt. xv. 29, immedi ately after the second miracle of the loaves. What is the purpose of the remark in ver. 4? Is it a chronological note ? In that case, it would rather have been placed at the beginning of the narrative. It occurs here incidentally, after the manner of John, as an explanatory remark (comp. i. 24). But with what purpose ? According to Meyer, to explain the great gathering which is spoken of in ver. 5. But this explanation forces him to distinguish this multitude from that of ver. 2, which is evidently inadmissible. Weiss acknowledges this, and sees in ver. 2, and ver. 5, the crowd of pilgrims who are about to go to Jerusalem for the Passover. But what had the caravans going up to this feast to do in this out of the way place ? And is it not very clear, from ver. 2, that these numerous arrivals are no others than the multitudes who habitually accompanied Jesus in Galilee ? The rfiention of the feast near at hand, must, therefore, serve to explain, not the presence of the J ft D If". ; mri)\9e (ui en. away), for an)\9e. 'KD dome Mnn. ; eica. .£_to for ma. j)to. chap. vi. 3-7. 5 ftiultitudes, but the conduct of Jesus towards them. Not being able to go to Jerusalem for the feast (vii. 1), Jesus, on seeing these multitudes has tening towards Him in the wilderness, recognizes in this unexpected cir cumstance a signal from the Father. He puts this concourse in compari son with the feast which is about to be celebrated in Jerusalem, and He says for Himself, for His disciples, for the multitude: "We also will have our Passover!" This is the thought which sets in its true light the following miracle, as the discourses which are connected with it prove. For Jesus represents Himself here as the one whose flesh and blood are designed to give life to believers, a point which undoubtedly calls to mind the sacrifice and eating of the Paschal lamb. By this fourth verse John gives us, therefore, the key of the whole narrative, as he had given us in iii. 1, by the words : of the Pharisees, that of the whole conversation with Nicodemus. The denials of Weiss and Keil seem to us to rest on no suffi cient grounds. The term i) eoprij r. 'lovS., the feast of Ihe Jews, must, accord ing to Keil, explain the word Passover, which was unknown to Greek readers, or, according to others, designate this feast as-"the feast par excel lence for the Jews ; " but comp. ii. 13, and vii. 2. Perhaps John desires to make us understand the total separation which was more and more evi dent between Jesus and this people who were becoming foreign to Him. From the incident in Luke vi. 1-5, and the parallel passages, we discover in the Synoptics also a spring season passed in Galilee during the course of the ministry accomplished in that province. Vv. 5-7. " Jesus therefore, lifting up His eyes and seeing a great midtitude coming to Him, says to Philip : Whence shall we buy l bread, that these may eat ? 6. Now this he said to prove him ; for,2 as for himself, he knew vihat he was going to do. 7. Philip answered3 him: Two hundred denarii^woiih of bread is not sufficient for them* that every one of themb may take a little." John does not say how "long the confidential interview of Jesus with His disciples, which is mentioned in ver. 3, continued. The term hca&iiro, he sat there, ver. 3, which the Sinaitic MS. wrongly changes into ma&tfcro proves that He remained for a certain time alone with them while the companies were successively coining up. For it is impossible to imagine five or six thousand persons arriving all at once in the locality into which Jesus had withdrawn (this in answer to Weiss). While Jesus and His dis ciples came directly by water from Capernaum or the environs, these crowds of people, who had observed from the western shore the point towards which the bark directed its course, made on foot ( .ref? , Mark vi. 33 ; Matt. xiv. 13), the circuit of the northern shore of the lake, and thus arrived successively during the day at the scene of action. According to the Synoptics, Jesus went forth from the solitude (Matt, and Mark) and received them with kindness (Luke). Thus a part of the day was devoted 1 K U V : ayopa.o-oij.cv, instead of ayopaa-- H ', ovv instead of aim-. u/x.f. * X omits avroi,. 2 {$ : yap instead of _. ; and afterwards Se 6 X A B L n and some Mnn. and Vss. omit instead of yap. avruiv (of them) which is read here by T. E. - 8 X D : airoKptverai instead of aweKpL&Tj ; and with 13 Mjj. 6 SECOND PART. to teaching and healing. Then seeing the crowd which was so eager and was continually increasing (Mark vi. 33 : " They ran thither afoot from all the cities "), Jesus experiences that feeling of profound compassion which Mat thew and Mark describe. But another feeling, of which John alone has caught the secret, is predominant in His heart :' it is that of joy. No doubt, He had wished to be alone, and this arrival thwarted His purpose. But such earnestness, such perseverance are for Him an irresistible appeal. He enters with eagerness into the new situation which is opened to Him ; for He discerns here a thought of the Father and He prepares Himself to give to this body of people the feast for which the opportunity is thus granted Him. Indeed, in John, it is Jesus who takes the initiative ; He . addresses Himself to Philip : " There are our guests ; we must give them supper. Have you already thought of it ? " In the Synoptics, it is the disciples who are disturbed about the multitude, and urge Jesus to dismiss them. The need of food may have occupied the minds of Jesus and the disciples simultaneously as they saw the evening drawing on. But as for Jesus, He had already taken His resolution (ver. 6). The thought of what He was going to do had formed itself in His mind during the work of that day. The narrative of the Synoptics is written from the disciples' point of view, which must very naturally -have prevailed in the stories emanating from the Twelve, particularly in those of Peter and Matthew, while John, who had read the heart of the Master, brings out the other point of departure — the inward impulse of the Lord. Thus, the disciples address themselves to Jesus and communi cate their anxiety to Him. Jesus, having already formed His plan, says to them : " Give ye them to eat," and, in speaking thus, addresses Himself especially to Philip, as we have just seen. Why to him, rather than some other? Bengel thinks that he was charged with the care of the res alimentaria. But it seems more probable from xiii. 29, that it was Judas who made the purchases. According to Luthardt, Jesus wished to bring an educating influence on Philip, who had a hesita; ting and over-careful character. This is possible. But the playful tone of Jesus' question : " Whence shall we buy? " may lead us to suppose that naivete was one of the traits of this disciple's character. This is the reason why Jesus addresses him this question, which was insoluble from the standpoint of natural resources ; and he, on his side, answers it with a good-natured simplicity. This slight touch gives an idea of the amenity which prevailed in the relations of Jesus to His disciples ; it appertained to the picture of the glory "full of grace " of the Word made flesh. The expression : to prove him, does not have the solemn sense which this term ordinarily has. It signifies merely that Jesus desired to see whether, in this situation, he would know how to find the true answer of faith. Philip makes his calculation with prudence. It is good sense, not faith, which speaks through his mouth. The denarius was a Roman coin worth about fifteen cents; two hundred denarii were, therefore, equivalent to thirty dollars of our money; a large sum, which, however, was still far below the necessity of the case ! Mark has also preserved this circum- CHAP. VI. 8-10. 7 stance respecting the two hundred denarii ; only, he puts this calculation in the mouth of tiie disciples in general. If the connection between the question of Jesus and Philip's answer were not so close in John, we might try to insert here between vv. 6 and 7 the brief conversation of Jesus with the disciples reported in Mark vi. 37. But it is much more probable that the reflection which Mark attributes to the disciples in general is nothing else than the reproduction of Philip's words, which are preserved by John in their most exact historical form. Vv. 8, 9. " One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, says to him : 9. There, is a 1 lad here, who 2 has jive barley loaves and two jishes : but what are these for so many ? " John mentions, first, in an indefinite way, one dis ciple ; then he makes a precise statement : " It was Andrew." We can believe that we hear him telling the story. And how can we fail to remember here, that Andrew was precisely the one, who, according to the tradition in the Muratorian Fragment, was present at the time of the composition of the Gospel ? His character as brother of Simon Peter had already been pointed out in i. 41. Was not this sufficient? Certainly; but the person of Andrew cannot present itself to the mind of John, without his recalling to mind how nearly connected he was with Simon Peter, the principal one among the apostles. And yet it is claimed that one of the tendencies of the Johannean narrative is to disparage Peter ! Andrew, thus, falls into the trap laid for his fellow-disciple, and it is, no doubt, with a sort of malicious humor that the evangelist is pleased to report in extenso their words, which form so strong a contrast to the magnificent display of power which is in preparation. The word ev, one only, which was restored by Tischendorf in 1859, is suppressed by him in his 8th ed., accord ing to the Alexandrian authorities and Origen; but certainly wrongly. We can more easily understand how it may have been omitted than added. It brings out the scantiness of the resources which are at hand : " One only who has anything, and he how little ! " It was some petty trader whom Andrew had just noticed in the crowd. Barley-bread was that used by the poorer classes. Ver. 10. " But 3 Jesus said : Make the people sit down. Now there was much grass* in the place. The men sat down, therefore, in number about5 jive thou sand." 6 In these scanty provisions Jesus has found that which He needs, the material on which omnipotence can work. Now, in His view, the banquet is prepared, the table spread : " Make the people sit down," He says to His apostles. The mountain-plateaus which rise behind the site of Bethsaida Julias displayed, at that time, their spring-time verdure. Mark, as well as John, draws the picture of this grassy carpet on which the mul titudes took their places (em rc> x^pv x^PT vi. 39). He describes, like wise, the cheerful spectacle which was presented by these regular ranks (pv/j,w6oia av/,w6uia, rrpaaidi npaaiai) of hundreds and fifties. "AvSpes de- 1 Ev is omitted by N B D L n 15 Mnn. * K reads Tom.. jroAvs (much room) instead It*11. Orig. ' of \opro. 7.0.01.. 'ABDGUA: 05 instead of o. 'KBDL:.! instead of u«.y_i (flees) instead of omitted in 10 Mjj. Syr"1" Cop. ave\iaprf(TC. CHAP. VI. 16-18. 11 multitudes away." This term constrain, which is not suggested by any thing in the Synoptical narrative, is explained only by the fact which John has just related (vv. 14, 15). Perhaps most of the apostles were ignorant of the true reason of this step which was so suddenly taken by Jesus. After this, Jesus calms and dismisses the multitude, which scatters itself through the neighboring region. Matthew and Mark also say : "And having sent the multitudes away, He withdrew to the mountain, apart, to pray." This moment in their narrative evidently coincides with the end of our ver. 15. After this only a part of the multitude — undoubtedly, the. most excited part — remained on the spot (comp. ver. 22). The reading Qebyu, flees, of the Sinaitic MS., which is adopted by Tischendorf, is absurd, especially with -n-dliv, again. This last word which is rejected by some Byzantine MSS. is to be retained. It contains an allusion to avyMe, he went up (ver. 3), which was not understood by certain copyists. We must conclude from this that Jesus had approached the shore for the repast, which is in conformity with the Synoptics : He went forth, He re ceived them ; and now He returns to the heights whither He had at first gone with His disciples. Avrb, p.6vog, Himself, alone, is in exact contrast to the words of ver. 3 : with His disciples. Weiss also places the waliv, again, in connection with ver. 3, but without holding that Jesus had descended for the multiplication of the loaves. The meaning would thus be : " He went up to a still higher point." He supports his view by the : they de scended (ver. 16), which, according to him, proves that the whole preced ing scene had taken place on the height. This reason is of no value (see ver. 16), and to go up again is not equivalent to go up higher. Vv. 16-18. " When the evening was come, his disciples went down to the sea shore ; 17 and having entered into the boat, they were crossing 1 the sea towards Capernaum ; and it was already dark 2 and Jesus had not 3 come to them. And the sea was agitated by a strong wind." The word went down does not imply that they were still on the heights where they had spent the first part of the day with Jesus, but only (see the rraXw of ver. 15) that the place where the miracle occurred was situated above the shore properly so called. What order had Jesus given His disciples before leaving them ? Accord ing to the Synoptics, that they should embark for the other side of the sea. This is likewise implied by the narrative of John ; for the supposition is inadmissible that they would have embarked, as is related in ver. 17, leaving Jesus alone on the eastern shore, if He had not made known to them His will in this regard. They even hesitate, as we see from w. 16, 17, to execute this command ; they wuit for this until the last light of the day. But how can we explain the end of ver. 17? These last words seem to say that they were expecting Jesus, as if He had had the intention of rejoining them (a view which is rendered more probable by the reading ovtca, not yet, of the Alexandrian authorities). But this would be in con tradiction to the order to depart which He must have given them. It has 1 J. epxovrai instead of iipxovto. 8!t'BDL5 Mnn. It-1"1*" Cop. read __.._» 2 K D 1 Mn.: Karc\.aflcv _e avrov, y o-Koria instead of ovk. instead of k. o-kot. 17-1} -y-y. 12 SECOND PART. been held that the words: He had not yet rejoined them, were written only from the standpoint of thatwhich really happened later, when Jesus came to them miraculously on the water ; — but this sense seems quite unnatu ral. I think it is more simple to suppose that, inasmuch as the direction from Bethsaida Julias to Capernaum is nearly parallel with that of the northern shore of the lake," Jesus had appointed for them a meeting-place at some point on that side, at the mouth of the Jordan, for example, where he counted upon joining them again. If not, it only remains to hold with Weiss that the pluperfects^./..- night had already come; Jesus had not rejoined them) refer, not to the moment when the disciples were already on the sea, but to that when they embarked. But it is difficult to recon cile the imperfect f/pxovro, literally they were coming, with this meaning. It would be necessary in that case to suppose that in vv. 17, 18 John wished only to bring together the different grounds of anxiety which weighed upon the disciples ; the night which prevented them from making their course on the water, the absence of Jesus and the violence of the tempest. Is not this rather an expedient than an explanation ? Vv. 19-21. " When, therefore, they had gone about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing near to the boat, and they were afraid. 20. But lie says to them : It is I, be not afraid. 21. And as they were willing x to receive him into the boat, immediately the boat reached the point of the shore where they were going." There was no other means by which Jesus could rejoin His disciples, before their arrival at Capernaum, but the one which He employs, ver. 19. They were now in the middle Of the sea. In its broadest part, the lake of Genesareth was, as Josephus, {Bell. Jud., iii., 10, 7) says, forty stadia, nearly two leagues in width. If the , expression of Matthew : " in the midst of the sea," is taken as an indica- | tion of distance (which appears- to me doubtful), this detail accords with j John's indication : twenty-five or thirty stadia. The present they see indi cates the suddenness of the appearance of Jesus ; the emotion of fear which the disciples experience, and which is more fully set forth in the Synoptics, does not allow the words cm, rij, -d-alaa-ons on the sea, to be explained here in the sense in which they are used in xxi. 1 : on. the sea shore. They think that they see a spectre approaching them. Jesus' words : It is I, be not afraid, must have made a very profound impression on the disciples, for it is reported in the same words identically in the four narratives. The imperfect ifielov (literally : they wished), ver. 21, ap pears to imply that Jesus did not enter into the boat : " They were willing to receive Him ; but immediately they found themselves at the shore." There would thus be a contradiction of Mark and Matthew, according to whom Jesus really entered the boat, in Matthew after the episode of St. Peter. Chrysostom thinks himself obliged to infer from this difference that John was here relating another event than that spoken of by Mat thew and Mark. But the close relation between this miracle and the multiplication of the loaves in the three Gospels, as well as the general 1 X : i)X9o>' (they came) instead of i)0e\_p. CHAP. VI. 19-21. 13 similarity of the three accounts, do not permit us to accept this solution. J. D. Michaelis supposed that, instead of riBcXov, iflSov must be read, which would solve the difficulty : they came; they drew near Him with the boat to receive Him. And, a singular circumstance, the Sinaitic MS. presents precisely the reading which was conjectured by this scholar. But it has too much the appearance of a correction to deserve confidence. Besides, Jesus moved so freely upon the waters that the boat had no need to come near to Him. Beza and many exegetes after him think that the verb were willing, here simply adds to the act of receiving, the notion of eagerness, comp. Luke xx. 46 ; Col. ii. 18. And Tholuck has given greater prob ability to this meaning by contrasting the words were willing, as thus understood, with k/poftfidriaav, they were afraid: they were ,afraid at the first moment, but now they received him willingly. There is one thing opposed to this explanation : it is that John has written the imperfect, they were wishing, which denotes incomplete action, and not the aorist, they wished, which would indicate an action completed (i. 44). On the other hand, there is little probability that John could have meant to say, in contra diction to the Synoptics, that Jesus did not really enter the boat, as Meyer thinks. In that case, must he not have said, instead of Kal sv6£a,, and immediately, aKX svBsog, but immediately ? The meaning of John's narra tive would be indeed that the sudden arrival at the shore prevented the execution of the disciples' purpose. As to purselves, the relation between the two clauses of ver. 21, standing thus in juxtaposition, seems to us to be similar to that which we have already observed elsewhere in John (v. 17). It is a logical relation, which we express by means of a conjunction : " At the moment when they were eager to receive Him, the boat came to shore." The moment of the entrance of Jesus into the boat was thus that of the arrival. The thing took place so rapidly that the disciples themselves did not understand precisely the way in which it occurred. Ver. 33 of Matt. and ver. 51 of Mark must be placed at the moment of disembarking. One can scarcely imagine, indeed, that, after an act of power so magnificent and so kingly as Jesus' walking on the waters, He should have seated Himself in the boat, and the voyage should have been laboriously con tinued by the stroke ofthe oar ? At the moment when Jesus set His foot on the boat, He communicated to it, as He had just done for Peter, the force victorious over gravity and space, which had just been so strikingly displayed in His own person. The words ical evBeag, and immediately, com pared with the distance of ten or fifteen stadia (thirty to forty-five minutes) - which yet separated them from the shore, allow no other explanation. Such is the real sovereignt}' which Jesus opposes to the political royalty that fleshly-minded Israel designed to lay upon Him. He gives Himself to His own as the one who reigns over a vaster domain, over all the forces of nature, and who can, one day, free Himself and free them from the burden of this mortal body. If the multiplication of the loaves was the prelude of the offering which He would make of His flesh for the nourish ment of the world, — if, in this terrible night of darkness, tempest and separation, they have experienced as it were the foretaste of an approaching 14 SECOND PART. more sorrowful separation, in this unexpected and triumphant return across the heaving waves, Jesus, as it were, prefigured His resurrection by means of which He will be restored to them and that triumphant ascen sion in which He will one day give the Church itself a share, when, raising it with Himself, through the breath of His Spirit, He will bring it even to the heavenly places. When we bear in mind that every voluntary movement which is effected by our body, every impulse which we communicate to a body which we throw into the air, is — undoubtedly not an abolishing of the law of gravitation, but — a victory which we gain momentarily over that law through the intervention of a force superior to it, namely, that of the will, we can understand that matter, being itself the work of the Divine will, remains always open to this essentially supernatural power. There is nothing therefore to prevent the Divine breath from being able, in a given condition, to free the human body for a time from the power of gravity. Reuss finds that this miracle " places Jesus outside of and above humanity," and that, if it is real, it must no longer be said that the Lord divested Himself of His divine attributes. But to be raised above the law of gravity is less than to be wrested from death.' Would the resurrection of Jesus, according to Reuss, prove that He was not a man ? That of Lazarus, that he was not a man ? The question of the nivaaig has absolutely nothing to do with this matter. II. — The Discourses: vv. 22-65. This section contains, first an historical introduction (vv. 22-24), then a series of conversations and discourses (vv. 25-65). Vv. 22-24. " On the morrow, the multitude who stood on the other side of the sea and who had seen 1 that there was no other boat there but one,2 that into which the disciples had entered, and that Jesus entered not 3 with his disciples into this boat* but that his disciples went away 5 alone — 23 but 6 there came other boats ' from Tiberias near to the place where they had eaten the bread 8 after the Lord had given thanks — 24 when the multitude tiierefore saw9 that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they themselves 10 got into the boats,u and came to Capernaum, seeking Jesus." — The carnal fanaticism of the mul titude had constrained Jesus to separate His disciples from them and to 1 T. R. reads iGuc with r A A and 0 other ctpayov aprov (from Tiberias which is near the Mjj. most Mnn. Syr™'; ABL ltpi«iq«- Syr»h: place where they had eaten bread). ei-op, and X D It"11.; etSev. ° X *ai -_o.re. instead of ore ovv ei.ev. 'ABL ItP1"^™ omit the words: e«e.vo eis o n>T. R. reads /cma-To. with U r some Mnn.. evefino-av ot h__..tjt b Syr™': of the sea saw that there was no other boat there ,-,',.\,.,r «A jm..r , \o,, ,',,„,-. than that into which the disciples of Jesus had 8 X : « Ti0«p.a_o5 eyy. . o. or). oir 0- /ton entered, and that Jesus went not with them into chap. vi. 22-24. 15 separate Himself from the disciples very suddenly. He had now rejoined them, and the -multitude set itself to seek after Him, still in the same spirit. The long and difficult sentence, vv. 22-24, has for its aim to bring out this idea : that the Sole thought which occupied the minds of this company was that of Jesus (end of ver. 24 : seeking Jesus). By examining attentively this complicated sentence, we can soon understand its true con struction. Everything starts from the condition of the multitude on the following morning (ore the morrow the multitude who stood, ver. 22), and looks to the resolution taken by them to set out for Capernaum {they got into the boats, ver. 24). The cause of this resolution is stated in the two determinative expressions : ISiiv, seeing, ver. 22, and ore oiv eldev, when there fore they saw (ver. 24); then, indirectly, in the parenthesis, ver. 23, designed to explain the possibility of this resolution taken by the multitude. In this ver. 23 we find a form analogous to that which we met in i. 10 and ii. 9. It seems that the circumlocutions which characterize this passage are a symbol of the perplexity experienced by the crowd until the moment when the arrival of the boats inspired them with a sudden resolution. The first word : on the morrow, has already a bearing upon the last verb ofthe sentence: they got into the boats (ver. 24). The sense of the perfect participle 6 hrriKu,, who stood there, is this : " who had remained since the previous evening and who were still on the shore at that moment." It seems to me that the article 6 before the participle must serve to limit the idea of the substantive: "the part of the crowd who ..." They were the most persistent ones. It is very evident that the entire multitude of the preceding day, the five thousand, did not cross the sea in these few boats. — The reading elSov or dSev, adopted by Tischendorf (8th ed.), and by the latest commentators {Weiss, Keil), has in its favor the most ancient MSS. The reading Idtiv, having seen, is supported by fifteen of the later Mjj. (r A A etc.) and by the Curetonian Syriac ; it is in my view the true reading. We must give to ISin/ the sense of the pluperfect which is rendered indispensable by the two "on, that, which follow: "On the morrow, the multitude who had seen that there was only one boat there and that the disciples had gone away in this boat without Jesus." — The limiting expression : who had seen, as well as the adverb of time : on the morrow, are in logical relation to the final act : they got into the boats (ver. 24). The aorist elSev or dSov cannot have the sense of the pluperfect because, as a finite verb, it is necessarily determined by ry k-Kavpmv, on the morrow; but the expression: "on the morrow the multitude saw (sing, or plur.) " affords no reasonable mean ing; for it was hot on the day after the miracle, but on the same evening, that the crowds saw that there was only one boat there and that the dis ciples had entered into it without Jesus. It would be necessary therefore to translate : had seen, which the limiting expression on the morrow renders impossible. This reading cannot therefore be sustained, unless we take tjv, was, in the sense of had been, which is much more inadmissible than our the boat, but the disciples only ; the boats having Lord had given thanks, having seen that Jesus then come from Tiberias, which was near the was not there, nor His disciples, they entered place where they had eaten the bread after the into the boat and came ..." 16 SECOND PART. sense of Iduv. The Alexandrian reading saw (sing, or plur.) was quite easily introduced by the mistaken idea that the brt ovv elSev, when [the multi tude] saw, of ver. 24 was the resumption of that of ver. 22, after the paren thesis ver. 23 (an error which is even at the present time found in Keil). This, then, is the meaning, The multitude who were standing there had on the preceding evening discovered two things : 1. That there was only one boat there; 2. That the disciples had departed in this boat, and that Jesus had not gone with His disciples (the two bri of ver. 22). These two facts duly discovered held them back; for it seemed to follow from them that Jesus, whom they were seeking, must still be on that side of the lake. Consequently {ovv, therefore, ver. 24)— that is to say, by reason ofthe depart ure of Jesus during the night— when, on the next morning, they saw neither Jesus nor His disciples (who' might have come back to seek Him), they took the resolution of crossing the sea, availing themselves of the boats which had arrived in the interval, to endeavor to find Jesus again on the other side. The ore ovv eldev, when therefore they saw, of ver. 24, is not, then, by any means a resumption of 'Mv, having seen, ver. 22.1 It serves to complete it, by indicating a new and even opposite sight. According to ver. 22, indeed, it seemed that Jesus must still be there; according to ver. 24, they discovered that He was no longer there. Hence the resolution to go into the boats. As to the parenthesis (ver. 23), it explains how they were able to think of doing it. The arrival of these boats has, occasioned difficulties. Did they come, perhaps, because it was known on the other side that this assemblage was formed in this desert place and needed boats for their return? Westcott makes a very probable supposition when he supposes that it was the tempest of the night which had forced them to take refuge under the eastern shore. The words, that whereinto His disciples had entered, may be a gloss ; yet they have in their favor the Sinaitic MS., and are very suitable. The particular which is so expressly brought to notice : after that the Lord had given thanks, and which is not demanded by the context, recalls the vivid impression which that solemn moment had produced on the spectators and the decisive import ance attached by them to that act. The alXA, ver. 24, does not signify otJiers ; it is the adversative particle but; at least provided the 6c of T. B. is not authentic, in which case this IM6, must rather be taken as an adjective {others). The particle mi, also, before avrol would mean : " they, as well as the disciples and Jesus Him self." This word, however, is insufficiently supported by U r. The avrol makes their persons prominent in contrast to those who had gone away before.2 They decided at last to do themselves what all the rest had done. The verb so long expected hi^aav, embarked, well brings out the final act which ended this long indecision. Thus there are described with an aston ishing precision, in this long sentence, all the impressions, fluctuations, various observations of this multitude, up to the point of the decision •One might be tempted to oonneot .__.. Jesus could not have departed " closely with ._¦.,,«_,: "which remained there »We have been Obliged to render it by mause they had seen that ... and that thus also. chap. vi. 25, 26. 17 which brings them to Capernaum, and gives occasion to the conversations of the next day. Let one imagine a Greek writer of Alexandria or of Rome, in the second century, narrating after this fashion ! Nowhere, perhaps, does the defective and arbitrary character of the Sinaitic text betray itself us it does in this passage (comp. note 11, p. 14). , Although the idea which is predominant in the discourses, vv. 25-65, appears to be the same as that of chap, v., namely, that of life, there is a difference between the teachings contained in these two chapters, which corresponds to that of the two miracles, the application of which they contain. In the healing of the impotent man, it is Jesus who acts ; the sick man is receptive. In the repast in chap, vi., the food is simply offered by Jesus ; if nutrition is to be accomplished, man must act in order to assimilate it. This is the reason why, while in the discourse of chap. v. it is the person of Jesus that comes forward, in the conversations of chap. vi., it is rather the idea of faith which predominates. Without finding it necessary, as Baur does, to explain the composition of our Gospel by a systematic process, we may yet hold that John, in gathering up his recol lections, was struck by the correlation between these two testimonies, which makes one the complement of the other, and that he designedly brought them together as presenting the complete description of the relation between divine and human agency in salvation. Four phases can be distinguished in this conversation, determined in each instance by a manifestation of a portion of the hearers. The first (vv. 25-40) is brought on by a question of the Jews {elirov avrp, they said to him). The second (vv. 41-51) results from a serious dissatisfaction which manifests itself {kydyyv&v, they murmured). The third (vv. 52-59) is marked by an altercation which arises among the hearers themselves {k/iaxovro, they strove among themselves). The last (vv. 60-65) is called forth by a declara tion of the larger part of the earlier Galilean believers, who announce to Jesus their rupture with Him. — Did all these conversations take place in the. synagogue ? This has little probability. Ver. 25 would not lead us to suppose it. The remark of ver. 59 may be referred to the last phases only. 1. Vv. 25-40. This first phase is made up of four brief dialogues, each including a question of the Jews and an answer of Jesus. The last of these answers is more fully developed ; Jesus expresses in it, with restrained emo tion, the impressions with which the condition of His hearers filled His soul. 1. Vv. 25-27. The contrast between the food which perishes and that which abides. Vv. 25, 26. " And having found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him : Babbi, when camest thou ' hither f 26. Jesus answered them and said: Verily, verily, Isay unto you, You seek2 me, not because you saw signs3 1 Instead of -y.yo.-a_, K reads T)\fl_., D fA.ijA.v- 'S omits £ijt-. re ne (you seek me). 8a,. 8 D Ifu- add k<« Ti.para (derived from iv. 48). 2 18 SECOND PART. but because you did eat of those loaves and were filled." — We have seen that the motive for the action of the multitude was the seeking for Jesus ; this is re called to mind by the first words of this passage : " And having found him." The question : when (not : how) camest thou f arises from the fact that they think it impossible that Jesus had made the journey on foot over the road which separates Bethsaida Julias from Capernaum (two to three leagues). The presence of Jesus produces on them the effect of an apparition. He replies, as on every occasion when He is questioned in the way of curiosity, not to the question of the interlocutor, but to the feeling which dictates it. Comp. ii. 4; iii. 3, etc. He unveils to these Jews what is false and fleshly in their way of seeking Him. As there is here a revelation of their inward feelings, of which they were themselves unconscious, He uses the emphatic affirmation, amen, amen. Jesus contrasts here with the false and vain seeking after His person, which aims only at the satisfaction of the earthly man (ver. 26), that salutary seeking which tends to fill the wants of the spiritual man (ver. 27). His miracles were the visible signs ofthe blessings of salvation which He brings to mankind. It will be necessary, therefore, not to rest in the material relief which they procure; it will be necessary to rise by their means to the desire of the superior gifts of which they are the pledge and the image ; it will be necessary, before and above all, to believe on Him whom God points out to the world by giving to Him to do such works. We see how necessary it is to avoid translating the word ati/ieia, signs, here by miracles {Ostervald, Arnaud, Rilliet). It is precisely on the meaning signs that the whole force of this saying depends. The multi tudes interpreted the multiplication of the loaves as the beginning of a series of wonders of the same nature, the inauguration of an era of miracles more and more brilliant and satisfying to the flesh. " Instead of seeing," as Lange says, " in the bread the sign, they had seen in the sign only the bread." This gross want of understanding is what gives to their search for Jesus a false, earthly, sensual, animal character. This tendency it is which Jesus points out to them from the very first word of the conversation, and particularly by the expression which betrays a sort of disgust: and because you were filled. What a difference between these people, who come with their gross aspirations, their earthly appetites, and the spiritual Israel which the Old Testament was intended to prepare and which cries out : " My soul thirsts after thee, oh living God ! " This Israel would say to Him who multiplied the loaves : Give us more still ! Do to-day for our hearts what thou didst yesterday for our bodies! The plural, signs, refers either to the two miracles related in the former part of the chapter, or rather to the miracles in general, which had been no better understood by the multitudes than the one of multiplying the loaves. We have rendered the article rav before apruv by the demon strative pronoun : " those, loaves," because the word the contains an evident allusion to the loaves of the preceding day. Ver. 27. " Work to obtain, not the food1 which perishes, but the food which » places m after the first pp_, K A I."U Syr"" omit m«. chap. vi. 36-38. 25 person of Jesus which plays the chief part. The two mi . . . Kal {and . . . and), are untranslatable : they forcibly bring out the moral contrast be tween the two facts which they so closely bring together. Between this word of condemnation and the calm and solemn declara tion of the following verses (37-40), there is a significant asyndeton. This omission of any connecting particle indicates a moment of silence and profound meditation. Jesus had received a signal from His Father ; in the joy of His heart, He had given a feast to all this people ; He had made for them a miraculous Passover. And these dull hearts have not understood it at all. They ask again for bread, the earth still and nothing but the earth, while He had desired, by means of this figurative repast, to offer them life, to-open to them heaven ! In the presence of this failure, which for Him is the prelude of the grand national catastrophe, the rejection of the Messiah, Jesus communes with Himself; then He con tinues : " It is in vain that you do not believe ! My work remains, never theless, the Father's work ; it will be accomplished without you, since it must be; and in the fact of your exclusion nothing can belaid to my charge ; for I limit myself to fulfilling in a docile way, at each moment, the instructions of my Father ! " Thus the painful check which He has just experienced does not shake His faith, He rises to the contemplation of the assured success of His work in the hearts which His Father will give Him ; and by protesting His perfect submissiveness to the plan of the Father, He lays upon the unbelievers themselves the blame of their rejection, and thus addresses to their consciences the last appeal. Vv. 37, 38. " All tlvat which the Father gives me shall come unto me ; and him who comes to me I will in no wise cast out ; 1 38 for I am come down from heaven2 to do,3 not my own will, but the will of him who sent me." * By the words : All that which the Father gives me, Jesus strongly contrasts the believers of all times with these men to whom He had just said : You do not believe ! The neuter irav b, all that which, indicates a definite whole in which human unbelief will be unable to make any breach, a whole which will appear complete at the end of the work. The extent of this irav, all, depends on an act of the Father designated here by the term give, and later by teach and draw (vv. 44, 45). The first of these three terms does not, any more than the other two, refer to the eternal decree of election ; there would rather be, in that case, the perfect has given. Jesus speaks of a divine action exerted in the heart of the believers at the moment when they give themselves to Him. This action is opposed not to human freedom, but to a purely carnal attraction, to the gross Messianic aspirations, which had, on this very morning, drawn these crowds to Jesus (ver. 26). It is that hunger and thirst after righteousness (Matt. v. 6) which the preparatory action of the Father produces in sincere souls. Every time that Jesus sees such a soul coming to Him, He receives it as as a gift of God, and His success with il is certain. I do not think that it is neces- l X D It"11- Syr™* omit .£->. 'SDL: iroino-io, instead of iroiio. "A BIT some Mnn. read air o t. ovp., in- * X C omit from tov ircp.\ji. p.e ver. 38 to to» stead of R- omit? " with * A 9«veral M»n- chap. vi. 43-45. 31 God. Every one,1 who has heard 2 the Father, and has learned from Him, comes to me: 46 not that any One has seen the Father, except he who is from God3 he lias seen the Father." * This passage presents a remarkable example of the manner in which Jesus cites the Old Testament. It is not from this book that He derived the thought which He here developes; it arose in Him spontaneously, as is shown by the perfectly original form in which it has been previously expressed : the gift, the drawing of the Father. But, afterwards, He thinks fit to cite the Old Testament as the authority recognized by the people. If He was already in the synagogue (ver. 59), He might have in His hands the roll which contained the prophecies of Isaiah, and, as He said these words : " It is written," He might read this very passage. Comp. Luke iv. 17 ff. This would explain the retaining of the copula, and, at the beginning of the quotation. These words are found in Is. liv. 13. Isaiah here declares that the whole Messianic com munity will be composed of persons taught of God, whence it follows that it is only men who are in the inward school of God who can truly give themselves to the Messiah. According to Meyer, the general expression, in the prophets, signifies : in the sacred volume containing the prophets. This meaning follows, indeed, from the terms in and is written.'W is never theless true that Jesus is not thinking only of the passage of Isaiah, which He quotes textually, but that He sees all the prophets rising in chorus to testify to this same truth ; otherwise, why not name Isaiah, as is done elsewhere ? Comp. Jer. xxxi. 33, 34 ; Joel ii. 28 ff. The second part of the 45th verse is commonly understood in this sense : " Every man who, after having heard the teaching {amvaa,), consents to receive it inter nally {ical fiadav), comes to me." With this sense, the teaching would be given to all men, as objects of the pre-eminent grace of God, but it would be expressly distinguished from the free acceptance of this teaching, which is true of only a certain number of them. The -n-dc, whoever, would have, therefore, a much more restricted sense than the navrec, all, of the first clause. But, convenient as this explanation would be to dispose of the doctrine of predestination, we belieye that it is contrary to the true sense of the word all in the passage of Isaiah and in the mouth of Jesus. This word in the former designates only the members of the Messianic community, altogether like the word «a, in the mouth of the latter. The meaning is rather this : As Isaiah has declared, all my believers must be taught ofthe Father; but of these not one shall fail. The whoever merely individualizes the idea of all. Jesus does not place in opposition here the teaching given and the teaching received ; for the question is of an inward teaching, working from the first in the heart. Hence it follows that if the Jews do not believe, it is because this divine teaching has not been effected in them. Hence their inability to believe (ver. 44) ; but this inability is 1 Ovv (therefore) ofthe T. K., with 11 Mjj. Orig. Akov-jj/ is read in U Mjj. 90 Mnn. ItP^nq™. Syr. etc., is omitted by X B C D L S T, some s X : tov iraTpos (of the Father), instead of Mnn. ItP1--1.-- Vulg. Cop. tov ffeov. a T. R. reads anovo-as with XABCKLTn * X D It"".: toi- Seov (God), instead of rqv tlje larger part of the Mnn. It"1'. Vulg. Syr. varepa. 32 SECOND PART. wholly chargeable to them. Perhaps Weiss is right in insisting on the' rejection of the word ovv, therefore, which connects the two clauses of this verse. The second may be regarded as a reaffirmation of, as well as a conclusion from the first. We may hesitate between the readings aKovaa, ¦ and'dicovav, who has heard or who hears. On the one hand, the aorist may have been substituted for the present, because it was supposed that the first participle must be accommodated to the Second. But, on the other hand, the present, which expresses the continuance of the hearing, is less suitable than the past, which indicates an act accomplished for the future at the moment when faith is produced. It is therefore through their previous want of docility with regard to the means prepared by God, that these hearers have brought themselves into an incapacity for believing. This saying implies in Jesus the infinitely exalted feeling of what His person and His work are. In order to come to Him, there is need of nothing less than a drawing of a divine order. " He feels Himself above every thing which the natural man can love and understand " {Gess). The true sense of this passage does not imply the notion of predestination (in so far as it is exclusive of liberty), but, on the contrary, sets it aside. The inability of the Jews to believe arises from the fact that they come to Him, not as persons taught of God, but as slaves of the flesh. They possessed the means of doing better ; hence their culpability. Ver. 46. The phrase ovx 8r., not that, marks a restriction. This restric tion can only refer to the term teaching (ver. 45). The notion of teaching seems to imply a direct contact between the disciple and the Master. Now no other but Jesus has possessed and possesses the privilege of im mediate contact with God through sight. All can certainly hear, it is true, but He alone has seen. And this is the reason why the divine teaching of which He has just spoken is' only preparatory ; it is designed not to take the place of His own, but to lead to Him, the only one who has seen and consequently can reveal God perfectly, xvii. 3; comp. Matt. xi. 27. [This saying is, certainly, one of those from which John has drawn the j fundamental ideas of his Prologue (comp. i. 1, 14, 18). If the preposition irapa, from, were not connected with the words b i>v, who is, it might be applied solely to the mission of Jesus. But that participle obliges us to think of origin and essence ; comp. vii. 29. This irapa is the counterpart" of the irpbc of i. 1 ; united, they sum up the entire relation of the Son to the Father. Everything in the Son is from {irapa) the Father and tends to {irpd.) the Father. Does the sight of the Father here ascribed to Jesus proceed from His divine state before the incarnation, as most interpreters and even Weiss think ? This does not seem to me possible. It is the contents of the human consciousness which He has of God, which He sets forth to His brethren in human words. Comp. iii. 34, 35, where His knowledge of God is inferred from the communication of the Spirit without measure, which has been made to Him as man ; the same in xiv. 10, where it is explained by the communion in which He lives here on earth with the Father. The perfect t&paia, lias seen, proves absolutely nothing for the chap. vi. 46-50. 33 contrary view ; comp. viii. 38, and the analogous expressions, v. 19, 20, which evidently refer to His earthly existence. Only it must not be for gotten that the unique intimacy of this paternal and filial relation rests on the eternal relation of Jesus to the Father ; comp. xvii. 24 : " Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world." It is because this son of man is the eternal well-beloved of the Father, that God completely commu nicates Himself to Him. The readings of X : " who comes from the Father," instead of "from God," and of X D : " has seen God," instead of " the Father" arose undoubtedly from the desire to make our text more literally conformed to the parallel expressions of the Prologue ; comp. for the first i. 14 : napa rov narpdc, and for the second i. 18 : Qebv iapaxe. By this saying Jesus gives it to be understood that after the divine teaching has led to the Son, it is He, the Son, who, in His turn, leads to the Father : " 7 am the way, the truth and the life ; no one comes to the Father but by me " (xiv. 6). Through this idea Jesus comes back to the principal idea which had excited the murmuring of the Jews and He reaffirms it with still more of solemnity than before, in the words of vv. 47-51 : Vv. 47-51. " Verily, verily, I say unto you : He who believes on me 1 has eternal life. 48. I am the bread of life. 49. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they are dead. 50. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die. 51. I am the living bread which came down from heaven ; if any man eat of this bread,2 he shall live 3 forever ; andi this bread which I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world." 6 The words verily, verily, are uttered with the sense of authority which Jesus derives from the unique position which He holds according to ver. 46, and in opposition to the objections of the Jews (vv. 41, 42). " It is thus, whatever you may say of it." Jesus' tone becomes gradually more elevated, and assumes more of energy and solemnity. The words e.c ifii, on me, omitted by four Alexandrian documents, are perfectly suited to the context, in which the principal idea is the person of Jesus. Ver. 48. The affirmations follow each other in the way of asyndeton, like oracles. That of ver. 48 justifies that of ver. 47. By that of ver. 49 He gives back to His hearers their own word of ver. 31. The manna which their fathers ate was so far from the bread of life that it did not prevent them from dying. This word undoubtedly denotes physical death; but as being the effect of a divine condemnation. Ver. 50. " Here is the bread which will truly accomplish the result that you desire." The Iva, in order that, might depend on 6 mrafialvav, which comes down, but it is better to make it depend on the principal idea : " It is here . . . in order that one may eat of it and not die," for : " in order that if one . . . he may not die." It is still the Hebrew paratactic con- 1 X B L T omit e_s cpe (on me) in opposition CDLT some Mnn. ItpMq™ Vulg. Syr"" Orig. to all the other Mss. Vss. and Fathers: (twice) Tisch. ed. 1849. The T. R. is sup- * X It"11 . read e/t tov cpov aprov (of my bread), ported by 11 Mjj. the greater part of the Mnn. instead of ck tovtov tov aprov. It"1!. Cop. Syr** Orig. (twice). X reads o ap™* ^ O u : ^crei, instead of £n vrrep ttjs tov Koo-pov £c-t|. tj irap£ , the living bread, declares even more clearly than the expression bread of life (ver. 48), ' that Jesus is not only the bread which gives life, but that He is Himself I the divine life realized in a human person ; and it is for this end that He gives life to him who receives it within himself. Ver. 51b. The second part of the verse is connected with the first by the two particles ko. and Si, which indicate an idea at once co-ordinated {Kai, and) and progressive {Si,- now) with reference to all that precedes: " And moreover ; " or : " And, finally, to tell you all." Jesus is now resolved to make them hear the paradox even to the end ; for it is here indeed that, as Weiss says, the hard saying begins (ver. 60). At first Jesus had spoken in general of a higher food of which the miraculous bread of the day before was the image and pledge. Then He had declared that this bread was Himself, His entire person. And now He gives them to understand that He will be able to become the bread of life for the world only on con dition of dying, of giving Himself to it as sacrificed. This is the reason why, instead of saying me, He from this time onward uses the expression, my flesh. How can His flesh be given as food to the world? Jesus ex plains this by this new determining phase: f/v _;<_• Soaa, " (my flesh) which I will give." These words are rejected, it is true, by the Alexandrian authorities, but no doubt because of the apparent tautology which they present with the words which precede: bv tju Saau, " (the bread) which' I will give." They should be retained in the text, as Meyer has acknowledged, notwithstanding his ordinary prepossession in favor of the Alexandrian readings, and whatever Weiss, Keil, Westcott, etc., may say. The limiting words for the life of the world cannot be directly connected with the words my flesh ; what would the expression : " my flesh for the life of the world " mean ? A participle. like given or broken would be necessary. 1 Cor. xi. 24 is ciled ; " This is my body [broken] for you." But there, there is at least the article t6 which serves as a basis for the limiting word. Weiss so clearly perceives tho difference that he proposes to make the limiting phrase -.for the life oftlie world, depend, not on the words my flesh, but on the verb earlv, is, nnd to make my flesh an appositional phrase to the bread : "The bread which I will give, that is to say, my flesh, is for the life ofthe world." But chap. vi. 51, 52. 35 even if it were possible to allow such an apposition and so harsh a use of the verb iariv (the passage xi. 4 is too different to prove anything), would not the future S6aa, I will give, require that the verb to be should also be placed in the future : " The bread which I will give, my flesh, shall be for the life of the world ? " His flesh will not be able to serve for the life of the world except after it shall have been given. The reading of the Sinaitic MS. is an unhappy attempt to restore the text after the omission of the words ijv kyo Saoa had made it intolerable. The first which I will give, applied to the bread, is to be paraphrased thus : " which I will give to be eaten;" it sums up the preceding conversation. The second, applied to my flesh, signifies : " which I will give to be sacrificed ; " it forms the tran sition to the following passage {my flesh and my blood). It is in view of this double relation and this double sense that the words : which I will give, had to be repeated. In fact, the flesh of Jesus cannot be eaten as food by each believer, until after it shall have been offered for the world as a victim. This expression : my flesh, especially in connection, as it is here, with the future I will give, which points to a fact yet to occur, can only refer to the sacrifice of the cross. The interpreters who, like Clement and Origen, de Wette, Reuss, Keil, etc., apply the term give to the voluntary consecration which Jesus makes of His person during His earthly life, take no account of the ual Si, and moreover, which indicates a different idea from that which precedes, and ofthe future I will give,. -which, permits us to think only of a gift yet to come. In this verse is betrayed more and more distinctly the pre occupation with the Paschal feast which filled the soul of Jesus from the beginning of this scene, which was one of the grandest in His life. The expression : " the life of the world " shows that the new Passover, of which Jesus is thinking, will have an altogether different extent from the old one : it is the entire human race which will be invited to it as soon as the victim shall have been offered and the feast of sacrifice can be celebrated. 3. Vv. 52-59. Ver. 52. " The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying : How can he give us his flesh 1 to eat ? " The term kftaxovro, strove, goes beyond the iyoy- yv^ov, murmured, of ver. 41 ; it is now a violent debate following after a whispered murmuring. The words among themselves seem to contradict the appositional word saying, which apparently indicates that the saying was unanimous. But the same question might really be found on all 'lips, while yet there was no agreement among those who presented it. Some arrived at the conclusion : It is absurd. Others, under the impres sion of the miracle of the day before and of the sacred and mysterious character of Jesus' words, maintained, in spite of everything, that He was, indeed, the Messiah. At the sight of this altercation, Jesus not only persists in His affirmation, but strengthens it by using expressions which were more and more concrete. Not only does He speak of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, but He also makes of this mysterious act the 1 B T ItP1"1.1"' add avTov after rnv o-apna. 36 SECOND PART. condition of life (vv. 53-56) ; He speaks of eating Himself (ver. 57) ; and finally, sums up the whole conversation in the final declaration of ver. 58. The evangelist closes by indicating the place of the scene (ver. 59). The true text says : " the flesh," not : His flesh, although it is indeed the flesh of Jesus that is in question. That which is revolting to them is, that this is the flesh which must nourish them in eternal life. Vv. 53-55. " Jesus therefore said to them : Verily, verily, I say to you, that unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you, will not have life in yourselves. 54. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life ; and I will raise him up at the last day.1 55. For my flesh is truly food2 and my blood is truly 2 drink." s — Verily : " It is so, whatever you may think of it ! " The Lord attests this first in the negative form (ver. 53), then positively (ver. 54). The term Son of man, recalls the notion of the incarnation, by means of which the eternal life, realized in Him in a hu man life, is placed within reach of the faith of man. Reuss and Keil think that the terms flesh and blood may be understood here as in the passages where the expressi6n Jlesh and blood denotes a living human person, for example, Gal. i. 16. But in these cases the blood is regarded as contained in the flesh which lives by means of it, while in our passage the two ele ments are considered as separated. The blood is shed since it is drunk ; and the flesh is broken since the blood is shed. These expressions imply that Jesus has present to His thought the type of the Paschal lamb. It was the blood of this victim which, sprinkled on the lintels of the doors, had in Egypt secured the people from the stroke of the angel of death and which, in the ceremony of the sacrifice of the lamb in the temple, was poured out on the horns of the altar, taking the place in this case of the - doors of the Israelite houses ; its flesh it was which formed the principal i food of the Paschal supper. The shed blood represents expiation ; and to i drink this blood is to appropriate to oneself by faith the expiation and find in it reconciliation with God, the basis of salvation. The flesh broken repre sents the holy life of Christ ; and to cat it, is to appropriate to oneself that life of obedience and love ; it is to receive it through the action of the Spirit who makes it our life. In these two inward- facts salvation is summed up. If then Jesus does not directly answer the How t of the Jews, He nevertheless docs give indirectly, as He had done with Nicodemus, the desired explanar tion. Asin chap. iii. He had substituted for the expression " born anew" the more ex plicit words " born of water and Spirit," so He here completes the ex pression "to eat His Jlesh " by the expression "to drink His blood," which was suited to recall the type of the lamb and to give these Jews, who celebrated the Paschal feast every year, a glimpse of the truth declared in this para doxical form. The h kavrol,, in yourselves, recalls the word addressed to the Samaritan woman iv. 14. Here again is the idea of the possession in Christ of a fountain of life springing up continually within the behever. 'The MSS. are divided between tjj and cvro. __\n_>r). (a true). = X D E H M SUV r A A Mnn. Itp-«*i-e » X omits the words /_p_j_-« . . . «_-n (eonfa- Vulg. Syr. Orig. (3 times) : aAijtJio. (truly) ; B sion of the two eon) and reads woto? instead C F" K I_ T n 30 Mnn. Cop. Orig. (5 times); of iroo-i..— D omits the words not . . . irons. chap. vi. 53-56. 37 Ver. 54. After having given this explanation in a negative form (with out this eating and this drinking, impossibility of living), Jesus completes the expression of His thought by adding : By this eating and this drink ing, assured possession of life. Then He raises the eye of the believer even to the glorious limit of this impartation of life — the resurrection of : the body. The relation between these last words : "And I will raise him \up . . . ," and the preceding ones is so close that it is difficult to avoid ' seeing an organic connection between the possession of the spiritual life and the final resurrection ; comp. Rom. viii. 10, 11. However this may be, the bodily resurrection is by no means a useless superfetation relatively to the spiritual life, according to the thought which Reuss as cribes to John. Here is the fourth time that Jesus promises it in this discourse as the consummation of the salvation which He brings to man kind ; comp. vv. 39, 40, 44. Nature restored and glorified is the end of the victory gained by the divine grace over sin. The 55th verse justifies the preceding negation and affirmation. If to eat this flesh and to drink this blood are the condition of life, it is because this flesh and this blood are, in all reality, food and drink. A part of the critical authorities present the reading alrr&ug, "is truly;" the rest read ahtdr/g: is true food . . . true drink. The former reading is more in con formity with the style of John. As Liicke observes, John ordinarily makes ok-ntH], refer to moral veracity, in contrast to fsiSo, (falsehood), but he also connects the adverb afa)f)ag with a substantive (i. 48: alr/Bo, 'loparfkiri,,; perhaps viii. 31 : air/Bug p.affi}Tai). Moreover, the sense of the two readings is not sensibly different. The adverb or the adjective expresses the full reality of the vital communication effected by these elements, which are truly for the soul what food is for the body. Vv. 56, 57 explain how this communication of life is effected. By this food of the soul Christ dwells in us and we in Him (ver. 56), and this is to live (ver. 57). Vv. 56, 57. "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 57. As the living Father sent me, and I live by the Father, so he who eats me, he also shall live1 by me." By drinking through faith at the foun tain of the expiation obtained by the blood of Christ and by nourishing oneself through the Spirit on the life realized in His flesh, we contract a union with Him through which His person dwells in us and we in it. This dwelling of the believer in Jesus is for his moral being, as it were, a transplanting from the soil of his own life into the new soil which the perfect righteousness and the holy strength of Christ offer him : renunciation of all merit, all force, all wisdom derived from what belongs to himself, and absolute confidence in Christ, as in Him who possesses all that is needed in order to fill the void. The abiding of Christ, which corresponds to this abiding of the believer in Him, expresses the real effective communica tion which Christ makes of His own personality ("he who eats me " ver. 57). This mutual relation being formed, the believer lives : why ? This is what ver. 57 explains. l The MSS. vary between ^o-eTai (rA etc.), _rj_-e. (N B etc.), and _V| (0 D). 38 second part. Ver. 57. To be in communion with Jesus is to live, because Jesus has access Himself to the highest source of life, namely, God. " Life passes from the Son to the believer, as it passes from the Father to the Son," {Weiss). This second transmission is at once the model (koB^c, as) and the principle (iiai, also) of the first. The principal clause does not begin, as Chrysostom thought, with the words Kayii ft., I also live, but with Kal 6 rpkyuv, aho he who eats me. There are two parallel declarations : the first, bearing on the relation between God and Jesus, the second, on the rela tion between Jesus and the believer ; each one containing two clauses : the one relating to Him who gives ; the other to him who receives. Jesus is a messenger of God, fulfilling a mission here on earth ; He who has given it to Him is the living Father, 6 C,Crv warrjp, the author, the primordial and absolute source of life ; it is in communion with this Father that Jesus, His Son and messenger, derives unceasingly, during His earthly existence, the life, light and strength which are necessary to fulfill His mission. " I live by the Father." The word ?_J, I live, does not indicate merely the fact of existence ; it is at once the physical and moral life, with all their different manifestations. Every time that He acts or speaks, Jesus seeks in God what is necessary for Him for this end and receives it. It is not exact to render Sid (with the accusative) as we have been obliged to do, by the pre position by {per patrem). Jesus did not express Himself in this way {Sia with the genitive) because He did not wish to say merely that God was the force by means of which He worked. But, on the other hand, it would be still more inexact to translate : because of the Father (propter patrem; Lange, Westcott), in the sense of : with a view to the service or the glory of the Father. For the preposition Sid with the accusative signifies, not with a view to (the purpose), but because of (the cause). Jesus means to say that, as sent by the Father, He unceasingly has from God the moral cause of His activity. It is in the Father that He finds the source and norm of each one of His movements, from Him that He gets the vital principle of His being. The Father, in sending the Son, has secured to Him this unique relation, and the Son continues sedulously faithful to it (v. 17). Thus it happens that the life of the Father is perfectly repro duced on earth : Jesus is God lived in a human life. From this results the fact described in the second part of the verse. Grammatically speak ing, this second part forms but one proposition. But, logically, the first member indicating the subject: "He who cats me," corresponds with the first proposition of the preceding declaration : "As the Father sent me; " and in the same way the predicate: "He also shall live by me," corresponds with the second member of the first proposition: "And as I live by the Father." The relation which Jesus sustains to the Father has its reflec tion, as it were, in that which the believer sustains to Jesus, and is for the believer the secret of life. The first /.<_.', also, corresponds with the koB&c, as, of the beginning of the verse: it is the sign of the principal proposition. It takes the place of a ovru,, so, which was avoided because the analogy between the two relations was still not complete. For the first relation is more than the model : it is the principle, the moral reason cMap. vi. 57, 58. 30 of the second. The latter, while being analogous to the first, exists only in virtue of the other. The second Kal before the pronoun makes the subject prominent: kicetvo,, he also. The believer, by feeding on Jesus, finds in Him the same source and guaranty of life as that which Jesus Himself finds in His relation to the Father. A.' -/_., not strictly by me or for me, but because qf me, the norm and source of his life. In each act ' which he performs, the believer seeks in Christ his model and his strength, as Christ does with relation to the Father ; and it is thus that the life of Christ and consequently that of the Father Himself become his. A thought . of unfathomable depth is contained in this saying : Jesus only has direct access to the Father, the supreme source. The life which He derives from j Him, humanly elaborated and reproduced in His person, becomes thus ac- ! cessible to men. As the infinite life of nature becomes capable of appro- I priation by man only so far as it is concentrated in a fruit or a piece of bread, so the divine life is only brought within our reach so far as it is incar- / nated in the Son of man. It is thus that He is for us the bread of life. Only, as we must take the piece of bread and assimilate it to ourselves in order to obtain physical life by its means, we must, also, in order to have the higher life, incorporate into ourselves the person of the Son of man by the inward act of faith, which is the mode of spiritual manducation. By eating Him, who lives by God, we possess the life of God. The living Father lives in One, but in this One He gives Himself to all. This is not metaphysics; it is the most practical morals, as every believer well knows. Jesus therefore reveals here at once the secret of His own life and of that of His followers. Here is the mystery of salvation, which St. Paul describes as "the summing up qf all things in one" (Eph. i. 10). The Lord sought thus to make clear to the Jews wha.t appeared to them in credible : that one man could be for all others the source of life. The formula here given by Christ is of course that of His earthly life ; that of His divine life was given in ver. 26. It follows from these words that no other even miraculous food can give life. Ver. 58. " This is the bread which came down ' from heaven: not as your fathers 2 did eat the, manna 3 and are dead ; he who eats this bread sliall live * forever." The pronoun ovtoc does not mean : " Such is the bread " {Reuss, Keil) ; but " This bread (ver. 57) is that which came down," — that which the manna was not in reality ; hence the two opposite consequences pointed out in what follows. Here is the final appeal : to reject it, will be to die ; to accept it, will be to live. Appendix on w. 516-58. What does Jesus mean by the expressions: to eat His flesh, to drink His blood t 1. Many interpreters see here only a metaphor, designating the act by which faith morally unites itself with its object. According to some {de Wette, Reuss), >X omits ovtos and reads' Karafiaivav in- 3 The same, together with D, omit to pawa stead of Karafia,. (after vpiav). aXB C L T Cop. Orig. omit vpiov after * Variants _Vjo-e. and £naerai (ver. 57). varepe. 40 second part. this object is the historical person of Jesus Christ as it appeared before the eyes of His hearers. The expression My flesh and My blood is to be taken in the same sense as flesh and blood, that is, "the human person." According to others, the object of faith is not only the living Christ {thefiesh), but also the sacrificed Christ {the blood) ; and Jesus describes here at once the appropriation of His holy Ufe and faith in His expiatory death. This interpretation, in one or the other of the two forms which we have just indicated, is easily connected with the beginning of the discourse ; for spiritual assimilation by means of faith is certainly the idea from which the Lord starts : "lam the bread of life, he that cometh to Me shall not hunger, and he thai believeth on Me shall never thirst " (ver. 35). Only we cannot understand, from this point of view, with what aim Jesus gives to this altogether spiritual conception an expression which is more and more paradoxical, material, and, consequently, unintelligible to His interlocutors. If this is all that He means to say, even in the last words of the interview, does He not seem to be playing with words and to lay Himself out needlessly to cause offense to the Jews? 2. This very real difficulty has impelled many commentators to apply these expressions to the scene of the Holy Supper, which Jesus had already had in mind at this time, and which was later to solve for His disciples the mystery of His words. But this explanation gives rise to a still greater difficulty than the preceding one. To what purpose this incomprehensible allusion to an institution which no one could foresee ? Then, Jesus cannot have made the possession of eter nal life depend on the accomplishment of an external act, like that of the Lord's Supper ? In all His teaching, the sole condition of salvation is faith. The Tu bingen School, which has attached itself to this interpretation, has derived from it an argument against the authenticity of the Gospel ; and not without reason, if the explanation were well founded. But the pseudo-John, who should have wished, in the second century, to put an allusion to the Lord's Supper into the mouth of Jesus, would not have failed to employ the word au/ia, body, used in the text of the institution of the Supper and in the Liturgical formulas, rather than oapt;, flesh. A proof of this is found in the unauthentic addition which we read in the Cambridge MS. the Amiatinus, etc., at the end of ver. 56 : " If a man re ceives the body of the Son of man as the bread of life, he will have Ufe in Him." On the passages from Justin (Apol. I., 66) and Ignatius {ad Smyrn., 7), see Weiss. These Fathers may have founded their expression on our passage itself. To discern the true thought of our Lord, we must, as it appears to me, distin guish carefully, in the mysterious eating and drinking here described, the act of man and the divine gift, as Jesus does Himself in ver. 27. The human act is faith, faith alone ; and inasmuch as the eating and drinking designate the believ er's part in his union with Jesus Christ, these terms do not go beyond the meaning which the exclusively spiritual interpretation gives to them. To eat the flesh, is to contemplate with faith the Lord's holy life and to receive that life into oneself through the Holy Spirit to the end of reproducing it in one's own life ; to drink the blood, is to contemplate with faith His violent death, to make it one's own ransom, to appropriate to oneself its atoning efficacy. But if the part of man in this mystical union is limited to faith, this does not yet determine anything as to the nature of the divine gift here assured to the believer. . To taste pardon, to live again by the Spirit the life of Christ— is this all? We cannot think so. We have seen with what emphasis Jesus returns, at different times in the foregoing discourse, to the idea of the bodily resurrection ; He does so again at ver. 54, and in chap. vi. 51 6-58. 41 the most significant way. The life which He communicates to the believer is not, therefore, only His moral nature ; it is His complete life, physical as well as spirit ual, His entire personality. As the grains which the ear contains are only the reappearing of the grain of seed mysteriously multiplied, so believers, sanctified and raised from the dead, are to be only the reproduction, in thousands of living examples, of the glorified Jesus. The principle of this reproduction is undoubt edly spiritual : it is the Spirit which causes Christ to live in us (ch. xiv.-xvi.) ; but the end of this work is physical : it is the glorious body of the believer, pro ceeding from His own (1 Cor. xv. 49). Jesus knew, Jesus profoundly felt that He belonged, body and soul, to humanity. It was with this feeling, and not that He might wantonly give offense to His hearers, that He used the terms which are surprising to us in this discourse. The expressions : to eat and drink, are fig urative ; but the corporeal side of communion with Him is real : " We are of His body," says the apostle who is least to be suspected of religious materialism (Eph. v. 30) ; and to show us clearly that there is no question here of a metaphor intel ligible to the first chance scholar, he adds : " This mystery is great, I speak in re spect to Christ and the Church " (ver. 32). This mystery of our complete union with His person, which in this discourse is expressed in words, is precisely that which Jesus desired to express by an act, when He instituted the rite of the Lord's Supper. We need not say, therefore, that this discourse alludes to the Lord's Supper, but we must say that the Lord's Supper and this discourse refer to one and the same divine fact, expressed here by a metaphor, there by an emblem. From this point of view, we understand why Jesus makes use here of the word flesh and in the institution of the Lord's Supper, of the word body. When He in stituted the ceremony, He held a loaf in His hand and broke it ; now, that which corresponds with this broken bread, was His body as an organism {aaya) broken. In the discourse at Capernaum where the question is only of nourishment, according to the analogy of the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus was obliged 'rather to present His body as substance {adp^) than as an organism. This perfect propriety of the terms shows the originaUty and authenticity of the two forms. There is one question remaining which, from the point of view where we have just taken our position, has only a secondary importance as related to exegesis ; — namely, whether already at this period, Jesus thought of instituting the ceremony of the Lord's Supper.1 He was aware of His approaching death ; the news of the murder of John the Baptist had just reawakened in Him the presentiment of it (Matt. xiv. 13) , He connected it in His thought with the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb , He knew that this death would be for the life qf the whole world what the sacrifice of the lamb had been for the existence of the people of Israel. From these premises He might naturally enough be led to the thought of instituting Himself a feast commemorative of His death and of the new covenant, in order thus to replace the feast of the Paschal lamb, the sacrifice of which was the figure of His own. This thought might certainly have arisen on the day when, being deprived of the joy of celebrating the Passover at Jerusalem, and seeing the multitudes flocking towards Him from all sides, He improvised for them a Pass over, instead of that which was about to be celebrated in the holy city. It was this feast, offered to His disciples as a momentary compensation, which Jesus after wards transformed, in the Lord's Supper, into a permanent institution And is 1 On the silence of John with reference to this institution, see chap. xiii. 42 second part. not this precisely the point of view at which St. John desired to place us, when he said at the beginning, ver. 4 : " Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near." This near approach was not altogether foreign to the thought of the other evangelists ; it explains the expression, so similar to that of the institution of the Lord's Supper, with which they all begin the narrative of the multiplication of the loaves: "He took the bread, and gave thanks." Ver. 59. " These things said Jesus, as he taught in Hie synagogue, at Caper' naum." There was a regular meeting in the synagogue on the second, fifth and seventh days of the week (Monday, Thursday and Saturday). The day of the Passover must have fallen in the year 29, on Monday, April 18th (see Chavannes, Revue de theol., third series, Vol. I., p. 209 ff.). If the multiplying of the loaves occurred on the evening before the Pass over (ver. 4), the following day, the day on which Jesus pronounced this discourse, must consequently have been Monday, which was a day of meeting. But with what purpose does the evangelist insert this notice here? Does he mean merely to give an historical detail? It is difficult to believe this. Tholuck thinks that his design is to account for the numerous audience which the following narrative {therefore, ver. 60), im plies. Is not this somewhat far-fetched? It seems to us, rather, that after having given the account of so solemn a discourse, the evangelist felt the need of fixing forever the locality of this memorable scene (comp. viii. 20), In order to be sensible of this intention we must, first, observe the absence of an article before awayuyy, not : in the synagogue, but ¦ in full synagogal assembly; then, we must connect the objective .words in an assembly with teaching, and in. Capernaum with He said, and paraphrase as follows: "He spoke thus, teaching in full synagogue, at Capernaum." The term SiSaa-Kuv, teaching, which denotes a teaching properly so called, recalls the manner in which Jesus had explained and discussed the Scriptural texts, vv. 31, 35; it is in accord with the solemnity of this scene. The hearers had questioned, murmured, debated; now it is the better- disposed among them, and even some of the permanent disciples of Jesus, who make themselves the organs of the general discontent. 4. Vv. 60-65. Ver. 60. "After having heard him speak thus, many of his disciples said This saying is a hard one; who can listen to itf" According to de Wette and Meyer, this exclamation relates to the idea of the bloody death ofthe Messiah, the great cause of stumbling to the Jews, which had been implied in the preceding declarations; according to Weiss, to the overthrow of all their Messianic hopes which resulted from all these discourses; according to Tholuck and Hengstenberg, to the apparent pride with which Jesus con nected the salvation of the world with His own person, according to several ofthe older writers, Lampe and others, to the claim of Jesus to be a. personage who had come down from heaven. Undoubtedly all these ideas are expressed in what precedes; but the most striking idea was evi- chap. vi. 59-62. 43 dently the obligation to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have life, and there was here indeed, also, the most paradoxical and most offensive idea. Grossly understood, it might indeed be revolting even to the disciples, and might force from them the cry: This is going too far; He talks irrationally ! The term jia&rirai, disciples, here denotes persons who attached themselves to Jesus, who followed Him habitually, and who had even broken off from then- ordinary occupations in order to accom pany Him (ver. 66) ; it was from among them that Jesus had, a short time before, chosen the Twelve. Some of them were afterwards found un doubtedly among the five hundred of whom Paul speaks (1 Cor. xv. 6). SK^p.f (properly, hard, lough), does not here signify obscure {Clvrysostom, Grotius, Olshausen), but difficult to receive. They think they understand it, but they cannot admit it. — Tig Svvarai, " who has power to . . . ?" — Aiwiieiv, " to listen calmly, without stopping the ears." Vv. 61-63. " But Jesus, knowing x in himself that his disciples murmured at this, said unto them: Does this word offend you? 62. And if .you shall see the Son of man ascending where lie was before f 63. It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words which I speak2 unto you are spirit and life." As Lange remarks, the words "in himself" do not exclude the perception of any external signs, but they signify that Jesus had no need of questioning any one of them in order to understand these symptoms. The word offend, is to be taken here in the gravest sense, as in Luke vii. 23 : to cause to stumble with respect to faith. The words idv ovv (ver. 62), which we have translated by and if, do not depend upon any principal proposition. One must, therefore, be supplied. We may understand, " What will you then say ? " But this question itself may and must be resolved into one of the two following ones : " Will not your offense cease then?" or, on the contrary: "Will you not then be still more offended ? " This last question is the one which is understood by de Wette, Meyer and Liicke. According to Weiss, this second view is absolutely required by the ovv, therefore ; the first would have required but: " But will not your present offense cease?" True; nevertheless, this second form of the question, if one holds to it, cannot be any more satis factory. What purpose indeed would it serve to refer them to a coming fact which would offend them still more ? We must come to a third sup position which unites the two questions, by passing from the second so as to end with the first. " If therefore, one day, after you have heard this saying which is so intolerable to you, an event occurs which renders it altogether absurd, will you not then understand that you were mistaken as to its true meaning ? " The apostle calls this event an avafiaivetv, as cending. _ A whole class of interpreters, find here the indication of the death of Jesus as the means of His exaltation to the Father {Liicke,, de Wette, Meyer, Reuss, Weiss). " It is then indeed, Jesus would say, that your Messianic hopes will be reduced to nothing ! " But are the ideas of 1 Instead of e.S-i. Se, X reads eyvu ovv and 2 Instead of *a\a> (I speak), which is read adds itai before e.u-ei/. by -ArA and 7 Mjj. X B C D K L T U IB Mnn. It. Vulg. Orig. read Kc\a\nica (lhave spoken). 44 second part. suffering and disappearing identical, then, with that of ascending ? When the idea of death on the cross is united with that of the heavenly exalta tion of Jesus (iii. 15 ; xii. 34), the apostle uses the passive term, v-iiu&ijvai, to be lifted up. When he desires to present this death from the point of view of the disappearance which will follow it, he says vwdyeiv, to go away (to the Father) but not avapaivetv. When John applies this last term to the exaltation of Jesus xx. 17, he does not mean to speak of His death ; for it is after His resurrection. How could the term ascend designate the mo ment of His deepest humiliation ? and that in speaking to Jews ! Still more, according to all these interpreters, it is the death of Jesus with its consequences which is the hard saying at which the disciples are offended ; — and yet the new offense, a still greater one, which should form the con summation ofthe first, is again the death ! Weiss perceives this contradiction so clearly that, in order to escape it, he supposes that the mention of the death contained in ver. 53 was imported by the evangehst into the dis course of Jesus ; the allusion to the great separation of death could have occurred only in this passage. This is to make over the discourse, not to explain it. The only natural and even possible interpretation is that which applies the term ascend to the ascension. It is objected that the fact of the ascension is not related by John and that the words : if you shall see, do not apply to this fact, since the apostles alone were witnesses of it. But the omission of the ascension in John is explained, hke that of the baptism ; his narrative ends before the first of these facts, as it be gins after the second. Nevertheless John alludes to the one and the other (i. 32 and xx. 17). And as to the word see, it is not always apphed to the sight of the eyes, but also to that of the understanding; comp. i. 52 "you shall see the angels ascending and descending ; " iv. 19 : "I see that Thou art a prophet; " but especially Matt. xxvi. 63 : " Henceforth you shall see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds." This last passage is altogether analogous to ours. In the visible facts of Pentecost and the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews beheld, whether they would or no, the invisible ones, the sitting of Christ on the right hand of God and His return in judgment. As to believers, they have seen and still see through the eyes of the apostles. Jesus Himself, if He foretold these facts, must have clearly foreseen the ascension which is the condition of them. Various details confirm this meaning. In the first place, the present participle ascending, which forms a picture (see Baum lein); then, the opposition between this term and the term descending from heaven which, throughout this whole chapter, has designated the incarna tion, as well as the words : where he was before, on which, as Keil observes, lies precisely the emphasis of the sentence ; finally, the parallel in xx. 17. It is evident that this meaning is perfectly suited to the context : " You are offended at the necessity of eating and drinking the blood of a man who is here before you. This thought will seem to you much more unaccept able, when you shall see this same man ascend again into heaven from which Ho descended before, and His flesh and blood disappear from be fore your eyes. But at that time you also will be obliged to understand chap. vi. 63-65. 45 that the eating and drinking were of an altogether different nature from what you at first supposed." The following versefully confirms this ex planation. Ver. 63. The first proposition is a general principle, from which they should have started and which would quite naturally exclude the mistake which they commit. Chrysostom, Luther, Reuss give to the word flesh here the sense of grossly literal interpretation and to the word spirit that of figurative interpretation. But the opposite of the spirit in this sense would be the letter, rather than the flesh ; and the word flesh cannot be taken here all at once in a different sense from that which it has had throughout the whole preceding discourse. "The Spirit alone gives life," Jesus means to say; "as to the material substance, whether that of the manna, or that of my own body, it is powerless to communicate it." Does this saying exclude the substantial communication of the Lord's body, in the Lord's Supper ? No, undoubtedly, since the Lord, as He. communicates Himself to believers, through faith, in the sacrament, is life-giving Spirit, and the flesh and blood no longer belong to the substance of His glorified body (1 Cor. xv. 50). From this general principle Jesus infers the true sense of His words. If He said simply : My words are spirit, one might understand these words with Augustine in the sense : My words are to be understood spiritually. But the second predicate : and life, does not allow this explanation. The meaning is therefore : " My words are the incarnation and communica tion of the Spirit ; it is the Spirit who dwells in them and acts through them ; and for this reason they communicate life " (according to the first clause of the verse). From this spiritual and life-giving nature of His words results the manner in which they are to be interpreted. The Alex andrian reading : " the words which I have spoken," is adopted as unques tionable by Tischendorf, Westcott, Weiss, Keil, etc., on the evidence of the most ancient Mjj. And one seems to be setting oneself obstinately against the evidence in preferring to it the received reading : " the words which I speak (in general)," which has in its favor only the St. Gall MS. and nine others of nearly the same time (9th century). My conviction is, never theless, that this is indeed the true reading. The first reading would restrict the application of these words to the sayings which Jesus has just uttered on this same day, while the pronoun iya, I, by making the nature of the sayings depend on the character of Him who utters them, gives to this affirmation a permanent application : " The words which a being such as Jam, spiritual and living, utters, are necessarily spirit and life." Weiss dfles not appear to me to have succeeded in accounting, for this pronoun iya, when he adopts the Alexandrian reading. Vv. 64, 65. " But there are among you some that believe not. For Jesus 1 knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who it was that should betray him ; 65 and he said : For this cause have I said unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it be given Mm by my Father." To the exclamation: This saying is a hard one, Jesus had replied: "It is hard only 1 Instead of Irjo-ov., X reads o o-wtijp (the Saviour)- 46 SECOND PART so far as you wrongly understand it." And now He unveils the cause of this want of understanding. Even among them, His disciples, apparently believers, there is a large number who are not true believers. The expression nvig does not so far limit the number of these false believers as the French [or English] word some ; comp. Bom. iii. 3 ; xi. 17, and Heb. iii. 16, where this pronoun is applied to the whole mass of the dis obedient and unbelieving Jewish nation. The word nvig designates any part whatever, whether great or small, of the whole. The evangelist by means of a fact gives the reason, in the second part of the verse, for the declaration pronounced in the first ; this fact is that Jesus knows them even to the foundation, and this from the beginning. The word hi? apxyg, from the beginning-, applies undoubtedly, as Liicke, Meyer, Westcott think, to the earliest times of Jesus' ministry, when He set Himself to the work of grouping around Himself a circle of permanent disciples (xv. 27, xvi. 4; Acts i. 21, 22), or, what amounts nearly to the same thing, to the beginning of the relation of Jesus to each one of them {Tholuck, Westcott, Keil); He discerned immediately the nature of the aspirations which brought them- to Him (ii. 22, 23). Lange and Weiss think that the term beginning desig nates the first appearance of the unbelief itself. Chrysostom and Bengel apply it to the moment when the hearers had begun to murmur on this very day. These last explanations are quite unnatural. Kai, and: and even, or : and in particular. The expression : who it was who should, is written, not from the standpoint of a fatalistic predestination, but simply from that of the accomplished fact (ver. 71). It follows undoubtedly from this word of John that Jesus did not choose Judas without understanding that, if there was to be a traitor among His disciples, it would be he; but not that He had chosen him in order that he should betray Him. He might hope to gain the victory over the egoistic and earthly aspirations which brought this man, like so many others, to Him. The privileged place which He accorded to him might be a means of gaining him, as also it might end in a deeper fall, if he trampled this grace under foot, As Keil says, " God constantly puts men in positions where their sin, if it is not overcome, must necessarily reach maturity. And God uses it then to serve the accomplishment of His plan." Still more, shall we not go so far as to say that the very fall in which this relation was to end might become the terrible means of finally breaking down the pride of this Titanic nature ? The moment when Judas, receiving the fatal morsel from the hand of Jesus, must have felt all the greatness of his crime, might have become for him the moment of repentance and of salvation. " If," ways Riggenbach {Leben des Htrrti Jesu, p. 366), "in that night of prayer when the choice of the Twelve was prepared for (Luke vi. 12), the thoughts of the Lord Jesus were again and again brought back to this man, and if, while very clearly discerning his want of uprightness, He was obliged to recognize in this the signal from the Father, what shall we have to say ? Literally the narrator says : " For He knew . . . who they are who do not believe and who is ho who shall betray Him; " so far does he carry himself back with vividness to the moment when all this occurred. chap. vi. 66. 47 The Kal ileyev, and he said, leads us to suppose a moment of silence here, filled with the sorrowful reflection which the evangelist afterwards communicates to us. The Sid tovto, for this cause, refers to the expression : some who do not believe. " It is precisely to this that I wished to turn your attention when I said to you." A man may declare and believe himself His disciple without truly believing, because he joins himself to Him under the sway of motives which do not proceed from the teaching of the Father (ver. 45). Without this divine and inward preparation, .even in the most favorable position faith remains impossible. The quotation is not literal, any more than in the other cases where Jesus quotes Himself (vi. 36). In ver. 37, it was the coming believer who was given to Jesus ; here it is given to him to come. Westcott observes correctly that the two elements, divine and human, appear here, the first in the word is given, the second in the word come. This saying of Jesus was a farewell; those to whom it was addressed understood it. Even after the day when the popular enthu siasm had reached its culminating point, the Galilean work of Jesus seemed as if destroyed ; it presented the aspect of a rich harvest on which a hail-storm has beaten. Ver. 66. " From that moment 1 many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him." In the picture which the Synoptics have drawn for us of the Galilean ministry, — particularly in that of St. Luke, — Jesus shows Himself often preoccupied with the necessity of making a selection among those crowds who followed Him without comprehending the serious char acter ofthe step. Comp. Luke viii. 9 ff. ; ix. 23 ff. ; xiv. 25 ff. Jesus pre ferred by far a little nucleus of men established in faith and resolved to accept the self-denials which it imposed, to those multitudes whose bond of union with His person was only an apparent one. But there was more than this : all His work would have been in danger if the spirit which was manifested on the preceding day had gained the ascendant among His adherents already so numerous. It was necessary to remove everything which, in this mass, was not decided to go with Him on the pathway of the crucifixion and towards a wholly spiritual kingdom. We can, from this point of view, explain the method pursued by Him in the foregoing scene. The words by which He had characterized the nature and privi leges of faith were adapted to attach the true believers to Him more closely, but also to repel all those whom the instincts of a carnal Messi anic hope brought to Him. The danger which His work had just in curred had revealed to Him the necessity of purifying His infant Church. Ver. 66 shows us this end attained, so far as concerned the group of dis ciples who most nearly surrounded the apostolic company. 'Ek rovrov may be taken in a temporal sense : from this moment {de Wette), or in the logical sense : for this reason {Meyer, Weiss, etc.). For this second sense classical examples may be cited. The passage xix. 12 determines nothing. I would understand : since this fact, which includes both ttie time (from this 1 X D add here ovv (therefore). 48 SECOND PART. day) and its. contents (that which had just occurred). The words dirf/Wov elg ™ _Tr.o-_j, went back, include more than simple defection ; they denote the return of these people to their ordinary occupations, which they had abandoned in order continuously to follow the Lord. The imperfect Tvepien-drow indicates a fact of a certain continuance; they no longer took part in His wandering kind of life (vii. 1). It was in consequence of this prolonged rupture that the following conversation took place. Jesus, far from being discouraged by this result, sees in it a salutary sifting pro cess which He wished even to introduce into the midst ofthe circle ofthe Twelve ; for here also He discerns the presence of impure elements. Vv. 67-69. "Jesus said therefore unto the Twelve: And you, you will not also go away ? 68. Simon Peter answered1 him : Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast words of eternal life ; 69 and as for us, we have believed and have known that thou art the Holy One of God." 2 At the sight of this increasing desertion {ovv), Jesus addresses Himself to the Twelve themselves. But who are these Twelve of whom John speaks as personages perfectly well known to the readers ? He has, up to this point, only spoken of the call ing of five disciples, in chap, i.; he has mentioned, besides, the existence of an indefinite and considerably numerous circle of adherents. In this example we lay our finger on the mistake of those who claim that John is ignorant of, or tacitly denies, all the facts which he does not himself relate. This expression : Ihe Twelve, which is repeated in vv. 70, 71, im plies and confirms the story of Luke vi. 12 ff. ; Mark iii. 13 ff, which John has omitted as known ; comp. the -f./Ufd/tf/v (ver. 70) with the cK?^dpsvog of Luke. Jesus' question expects a negative answer (/_>;). So de Wette, Meyer, Weiss, give to it this melancholy sense : " You would not also leave me ? " Here, as it seems to me, and whatever Weiss and Diisterdieck may say, is an example of the errors into which grammatical pedantry may lead. Far from having the plaintive tone, this question breathes the most manly energy. Jesus has just seen the larger part of his earlier dis ciples leaving Him ; it seems, therefore, that He must hold so much the more firmly to the Twelve, the last human supports of His work; and yet He Himself opens the door for them. Only, as he certainly does not wish to induce them to leave Him, and it is only a permission that He intends to give them, He cannot use the expression o_,y vpelg 8i?,eTt, will you not, which would be a positive invitation to depart. He limits Him self, therefore, to saying : you surely will not . . . ? a form which implies this idea : " But if you wish to go, you are free." It must not be forgot ten, that, in the use ofthe particles, there are shades of feeling which prevent our subjecting their meaning to such strict rules as those which philology sometimes claims to establish. The Kai before v/telg, you also, emphatically distinguishes the apostles from all the other disciples. At which on e of them did Jesus aim, as He discharged this arrow ? The close 1 » Mjj. (X B C etc.), omit ovv. tov (oivtoi (the Clirist,tlieSonofthelivin T. R. reads mv after el? with 13 Mjj. Mnn. It. Vulg. Cop. against B C D L Syr. which reject.*. chap. vi. 71. 51 ances. If one wishes to understand this crisis, it is enough for him to cast a glance at the Christianity of to-day. It declares and thinks itself Chris tian, but material instincts have, more and more, the preponderance over religious and moral needs. Soon the Gospel will not answer any longer ,; to the aspirations of the masses. The words : " You have seen me and believe not," will have their application to them on a still vaster scale ; and the time will come when the great defection of Christendom will, for a time, > reproduce the Galilean catastrophe. Our epoch is the true commentary on the sixth chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Objections have been made to the authenticity of these discourses. Critics have alleged their unintelligibility for the hearers {Strauss, Leben Jesu, vol. I., 2d part, pp. 680, 681) and the similarity of the dialogue to the one in chap. iv. {Ibid. p. 680). Comp. especially, ver. 34 with iv. 15; ver. 27 with iv. 13, 14. With reference to this second point we answer. 1. That the ever-renewed collision between the heavenly thought of Jesus and the carnal minds which it was trying to elevate even to itself must, at each time, introduce analogous phases ; and 2. That it is not difficult to point out characteristic differences between chap. iv. and chap. vi. The chief one is this : While the Samaritan woman suffers herself to be trans ported to the celestial sphere whither Jesus would attract her, the Gali leans, elevated for a moment, soon fall again to the earth, and break decisively with Him who declares that He has nothing to offer them for the satisfaction of their gross religious materialism. As to theirs, point, we think that we have here an excellent opportu nity to convince ourselves of the authenticity of the discourses of the fourth Gospel. If there is any one of them which can be accused of pre senting the mystical character to which the name Johannean is often given, it is certainly this one. And yet, how without this discourse can we explain the great historical fact of the Galilean crisis which is con nected with it in our narrative. This decisive event in the history of Jesus' ministry is not called in question by any one, and yet it is insepa rable from the discourse which caused it ! This discourse, moreover, is naturally connected with its starting point and has a clearly graduated pro gress. Jesus here declares to the Jews : 1. That they must seek after a higher food than the bread of the day before ; 2. That this food is Him self; and 3. That, in order to appropriate it to oneself, one must go so far as to eat His flesh and drink His blood. This gradation is natural : it pre sents itself as historically necessary, the fact being given which served as its point of departure. Even the incomprehensibility of the last part for the mass of the hearers becomes one of the factors of the double result which Jesus desired to attain ; the purification of the circle of His disci ples and even of that of His apostles, and the radical rupture with the Messianic illusions on which the multitudes gathered around Him were still feeding. As to the relation of the profession of the apostles, ch. vi., to that of C-esarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 13 ff. ; Mark viii. 27 ff. ; Luke ix. 18 ff), it seems to me that it is difficult to imagine two questionings of Jesus, aa 52 second part. well as two responses of the disciples, so similar to one another nearly at the same time. There is nothing to prevent our placing between the scene at Capernaum and the confession of Peter in our chapter an inter val of some weeks. The _/c tovtov, from this time (ver. 66), easily allows it. and we have thus the necessary time for locating the matter contained (in Matt, and Mark) between the multiplication of the loaves and this solemn conversation of Jesus with His disciples (Matt. xiv. 34-xvi. 12 ; Mark vi. 53-viii. 26). As for Luke, he is still more easily put in accord with John, since omitting all the intermediate passages, he directly con nects the conversation of Jesus and Peter's profession with the multipli cation of the loaves (ix. 17, 18). No doubt, the answer of Peter is some what differently expressed in Matthew (" Thou art the Christ, the Son qf the living God") and in John (" Thou art the Holy One of God"); and Westcott finds in this difference a sufficient reason for distinguishing the two scenes. But in the Synoptics also the answer differs (Mark : " Thou art the Christ ; " Luke : " Thou art the Christ of God "), a proof that we should not fasten our attention here on the terms, but on the sense : the Messianic dignity of Jesus (in opposition to the function of a simple prophet or a forerunner ; comp. Matt. xvi. 14 ff.). For myself, I cannot comprehend how Jesus, after having obtained from the mouth of Peter either the profession reported by Matthew, or that of which John speaks, should almost at the same time have also asked a new one. THIRD SECTION. VH. 1-VHI. 59 The Strife at its Highest Stage of Intensity at Jerusalem. Seven months had elapsed without any appearance of Jesus at Jerusa lem. The exasperation of the rulers, whose murderous character John had recognized from the beginning (v. 16, 18), had for a moment become calm ; but the fire was ever smouldering under the ashes. At the first appearance of Jesus in the capital, the flame could not fail to burst forth anew, and with a redoubled violence. We may divide this section into three parts : 1. Before the feast : vii. 1-13. 2. During the feast : vii. 14-36. 3. End and results of the feast : vii. 37— viii. 59. I. — Before the Feast : vii. 1-13. Ver. 1. " And after this,1 Jesus contin ued to sojourn in Galilee : for he would not sojourn in Judea, because Ihe Jews were seeking to put Him to death." The situation described in this first verse is the continuation of that of i Kai (and) is omitted by X D I_pi«i«»- Sah. the beginning of the verse, and not aftet Byr.— 'j Mjj. (X B 0 etc.), plueo pcra to,vt_. at Ijicov.. CHAP. VII. 1, 2. 53 which the picture has been drawn in vi. 1, 2. Hence the «<_., and, placed at the beginning ; comp. vi. 1. If he does not any further mention the numerous body of attendants of which he had spoken at the beginning of chap, vi., it is perhaps owing to the general desertion which had tempo rarily followed the scene related in the sixth chapter. But he brings out more forcibly the persistence with which, during so long a period, Jesus limited His journeyings to Galilee. The term irepnrareiv, to go and come,- characterizes by a single word that ministry of itinerant evangelization which the Synoptics describe in detail. The imperfect tenses make promi nent the continuance of this state of things. The sense of the words : He sojourned in Galilee, is rather negative .than positive : " He did not go out of Galilee." The last words of the verse recall the state in which the preceding visit of Jesus had left the minds of men in Jerusalem (chap, v.), and thus prepare the way for the following narrative.. In one sense, everything is fragmentary, in another, everything is intimately con nected in the Johannean narration. Let us here cast a glance at the contents of the Synoptic narrative up to the moment which we have reached in the narrative of John. To our sixth chapter corresponds precisely the period contained in Matt. xiv. 13-xvi. 28, and in Mark vi. 30-viii. 38, including the multipli cation of the loaves, the conversation with the Pharisees on washings and the cleanness of meats, the journey to the northwest as far as Phoenicia, (the Canaanitish woman), the return through Decapolis with the second multiplication of loaves, the return on the western shore of the lake, a new excursion on the opposite shore, together with the arrival at Beth saida ; finally, an excursion to the north of Palestine, with the conversa tion at Csesarea Philippi. Thus we reach the moment parallel with the end of the sixth chapter and the beginning of the seventh chapter of John. It is October. Here are placed in the Synoptics the events which pre cede and accompany the return from Upper Gahlee to Capernaum, the Transfiguration, the conversations on the approaching rejection of Jesus, the dispute among the disciples and the arrival at Capernaum (Matt. xvii. 1-xviii. end ; Mark ix.). Then Mark (x. 1) and Matthew (xx. 1) relate the final departure from Galilee to Judea. This cannot be the journey to the feast of Tabernacles in John vii., as we shall show. This journey (in John) is omitted, Uke all the others, by the Synoptics ; the final departure from Gal ilee indicated by them is certainly a fact posterior to the brief journey to Jerusalem described by John in chap. vii. Luke, as we have seen, con nects the conversation at Csesarea (ix. 17, 18) directly with the first multi plication of loaves. Then he recounts nearly the same facts as the two other Synoptical writers, the Transfiguration, the healing of the lunatic child, the conversation respecting the approaching sufferings and the return to Capernaum (ix. 18-50) ; finally he passes, like the other two, from this point to the final departure for Jerusalem (ix. 51.) Ver. 2. " But the feast of the Jews, called that qf Tabernacles, was at hand." This feast was celebrated in October : six full months, therefore, according to John himself, separate this story from the one preceding, without his 54 SECOND PAfeT. mentioning a single one of the facts which we have just enumerated, and which filled this entire half-year. His intention, then, is certainly not to relate a complete history, and his silence with respect to any fact what ever cannot be interpreted as a proof of ignorance or as an implicit denial of it. The feast of Tabernacles, called in Maccabees and in Josephus, as here, oicnvomjyia, was celebrated for eight days, reckoning from the fifteenth day of the seventh month (Tisri). During this time, the people dwelt in tents, made of leafy branches, on the roofs of the houses, in the streets and squares, and even on the sides of the roads around Jerusalem. The Jews thus renewed every year the remembrance of the forty years during which their fathers had lived in tents in the wilderness. The city and its environs resembled a camp of pilgrims. The principal ceremonies of the feast had reference to the miraculous blessings of which Israel had been the object during that long and painful pilgrimage of the desert. A liba tion which was made every morning in the temple, recalled to mind the waters which Moses had caused to spring forth from the rock. Two candelabra, lighted at eveinng in the court, represented the luminous cloud which had given light to the Israelites during the nights. To the seven days of the feast, properly so called, the law added an eighth, with which was perhaps connected, according to the ingenious supposition of Lange, the remembrance of the entrance into the promised land. Jose phus calls this feast the most sacred and greatest of the Israelitish festi vals. But, as it was also designed to celebrate the end of all the harvest ings of the year, the people gave themselves up to rejoicings which easily degenerated into license, and which caused it to be compared by Plutarch to the feasts of Bacchus. It was the last of the great legal feasts of the year ; as Jesus had not gone, this year, either to the Passover-feast or to that of Pentecost, it might be presumed that He would go to this feast. For it was assumed that every one would celebrate at least one of these three principal feasts at Jerusalem. Hence the therefore of the following verse. Ver. 3^5. "His brethren therefore said to him: Depart hence and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may behold 1 the works which thou doest ; 4 for no man does 2 any work in secret, while seeking after s fame ; if thou really doest such works, manifest thyself to the world. 5. For even his brethren did not believe * on him." We take the expression " Jesus' brethren," in the strict sense. Comp. on this question Vol. I., pp. 357-361. At the head of these brethren was undoubtedly James, who was afterwards the first director of the flock at Jerusalem (Acts xii. 17 ; xv. 13 ; xxi. 18 ; Gal. i. 19 ; ii. 9). The ex hortation which they address to Jesus is' inspired neither by a too impatient zeal for the glory of their brother {Hengstenberg, Lange) nor by the malignant desire of seeing Him fall into the hands of His enemies {Euthymius). They are, beyond doubt, neither so good nor so bad. They are perplexed with regard to the claims of Jesus; on the one hand, they 1 Instead of 9cu>pno-uo-i, B D L M A read s Instead of ovto., B D d Cop. read avro. Bcupvo-ovo-i ; X fleiopovo-i. * D L read err lo-revo-ac (believed). * Instead of n-oiei, X L> : irouav. chaP. vii. 3-5. 55 Cannot deny the extraordinary facts of which they are every day the wit nesses ; on the other, they cannot decide to regard as the Messiah this man whom they are accustomed to treat on terms of the most perfect familiarity. They desire, therefore, to see Him withdraw from the equivo cal situation which He creates for Himself and in which He places them all by keeping Himself so persistently at a distance from Jerusalem. If He is truly the Messiah, why indeed should He fear to make His appear ance before more competent judges than the ignorant Galileans. His place is at Jerusalem. Is not the capital the theatre on which the Mes siah should play His part, and the place where the official recognition of His mission should be accomplished? The approaching feast, which seems to impose on Jesus an obligation to go to Jerusalem, appears to them the favorable moment for a decisive step. There is a certain analogy between this summons of the brethren and the request of Mary, chap, ii., as there will be also between the manner in which the Lord acts and His conduct at the wedding in Cana. What do the brethren mean by the expression " thy disciples " (ver. 3) ? It seems that they apply this name only to the adherents of Jesus in Judea. And this was indeed their thought, perhaps, in view of the fact that there only had Jesus properly founded a school similar to that of John the Baptist, by baptizing like him ; comp. iv. 1 : " The Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John the Baptist." All this had been told and repeated in Galilee; a great stir had been made respecting these numerous adherents of Jesus in Judea and at Jerusalem, at whose head might even be found members of the Sanhedrim. His brethren remind Him of these earlier successes in Judea, and this with the more timeliness because, since the scene of chap, vi., the larger part of His disciples in Galilee had abandoned Him, and He was now sur rounded only by a fluctuating multitude. They mean, therefore : " These Messianic works which thou dost lavish upon these crowds, without any result, — go then, at length, and do them in the places where it is said that thou hast formed a school, and where thou wilt have witnesses more worthy of such a spectacle and more capable of drawing a serious con clusion from it." It is not necessary, therefore, to supply, with Liicke and others, _/ce.: "thy disciples there," or to explain, as Hengstenberg and Meyer do : " thy disciples in the entire nation, who will come to the feast." John must certainly have added a word in order to indicate either the one or the other of these meanings. The term padr/rat,, disciples, is taken here by the brethren in a sense which is slightly emphatic and ironical. Liicke has perfectly rendered the construction of ver. 4 by a Latin phrase : Nemo enim clam sua agil idemque cupit celeber esse. There exists no man who works in secret and at the same time aspires to make for himself a name. Avrdg refers to this hypothetical subject of the verb i.o.__, does, whose real existence the word no one afterwards denies. The copula Kai, and, strongly sets forth the internal contradiction between such a claim and such conduct (comp. the Kai of vi. 36). 'Bv ivappvoia is used 56 SECOND part. here, whatever Meyer may say, in the same sense as in xi. 54 and Col. ii. 15 : in public. From the idea of speaking boldly we easily pass to that of acting openly {Keil). The sense given by Meyer: "No one acts in secret and wishes at the same time to be a man of frankness," is inadmissible. By saying el, if, the brethren do not precisely call in question the reality of the miracles of Jesus. This el is logical; it signifies if really. Only they ask for judges more competent than themselves to decide on the value of these works. And for this end it is necessary that he should advance or retreat. Certainly, speaking absolutely, they were right: the Messianic question could not be decided in Galilee. The choice of the time remained ; this was the point which Jesus reserved for Himself. By Kdayog, the world, the brethren evidently mean the great theatre of human existence, such as they knew it, Jerusalem. The style of ver. 4 has a peculiarly Hebraic stamp : these are the words of the brethren of Jesus taken as if from their lips. Comp. the analogous construction in 1 Sam. xx. 2. Hengstenberg, Lange, Keil and Westcott endeavor to reconcile ver. 5 with the supposition that two or three of Jesus' brothers were apostles. Heng stenberg remarks first that these words may refer to Joses, the fourth brother of Jesus, and then to the husbands of His sisters. Perceiving indeed the improbability of this understanding of the matter, the others weaken as far as possible the force of the words : TJiey did not believe. It is only a partial and momentary want of faith, or, according to Westcott, an effect of the insufficient influence exerted by their faith on then- thought and their conduct. But this relative unbelief, as they call it, does not account for the absolute expression : They did not believe on him; especially when strengthened, as it is, by the word neither, by which John brings the brethren of Jesus into the category of all the other unbelieving Galileans. The reading of D L : They did not believe (aorist), is certainly a correction, intended to facilitate an interpretation of this sort. Moreover, what follows excludes this weakened meaning. How could Jesus address to His brothers, being apostles, those severe words : " The world cannot hate you " (ver. 7), while in xv. 19 He says to the apostles : " If you were qf the world, the world would lave its otvn; but because you are not qf the world . . ., therefore the world hates you." It certainly follows, therefore, from this remark, that even at this time, six months before the last Passover, Jesus' own brothers did not acknowledge Him as the Messiah. But, divided between the impression which His miracles produced upon them and the insuperable doubts of their carnal minds, they eagerly desired to reach at length a solution. This attitude is very natural; it accords with the role which is ascribed to them in the Synoptical narrative ; comp. Mark iii. The perfect sincerity of John's story appears from the frankness with which he expresses himself respecting this fact which was so humbling to Jesus (see TJioluck). We may well remark also, with the same author, that these words of the brethren (w. 3, 4) contain the complete indirect confirmation of the entire representation of the Galilean ministry which is traced by the Synoptics. chap. vii. 6-8. 57 Vv. 6-8. "Jesus therefore1 says to them: My time is not yet2 come ; but your time is always ready. 7. The world cannqt hate you; but it hates me, because I3 bear testimony concerning it3 that its works are evil. 8. Go ye up to the* feast, I go notb up to this feast, because my time is not yet fulfilled." The meaning of the demand of the brethren of Jesus was that He should present Himself at last at Jerusalem as the Messiah, and obtain there the recognition of that dignity, which could not be refused Him, if He was really what He claimed to be. Jesus could not explain to His brethren the reasons which prevented Him from deferring to their wish. If He had wished to answer altogether openly, He would have said to them : " What you ask of me would be the signal of my death ; but it is not yet time for me to leave the earth." Of this explanation, into which Jesus does not wish to enter, He gives a hint. The words : The world hates me, sufficiently express the prudence which- is required of Him. The term Kaipdg, favorable moment, must be understood in a manner sufficiently broad to make it possible to apply it both to Jesus (ver. 6a) and to His brethren (ver. 6b). It denotes therefore the moment of showing oneself publicly as one is : for the brethren, as faithful Jews, by going up to this feast ; for Jesus, as Messiah, by manifesting Himself as such at one of the great feasts of His people, at Jerusalem. The seventh verse explains this contrast between His position and theirs. There is a certain irony in the reason alleged by Jesus : " Your works and your WQrds are not sufficiently out of harmony with those of the world to make it possible for you to provoke its hatred." It is other wise in His case, who by His words and His life does not cease to unveil its deep depravity concealed under the outward show of Pharisaic right eousness (v. 42, 44, 47). Ver. 8 draws the practical consequence of this contrast. The meaning of the reply of Jesus is naturally in accord with that of the question, and especially of the words : " Manifest thyself to the world." Jesus well knew that He must one day make the great Messianic demonstration which His brethren demanded, but He also knew that the time for it was fnot yet come. His earthly work was not accomplished. Moreover, it was not at the feast of Tabernacles, it was at that of the Passover that He must die. Hence, the special emphasis with which He says in the second clause, no longer as when speaking of His brethren : " Go up to the feast " (comp. the reading of B D, etc.), but " to this feast," or even " this particu lar feast." If the reply of Jesus is thus placed in close connection with the request of His brethren, it is no longer necessary, in order to. justify it, to read with so many of the MSS. : "I go not yet up," instead of: " I go not up." The first reading is manifestly a correction by means of which an attempt was early made to remove the apparent contradiction between 1 X D omit ovv. by T. R. with 12 Mjj. (among which X) Mnn. a X : ov instead of ov.™. I-""- Syr. 8 X alone omits cyia and .rep. ovtov. 5 T. R. reads ovrrio (not yet) with B E F Gt H «BDKLTXni5 Mnn. I_pi«-qm Cop. re- LSTUXTAA Mnn. It«n - Syr"* Ovk (not) is jeet the first ravrvv (this feast) which is read read in X D K M n I.pi.-iq»- Vulg. Cop. Syr™. 58 second par* . the reply of Jesus and His subsequent action (ver. 10). The reading, rwt yet, is not only suspicious for this reason ; the meaning of it is altogether false. The antithesis which engages the thought of Jesus when He says: " I go not up to this feast," is not the contrast between this day and some days later ; it is that between this feast and another subsequent feast. What proves this, is the reason which He alleges : For my time is not yet fulfilled (ver. 8). The condition of things had not changed when Jesus went up to Jerusalem a few days afterwards. This very solemn expression, therefore, could only apply to the period of time which still remained be fore the future feast of the Passover, the destined limit of His earthly life. The not yet which was well adapted to ver. 6, was wrongly intro duced into our verse instead of not ; comp. for this solemn sense of the word to be fulfilled Luke ix. 31, 51 ; Acts ii. 1, etc. As Jesus rejected at Cana a solicitation of His mother aiming substantially at the same result as the present summons of His breljiren, and yet soon gave her satisfac tion of her desire in a much more moderate way, so Jesus begins here by refusing to go up to Jerusalem in the sense in which He was urged to do so (that of manifesting Himself to the world), in order to go up afterwards in a wholly diffent sense. The conversion of His brethren, a few months afterwards, proves that the subsequent events were for them the satisfac tory commentary on this saying, and that there did not remain in their minds the slightest doubt respecting the veracity and moral character of their brother. The following are the other explanations which have been given of this saying of Jesus. 1. That of Chrysostom, adopted by Liicke, Okhausen, Tholuck, Stier : " I go not now," deriving a vvv {now), to be sup plied, from the present dvaflaiva {I go). This ellipsis is not only needless, but false. Jesus, as we have seen, makes no allusion to a nearly approach ing journey to Jerusalem, which perhaps was not yet even determined upon in His own mind. 2. Meyer holds that Jesus, in the interval be tween ver. 8 and ver. 10, formed a resolution which was altogether new; Gess, in like manner : God did not give Him the order until later (v. 19). Reuss, nearly the same : Jesus reserved to Himself the liberty of acting according to His own desire, without consulting any one. Weiss: In ac cordance with prudence, Jesus was obliged to say : I go not up ; but as His father gave Him afterwards the order to go, a promise was given to protect Him; and this is what took place. All this is very well conceived. But if Jesus did not yet know the Divine will, should He have said so positively : I go not up. This was to declare Him self far too categorically. He should have answered more vaguely: "I know not yet whether I shall go up ; do you go up ; nothing prevents your doing so." 3. Others finally, as Bengel and Luthardt, explain in this way: " I go not up with the caravan ; or, as Cyril, Lange, etc., " I go not up to celebrate the feast" {ovx oiirog eoprdi. : Jesus was not really a man who concealed Him self, although He for the moment acted as such. But why go up, if this act might so soon bring the end of His activity ? The answer is simple. Jesus was not able, even to the end, to withdraw from the obligation of giving testimony before the assembled people in Jerusalem. But He avoided going thither in company with the numerous caravans which were at that time proceeding on their way towards the capital. A new movement of enthusiasm might manifest itself, like that in ch. vi., and without the possibility on His part of restraining it. The state of men's minds, as it is described in vv. 11-13, proves that the danger was a very real one. It could no,t be prevented except by a course of action such as He adopts here. Besides, He thereby prevented the hostile measures which might have been taken against Him in advance by the authorities. What a sad gradation or rather degradation, since the first Passover in ch. ii. ! There, He entered the, temple as Messiah-King; in ch. v., He had arrived as a simple pilgrim ; here He can no more even come publicly to Jerusalem in this character : He is reduced to the necessity of going thither incognito. An hypothesis of Wieseler has found favor with some interpreters. Ac cording to this scholar, this journey is identical with that which is spoken of in Luke ix. 51 ff. This uniting of the two cannot be sustained. In Luke ix. Jesus gives to His departure from Galilee the character of the 1 Ae is omitted by X D K n some Mnn. 'SBKITXn place ei, tvv eoprnv (to Itpietiq-e Syr. the j 'east) before totb (then). 'SDKLX n some Mnn. ItpWq"" Cop. 4X D It»>iqSyr°"* omit 109 before ev upvirru. read avTo. (he) instead of avroi. (to them). 60 SECOND PART. greatest publicity : He sends, two and two, His seventy disciples into all the cities and villages through which He is to pass (x. 1) ; He makes long stays (xiii. 22 ; xvii. 11) ; multitudes accompany Him (xiv. 25). And this, it is said, is to go to Jerusalem, as it were, in secret ! It would be better to give up all harmony between John and the Synoptics, than to obtain it by thus violating the texts. Exegesis simply establishes the fact, as we have said above, that the journey of which John here speaks, as well as those of chaps, ii. and v., is omitted by the Synoptics. And, as Gess observes, the omission of the last two journeys (chaps, v. and vii.) is the less surpris ing, since Jesus seems to have gone to Jerusalem both times alone or almost alone. Hengstenberg thinks that this journey (together with the sojourn in Perea x. 40), corresponds to the departure mentioned in Matt. xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1. But the exegesis of the passage in Matthew by means of which this scholar tries to reach this result, is unnatural. See on ver. 1 and x. 22 for the relation between the journeys of John and those of the Synoptics, Luke ix. 51 ; Matt. xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1. The following verses describe in an animated and dramatic way what occurred at Jerusalem before the arrival of Jesus, as soon as the fact of His absence was discovered. Vv. 11-13. " The Jews therefore sought him at the feast, and said, where is he ? 12. And tiiere was much murmuring concerning him among the mul titudes.1 Some said, He is a good man. Others said, No, but he leads the multitude astray. However, no one spoke openly of him for fear qfthe Jews." This narrative justifies the circumspect action of Jesus. This popular agitation proves the immense sensation which had been produced by His appearance and the impression which His last sojourn in Jerusalem had left (chap. v.). We find again in this representation, w. 11-13, the contrast which appears continually in our Gospel between those whom "the light attracts and those whom it repels. The term yoyyvaydg, murmuring, de notes the rumors in both senses, friendly and hostile. The 6x'am are the groups of pilgrims. "Aya-&6g, good man, signifies here an upright man, in contrast with an impostor (" He leads the people astray "). Tov bx^av, the multitude (ver. 12), designates the common people who allowed them selves to be easily deluded by every demagogue. The words : No one spoke openly, must not be referred to those only who, though well disposed, did not dare to manifest aloud their sympathy. The rest also, those who said : " He is an impostor," did not speak freely, in the sense that through servility they went in their expressions beyond what they really thought. Weiss thinks, on the contrary, that they would have said yet more that was evil of Him, if they had not feared the change on the part of the leaders to a more favorable judgment. This explanation seems to me scarcely natural. However it may be, a pressure coming from above was exerted upon all, upon those who were well-disposed towards Jesus, as upon those who were ill-disposed. 1 X D It. Vulg. Syr. read to> ox-im instead of toi. o^ton.. CHAP. VII. 11-15. 61 II. — During the Feast : vii. 14-36. The first agitation had subsided; everyone was quietly attending to the celebration of the feast, when all at once Jesus appears in the temple and sets Himself to the work of teaching. The authorities had hot taken any measures against Him ; and there was still time enough remaining for Him before the end of the feast to accomplish His work and to invite to faith the people who had come from all the regions of the world. This passage includes three teachings of Jesus, interrupted and in part called forth by the remarks of His hearers. The first is an explanation respecting the origin of His doctrine and a justification of the miracle which was performed in chap. v. and which was made a means of attack upon His divine mission (vv. 14-24) ; the second is an energetic declaration of His divine origin called forth by an objection (vv. 25-30) ; the third con tains, on occasion of a step taken by the rulers, the announcement of His approaching end and calls the attention of the Jews to the consequences which this departure will have for them (vv. 31-36). Following upon each of these discourses, John describes the different impressions which manifested themselves in the multitudes. The difference of tone in these three testimonies is observable : in the first, defense, in the second, protestation, finally, in the third, warning. I. — The Origin of His Teaching and the Refutation of an v Accusation : vv. 14-24. 1. Vv. 14-18: His teaching. Vv. 14, 15. "Nevertheless, when the feast was already half finished, Jesus went up to the temple ; and he taught there. 15. And * the Jews were astonished, saying, How does this man know the Scriptures, not being a mare who has studied ? " The question of the Jews bears only upon the competency of Jesus (as Tholuck thinks, according to the Babbinical customs ofthe later times) ; their astonishment, according to the text, arose from the boldness and skill with which He handled the Scriptural declarations. It is not necessary to understand an object with yeyaOnKag, having studied, as our translators do ("not having studied them"). [The English translators, both in A. V. and R. V., translate without the objective word.] This word is absolute: not having passed through the school of the masters; "not being a learned man " {Reuss). Tpdyfiara,' letters, denotes, undoubtedly, literature in general, and. not only the sacred Scriptures {ypae>at, lepd ypdypara). Comp. Acts xxvi. 24. But as the sacred writings were among the Jews the essential object of literary studies, ypdyyara certainly refers first of all to the Scriptures. This saying of the adversaries of Jesus proves, as Meyer justly observes, that it was a fact generally known that Jesus had not received any Babbinical teaching. 1 X B P li T X : e<)avp,a$ov ovv, instead of k.-.o-.i i) before T«.. OTav cpxrjrai. chap. vii. 25-28. 69 scorpion" {Sanhedr. 97a, see Westcott). This idea probably arose from the prophecies which announced the profound humiliation to which the family of David would be reduced at the time of the advent of the Christ (Is. xi. 1 ; liii. 2). It was true that it was not unknown, that the Messiah would be born at Bethlehem ; but the words : whence He is, refer not to the locality, but to the parents and family of the Messiah. Those who speak thus imagine of course that they are acquainted with the origin of Jesus, in this second relation also. Comp. vi. 42. Thus they sacrifice the moral impression produced upon them by the person and word of the Lord to a mere critical objection : a bad method of reaching the truth ! Vv. 28, 29. " Jesus cried therefore, teaching in the temple and saying : You both know me and you know whence I am : and yet I am not come of myself ; but he who sent me is competent,1 whom you know not. 29. As for me,2 1 know him; for I come from him3 and he sent me." Jesus taking this objection as a starting-point {therefore), pronounces a new discourse which relates, no longer to the origin of His doctrine, but to that of His mission and of His person itself. The term Hpa^ev, he cried, expresses a high elevation of the voice, which is in harmony with the solemnity of the following declaration. The words : in the temple, call to mind the fact that it was under the eyes and even in the hearing of the rulers that Jesus spoke in this way (comp. ver. 32). Jesus enters here, as in ver. 16, into the thought of His adversaries ; He accepts the objection in order to turn it into a proof in His favor. In the first place, He repeats their assertion. The repetition of their own words, as well as the two /.a. which introduce the first two clauses, give to this affirmation an interrogative and slightly ironical turn : " You both know me, and you know . . .. " This form of expression reveals an intention of setting forth a false claim on their part, for the purpose of aftervvftrds confuting it. The third Kai, and, forms an. antithesis to the first two and begins the reply of Jesus. This is, with shades of difference, the sense given by most of the interpreters. Meyer and Weiss think that it is better to see in the first two clauses a concession : " Yes, no doubt you do know my person and my origin up to a certain point; but this is only one side of the truth ; there is a higher side of it which you do not know and which is this." But it would have been difficult for His hearers to get this idea : "You know me; but you do not know me." Jesus rejects the very premises of their argument; and to the fact alleged by them He opposes a directly contrary one : " You think you know me, but you do not know me, either as to my mission or as to my origin (ver. 29)." And as they seem to suppose that He has given Himself His com mission, He adds : " I have one sending me, and this one is the veritable sender, that is to say, He who alone has the power to give ' divine ' missions." The adjective aXvdivdg has not here, any more than elsewhere, the sense of akrfiiig, true, as a large number of interpreters from Chrysostom to Baumlein have thought. Jesus does not mean to say that the Being who 1 X : a\nth},, instead of a\ndi.vo,. Cop. Syr. a T. R. adds _e with SDK some Mnn. It""- 3 X : top' olvtm, instead of nap' avrov. 70 SECOND PART. sends Him is morally true ; no more does He mean that He is real (see my 2d ed.), that is, that He is not imaginary, and consequently that His mission is not fictitious and a matter purely of the imagination; this is not what hXndivdg signifies. But the sense is : " The one sending me is the true sender." The last words : whom you know not, are very severe. How can Jesus charge Jews with not knowing Him of whom they make it their boast to be the only worshipers? But this strange ignorance is nevertheless the true reason why they cannot discern the divine origin of His mission. At the same time He shows them thereby, with much acute- ness, that the very criterion by which they intend to deny Him, as Messiah, is precisely that which marks Him as such. In fact the postulate which is laid down by the Jews themselves, in ver. 27, is found thereby to be only too fully realized ! It is an argument ad hominem, which Jesus allows Himself because He finds thus the means of presenting to this company of people the notion of the Messiah in its most exalted light, as He does in the following verses. Ver. 29. To the ignorance of God with which He charges the Jews, Jesus opposes the intimate consciousness which He Himself has of God and of His true relation to Him. This relation is, first of all, a relation of essence (.-/.., I am, I proceed from Him). In fact, this first clause cannot refer to the mission of Jesus which is expressly mentioned in the following one. Jesus affirms that He knows God, first by virtue of a com munity of essence which unites Him to Him. The second clause does not depend on the word because. It is an affirmation, which serves also to justify His claim to know God. The one sent has intimate communion with Him who sends Him, and consequently must know Him. Hence it follows that Jesus is the Messiah, and that in a sense much more exalted than that which the Jews attributed to this office. Ver. 30. " They sought therefore to take him; and yet no one laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come." The result of this strong protesta tion {therefore) was to confirm His declared enemies in the design of arresting Him. It is clear that the f?r_.v (to seek) was an affair of the rulers, as in v. 16, 18. They were strengthened in their resolution of accom plishing it and in the search for the means of arriving at the result. But the appointed hour had not yet struck. The expression : his hour, does not designate that of His arrest (xviii. 12), as Hengstenberg thinks, but that of His death as the result of His arrest (comp. vii. 8). The divine decree, to which the evangelist alludes thereby, does not exclude second causes; on the contrary, it implies them. Among these, the interpreters make especially prominent the veneration with which the multitudes at this time regarded Jesus. Yes, assuredly ; comp. Luke xx. 19. But we may also think, with Hengstenberg, of the resistance which the conscience of His enemies was still opposing to the extreme measures to which their hatred was impelling them. When the hardening of their hearts was consummated and the Spirit of God ceased to restrain their hands, then the hour of Jesus struck. There is, therefore, no reason to assert, with Reuss, that " the historical interpretation of this verse creates a contra- chAp, vii. 29-32. U diction/' The sequel is about to show us a first attempt in the sense indicated, but one which fails precisely because the moral ground was not yet sufficiently prepared. This verse is thus the transition to the following narrative, which relates the first judicial measure taken against Jesus. 3. The Approaching Departure of Jesus : vv. 31-36. Vv. 31, 32. " But of the multitude 1 many believed on him, and they said, When the Christ shall come, will he do more miracles 2 than those which this man has done ? 3 32. The Pharisees heard * this talk which was circulating among the multitude concerning him, and the chief priests and the Pharisees 5 sent officers to take him." While the adversaries of Jesus were becoming fixed in their hostile designs, a great part of the multitude were strength ened in faith. Ver. 31 marks a decided advance on ver. 12. The parti sans of Jesus are more numerous, and their profession of faith is more explicit, notwithstanding the position of dependence in which they still were in relation to the rulers. If timidity had not arrested them, they would have gone forward to the point of proclaiming Jesus the Mes siah. The reading iiroir/aev, has done, is wrongly replaced in the Sinaitic MS. by .ro..., he does. The question is of His earlier miracles in Galilee and in Judea itself : ii. 23 ; chap, v.; vi. 2. This impression made on the multitude exasperates the rulers, espe cially those of the Pharisaic party. The place of the meetings of the 'Sanhedrim could not have been far from that where these scenes were passing (see on viii. 20). It is therefore possible that, in going thither, some of the rulers may have heard with their own ears this talk favora ble to Jesus ; or also spies may have brought it to them during their meeting; the term heard allows both meanings. This is the moment when the Sanhedrim suffers itself to be impelled to a step which may be regarded as the beginning of the judicial measures of which the crucifix ion of Jesus was the end. It was certainly under the influence of the Pharisaic party, whose name appears twice in this verse. The second time, however, their name is preceded, according to the true reading, by that ofthe chief priests ; the latter are mentioned separately, because they belonged at this epoch rather to the Sadducee party, and they are placed first because, if the impulse had been given by the Pharisees, the meas ures in the way of execution must have started from the chief priests, who, as members of the priestly families, formed the ruling part of the Sanhedrim. The officers who were sent undoubtedly did not have orders to seize Him immediately ; otherwise they could not have failed to exe cute this commission. They were to mingle in the crowds and, taking advantage of a favorable moment when Jesus should^ give them some 1 B K L T X n place the words e.«« Vulg. Syr"* ttoi.i (does) _e at the beginning of the verse ; T. R. with instead of enoino-ev (did). 10 Mjj. places them after iroMoi Sc, X D after *K M U n add ouv, X D oe, after ntovo-av. cmo-Tevo-av. 6T. R. with 8 Mjj. (E H M S etc.) places oi 8 8 Mjj. (X B D etc.), omit tovtiov after $ap.creuoi before ot apx-.p.-s ; X B D etc. place anpeia. ol apx-_p-t- first. 72 SECOND part. handle against Him, and when the wind of popular opinion should hap pen to turn, to get possession of Him and bring Him before the Sanhe drim. There are in this story shadings and an exactness of details which show an eye-witness. Vv. 33,34. "Jesus said1 therefore : I am with you yet a little while, andthen I go to him that sent me. 34. You shall seek me and shall not findme;2 and where I am you cannot come." Jesus was not ignorant of this hostile meas ure ; and this is what awakened in Him the presentiment of His approach ing death which is so solemnly expressed in the following words {there fore). In this discourse, He invites the Jews to take advantage of the time, soon to pass away, during which He is still to continue with them. There is a correspondence between the expressions: I go away, and: He who sent me. The idea of a sending involves that of a merely temporary sojourn here below. The practical conclusion of ver. 33, which is under stood, " Hasten to believe ! " is made more pressing by ver. 34. Of the two clauses of this verse, the first refers to their national future; the second, to their individual fate. In the first, Jesus describes, in a striking way, the state of abandonment in which this people will soon find itself provided it persists in rejecting Him who alone can lead it to the Father; a continual and ever disappointed expectation ; the impotent attempt to find God, after having suffered the visitation of Him to pass by who alone could have united them to God. This sense is that in which Jesus cites this word in xiii. 33 (comp. xiv. 6). It is also that in which He will repeat it, soon afterwards, in a more emphatic form, viii. 21, 22. There cannot be any difficulty in applying the notion of the pronoun /__, me, to the idea of the Messiah in general. To expect the Messiah is, indeed, on the part of the Jewish people, and without their being aware of it, to seek Jesus, the only Messiah who can be given to them. But there is some thing more terrible than this future of the nation — it is that of individuals. The expression : where I am, denotes symbolically the communion with the Father and the state of salvation which one enjoys in that commu nion. This is the blessed goal which they cannot reach after having rejected Him ; for it is He alone who could have led them thither (xiv. 3). If then they allow this time to pass by, in which they can yet attach themselves to Him, all will be over for them. The present : where I am, signifies : " where I shall be at that moment ; " it can only be rendered in French by the future. This second part of the verse does not allow us to explain the term .¦ you shall seek me, in the first part, either of a seeking inspired by hatred {Origen) — comp. xiii. 33 — or of a sigh of repentance; such a feeling would not have failed to lead them to salvation. Vv. 35, 36. " Then the Jews said, among tiiemselves, Whither irill he go then, that we* shall not find him? Does he mean to go to those who are scattered among the Greeks and to teach tlie Greeks ? 36. Wliat means this word which he 1 The a. t on (to them) of the T. R. has in its other Mjj. omit this pronoun. favor only T and some Mnn. a X D omit vpci. whioh all the other Mjj. 2 B T X read pc after cvpno-erc ; tlie fifteen read. " chap. vii. 33-36. 73 has said : You shall seek me and sliall not find me ; ' and where I am you cannot come."2 These words are, of course, ironical. Rejected by the only Jews who are truly worthy of the name, those who live in the Holy Land and speak the language of the fathers, will Jesus go and try to play His part as Christ among the Jews who are dispersed in the Greek world, and, through their agency, exercise His function as Messiah among the heathen? A fine Messiah, indeed, He who, rejected by the Jews, should become the teacher of the Gentiles ! The expression Siaonopd ™ 'HXkhvuv, literally : dispersion of the Greeks, designates that portion of the Jewish people who lived outside of Palestine, dispersed through Greek countries. Toiig "EXXr/vag, the Greeks, refers to the Gentiles properly so called. The dispersed Jews will be for this Messiah the means of passing from the Jews to the Gentile peoples ! They themselves, however, do not seriously regard this supposition as well founded ; and they mechanically repeat the word of Jesus, as if not discovering any meaning in it. Meyer has asserted that this course of action would be impossible, if in ver. 33 Jesus really expressed Himself as the evangelist makes Him speak : " I go to Him who sent me." These last words would have explained everything. They would have understood that a return to God was the thing in ques tion. According to Reuss also, ver. 35 contains a too flagrant misappre hension to be conceivable. But either these words : to Him who sent me had left in their minds only a vague idea, or more probably, regarding Jesus as an impostor, they see in them only a vain boast designed to cover a plan of exile, as at viii. 22, a plan of suicide. We cannot form a suf ficiently accurate idea of the gross materialism of the contemporaries of Jesus, so as to fix the limits of possibility in their misapprehensions. After having passed years with Jesus, the apostles still interpreted a bid ding to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees as a reproof for having neglected to provide themselves with bread — it is they themselves who relate this misunderstanding in the Synoptical Gospels ; how then should the Jews, to whom the idea of the departure ofthe Messiah was as strange as would be to us, at the present hour, that of His visible reign (comp. xii. 34), have immediately understood that, in the preceding words, Jesus was speaking to them of entering into the perfect communion with His Father? The evangelist takes a kind of pleasure in reproducing in extenso this derisive supposition. Why ? Because, like the saying of Caiaphas in chap. | xii., it seemed at the time and in the regions in which John was writing ! and in which it was read, like an involuntary prophecy. Indeed, had not Jesus really become the Messiah of the Greeks ? Was not John com- | posing this Gospel in the country, and even in the language, of the Gen- 'tiles at the same time that the prophecy of Jesus contained in the preced ing verses, and turned into ridicule by the Jews, was finding its accomplish ment with respect to them in a striking and awful manner before the eyes of the whole world ? 1 B G T X read pe after cvprjo-eTc. with the words Kai .-rope- _bj eKao-ro, and the ! After this word eMeiv, Cod. 225 continues story of the woman taken in adultery. 74 second part. III.— On and after the great day of tlie Feast : vii. 37-viii. 59. The last and great day of the feast has arrived ; Jesus lays aside the apologetic form which until now He has given to His teachings. His word assumes a solemnity .proportioned to that of this holy day ; He de clares Himself to be the reality of all the great historic symbols which the feast recalls to mind. Such declarations only aggravate the unbelief of a part of those who surround Him, while they draw more closely the bond already formed between the believers and Himself. Four Divisions : 1. The true source : vii. 37-52 ; 2. The true light : viii. 12-20; 3. The true Messiah : viii. 21-29 ; 4. The incurable nature of Jewish unbelief: viii. 30-59. The passage vii. 53— viii. 11, which contains the story of the woman taken in adultery, does not appear to us to belong to the genuine text of the Gospel. 1. The True Source : vii. 37-52. John reports the discourse of Jesus and ogives the explanation of it (vv. 37-39) ; he describes the different impressions of the multitude (w. 40—44) ; he gives an account of the meeting of the Sanhedrim, after the return of the officers (vv. 45-52). Vv. 37-39. The discourse of Jesus. Vv. 37, 38. " On the last and great day of the feast, Jesus stood, and, speaking with a loud voice,1 said: If any thirsts, let him come to me2 and drink; 38. he that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." Almost all the interpreters at the present day acknowledge that the last day of the feast is not the seventh, which was distinguished in no respect from the others, but the eighth, which was marked by certain special ceremonies. No doubt, only seven feast days are mentioned in Deut. xvi. 13. The same is the case in Num. xxix. 12; but in this passage there is found, in ver. 35, this supplementary indie*- tion : "And on the eighth day ye shall have a solemn assembly, and ye shall do no work;" which agrees with Lev. xxiii. 36, and Neh. viii. 18: "So they celebrated the solemn feast seven days, and on tlie eighth day was a solemn as sembly, as it was ordained," as well as with Josephus {Antiq. iii. 10, 4, ""Cele brating tiie feast during eight days "), 2 Mace. x. 7 and the statements ofthe Rabbis. The two modes of counting are easily explained : the life intents continued seven days, and on the eighth day the people returned to their dwellings. Probably, in this return there was seen, according to the in genious supposition of Lange, the symbol of the entrance and establish ment of the people in the land of Canaan. Philo sees in this eighth day the solemn close of all the feasts of the year. Josephus also calls it : "the sacred closing of the year " {avpTripaa/ia tov eviavrov dyiarepov). This day was sanctified by a solemn assembly and the Sabbatic rest; the whole 1 X D It. Vulg. Cop. : cnpa(cv (he was cn/ing), all the rest. instead of cnpa.ev (lie cried) whioh is read by a X D It«u. omit irpo. pe (to me). Chap. vii. 37, 38. 75 people, abandoning their tents of leafy branches, went in a procession to the temple, and from thence every one returned to his house. The treat ise Succa calls this day " the last and good day." The Si indicates an advance : the narrative passes to something greater. The terms tlornKti (pluperfect, in the sense of the imperfect) and _tcp-.f_, cried, designate a more solemn attitude and a more elevated tone of voice than ordinary. For the most part, Jesus taught sitting ; this time, apparently, He stood up. He was about to apply to Himself one of the most striking Messi anic, symbols among all those which the national history contained. It is difficult to hold, with Reuss, that the figure of which He makes use at this solemn moment was not" suggested to Him by some circumstance connected with the feast. Thus almost all the commentators think that He alludes to the libation which was made every morning during the sacred week. Led by a priest, the whole people, after the sacrifice, went down from the temple to the fountain of Siloam ; the priest filled at this fountain, already celebrated by the prophets, a golden pitcher, and car ried it through the streets amid joyful shouts of the, multitude, and with the sound of cymbals and trumpets. The rejoicing was so. great that the Rabbis were accustomed to say that he who had not been present at this ceremony and the other similar ones which distinguished this feast, did not know what joy is. On the return to the temple, the priest went up to the altar of burnt-offering ; the people cried out to him: "Lift up thy hand ! " and he made the libation, turning the golden pitcher to the West, and to the East a cup filled with wine from two silver vases pierced with holes. During the libation, the people sang, always to the sound of cym bals and trumpets, the words of Is. xii. 3 : "Ye shall draw water with joy out qf the well of salvation," words to which the Rabbinical tradition quite specially attributed a Messianic significance. It may seem probable, therefore, that Jesus alludes to this rite. No doubt, objection is made that according to Rabbi Judah, this libation was not made on the eighth day. But even if it were so, Lange judiciously observes that it was pre cisely the void occasioned by the omission of this ceremony on this day that must have called forth this testimony which was designed to fill it. This method of acting was much better than that of creating a sort of competition with the sacred rite, at the very moment when it was being performed as on the preceding days in the midst of tumultuous joy. 1 Nevertheless we have a more serious reason to allege against this refer ence of the word of Jesus to the ritual libation. Would it be worthy of Jesus to take for His starting-point in a testimony so important as that which He is about to give, a ceremony which is altogether human ? What was this rite ? An emblem contrived by the priests for recalling to mind one of the great theocratic miracles wrought in the desert, the pouring forth of the water from the rock. Now, why should not Jesus, instead of ! thinking of the humanly instituted emblem, have gone back even to the : divine blessing itself, which this rite served to recall ? The word which He utters stands in a much more direct relation to the miracle than to the ceremony. In the latter it was not the question of drinking, but only 76 SECOND PART. of drawing and pouring out the water, while, in the miracle in the wilder ness, the people quenched their thirst from the stream of water coming jr forth from the rock. It is, then, not to this golden pitcher carried in the procession, but to the rock itself from which God had caused the living . water to flow, that Jesus compares Himself. In chap. ii. He had presented Himself as the true temple, in chap, iii., as the true brazen serpent, in chap. ', vi., as tlie bread from heaven, the true manna ; in chap, vii., He is the true . rock ; in chap, viii., He will be the true luminous cloud, and soon, until j chap. xix. where He will finally realize the type of the Paschal lamb. Thus I Jesus takes advantage of the particular circumstances of each feast, to show the Old Covenant realized in His person, so fully does He feel and know Himself as the essence of all the theocratic symbols. In view of all this we may estimate aright the opinion of those who make the fourth Gospel a writing foreign or even opposed to the Old Covenant {Reuss, Hil genfeld, etc.) ! The solemn testimony of w. 37, 38 therefore places us again face to face with the scene in the wilderness, which had been so vividly recalled, during the course of the feast, by the joyous ceremony of the libation. The first words: " If any man thirsts," bring before our eyes the whole people con sumed by thirst in the wilderness. To all those who resemble these thirst ing Israelites, the invitation, which is about to follow, addresses itself. Thirst is the emblem of spiritual needs. Comp. Matt. v. 6 : " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness." These are the hearts which the Father has taught and drawn by means of a docile listening to Moses. The expression Idv rig, if it happens that any one, reminds us how sporadic these cases are ; for the spiritual wants can be easily stifled. For every thirsty heart, Jesus will be what the rock from frhich the living water sprang forth was for the Israelites : " Let him come unto me and drink." These two imperatives, thus united, signify : There is nothing else to do but to come ; when once he has come, let him drink, as formerly the people did. Reuss, Weiss and Keil object to this interpretation of ver. 37, that in ver. 38 it is the believer who is represented as the refreshing stream. But ver. 38 can in no case serve to explain the idea of ver. 37. For there is between the two, not a relation of explanatory repetition, but a relation of distinctly marked advance. The believer, after having his own thirst quenched (ver. 37), becomes himself capable of quenching the thirst of other souls (ver. 38) ; this is tlie striking proof of the fullness with which his own spiritual wants have been satisfied. Now, if the idea changes from ver. 37 to ver. 38, the figure may also change. In ver. 37, the believer drinks of the water of the Rock ; in ver. 38, he becomes himself a rock for others. How magnificently is the promise of ver. 37 : Let him drink, confirmed by this experience ! He will be so filled, that he will himself overflow in streams of living water. One of the greatest difficul ties of this passage has always been to know what expression of the Old Testament Jesus alludes to, when He says in ver. 38 : as the Scripture has said; for nowhere does the Old Testament promise to believers the priv ilege of becoming themselves fountains of living water. Meyer, Weiss, Keil, chap. vii. 37, 38. 77 Reuss, etc., cite passages such as Is. xliv. 3: "I will pour water upon Mm that is thirsty ... and my Spirit upon his seed " ; lv. 1 : "All ye who are thirsty, come to the waters; " lviii. 11 : " Thou shalt be like a watered garden and as a fountain whose waters fail not." Comp. also Joel iii. 18 ; Zech. xiv. 8 ; Ezek. xlvii. 1 ff. etc. But, 1. In none of these passages is the idea ex pressed which forms the special feature of the promise of Jesus in ver. 38 — that of the power communicated to the believer of quenching the thirst of other souls. 2. Nothing in these passages can serve to explain the strange expression Koikia, his heart (literally, his belly). Hengstenberg, always preoccupied with the desire to discover the Song of songs in the New Tes tament, cites Cant. iv. 12 : " My sister, my spouse, thou art a barred garden, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed," and ver. 15 : " Oh fountain of gardens, oh well of living waters, flowing streams from Lebanon ! " And as these cita tions strike against the same objection as the preceding, he tries to explain the figure of KoMa by an allusion to Cant. vii. 2, where the navel of Sula- mith is compared to a round goblet. What puerilities ! According to Bengel, Jesus was thinking of the golden pitcher which served for the libation during the feast ; according to Gieseler, of the subterranean cavern situated in the hill of the temple, from which escaped the waters which came forth by the fountain of Siloam. But these two explanations of the term Koikia give no account of the formula of citation which refers us to the Old Testament itself (ft ypa$ij,ihe Scripture). By a desperate expedient, Stier and Gess desire to connect the words : he that believeth on me, with ver. 37, and to make them the subject of the imperative irivira -. " Let him that believeth on me drink." One comes thus to the point of referring the pronoun avrov, " of his heart," no longer to the believer, but to Christ. But where has the Scripture ever spoken of the mikia of the Messiah . And the construction is evidently forced. The pronoun avrov cannot refer to the object ipi me, but only to the subject of the sentence : " he that cometh." * Chrysostom makes the Scriptural quotation bear upon thenotion of believing : "He who believes on me conformably to the Scriptures." But nothing in the idea of faith calls for a special appeal here to the Old Testa ment. Semler, Bleek, Weizsacker think they see in this passage an allusion to an unknown apocryphal writing ; Ewald to a lost passage of Proverbs. These would be singular exceptions in the teaching of Jesus. The true explanation seems to me to come from the event itself, of which we be lieve that Jesus was thinking in ver. 37. It is said in Exod. xvii. 6 : " Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb, and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come from within it {mimmennou) waters and the people shall drink ; " and Num. xx. 11 : " And abundant 1 In his recent work, Das Alte Testament sages of the prophets in which they promise bei Johannes (1885), A. H. Franke favors the that a stream shall come forth from the tem- grammatical construction which 1 have just pie in the last times (Joel iv. 18 ; Zech. xiv. refuted, and starting from the application 8, and particularly Ezek. xlvii. 1, 2, etc.). which Jesus makes, ii. 19-21, of the idea of Certainly, if .this construction were adopted, the temple to His own body, he thinks that this explanation of ko.A.<_ avrov (his the Lord, in virtue of this typical relation, would be preferable to every other. applies here to Himself the different pas- 78 second part. waters came forth," comp. also Deut. viii. 15 ; Ps. cxiv. 8. It seems to me probable that these passages had been read on the occasion of the feast, and, that, being present to all minds, they furnished the occasion for this citation : as tlie Scripture hath said. The expression of Jesus n-orapol vSarog, rivers of water, reproduces that in the Mosaic narrative 0'2t D'O {abundant waters). The expression Koikia avrov, his belly, is derived from the word mimmennou, from within him. This figure, borrowed from the interior cavity of the rock, from which the waters must have sprung forth, is ap plied first to Christ Himself, then to the man whose thirst Christ has quenched, and whom He fills with His presence and grace. The future pevoovo-iv, shall flow, recalls the similar form of the Old Testament : "waters shall come forth." The word 6 irio-revav, he that believeth, is a nominative placed at the beginning as a nominative absolute, and one which finds its grammatical construction in the avrov which follows : comp. vi. 39 ; xvii. 2, etc. If the change of idea and of figure from ver. 37 to ver. 38 appears abrupt, it must not be forgotten that, according to ver. 40, and from the nature of things, we have only a very brief summary of the discourse of Jesus. Ver. 39. " Now he said 1 this ofthe Spirit whom 2 they that believed on him s were to receive; indeed, the Spirit1 wasnotyet,b because Jesus was not yet glorified."6 Liicke and others criticise this explanation which John gives of the saying of Jesus. The future pevaovaiv, shall flow, they say, is purely logical ; it expresses the consequence which must result from the act of faith. Moreover, the living water is the eternal life which the believer draws from the words of Jesus, and by no means the Holy Spirit. Reuss finds here a proof of the way in which the evangehst misapprehends the meaning and import of certain sayings of the Lord. Scholten thinks he can reject this passage as an interpolation. Certainly, if ver. 38 only re produced the idea of ver. 37, the promise of Jesus might refer to a fact which had already occurred at the time of His speaking : comp. v. 24, 25, vi. 68, 69 (the profession of Peter). But we have seen that the promise of ver. 38 passes far beyond that of ver. 37, and must refer to a more advanced and more remote state of believers. The facts prove that if, until the day of Pentecost, the apostles were themselves able to quench their thirst in the presence of Jesus, they could not before that event quench that of any one besides. The rivers of living water, those streams of new life which flowed forth from the heart of believers by means ofthe spiritual gifts (the different xaPlatlaTa, the gift of tongues, prophecy, teach ing), all these signs of the dwelling of Christ in the Church by His Holy Spirit, appeared only after that day. Jesus distinctly marks this advance from the first state to the second in the passage xiv. 17, 18 ; and no one could i X It»u' : cKcycv (he was saying), instead of (among them X) Mnn. It. etc. e.ir.i> (he said). * Wo reject ayioi- (holy) with X K T Cop. 2 The Mjj. are divided between o_ (X D etc.) Orig. against the other Mjj. and Vas. and o (B E etc.). s B ItptoH-e Syr""" add SeSopcvov (given). D 8 B L T read irio-revaavre. instead of ma-- adds en' avTotg. Te.okT-t which is read by T. R, with 14 Mjj. • X reads -._o{oioto instead of «_of-o-0i|. chap. vii. 39. 79 understand better than John the difference between these two states. Let us remember St. Peter, the Twelve, the one hundred and twenty, pro claiming the wonderful things of God at Jerusalem, and bringing on that day three thousand persons to the faith ! Nothing like this had taken place before. John also does not, as Liicke supposes, confound the Divine Spirit with the spiritual life which He communicates. The figure of living looter, of which Jesus makes use, unites these two ideas in one conception : the Spirit, as the principle, and life, as the effect. The term " hesaid this of . . . ," is broad enough to include this double reference. The strange expression ovira J/v, was not' yet, occasioned the gloss SeSopivov, given, of the Vatican MS. and of some MSS. of the Itala, and i-n-' amolg, upon them, of the Cambridge MS. This expression is explained by the words of Jesus : " If I go not away, the Paraclete will not come to you " (xvi. 7), and by all the words of chaps, xiv. and xvi. which show that the coming of the Spirit is the spiritual presence of Jesus Himself in the heart ; comp. especially xiv. 17, 18. Until the day of Pentecost, the Spirit had acted on men both in the Old Covenant and in the circle of the disciples ; but He was not yet in them as a possession and personal life. This is the reason why John employs this very forcible expression : " The Spirit was not," that is, as already, having in men a permanent abode. Weiss supposes that the par ticiple SeSopivov, given, might well be genuine, and that it may have been omitted because, according to 2 Cor. iii. 17 r Jesus was made the subject of fiv, was, in this sense : " Because Jesus was not yet spirit (pure spirit), since He was not yet glorified." But, in that case, why expressly repeat the subject Jesus in the following clause. And how unnatural is this com parison with the passage in Corinthians ! The relation which John establishes between the exaltation of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit is explained in different ways. According to Hengstenberg and others, the iSo^doBi) designates the fact of the death of Jesus as the condition of the sending of the Spirit, because this gift implies the pardon of sins. The idea is a true one ; but the term to be glorified is nowhere applied to the death of Jesus as such. In this sense, vfaBfjvai, to be lifted up (iii. 15 ; xii. 32, 34) would be necessary. According to de Wette and Vinet, in a fine passage from the latter which Astie quotes, the connection between the glorification of Jesus and Pentecost consists in the fact, that, if Jesus had remained visibly on the earth, the Church could not have walked by faith ^and consequently could not have lived by the Spirit. But in the word iSo^daBv the emphasis is by no means on the putting aside of the flesh, but on the being clothed with glory. This remark seems to me also to set aside the explanation of Liicke and Reuss: "It was necessary that the veil of the flesh should fall, in order that the liberated spirit might freely manifest itself in the Church " {Liicke). It is neither the expiatory death nor the bodily disappearance which are laid down as the cgndition of Pentecost ; it is the positive glorification of Jesus, His reinstatement, as man, in His glory as Logos. It is this supreme position which renders Him capable of disposing of the Spirit and of sending Him to His own, The truth expressed by John may also be pre- 80 SECOND PART. sented in this other aspect. The work of the Spirit consists in making Christ Himself live in the heart of the behever. But it is evident that it is not a Christ who is not perfected, whom the Spirit is to glorify and to cause to live in humanity, but the God-man having reached His perfect stature. The epithet dymv, holy, was probably added (see the variants) with the purpose of distinguishing the specifically Christian Spirit from the breath of God as it was already acting in the Old Covenant. By reading simply wvevpa one might take this word in the special sense in which it is so frequently used in the Epistles of St. Paul : the spiritual life as the fruit of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, ihe spirit born of the Spirit (iii. 6) ; this would facilitate the explanation of was not yef. Nevertheless, we do not think it possible to defend this meaning. 2. Vv. 40-44. The impressions of the Multitude. Vv. 40-44. "Some among the multitude,1 who had heard these words s said, This man is of a truth the prophet. Others ' said, This is the Christ. 41. But others said, Does the Christ then come out of Galilee? 42. Has not Ihe Scripture declared that the Christ comes of the seed of David and from the village of Beth lehem, where David was ? 43. So there arose a division in the multitude because of him, 44 and some qf them would * have taken him; but no one laid hands on him." These brief descriptions ofthe impressions ofthe people, which follow each of the discourses of Jesus serve to mark the two-fold develop ment which is effected and thus prepare the way for the understanding of the final crisis. These pictures are history taken in the act ; how could they proceed from the pen of a later narrator? John has given us only the r'eswmi of the discourses delivered by Jesus on this occasion. This is what he gives us to understand by the plural ruv 7.6yav, these discourses, which, according to the documents, is to be regarded as the true reading. We know already who this prophet was of whom a portion of the hearers are thinking. Comp. i. 12; vi. 14. The transition from this supposition to the following one : This is the Messiah, is easily understood from the second of these passages. As there were two shades of opinion among the well-disposed hearers, so there were also two in the hostile party : some limited themselves to making objections (vv. 41, 42) ; this feature suffices to isolate them morally from those previously mentioned. Others (ver. 44) already wished to proceed to violent measures. De Wette, Weiss, Keim ask why John does not refute the objection advanced in ver. 42, which it would have been easy for him to do, if he had known or admitted the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem. From this silence they infer that he was ignorant of or denied the whole legend of the Davidic descent of Jesus and His 1 Instead of ttoAAol ovv ck rov oxAov aieo.. Syr"°h Cop. Orig. read twv koytov (these words), o-avTct which is road by T. R. with 11 Mjj. and X B D L T U ndd tovt-jv. X D K n add Mnn. It»«l Syr., in X B D L T X ItP'«i. outos AaX.t. X ->- o.tos ledges that the fact of the birth of Jesus in AnA.i o avBgunro,. Bethlehem is implied in this passage as 3 X D : mo-ievei instead of ctrio-revo-cv. known by the author. »«BT. Mnn. Orig, ; «. apaToi instead of 3 B L T Cop. Orig. omit (_s ovto? o av9pm- eiriKarapaToi, 82 SECOND PART. conduct of Nicodemus in ver. 50). The commentators recall, on the sug gestion of ver. 49, the contemptuous expressions contained in the Rab binical writings with reference to those \vho are uneducated. "The ignorant man is not pious; the learned only will be raised from the dead." We must also recall the expressions: "people ofthe earth," " vermin," etc., applied by the learned Jews to the common people. By the words : who know not tlie law, the rulers insinuate that for themselves they have unanswerable reasons derived from the law for rejecting Jesus. Sacer dotal wrath willingly assumes an esoteric mien. The reading iwdparoi belongs to the classical style ; the LXX. and the New Testament (Gal. iii. 10-13) use the form iirmaidpaTog. But there is one present who calls them to order in the name of that very law which they claim alone to know : Vv. 50-52. " Nicodemus, who came to him before by night l and who was one ofthem, says to them, 51. Does our law then condemn a man before2 hear ing from him and taking knowledge qf what he does? 52. They answered and said to him, Art thou, then, thyself also, a Galilean? Search and see that out qf Galilee arises 3 no prophet." The part which Nicodemus plays on this occa sion is the proof of the advance which has been made in him since his visit to Jesus. This is noticeably indicated by the apposition, " who came to Jesus before." The omission of these words in the Sinaitic MS. is proba bly owing to a confounding of avro'vg and avrbv. SvKrdg, by night, is omitted by the Alexandrian authorities ; but we may hold that it has for its aim to bring out the contrast between his present boldness and his former cau tion. The irporov or n-pdrepov, before, which the Alexandrian authorities read in place of vvKrdg, likewise establishes the contrast between his pres ent conduct and his previous course. The second apposition : who was one qf them, ironically recalls their own question, ver. 48 : " Has any one of the rulers . . ." ? The term b vduog , the law, ver. 51, is at the beginning of the sentence ; it contains a cutting allusion to the claim of the rulers that they alone have knowledge of the law (ver. 49). The subject of the verbs aicovey and yvy is the law personified in the judge. We see in ver. 52 how passion regards and judges impartiality. It dis covers in it the indication of a secret sympathy, and in this it is not always mistaken. The Sanhedrim maliciously assume in their reply that one cannot be an adherent of Jesus without being, like Him, a Galilean : " It must be that thou art His fellow-countryman to give up thyself thus to His imposture." The last words which the narrative places in the mouth of Jesus' adversaries seem to contain an assertion which is contrary to the facts of the en se; for.it is claimed, several prophets, Elijah, Na hum, Hosea, Jonah, were of Galilean origin. Hence the conclusion has ' T. R. reads o _A_w iuktos i.oo. avrov with 'dBMKITX n Orig. read wbutov i»" EOlIMSr... It»«. Vulg. Syr. InBLT stead of wporcpov. Sah. o .A_W .too. avrov irportpov is read ; in 8 Instead of eyrf-yeprat, XBDK T r A n 30 I), o ¦ Ai'i-m. irpoe auTop pvkto. to ,rpwToi>. X Mnn. ItPlorii«« Vulg. Syr. read .yeip-Tcw, omits the whole, chap. vii. 53-vin. 11. 83 been drawn {Bretschneider, Baur) that the members of the Sanhedrim, who must have known their own sacred history, could not have uttered these words, and that it is the evangelist who has wrongly attributed to them this error. If the perfect iytryeprai, has arisen, is read, we might with some writers understand the thought thus : "And see that a prophet has not (really) arisen in Galilee (in the person of this man)." There would thus be an allusion to the title prophet of Galilee, which was frequently given to Jesus. But this does not obviate the difficulty. For there still remains the phrase ipevvnaov Kal lie, search and see that . . . , which implies that the fact has not yet occurred. The more probable reading, the present iyeiperai, doesjnot arise, also does not set aside the difficulty ; for the prov erb : " no prophet arises in Galilee " can only be an axiom resulting, ac cording to them, from Scriptural experience (" search and thou shalt see "). The attempt at a complete justification of this appeal to history must be given up. Undoubtedly, the Galilean origin of three of the four prophets cited (Elijah, Nahum, Hosea) is either false or uncertain; see Hengsten berg. Elijah was of Gilead; Hosea, of Samaria, which cannot be identi fied with Galilee; Nahum, of El-Kosh, a place whose situation is uncertain. But Jonah remains. His case is an exception which passion might have caused the rulers to forget in a moment of rage and which, if it had been mentioned in the way of objection to the rulers, would have been set aside by them as an exception confirming the rule. Notwithstanding this iso lated fact, Galilee was and still continued to be an outcast land in the theocracy. Westcott : " Galilee is not the land of prophets, still less of the Messiah." The gravest thing which they forget, is not Jonah, it is the prophecy Is. viii. 23-ix. 1, where the preaching of the Messiah in Gahlee is foretold. The story of the woman taken in adultery : vii. 53-viii. 11. Three questions arise with regard to this section : Does it really belong to the text of our Gospel? If not, how was it introduced into it? What is to be thought of the truth of the fact itself? The most ancient testimony for the presence of this passage in the New Testa ment, is the use made of it in the Apostolical Constitutions (I. 2, 24) to justify the employment of gentle means in ecclesiastical discipline with reference to penitents. This apocryphal work seems to have received its definitive form about the end of the third century. If then this passage is not authentic in John, its interpolation must go back as far as the third or the second century. The Fathers of the fourth century, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, admit its authenticity and think that it was rejected in a part of the documents by men who were weak in faith and who were afraid that " their wives might draw from it immoral inferences " (Augustine). Certain MSS. of the Itala { Veronensis, Colbertinus, etc.), from the fourth century to the eleventh, the Vulgate, the Jerusalem Syriac translation of the fifth century, the MSS. D F G K H U T, from the sixth century to the ninth, and more than three hundred Mnn. (Tischendorf), read this passage, and do not mark it with any sign of doubtfulness. On the other hand, it is wanting in the Peschito and in two of the best MSS, ofthe 7to.a, the Vercelhnsis, of the fourth, and the Brixianus^ of the 84 SECOND PART. sixth century. Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Chrysostom do not speak of it. N A B C L T X A, from the fourth century to the ninth, and fifty Mnn., omit it entirely (L and A leaving a vacant space) ; E M S A II and forty-five Mnn. mark it with signs of doubtfulness. Finally, in some documents it is found transposed to another place : one Mn. (225) places it after vii. 36 ; ten others, at the end of the Gospel ; finally, four (13, 69, etc.), in the Gospel of Luke, after chap. xxi. Ew thymius regards it as a useful addition; Theophylact rejects it altogether. From the point of view of external criticism, three facts prove interpolation : 1. It is impossible to regard the omission of this passage, in the numerous doc uments which we have just looked at, as purely accidental. If it were authentic, it must necessarily have been omitted of design, and with the motive which is supposed by some of the Fathers. But, at this rate, how many other omissions must have been made in the New Testament ? And would such a liberty have been allowed with respect to a text decidedly recognized as apostolic? 2. Besides, there is an extraordinary variation in the text in the documents which present this passage ; sixty variants are counted in these twelve verses. Griesbach has distinguished three altogether different texts: the ordinary text, that of D, and a third which results from a certain number of MSS. A true apostolic text could never have undergone such alterations. 3. How does it happen that this entire passage is found so differently located in the documents : after ver. 36, at the end of our Gospel, at the end of Luke xxi. finally between chaps, vii. and viii. of our Gospel, as in the T. R. ? Such hesita tion is likewise without example with respect to a genuine apostolic text. From the point of view of internal criticism, three reasons confirm this result : 1. The style does not have the Johannean stamp ; it has much more the charac teristics of the Synoptical tradition. The ovv, the most common form of transition in John, is altogether wanting ; it is replaced by Si (11 times). The expressions dpdpov (John says irpal), irdg 6 faidg, naBioag iSiSaanev, oi ypappareig ko.1 ol . nav eo-\artav 8 D : -7.1 apapna (in sin). (even to the last). D reads wore iravra, e£eA- 0 E G H K add ncipa^ovTc. (tempting him). Oeiv (so that all went out). D : _k?t etpa£opT.. avrov ot tepet. iva ex E F G K Mnn. : «pi._, (judge). " D M S Vss. : avemipev icai. U A : aroSAe- »> D : unaye. to the world. 27. They understood not that he spoke to them of the Father." 3 Some interpreters, ancient and modern, have tried to connect this verse grammatically with the preceding, by making the last words of that verse: "on Kal AaAw ipiv, a parenthetical clause, and the first words of ver. 26, .roAAd ixa, the continuation of the clause which was begun with rvv dpxvv (so Bengel, Hofmann, Baumlein) : " For the moment — since it is still the time when I am speaking with you— I have many things to say to you" {Hofmann); or: " Certainly I have — a thing which I am also doing — many things to say to you " {Baumlein). But this sense of rvv dpxvv is absolutely idle ; and no less so that of the parenthetical clause. The attempt has also been made to connect ver. 26 logically with ver. 25. Thus Luthardt and Reuss introduce this antithesis : " It is of yourselves (not of myself) that I have to speak to you, and this will be for you a much more important thought to occupy your minds." But what was there of more serious importance for them than to know who Jesus was? Weiss finds a contrast between the idea : that it was not worth while to speak to them any longer (ver. 25), and the idea of the multitude of things which He had to say to them (ver. 26). This explanation falls together with the sense which Weiss gives to ver. 25. In my view, ver. 26 does not con tinue the thought of ver. 25. Tt is united with ver. 24. After having answered the question of the hearers in ver. 25, Jesus takes up again the course of His charges in vv. 21-24. In these verses he had uttered stern truths with reference to the moral state of the people ; He simply con tinues in ver. 26 : "Of these declarations and these judgments I have still many] (.roAAd, at the beginning ofthe clause) to pronounce with regard to you." What is to follow in this same chapter, vv. 34, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 49, 55, gives us an idea of these many judgments which Jesus had in mind. " But," He adds, " painful as this mission may be for me, I cannot abstain from speaking to you as I do, for I only obey herein Him who dictates to me my message ; now He is the truth itself, and my office here below can only be that of making the world hear what He reveals to me." From 1 K reads .rap' a.™ (with him) instead of F G etc.) and AaAio (X B D etc.). Trap' avrov. ' s K D 3 Mnn. ItP1--!--- Vulg. add tov Qeov. at 2 The MSS. are divided between Aey_> (E the end of the verse. 102 SECOND PART. Chrysostom to Meyer, some explain the opposition expressed in the word but by this idea: "I have much to say to you; but I refrain, and this because you are unwilling to receive the truth." But with this sense, to what purpose make appeal to the divine truth which forces him to speak and to say to the world what He hears from above.. And in what follows, does Jesus keep silence ? Does He not, on the contrary, make the greatest number of charges and the most severe ones against His hearers that He has ever addressed to them ? With reference to vmvaa, I heard, comp. v. 30. This past tense cannot, either in accordance with this parallel or with the context, refer to the pre-existent state. Jesus certainly cannot mean that He heard in heaven, before coming here below, the charges which He now addresses to the Jews. Ver. 27. Criticism declares the want of understanding of the Jews which is mentioned in ver. 27 impossible. Can those of whom John speaks, then, be, as Meyer thinks, new hearers who had not been present at the previous discourses ? Or must we understand with Liicke : They were not willing to acknowledge that it was the Father who really made Him speak in this way; or with Weiss: They did not understand that He had the mission to reveal the Father by declaring what He inwardly heard from Him. These are manifest tortures inflicted on the text. The eAeyev cannot be taken here in the same sense as in vi. 71 : to speak of. It must be observed that in this whole discourse from ver. 21, Jesus had spoken of Him who sent Him, without once pronouncing the name either of God or of the Father. Now among the multitude there might be found hear ers who were unable to imagine so close a relation between a human creature and the infinite God as that of which Jesus was bearing witness, and who consequently asked themselves whether He did not mean to speak of some one of the persons who were to precede the Messiah and with whom Jesus sustained a secret relation, as the Messiah was to do with Elijah. Think of the strange misunderstandings attributed by the Synoptics to the apostles themselves ! ' After eighteen centuries of Chris tianity, many things in the discourses of Jesus appear evident to us, which, through their novelty and the opposition which they encountered from inveterate prejudices, must have appeared strange in the extreme to the greater part of His hearers. No doubt, if the heart had been better disposed, the mind would have been more open. To this want of intelligence in His present hearers, Jesus opposes the announcement of the day when the full light will come among them re specting His mission, after the great national crime which they are on the point of committing. Vv. 28, 29. " Jesus tiierefore said to them1 when you have lifted up the Son qf man, then shall you know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself, but that I speak these things ' to you according to tlie teachings of my s Father, 29 and that he that sent me is with me ; the Father * has not left me alone, because ¦BIT omit auToi. after eurtv, and tt D » Mo. is omitted by K D L T X Itpi«K™. add TraAiv. «NBDI_TX5 Mnn. ItpiwK-- Vulg. Cop. re- s K : o. tw . instead of TavTa. ject o irarnp after povov. chas-. viii. 28-29. 16:i / do always that which is pleasing to him." The lifting up of the Son of man refers especially to the death on the cross ; this appears from tho second person : you have lifted up. But Jesus could not hope that the cross would by itself cause the scales to fall from the eyes of the Jews and extort from them the confession : It is He ! It could not produce this effect except by becoming for Him the stepping-stone to the throne and the passage to glory. The word to lift up, therefore, contains here the same amphibology as in iii. 14, and the second person of the plural assumes thus a marked tinge of irony : " When by killing me you shall have put me on the throne. . . ." The term Son of man designates that lowly appearance which is now the ground of His rejection. The recogni tion of Jesus here predicted took place in the conscience of all the Jews without exception when, after the sending of the Holy Spirit, the holy and divine nature of His person, of His work and of His teaching was manifested in Israel by the apostolic preaching, by the appearance of the Church, and then, finally, by the judgment which struck Jerusalem and all the people. At the sight of this, the want of understanding came to its end whether they would or not, and was transformed into faith in some, in others into voluntary hardening. This recognition never ceases to be effected in Israel by reason of the spectacle of the development of the Church ; it will end in the final conversion of the nation, when they will cry out with one voice, as if on a new Palm-day : " Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord " (Luke xiii. 35). What calm dignity, what serene maj esty, in these words : Then you shall know . . . ! They recall, as Hengsten berg remarks, those grave and menacing declarations of Jehovah : " Mine eye shall not pity thee . . . and ye shall know that I am the Lord," Ezek. vii. 4. Comp. the same form of expression, Ezek. xi. 10 ; xii. 20 ; Exod. x. 2, etc. Weiss compares with this saying the word of Jesus respecting the sign of Jonah (Matt. xii. 39 ff.). A still more striking parallel in the Synoptics seems to me to be the word addressed to the Sanhedrim, Matt. xxvi. 64 : " You shall see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven." Some interpreters claim that John should have written oirug, thus, instead of ravra, these things. But the thought is this : " and that I declare to you these things {ravra) which you hear, according to {KaBag) the teaching which I have received from the Father." The expression is therefore correct. The whole of the end of the verse depends on yvaaeade, you shall know. Jesus here sums up all His preceding affirmations, while presenting them by anticipation as the contents of that future recognition which He announces : " that lam he;" comp. ver. 24: " that I do and teach nothing of myself; " comp. vii. 16, 17. This verse therefore means : " You yourselves will then say amen to all these declara tions which you so lightly reject at this hour." It appears to me natural to make the first clause of ver. 29 also depend on the verb, You shall know ; it sums up the declarations of viii. 16-18. The following clause then reproduces very forcibly (by asyndeton) this last affirmation : is with me. In contrast with the present which escapes Him, Jesus with assured confidence lays hold of the future : " You may reject 104 SECOND PART. me if you will, yet the Father remains in inner communion with me, as I have said to you, and He will protect my work." One might be tempted to understand the words ovk dijivxe in this sense. " In sending me, He has not suffered me to come alone here below ; He has willed to accompany me Himself." This indeed would be the most simple sense of the aorist. But in this case, how are we to understand what follows : " Because I do always that which is pleasing to Him ? " Hengstenberg, who explains thus, has recourse to the divine foreknowledge : " He has not suffered me to come alone, since He well knows that I am faithful to Him in all things." This sense is evidently forced. We must therefore understand the aorist d^/.. in the sense in which we find it in the passage, Acts xiv. 17 : " God has not left Himself without witness." " God has, in no moment of my career, left me to walk alone, because at every moment He sees me doing that which pleases Him." An instant therefore, a single one, in which Jesus had acted or spoken of His own impulse would have brought a rupture between Him and God ; God would have immediately withdrawn from Jesus Himself, and that in the measure in which this will of His own was fixed within Him. The voluntary and complete dependence of Christ was the constant condition of the co-operation of the Father ; comp. the words of x. 17 and xv. 10, which express in the main the same thought. Certainly, if the evangelist had written his Gospel to set forth the theory of the Logos, he would never have put this saying into the mouth of Jesus. For it seems directly to contradict it. The communion of the Son and the Father is regarded here as resting upon a purely moral condition. But we see by this how real was the feeling which Jesus had of His truly human existence, and how John himself has taken for granted the human ity of his Master. Ta dpeard, that which is pleasing to Him, designates the will of the Father, not from the point of view of the articles of a code, but in that which is most spiritual and inward in it. Indeed, this term does not express the contents only of the doing of Jesus, but its motive. He did not only what was pleasing to the Father, but He did it because it was pleasing to Him. It is proved by this saying that Jesus had the conscious ness, not only of not having committed the least positive sin, but also of not having neglected the least good, and that in His feelings as well as in His outward conduct. Here is one of the passages where we can make palpable the fact that the dis courses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel are not compositions of the writer, but real discourses of Christ. 1. The communion with God which Jesus affirms can only be a real historical fact. It cannot have been invented by the author. If it were not in the experience, it would not be in the thought. 2. The allusion to the Jewish law (vv. 17, 18), in order to justify a fact of so inward a nature, contains a surprising accommodation, which necessarily implies the historical surroundings in which Jesus taught. 3. The locality indicated with so much precision in ver. 20 testifies of a perfectly accurate historical recollection ; otherwise, there would be here a piece of charlatanism, which it would be impossible to reconcile with the seriousness of the whole narrative. chap. viii. 30-31. 105 4. " I and you " : viii. 30-59. Jesus, in His second discourse (vv. 12-20) attributed to Himself two modes of teaching : testimony, by which He reveals His origin, His mis sion, His work, and judgment, by which He unveils the moral state of His hearers. In this sense He had also said, ver. 26 : "I have yet many things to say and to judge concerning you." These more severe judgments which Jesus bore in His mind respecting the moral state of His people, we find expressed in the first section of the following discourse ; it is judgment ; reaching its culminating point (vv. 30-50) : you are not free ; you are not ! children of Abraham ; you are not children of God, but of the devil. ', Such are the severe judgments which are gradually introduced in the ' conversation between Jesus and even the least ill-disposed of His hearers. The second part is that of testimony. Jesus rises to His greatest height : He is the destroyer of death ; He is before Abraham (vv. 51-59). 1. The judgment of Jesus respecting Israel : vv. 30-50. And first its state of slavery : vv. 30-36. , Vv. 30-32. "As Jesus spoke thus, many believed on him. 81. Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had become believers on him : If you abide in my word, you shall be really my disciples, 32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." The term" believed" designates here undoubtedly the disposition, openly expressed, to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. In this quite considerable number of believers, there were perhaps some members ofthe Sanhedrim; xii. .42: "Manyof the rulers believed on him." They perceived indeed that, in the words which Jesus had just uttered, there was something else than a vain boast. But Jesus is no more dazzled by this apparent success than he had been by the con fession of Nicodemus (iii. 1, 2), and by the enthusiasm of the Galilean multitude (vi. 14, 15). Instead of treating these new believers as converts, He puts them immediately to the test by addressing to them a promise / which, notwithstanding its greatness, presents a profoundly humiliating side. It is thus that Jesus often acts. At once, the one whose faith is only superficial stumbles at the holiness of the new word and falls; the one whose conscience has. been laid, hold of perseveres and penetrates farther into the essence of things. The particle therefore in ver. 31, sums up in a word the connection of ideas which we have just developed. This new scene can scarcely have taken place on the same day with the preceding. Ver. 31 is explained in the most natural way by holding that those of the stranger pilgrims who had believed had departed on the day after the feast, and that, at this moment, Jesus was surrounded only by believing hearers who had until then belonged to the Jewish party. We are surprised, at the first glance, to meet in this gospel a connection of words such as Jews who had become believers. But this contradictio in adjecto is intentional on the part of the author ; it is even the key of the following passage. These believers, at the foundation, belonged to the party of the adversaries ; they were indeed still really Jews ; they con tinued to share in the Messianic aspirations of the nation ; only they were 106 SECOND PART. disposed to recognize in Jesus the man who had the mission to satisfy these aspirations. Theirs was nearly the condition of mind of the Gali lean multitude, at the beginning of chap. vi. Undoubtedly, these Jewish believers were not all of the .roAAo., many, of the preceding verse, -but only a group among them, as Weiss and Westcott think. In the view of the latter, the difference between the two limiting words, airy, him, and elg avrdv, on him, ver. 30, is explained even by this fact. But the meaning seems to me rather : They believed on him (as the Messiah) because they for a moment put confidence in His word {him). The nature of the promise made in vv. 31, 32, is admirably fitted to the end which. Jesus proposes to Himself. He knows that emancipation from the Roman yoke is the great work which is expected of the Messiah ; He therefore spiritualizes this hope, and presents it under this more elevated form to the heart of the believers. The pronoun vpelg, you, has as its aim to contrast these new disciples with the unbelieving multitude. Accord ing to Weiss, this word serves rather to place them in opposition to the .rue believers among the ixoXKol; but this distinction was not sufficiently marked. We might also see here a contrast with the early disciples. The first sense is the most natural. The expression to abide in contains the idea of persevering docility. There will be for this rising faith ob stacles to be overcome. The Word will find in their hearts inveterate prejudices; a relapse into unbelief is therefore for them, though believers, a serious danger. By this figure : lo abide in, the revelation contained in the word of Jesus is compared to a fertile soil in which true faith must be rooted ever more deeply in order to thrive and bear fruit. Ver. 32. Kal : and on this condition. They will really possess the quality of disciples; and on this path they will reach the complete illu mination from which will result within them complete emancipation. The truth is the contents of the word of Jesus; it is the full revelation of the real essence of things, that is to say; of the moral character of God, of man, and of their relation. This new light will serve to break the yoke, not of the Roman power, but, what is more decisive for salvation, of the empire of sin. On what, indeed, does the power of sin in the human heart rest? On a fascination. Let the truth come to light, and the charm is broken. The will is disgusted with that which seduced it, and, according to the expression of the Psalmist, " the bird is escaped from the snare of the fowler." This is the true Messianic deliverance. If there is to be another more external one, it will be only the complement of this. Vv. 33, 34. " They answered him, We are Abraham's seed, and have never been slaves of anyone; how sayest thou: you shall become free f 34. Jesus answered them, Verily, verily I say to you that ivhosoever commits sin is a slave [pf sin1]." According to some modern interpreters, those who thus answer Jesus cannot be the believing Jews of ver. 30, the more since Jesus charges them in ver. 37 with seeking to put Him to death, and, subsequently, calls them children of the devil. Lucke therefore 1 D b omit ti). apapna. (of sin,) CHap. vm. 33, 34. 107 regards vv. 30-32 as a parenthesis, and connects ver. 33 with the preceding conversation (ver. 29). Lutliardt thinks that in the midst of the group of well-disposed persons who surrounded Jesus, there were also adversaries, and that it was these latter who at this moment began to speak. Others give to the verb an indefinite subject: "They answered Him." But, on all these views, the narrative of John would be singularly incorrect. In read ing ver. 33, we can only think of the believers of vv. 30-32. We shall see that the last words of ver. 37, also, do not allow any other application. It was not for no purpose that the evangelist had formed so marvelous a union of words in our Gospel as that of believing Jews. In these persons there were two men : the nascent behever — it was to him that Jesus ad dressed the promise vv. 31, 32 — and the old Jew still living : it is the latter who feels himself offended, and who answers with pride (ver. 33). There was in fact a humiliating side in this word : will make you free. It was to say to them : you are not so. Making this step backward, they fell back into solidarity with their nation from which they had only superficially and temporarily separated themselves. The key of this entire passage is found already in these words, ii. 23, 24 : "And many in Jerusalem believed on His name . . . ; but Jesus did not intrust Himself to them." Under their faith He discerned the old Jewish foundation not yet shattered and trans formed. In order that the promise of vv. 31, 32 should have been able to make a chord vibrate in their heart, they must have known experiences like those which St. Paul describes in Rom. vii. : the distress of an earnest, but impotent, struggle with sin. Jesus discerned this clearly, and for this reason He spoke to them, in ver. 31, of abiding, that is to say, of perse vering in submission to His word. There is no confusion in John's nar rative ; we must rather admire its sacred delicacy. The slavery which the hearers of Jesus deny cannot be of a political nature. Had not their fathers been slaves in the land of Egypt, in bond age, in the times of the Judges, to all kinds of nations, then subjected to the dominion of the Chaldeans and Persians ? Were they not them selves under the yoke of the Romans ? It is impossible to suppose them so far blinded by national pride as to forget facts which were so patent, as de Wette, Meyer, Reuss, etc., suppose ; the last writer says : " They place themselves at the point of view, not of material facts, but of theory . . . There was submission to the Roman dominion . . . . , but under pro test." But the words: we were never, do not allow this explanation. Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Keil, give to this expression a purely spiritual im port ; they apply it to the religious preponderance which the Jews claimed for themselves in comparison with all other nations. This is still more forced. The hearers of Jesus cannot express themselves in this way except from the view-point of the civil individual liberty, which they enjoyed as Jews. Hence the connection between the two assertions : " We are Abraham's seed ; we werenever in bondage." With a single excep tion, which was specially foreseen, the law forbade the condition of bond age for all the members of the Israelitish community (Lev. xxv.). The dignity of a free man shone on the brow of every one who bore the name 108 SECOND PART. of child of Abraham, a fact which assuredly did not prevent the possibil ity that Jewish prisoners should be sold into slavery among the Gentiles (in answer to Keil). The question here is of inhabitants of Palestine such as those who were in conversation with Jesus. These Jews, when hearing that it was the truth taught by Jesus which should put an end to their bondage, could not have supposed that this declaration applied to eman cipation from the Roman power. Now as, along with this national dependence, they knew no other servitude than civil or personal slavery, they protested, alleging that, while promising them liberty, Jesus made them slaves. They changed the most magnificent promise into an insult ; "and," as Stier says, " thus they are already at the end of their faith." We can see whether Jesus was wrong in not trusting to this faith. Ver. 34. The genitive rijg dpaprlag of sin, is omitted by the Cambridge MS., and an important document of the Itala; without this complement, the sense is: " He is a slave, truly a slave, while believing himself a free man ; " a sense which is perfectly suitable. If, however, with all the other documents, the complement : of sin is sustained, it must be under stood : " He is a slave, I mean a slave of sin." The sin to which'the man at first freely surrenders himself becomes a master, then a tyrant. It ends by entirely confiscating his will. The passage Rom. vi. 16-18 pre sents an idea analogous to that of these words. The present participle 6 iroiav, who commits (sin) unites the two notions of act and condition ; the act proceeds from the condition, then it establishes it. It is a slavery for which the individual is responsible, because he has himself cooperated in creating it. . The genitive of sin brings out the degrading character of this dependence; the following clause shows the terrible consequence of it: Vv. 35, 36. " The slave does not abide in the house for ever ; the son abides for ever.1 36. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." If in ver. 34 the words rf/g dyapriag, of sin, are read, it is necessary to admit a change of meaning in the idea of slavery between ver. 34 and ver. 35. In ver. 34, the master is sin ; in w. 35, 36, the master is God, the owner of the house. This modification in the notion of moral slavery is un doubtedly to be explained by a thought which is also that of some pas sages in the Epistles of St. Paul : that the slave qf sin, when he is a member of the theocracy, of the house of God, is made thereby a slave with respect to God Himself. In this moral condition, indeed, his position is servile ; he renders to the master of the house only a forced obedience, because his will is governed by another master, sin. It cannot be denied, however, that the connection would be much more simple, if the words qf sin were omitted in ver. 34. " He who commits sin is not a child, but a slave (with respect to God), ver. 34. Now, in such a moral state, the man possesses no permanent abode in the house of God (ver. 35). Sep arated spiritually from the Father of the family, he is not a real member 'KXr omit the words o _ to. ftevet ei? top attopa (the son abides for ever) ; no doubt, a con founding ofthe two et. toc amva. "chap. viii. 36, 37. 109 of the family." The meaning is thus perfectly simple. — Oi yhei : " He will remain in the house only as long as the master shall desire to make use of him " {Luthardt) ; he may be sold at any moment. What a threat ening for those to whom Jesus was addressing Himself ! — In contrast to this term slave, the term son must designate the quality of son ; not the person of the Son. He who is truly a son through the. community of spirit with the Master cannot be at all detached from that of which he has become an organic member. He can no more be separated from the kingdom of God than a child can be sold into slavery. But from ver. 36 the term Son is evidently applied to Jesus only. This is because in this house the filial dignity and the individual Son are mingled in one. There is here properly only one son, he who bears in himself the whole gens ; all the rest become sons only by the act of manumissio, of liberation, on his part (ver. 32). Just as the passage Gal. iv. 21-31 seems to be only a development of ver. 35, so Rom. viii. 2 : " The law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ made me free {vhevBipuai ps) from the law of sin and death" is the commentary on ver. 36. It is to the Son as the representative and heir of the paternal fortune that the right is committed by the Father of free ing the slaves. "Ovrag iXeiiBepoi, really, that is to say, spiritually free in God, and consequently true members of His house and for ever. Jesus has set aside the haughty assertion of ver. 33: We were never in bondage. He goes back now to the claim which was the point of support for that assertion : We are Abraham's seed, and He disposes of this also. The moral sonship of Israel : vv. 37-47. Vv. 37, 38. " I know indeed that you are Abraham's seed; but you seek to Mil me, because my word makes no progress in you. 38. As for me, I speak that which 1 1 have seen with the Father ; 2 and you do the things which 3 you have heard from your father," * Jesus does not deny the genuineness of the civil registers in virtue of which His hearers affirm their character as children of Abraham. But He alleges a moral fact which destroys the value of this physical filiation in the spiritual and divine domain ; it is their conduct towards Him and His word. Jesus here employs a method like that of John the Baptist, Matt, hi., and that of Paul, Rom. ix. By reason of the resistance which they oppose to His teaching, He addresses them as persons who have already returned to the solidarity of that Israel itish community which is desiring to make way with Him. Hence the charge which has been regarded as so strange (comp. w. 31, 32) : " You seek to kill me." But what more proper than the announcement of such a crime to make them feel the necessity of breaking finally the bond which 'SBODLX Orig. some Mnn. Cop. read (that which) with the others. a (the things which) instead of o (that which) * B C K L X 15 Mnn. Oop. Orig. (frequently) which is read by T. K. with KPGHKM8 read ^Kovaare napa tov iraTpos (the things T» U r A A Mnn. It. Syr. which you have heard from the father); T. E. 2 B D L T X Orig. reject pov, which is read with N D E F G etc. Itpi«'iq»« etc. : capo/care by T. E. with the other MSS. and almost all irapa ra irarpi (the things which you have seen the Vss. with your father). B L T omit _*_<_¦> after 3 K B C D K X (not L) read a (the things rov irarpo,.] which) in the second clause. T. E. reads o 110 SECOND PART. still united them to a people so disposed. What justifies this severe asser tion of Jesus is that He has just discovered, at this very moment, the im pression of irritation produced in them by His word (ver. 33). The word xapeiv has two principal meanings : one, transitive, to contain (ii. 6) — this meaning is inapplicable here, — the other, intransitive: to change place, to advance. This verb is applied in this sense to water flowing, to a dart piercing, to a plant growing, to one body penetrating another, to invested money paying interest. Starting from this second meaning, some have explained: "has no place in you for developing itself," or: "has no entrance, access to you " {Ostervald, Rilliet). The former translation is not suitable for the word x<->Pelv', comp. 2 Cor. vi. 12; oi x-./._-.t_ rov Myov would have been necessary. With the second, these words would apply only to persons who have already manifested a beginning of faith. We must therefore explain, with Meyer, Weiss, Keil: makes no progress in you. The word of Christ struck in them, from the first uttered words, against national prejudices which they still shared with their fellow-countrymen, against the Jewish heart which they had not laid aside ; like the seed which fell on the rocky ground, it had been blighted as soon as it had begun to germinate. This is the reason why Jesus had said at the beginning, " If you abide." Yet once more, there is no inaccuracy in the narrative. For him who goes to the foundation of things and who judges of the facts by placing himself at the point of view of Jesus and of John himself, every thing is perfectly connected and well-founded. In ver. 38, Jesus explains the resistance which His word encounters in them by a moral dependence in which they are and which is of a nature contrary to that in which He Himself lives. In speaking as He does, He obeys the principle which governs Him; they, in acting as they do, are the instruments of a wholly opposite power. In order to decide between the numerous various readings which are presented by the text of this verse, it is natural to start from this principle : that the copyists have sought to conform the two parallel clauses to one another, rather than to introduce differences between them. If we apply this rule, we shall arrive at the text which seems to us also to present the best sense intrinsi cally. It is that of the MS. K (with the exception, perhaps, of tlie pronoun yov which is read by this MS. in the first clause, and which may be rejected according to the principle suggested). This text of K is that which we have rendered in the translation.1 The expression : that which lhave seen with my Father, does not refer, as Meyer, Weiss and others think, to the state of the Lord's divine pre-existence ; the parallel clause : that which you have heard from your father, excludes this explanation. For the two facts compared must be of a homogeneous nature. Weiss alleges the difference introduced intentionally by the change of the verbs {see, hear). But ver. 40 and v. 30 prove that no intention of this sort occasions this difference of expression. The question here is of a fact of incalculable importance in all human life. Behind the particular acts which are at 1 Eyco o ecopaKa irapa tw n-aTpi AaAw koi vpci, ovv a rjKo.o-aTe irapa t .v n-arpo? vpttv iroietTt. CHAP. VIII. 38. Ill the surface in the life of each man, there is concealed a permanent basis and, if I may venture to speak thus, a mysterious anteriority. All per sonal and free life has communication in its depths with an infinity of good or of evil, of light or darkness, which penetrates into our inner being and which, when once received, displays itself in our works (words or acts). This is what Jesus here represents under the figure of the paternal house whence we come forth and whence, as a son with his father, we derive our principles, our conduct, our habits : " From my speaking and from your doing, one may clearly see from what house we come forth, you and I." This is not all : at the foundation of each of these two infinites, good or evil, with which we are in ceaseless relation and of which we are the agents, Jesus discerns a personal being, a directing will, the father of a family who reigns over the whole house {my Father, your father). It is from him that the initiative on each side starts, that the impulses emanate. And as the moving power is personal, the dependence in which we are placed as related to it is also free, not inevitable. Jesus by His fidelity cultivates His communion with the Father ; so He finds in this relation the initiative of all good (" that which I have seen ") — the perfect : " that which I am having seen with the Father." The Jews, through their spirit of pride and hypocrisy, maintain in themselves this relation to the oppo site principle, to the other father ; so they continually receive from him the impulsions to every species of perverse works ("that which you have heard "). The therefore which unites the two parallel clauses has certainly a tinge of irony, as Meyer acknowledges : " You are consistent with the principle with which you are in communication, in doing evil, just as I am with mine in speaking what is good." The rejection of the pronoun pov after ¦n-arpt characterizes God as the sole Father in the true sense of the word. The singular pronoun 6, that which, in the first clause, answers to the thorough unity and the consistent direction of the will towards good. There is in it no vacillation, no contradiction. The plural pronoun d, the things which, characterizes, on the contrary, the capricious inconsistency of the diabolical volitions. This contrast is connected with that of the perfect iopam and the aorist v^ovcare : the former designating a man who is what he is through the fact of having beheld ; the latter, a variety of particular and momentary inspirations. The choice of the two terms see (Jesus) and hear (the Jews), to designate the two opposite kinds of moral dependence, is no less significant. Sight is the symbol of a clear intuition, such is only possible in the domain of the divine light and revelation. " In thy light we see light" (Ps. xxxvi. 10). The term : to hear from applies, on the con trary, to the secret suggestions which the perfidious mouth of an impostor whispers in the ear of his agents. Evil is the night in which one hears, but does not see. There is nothing even to the contrast of the two prepo sitions irapd (with the dative) with, and -n-apd (with the genitive), from, which does not contribute to the general effect of this inexhaustible saying : with is related to the idea of sight, nsfrom is to that of hearing. If Jesus mentions on His own part speaking {Xaleli) and on the part ofthe Jews doing, 112 SECOND PART. {¦n-oie'tv), it is because His activity consisted essentially, at this moment, in His testimonies and His judgments, while the Jews answered Him by hostile measures and projects of murder (ver. 37). If it were desired, with Hengstenberg, to give to ixoiure, you do, the sense of the imperative do, it would not be necessary to see here a summons of the character of that in chap. xiii. 27; it would rather be necessary to refer the word your father to God, and to see in the word a serious exhortation. But all this is opposed to the connection with what follows. Vv. 39-41a. " They answered and said to him, Our father is Abraham. Jesus said to them, If you were l Abraham's children, you would do 2 the works of A braham. 40. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I have heard from God ; Abraham did not do this. 41 a. You do the works of your father." The Jews feel themselves insulted by the insin uation of ver. 38 ; they affirm more energetically, and with a feehng of wounded dignity, their descent from Abraham. Jesus takes up again His answer in ver. 37 and develops it. In this domain, He says, there is no real paternal relationship where there is opposition in conduct. The Alexandrian reading : If you are . . . you would do, can be defended only by supposing a decided grammatical anomaly. John would at first lay down the fact as real {you are), to deny it afterwards in the second clause {you would do). In any case this explanation is preferable to that of Origen and Augustine, to which Weiss inclines, accepting the reading of B, " If you are . . . do then ! " But Jesus is not exhorting, He is'proving. This Alexandrian reading seems to be the result of an arbitrary correction. The verb of the principal clause iwoielre av, you would do, was first changed into the imperative iroielre, do, and after this it was necessary to transform the rjre {if you were) into iare {if you are). Abraham was distinguished for an absolute docility to the divine truth (Gen. xii., xxii.), and by a respect ful love for those who were the organs of it in his presence (Gen. xvi., xviii.) ; what a contrast to the conduct of his descendants according to the flesh ! Observe the gradation (ver. 40) : 1. To kill a man; 2. A man who is an organ of the truth ; 3. Of the truth which comes from God. Their moral descent from Abraham being thus set aside, the result is this : "You have therefore another father, the one whose will you do and whose works you practice, as I do those of my Father." Vv. 41b-43. "They said therefore3 to him: We are not children born* in fornication ; we have only one father, God. 42. Jesus said6 unto them, If God were your Father, you would love me; for I came forth and am come from God ; for neither am I come of myself, but he sent me. 43. Why do you not recognize my speech f Because you cannot understand my word." 1 Instead of rjre (if you were) which is read Augustine : facite. — Av is omitted by 11 Mjj by T. R. with 14 Mjj. and nearly all the 80 Mnn. Orig: (12 times). other authorities, Mnn. Vss. Orig. (3 times), » tt B L T ItP1"!-"' Syr. reject ow. -o-Te (if you are) is read in K B D I. T Orig. 'BD: ovk eyevvndnpev instead of ov ycyev (10 times). njue.ra. 2 All the MSS., even those which read eor., 'The ovv of T. E. has in its tavor only 1 have en-oietTe (you would do), except B which, Mjj. (tt D M etc.). with Orig. (10 times) reads ;r otetre (do) ; Vulg. chap. viii. 39-43. 113 The Jews now accept the moral sense in which Jesus takes the notion of sonship and use it in their own behalf: " Let us not speak any more of Abraham, if thou wilt have it so ; whatever it may be, in the spiritual domain, of which it seems that thou art thinking, it is God alone who is our Father. And we have, been able to receive in His house only good examples and good principles." We, -npeig, at the beginning of the clause ; persons such as we are ! From the time of the return from the captivity (comp. the books of Nehemiah and Malachi), the union with a Gentile woman was regarded as impure, and the child born of such a marriage as illegitimate, as belonging through one of its parents to the family of Satan, the God of the heathen. It is probably in this sense that the Jews say : " We have only one Father, God." They were born in the most normal theocratic conditions ; they have not a drop of idolatrous blood in their veins ; they are Hebrews, born of Hebrews (Phil. iii. 5). Thus, even when rising with Jesus to the moral point of view, they cannot rid themselves altogether of their idea of physical sonship. Meyer, Ewald and Weiss think that they mean that their common mother, Sarah, was not a woman guilty of adultery. But how could a supposition like this come to their thought ! Liicke and de Wette suppose rather that they as sert the fact that their worship is free from any idolatrous element. But the question here is of origin, not of worship. It would be possible, ac cording to the sense which we have given, that they were alluding to the Samaritans born of a mingling of Jewish and heathen populations. But Jesus does not hesitate to deprive them even of this higher prerog ative, which they think they can ascribe to themselves with so much of assurance. And He does this by the same method which He has just employed, in ver. 40, to deny their patriarchal filiation : He lays down a moral fact against which their claim is shattered. By virtue of His ori gin, of which He is distinctly conscious (ver. 14), Jesus knows that His appearing carries with it a divine seal. Every true child of God will be disposed to love Him. Their ill-will towards Him is, consequently, enough to annihilate their claim to the title of children of God. The true translation of the words : _k tov Bcov i^fjTSov Kal vKa, is : " It is from God that I came forth and am here," {vku, present formed from a perfect). Jesus presents Himself to the world with the consciousness that nothing in Him weakens the impression which the heavenly abode that He has just left must make upon accessible souls. 'E^Aftw, I came forth, refers to the divine fact of the incarnation; vku, I am here, to the divine character of His appearing. And along with His origin and His pres ence, there is also His mission which He has from God : " For neither am I come of myself." This second point is fitted to confirm the impression produced by the first ones. He does not accomplish here below a work of His own choice ; He continues in the service of that work which God gives to Him at each moment {for . . . neither). If they loved God, they would without difficulty recognize this character of His coming, His person and His work. Ver. 43. Why then does all this escape them ? How does it happen, in 8 114 SECOND PART. particular, that they do not distinguish the tone, and, so to speak, the heavenly timbre of his speech 9 AaVia, speech, differs from Adyoc, word, as the form differs from the contents, the discourse from the doctrine. "You do not know my speech; you do not distinguish it from an ordinary human word. Why ? Because you are unable to lay hold of and receive my doctrine." There was wanting to them that internal organ by means of which the teaching of Christ would become in them a light perceived. 'Akovsiv, to hear, signifies here to understand; to listen with that calmness, that seriousness, that good will which enables one to apprehend. This inability was not a fact of creation ; it results from their previous moral life ; compare v. 44-47. Jesus now develops in full the idea of the first cause of their moral incapacity. This cause He had already declared in ver. 38. It is the dependence in which they are inwardly on an enemy of the truth, who fills their hearts with tumultuous and hateful passions, and thus renders them deaf to the voice of God which speaks to them through Jesus. Ver. 44. " You are born of the 1 father, the devil, and you wish lo fulfil the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he is not in the truth, because there is no truth in him ; when he speaks falsehood, he speaks of his own, for he is a liar and2 the father of the liar." The light does not succeed in penetrating into this Jewish medium, because it is sub jected to a principle of darkness. 'Tpeig, you, is strongly emphasized: " You who boast of having God as your Father." Grotius made tov <..<_/..- fa>v, of the devil, the object of irarpdg, taking the former word in a collective sense : the father of the demons. Hilgenfeld, starting from the same grammatical construction, surprises the evangelist here in the very act of Gnosticism. This father of the devil, according to this critic, is the Demi urge of the Gnostics ; in other words, the creator of this material world, the God of the Jews, who is designated here as the father of Satan, in ac cordance with the doctrine of the Ophites in Irenfeus.3 Jesus would thus say to the Jews, not : " You are the sons of the devil," but : " You are the sons of the father of the devil ; " that is to say, the brothers of the latter. But where can we find in the Scriptures a word respecting the person of the devil's father ? And how, on the supposition that this father of the devil was the God of the Jews, could Jesus have called this God of the Jews His own Father (" the house of my Father " ii. 16) ? Finally, it is sufficient to compare 1 John iii. 10, in order to understand that He calls the Jews not the brothers, but the sons of the devil. The literal meaning is the following: You are sons of the father who is the devil, and not, as you think, of that other father who is God." The lawless passions {iwiBvplat) by which this father is animated and which he communicates to them, are unfolded in the second part of the verse : they are, first, hatred of man, and then, abhorrence of truth ; pre- 1 T. R. omits, with some Mnn. only, tov » Hilgenfeld : " The Ophites regarded JW- (the) before iraTpd 5. dabaoth (the Creator of the world and the God 2 Instead of xai, It«". and some Fathers of the Jews) as the father of the serpent fe«d so,?-)? icai (as also). (JStnJ., p. 725). chap. viii. 44. 115 cisely the tendencies with which Jesus had just reproached the Jews, ver. 40. The verb Bikers, you desire, you are eager for (v. 35), is contrary to the fatalistic principle which Hilgenfeld attributes to John ; it expresses the voluntary assent, the abounding sympathy with which they set them selves to the work of realizing the aspirations of their father. The first of these diabolical appetites is the thirst for human blood. Some inter preters ancient and modern {Cyril, Nitzsch, Liicke, de Wette, Reuss) explain the word dvBpaKOKrdvog, murderer, by an allusion to the murder of Abel. Comp. 1 John iii. 12, 15 : " Not as Cain, who was of the. evil one and slew his brother. . . . Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer." But the Scriptures do not ascribe to the demon a part in this crime, and the relation which Jesus establishes here between the murderous hatred of Satan and his character as a liar, leads us rather to refer the word murderer to the seduc tion in Paradise by which Satan caused man to fall under the yoke of sin and thereby of death. By thus separating him from God, through false hood, he has devoted him to spiritual and physical ruin. The expression from the beginning may, on this view, be much more strictly explained. The sense of dpxh, beginning, does not differ from that of this word in i. 1, except that here the question is of the beginning of the human race, there of the beginning of creation. As to the quota tion taken from 1 John, it proves nothing in favor of the allusion to the act of Cain ; for that act is there cited as the first example of the hatred of a man to his brother. When Jesus said in ver. 40 : " You seek to kill me, a man," He already had in His mind the idea of that mur derous hatred which is expressed by the word dvBpa-n-oKrdvog. Whence did this hatred of Satan against man arise ? Undoubtedly, from the fact" that he had discerned in him the future organ of divine truth and the des troyer of his own lies. Thus the two features of his character are united : hatred of man and enmity to the truth. And we may understand how this double hatred must be concentrated in the highest degree upon Jesus, in whom at length was perfectly realized the idea of man and of man as the organ of divine truth. Some interpreters, ancient and modern, have applied the expression iv dhjBela oix eo-rvKev to the fall of the devil. Vulgate: in veritale non stetit; Arnaud: he did not abide in the truth; Oster vald: he did not persist in . . . But the perfect iarvKa does not mean : did not abide in; its sense, in the sacred as in the classic Greek, is: "I have placed myself in a position and Zaire there." Jesus therefore does not mean to say that the devil has abandoned the domain of truth, in which he was originally placed by God, but rather that he does not find himself there, or, more exactly, that he has not taken his place there, and conse quently is not there.1 The domain of truth is that of the real essence of things, clearly recognized and affirmed, holiness. And why does he not live in this domain ? Because, Jesus adds, there is no truth in him. He is i Westcott explains the form ov/t instead of He thinks that the context requires a past ovx before eo-rnicev, in tt B D L X etc., by tense ; I do not think so ; the question is as making this verb the imperfect of o-tjj/ci. to what the devil is and does now, and not of (l_-TT|Ke>') j comp. Rom, xiv. _ and elsewhere, , a revelation respecting his beginning, 116 SECOND PART. wanting in inward truth, truth in the subjective sense, that uprightness of will which aspires after divine reality. We must observe, in this last clause, the absence of the article before the word dXvBela, truth : Satan is cut off from the truth, because he is destitute of truth. One can abide in the truth (objectively speaking) in that which God reveals, only when one sincerely desires it. The St., because, is the counterpart of that in ver. 43. Like father, like son : each of the two lives and works in what is false, because he is false. What Jesus has just set forth in a negative form, He reproduces in a positive form in the second part of the verse. Not desiring to derive any thing from divine truth, Satan is compelled to draw everything that he says from his own resources, that is from the nothingness of his own subjectiv ity ; for the creature, separated from God, is incapable of possessing and creating anything real. Lying is, in this condition, his natural language, as much as speaking the truth is the natural language of Jesus (ver. 38) in the communion with God in which He lives. 'Ek rav ISlav, from his own resources, admirably characterizes the creative faculty of a being sepa rated from God, who is capable no doubt of producing something, even sometimes great works, and of uttering great words, but whose creations, in proportion as he creates apart from God, are always only a vain phan tasmagoria. The word ijievarvg, a liar, reproduces the idea : He has no truth in him. In the expression : " He is a liar and also his father," we must not make the word his father a second subject to is, as if the question were here also of the father of the devil {Hilgenfeld). The word : and his father is the predicate : " he is a liar and father of ... " Otherwise on avrbg fevarvg iorl Kal 6 nari/p avrov would have been necessary. Only it may be asked to what substantive it is necessary to refer the pronoun avrov -{his); to the word -tyevorvg, liar, or the word ijievSovg, falsehood, in the preceding clause ? I think, with Liicke, Meyer and others, that the context is decisive in favor of the first alternative. For the question here is, not of the origin of falsehood in general, but specially of the moral sonship of the individual liars whom Jesus has before Him (vv. 40, 44).1 Weiss objects that in the expression : " he is a liar," the word liar is used in the generic sense. It is true ; but we may certainly derive from it the notion of a concrete substantive. In both senses, there is a slight grammatical difficulty to be overcome. The theory of accommodation, by means of which it is often sought to weaken the force of the declarations of Jesus respecting the personal existence of Satan, may have some probability when it is applied to His conversations with the demoniacs. But here Jesus gives altogether 1 The reading KaBim Kai (as also his father) the ordinary reading, though at the same time in the Itala and in some Fathers, is a correc- acknowledging the harshness of the ellipsis tion due to the (.. nosties who desired, like Hil- ofthe subject of Ka\f) (any man whatsoever): genfeld, to find here the mention of the father " Whoever says what is false, speaks of his of tlie devil. The Fathers, however, adopted own ; for he is a liar, as also his father, the this reading only on condition of reading devil." Respecting the explanation of Hil- before it &s av (he who) instead of oTai* (wfien, genfeld, who finds here again the indication each time when) ; this is the translation which of the father of the devil, see Introd., Vol I, Westcott thinks may be given when following p. 130 f. chap. viii. 45, 46. 117 Spontaneously this teaching with respect to the person, the character and the part of this mysterious being.1 After this Jesus comes back from the father to the children : they are enemies ofthe truth, just as the evil being is to whom they are subject : Vv. 45-47. " And because I say the truth to you, you believe me not. 46. Which qf you can convict me of sin f And if2 1 say the truth, why do you not believe me?3 47. He that is of God hears the words of God; for this cause you hear them not, because you are not qf God." What, ordinarily, causes a man to be believed is the fact that he speaks the truth. Jesus has with the Jews the opposite experience. They are so swayed by falsehood, by which their father has blinded their hearts, that precisely because he speaks the truth, he does not find credence with them. 'Eya, at the beginning : I, the organ of the truth, in opposition to Satan, the organ of falsehood. Ver. 46. To justify their distrust with respect to His words, it would be necessary that they should at least be able to accuse Him of some fault in His actions ; for holiness and truth are sisters. Can they do this ? Let them do it. This defiance which Jesus hurls at His adversaries shows that He feels Himself fully cleared, by His defense in chap, vii., of the crime of which He had been accused in chap. v. We must be careful, indeed, not to take dpaprla, sin, in the sense of error {Calvin, Melanchthon) or of falsehood {Fritzsche). The thought is the same here as in vii. 18 : Jesus affirms that there absolutely does not arise from His moral conduct any ground of suspicion against the truth of His teaching. We must im agine this question as followed by a pause sufficient to give opportunity to whoever should wish to accuse Him to be heard. ... No one opens his mouth. The admission involved in this silence serves as a premise for the following argument : " Well, then, if (.. Si, now if, or simply ei), as your silence proves, I teach the truth, why do you not believe ? " Here 1 If St. Augustine, and following his exam- voluntarily his natural autonomy, and to sub- pie the Catholic interpreters and some mod- ordinate his ego to the manifestation of good, em writers, have been wrong in seeing in the to the unveiled truth, that is, to God who re- expression o_x -o-TTjKer the indication of the veals himself. Herein is the decisive test for fall ofthe devil, Frommann and Reuss are no him, from which neither angel nor man es- less in error in finding in our passage the idea capes. The refusal of this voluntary annul- of an eternal principle of evil. The term ling of oneself in the presence of the revela- eo-Tiw-ev expresses, as Meyer says, the actual tion of the good, of the perfect good, of God,— fact: "This passage declares the bad moral this is evil in its first form (simply negative). situation of the devil, as it is, without teach- The exaggerated affirmation of the ego, posi- ing anything as to the origin of this state tive evil, is its immediate result. This refusal ..." " But," he adds, " the fall of the devil to abdicate before the truth, to go out of one- is necessarily implied by this -saying." I self and to ingraft oneself in God— herein is think that it is even necessary to go a step the fall both ofthe devil and the man : it can- farther. The perfect co-Tena, while designat- not be better formulated than in these terms : ing the present state implies the notion of a "not to be in the truth, because one has not past act to which this state is due ; not in this placed himself there at the required moment, case, if I mistake not, the idea of a fall out of that of its revelation." truth already known, but that of a refusal to »T. R. : ei Se with 11 Mjj.; ei simply in tt enter into revealed truth, to the end of beeom- B C L X n 20 Mnn. It. Vulg. Syr. Cop. ing firmly established therein and of yielding 3D omits the 46th verse (confounding of submission to it. Every free being is called, the two ov jrio-TeveTe (tot). at some moment in his existence, to sacrifice 118 SECOND PART. again a pause ; He had invited them to judge Him ; in the face of His innocence which has just been established, He leaves them a moment now to pass judgment on their conduct towards Him. After this silence, He pronounces the sentence : " You are not of God : herein is the true reason of your unbelief towards me." Tlie expression to be of God desig nates the state of a soul which has placed itself, and which now is, under the influence of divine action. It is the opposite of the ovx iar-nKtv affirmed with regard to Satan. This state does not exclude, but implies, the free determination of the man. Otherwise, the tone of reproach which prevails in our verse would be unjust and even absurd. 'Akovciv, properly, to hear, takes here, as often the French term does, the sense of intelligent hearing (hence the limiting word in the accusative). Comp. the manner in which the declaration of Jesus respecting the truth which gives freedom (ver. 32) had been received. The Sta rovro, for this cause, refers at once to the general principle laid down in the first part of the verse, and the following bn : " It is for this cause . . . , that is to say, because . . ." The perfect holiness of Christ is proved in this passage, not by the silence of the Jews, who might very well have ignored the sins of their interlo cutor, but by the assurance with which Jesus lays this question before them. Without the immediate consciousness which Christ had of the perfect purity of His life, and on the supposition that He was only a more holy man than other men, a moral sense so dehcate as that which such a state would imply, would not have suffered the least stain to pass unnoticed, either in His life, or in His heart ; and what hypocrisy would there not have been in this case in addressing to others a question with the aim of causing them to give it a different answer from that which, in His inmost heart, He gave Himself! In other terms : to give a false proof whose want of soundness He hopes that no one will be able to prove. Conclusion : vv. 48-50. Vv. 48-50. " The Jews therefore1 answered and said to him, Say we not rightly that thou art a Samaritan and art possessed by a demon f 49. Jesus answered: I am not possessed by a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. 50. But I seek not my own glory; there is one who seeks it and who judges." Some, as Hengstenberg and Astti, think that by calling Jesus a Samaritan, they wish to charge Him with heresy, as making Himself equal with God. But the term Samaritan can scarcely be regarded as a synonym of blasphemer. The Samaritans passed for national enemies of the Jews ; now Jesus seemed to commit an act of hostility against His people by accusing all the Jews of being children of the devil. The mad ness of insanity, as it seemed to them, could alone give an explanation of such language ; and this is what they express by the words : Thou art possessed of a demon, which are, as it were, the counterpart of the charge of Jesus. The meaning of this assault comes to this : Thou art as wicked as thou art foolish. "Who when he was reviled," says St. Peter, "reviled not again, but commit- IKBCDLXomit ovv. Chap. viii. 48-53. 119 led himself to him who judges righteously " (1 Pet. ii. 23). These words seem to have been suggested to the apostle by the recollection of the following reply in our verses 49, 50. To the insult, Jesus opposes a simple denial. 'Kya, I, placed first, is pronounced with the profound feeling of the con trast between the character of His person and the manner in which He is treated. To the false explanation which the Jews give of His preced ing discourse, Jesus substitutes the true one : " I do not speak of you as I Jo, under the impulse of hatred; but I speak thus to honor my Father. The testimony which I bear against you is a homage which I must pay to the divine holiness. But, instead of bowing the head to the voice of Him who tells you the truth from God, you insult Him— Him who glorifies the one whom you claim to be your Father." The conclusion is this : You cannot be children of God, since you insult me who speak to you only to honor God ! Nevertheless (ver. 50), Jesus declares that the affronts with which they loaded Him were to Him of little importance. It is God who looks to this ; He commits to God the care of His glory ; for He knows His solici tude for Him. He wishes to be honored only in the measure in which His Father Himself gives Him glory in the hearts of men. The two participles : seeking and judging give a presentiment of the divine acts by which the Father will glorify the Son and will chastise His calumniators : on one side, the sending of the Holy Spirit and the founding of the new Israel ; on the other, the fall of Jerusalem and the final judgment. It is thus that " he commits himself to him who judges righteously." Be sides, all do not dishonor Him ; there are some who already honor Him by their faith : 2. The last testimonies of Jesus respecting His person : vv. 51-59. Vv. 51-53. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, If any one keep my word, he shall never see death. 52. The Jews therefore 1 said to him, Now we know that thou art possessed of a demon ; Abraham is dead and the prophets also, and thou sayest, If any one keep my word, he shall never taste of death.2 53. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets also are dead. Whom dost thou s pretend to be ? " The various relations of ideas which it has been sought to establish between ver. 50 and ver. 51 seem to me hardly natural. With the last word of ver. 50 : and who judges, Jesus has come to an end with His present interlocutors. But He knows that among these numerous hearers who had believed in Him (ver. 30) and of whom many had immediately succumbed to the test (ver. 32), there are a certain number who have fulfilled the condition imposed by Him (ver. 31) : If you abide in my word ; it is to these, as it seems to me, as well as to His disciples in general, that He addresses the glorious promise of ver. 51. So Calvin, de Wette, etc., think. Weiss holds that the discourse simply con tinues : Jesus shows that His word will be the means through which God will glorify Him, by giving life to some and judging others by 1 tt B C omit ovv. ycvtrnrai. * B reads davarov ov pn &eapno-, (as in ver. s %v js rejected by 10 Mjj. (It A B C, etc.), 50 51). -T. R., y-vo-eTai with E F H. All the rest Mnn. It. Vulg. Syr. Cop. Orig. 120 SECOND PART. means of it, — which will show to all that He is the Messiah. The expres sion : keep my word, as well as the tone of the promise, carries us back to the exhortation of ver. 31 : Abide in my word; and the promise of never seeing death is the opposite of the threatening of ver. 35 : The slave does not abide in the house for ever. The term death is not taken in the exclu sively spiritual sense, as if Jesus meant : shall not be condemned. Would there not be some charlatanism on Jesus' part in giving Himself the appearance of saying more than He really meant? It is indeed death, death itself, in the full sense of the word, which He denies for the believer. See at vi. 50 and xiv. 3. What an encouragement presented to those who persevered in His word : no longer to have to experience death in death ! The Jews do not altogether misapprehend therefore, as is claimed, when they conclude from these words that Jesus promises to believers a privilege which was enjoyed neither by Abraham nor by the prophets, and that He makes Himself greater than these ; for it is manifest that He must Himself possess the prerogative which He promises to His own. The expression : taste of death, rests upon the comparison of death with a bitter cup which a man is condemned to drink. The word elg rbv alava, for ever, in vv. 51, 52, should not be explained in the sense : " He will die indeed, but not/or ever." The sense is : " He shall never perform the act of dying." Comp. xiii. 8. The pronoun bong, instead of the simple 5c, signifies : " who, Abraham though he was." This objection forces Jesus to rise to the highest affirmation which He has uttered with reference to Himself, that of His divine pre-existence. If Jesus is the conqueror of death for His own, it is because He Him self belongs to the eternal order. He comes from a sphere in which there is no transition from nothingness to existence, and consequently no more falling from existence into death, except in the case in which He Himself consented to give Himself up to its power. Vv. 54-56. "Jesus answered, If I glorify1 myself, my glory is nothing; he who glorifies me is my Father, he of whom you say that he is your2 God; 55 and yet you do not know him, but I know him; and if Isay that I do not know him, I shall be like to you3 a liar ; but I know him and I keep his word. 56. Abraham, your father, rejoiced in the hope of seeing my day; and he saw it, and was glad." In one sense, Jesus glorifies Himself, indeed, whenever He gives testimony to Himself; but the emphasis is on iya, I, " I alone, without the Father, seeking and attributing to myself a position which has not been given to me." The word So^dca may be either the future indicative or the aorist subjunctive. Here is the answer to the question : ]Vhom, dost thou claim to be ? " Nothing except that which the Father has willed that I should be." And this will ofthe Father with regard to Him is continually manifested by striking signs which the Jews would 1 Instead of _ofa£u>, which is read by T. R. ii»-<-i> (our) is read in the 12 other Mjj. 90 with 12 Mjj. and the Mnn., -o£a_-_> is read in Mnn. Syr. KBCD If". Orig. ' Instead of mu which T. R. reads with A a Instead of vpmv which is read by T. R B D, the rest read vpav. ivlth tt B D F X most of the Mnn. It.i»iq««, chap. viii. 54-56. 121 easily discern, if God were to them really what they claim that He is : their God. But they do not know Him ; and therefore they do not understand the signs by which He whom they declare to be their God accredits Him before their eyes. This ignorance of God which Jesus encounters in the Jews awakens in Him, by the law of contrast, the feeling of the real knowledge which He has of the Father, in whose name and honor He speaks : He affirms this prerogative with a triumphant energy, in ver. 55. It is, as it were, the paroxysm of faith which Jesus has in Himself, a faith founded on the certainty of that immediate consciousness which He has of God. If He did not assert Himself thus as knowing God, He would be also a liar like them, when they claim to know Him. And the proof that He does not lie is His obedience, which stands in contrast with their disobedience. Thus are the unheard of affirmations prepared for, which are to follow in vv. 56, 58. OlSa, I know him, designates direct, intuitive knowledge, in opposition to iyvamre (literally, you have learned to know), which relates to an acquired knowledge. After having thus answered the reproach : Thou glorifiest thyself, Jesus comes to the question raised by them : Art thou greater than our father Abraham? and He does not hesitate to answer plainly : "Yes! I am, for after having been the object of his hope when he was on earth, my coming was that of his joy in Paradise where he now is ! " There is a keen irony in this apposition: "Abraham, your father." Their spiritual patron rejoicing in the expectation of an appearance which excites only their spite ! The word rejoiced designates the joy of hope, as is indicated by the ha iSv, to the end of seeing. To see Him — this was the aim and object of the exultant joy ofthe patriarch. The question is evidently of what took place in Abraham's heart, when he received from the mouth of God the Messianic promises, such as Gen. xii. 3 and xxii. 18 : " In thy seed shall all the nationsbe blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." The expression my day can only designate the present time, that of Christ's appearance on earth (Luke xvii. 22). The explanations of Chrysostom (the day of the Pas sion) and Bengel (the day of the Parousia) are not at all justified here. Hofmann and Luthardt understand by it the promised birth of Isaac, a promise in which Abraham saw the pledge of that of the Messiah. But the expression : my day, can only refer to a fact concerning the person of Christ Himself. The relation between the iva ISy, to see, and the past elSe, and he saw, proves that this last term expresses the realization of the desire which had caused the patriarch to rejoice, the appearance of Jesus here below. The second aorist passive, ix<*p>/, well expresses the calm joy of the sight, in contrast with the exultant joy of the expectation (j7yaAA1do--.ro). Jesus there fore reveals here, as most of the interpreters acknowledge, a fact of the invisible world, of which He alone could have knowledge. As at the transfiguration we see Moses and Elijah acquainted with the circum stances of the earthly life of Jesus, so Jesus declares that Abraham, the father of believers, is not a stranger, in his abode of glory, to the fulfill- 1 22 SECOND PART. ment ofthe promises which had been made to Him, — that" he beheld the coming ofthe Messiah on the earth. No doubt we know not in what form the events of this world can be rendered sensible to those who live in the bosom of God. Jesus simply affirms the fact. This interpretation is the only one which leaves to the words their natural meaning. The Fathers apply the elSe, we saw, to certain typical events in the course of the life of Abraham, such as the birth or the sacrifice of Isaac, in which the patriarch, by anticipation, beheld the fulfillment of the promises. These explanations are excluded by the marked opposition which the text establishes between the joy of the expectation and that of the actual sight. The same is true of that of Hengstenberg and Keil, who apply the last words of the verse to the visit of the angel of the Lord as Logos-Jesus (Gen. xviii.). The expression my day can receive, in all these applications, only a forced meaning. The Socinian explanation : " Abraham would have exulted, if he had seen my day," is no longer cited except as calling it to mind. What can be made of the second clause with this interpreta tion? By bringing out this two-fold joy of Abraham, that of the promise and that of the fulfillment, Jesus puts the Jews to the blush at the contrast between their feelings and those of their alleged father. Vv. 57, 58. " Whereupon the Jews said to him, Thou art not yet fifty x years old, and thou hast seen Abraham ! 2 58. Jesus said to them, Verily, verily I say unto you, Before Abraham came into being,3 I am." From the fact that Abraham had seen Jesus, it seemed to follow that Jesus must have seen Abraham. The question of the Jews is the expression of indignant sur prise. The number fifty is a round number ; fifty years designates the close of the age of manhood. The meaning is : " Thou art not yet an old man." No inference is to be drawn from this as to the real age of Jesus, since ten or twenty years more, in this case, would be of no consequence. "I am not only his contemporary," Jesus replies, "but I existed even before him." The formula, amen, amen, announces the greatness of this revela tion respecting His person. By the terms yeviadai, became, and elpl, lam, Jesus, as Weiss says, contrasts His eternal existence with the historical beginning of the existence of Abraham. To become is to pass from nothing ness to existence ; I am designates a mode of existence which is not due to such a transition. Jesus goes still further ; He says, not I was, but lam. Thereby He attributes to Himself, not a simple priority as related to Abraham, which would still be compatible with the Arian view of the Person of Christ, but existence in the absolute, eternal, Divine order. This expression recalls that of Ps. xc. 2 : "Before the mountains were brought forth and thou hadst founded the earth, from eternity ta eternity, thou art, 0 God!" No doubt, eternity must not be considered as strictly anterior to time. This term irptv, before, is a symbolic form, derived from the human consciousness of Jesus, to express the relation of dependence of time on 1 A 3 Mnn. Chrys. : rco-trapaKovra (forty). seen thee). » K : /cat A(3p. eupcucei' o-e (and Abraham hath 8 D If'i omit ycveaSai (became). chap. viii. 57, 58. 123 eternity in the only way in which the mind of man can conceive of it, that is, under the form of succession. There is no longer any thought, at the present day, of having recourse to the forced explanations which were formerly proposed by different commentators : that of Socinus and Paulus : " I am, as the Messiah promised, anterior to Abraham," or that of the Socinian catechism : Before Abraham could justify His name of Abra ham {father of a multitude, by reason of the multitude of heathen who- shall one day be converted) I am your Messiah, for you Jews. Scholten himself acknowledges (p. 97 f.) the insufficiency of these exegetical attempts. According to him, we must supply a predicate of eipi ; this would be 6 x?mTk, the Messiah. But the antithesis of e\vai and ylveaBai {be and become) does not allow us to give to the first of these terms another sense than that of existing. Besides, the point in hand is a reply to the question : " Hast thou then seen Abraham ? " The reply, if understood as Scholten would have it, would be unsuitable to this question. The So cinian Orell and de Wette understand : " I exist in the divine intelligence or plan." Beyschlag goes a little farther still. According to him, Jesus means that there is realized in Himself here below an eternal, divine, but impersonal principle, the image of God. But as this impersonal image of God cannot exist except in the divine intelligence, this comes back in reality to the explanation of de Wette. This explanation of an impersonal ideal is opposed by three considerations : 1. The iya, I, which proves that this eternal being is personal ; 2, the parallel with Abraham. An impersonal principle cannot be placed in parallelism with a person, especially when the question is of a relation of priority. Finally, 3. How could a Jesus conceived of as an impersonal principle have answered the objection of the Jews : Thou hast then seen Abraham ? And yet if this word did not satisfy the demand of the Jews, it would be nothing more than a ridiculous boast.1 This declaration has the character of the most elevated solemnity. It is certainly one of those from which John derived the fundamental idea of the first verses of the Prologue. It bears in itself the guaranty of its authenticity, first by its striking conciseness, and then by its very mean ing. What historian would gratuitously ascribe to his hero a saying which was fitted to bring upon him the charge of being mad ? It will be asked, no doubt, how. Jesus can derive from His human consciousness an expression which so absolutely transcends it. This conception was derived by Him from the revelation of His Father, when He said to Him : " Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." There is a fact here which is analogous to that which is accomplished in the conscience of the believer when he through the Spirit receives the testimony that he is a child of God (Bom. viii. 16). 1 Beyschlag himself has felt this ; he now idea of pre-existence belongs). But it is not has recourse to another expedient, the one ¦ easy to understand how from this point of which Weizsacker proposed : the distinction view the authenticity of the Gospel can still between the two theologies placed in juxta- be defended, as it is defended by Beyschlag position in our Gospel ; that of Jesus Himself (comp. on this question Introd., vol. I., p. 123). and that of the evangelist (to which alone the 124 SECOND PART. Vv. 59. " Thereupon, they took up stones to stone him; but Jesus hid him self and went out of the temple." 1 In the'face of this reply, there was indeed nothing left to the Jews except to worship — or to stone him. The word ypav, strictly : they lifted up, indicates a volition, a menace, still more, per haps than a well-settled purpose. Comp. the stronger expression in x. 31. These stones were probably lying in the court, for the building of the temple, which was not yet finished. The word iKpvfSv, hid himself, does not include, but rather excludes the idea of a miracle. Jesus was sur rounded by a circle of disciples and friends who facilitated His escape. Whatever may be the authority of the documents and Versions which support the T. R. here (see the note), it is evident that the last words are a marginal gloss formed by means of the first words of the following chapter and of Luke iv. 30. Baur defends their authenticity, and tries to draw from them a proof of the Docetism of the author. But the normal expression, from the Docetic point of view, would have been, not hpvflv {he hid himself), but dfyavrog or d^avvg iyivero {he vanished). Here is the end of the most violent conflict which Jesus had had to sustain in Judea. Chaps, vii. and viii. correspond in this regard with chap. vi. The general victory of unbelief is here decided for Judea, as it had been in chap. vi. for Galilee. So from this time Jesus gradually aban dons the field of battle to His adversaries, until that other final hpt-fbi, xii. 36, which will close His public ministry in Israel. We have seen all the improbabilities, which criticism has found in such large numbers in this chapter and the preceding one, vanish before a calm and con scientious exegesis. The answers and objections of the Jews, which Reuss charges with being grotesque and absurd, have appeared to us, when placing ourselves at the point of view of those who make them, natural and logical. The argument of Jesus which, according to Renan, " is very weak when judged by the rules of Aristotelian logic," appears so only because it is forgotten that the question is of things which Jesus, counting on the moral consciousness of His adversaries, thought He might lay down as axioms. There is certainly, in the narrative of these two chapters, vii. and viii., not a single improbability which approaches that which there would be in supposing such conversations invented afterwards outside of the historical situation to whicli they so perfectly adapt themselves. There is no verbiage, no incongruity, no break of continuity. This reproduction of the conversations of Jesus is made with such delicacy, that one almost gives his assent to the hypothesis of a rationalist of the past century, Bertholdt, who sup posed that the evangelist had taken notes of the discourses of Jesus at the very time when he heard them. Two features strike us especially in these two chap ters : 1. The dialogue form, so full of reality, which could have engraved itself on the mind of a witness more easily than a consecutive discourse ; 2. The summary character of the testimonies of Jesus. There is always, at the beginning, a simple and grand affirmation without development, vii. 37, 38 ; viii. 12, 31, 32 ; then, in 1 After tepov, T. R. reads _ieA-W Sia ueo-ou FGH KLMSUXAAthe Mnn. Syr. Cop.; avTwp irai iraprryev ovTajt (passing through the these words are wanting in tt B D It.l",1»« midst of them, and so he departed), with A 0 E Vulg. Sah. Orig. Chrys. chap. ix. 1-5. 125 proportion as it becomes the subject of a discussion between Jesus and His hearers, the developments are given. These two features would be sufficient to prove the historical character of the narrative. SECOND CYCLE. IX. and X. The consequences of the first point of departure, the healing of the impotent man, chap, v., are exhausted. A new miracle produces a renewed breaking out of hatred among the Jews and calls forth a new phase of the conflict. Nevertheless, one feels that the worst of the con flict is past. The people of Judea, those even who had shown themselves for a moment disposed to believe, are offended, like the Galileans, at the absolute spirituality of the promises of Jesus. He begins from this time to abandon that lost community to its blindness ; He labors especially to the end of gathering about Himself the small number of those who are to form the nucleus of the future community. So the incisive character of the preceding conversations gives place to the tone of resignation and of saddened love. 1. Chap. ix. : a new miracle opens the second cycle ; 2. Chap. x. 1-21 : with this miracle is connected a first discourse, and then the representation of its immediate effects; 3. Chap. x. 22-42 : a second discourse, which, although given a little I later and at another visit, is, in respect to its subject, only a continuation of the first ; finally, a brief historical notice. FIEST SECTION. IX. 1-41. The Miracle. 1. The fact: vv. 1-12; 2. The investigation : vv. 13-34; 3. The moral re sult: w. 35-41. I.— The fact: vv. 1-12. Vv. 1-5. "And in passing, he saw a man blind from birth; 2 and his disci ples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind ? 3. Jesus answered, Neither did he nor his parents sin; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. 4. I must 1 work the works of him who sent2 me, while it is day; the night comes, in which no one can work. 5. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." These first five verses describe the situation in which the new miracle is wrought. If the last words of the preceding chapter in the T. R. are authentic, the first words of this would closely connect this scene with the preceding ; comp. *a. irapdyuv with wapvyev ovrag. But there 1 S B D L Cop. Orig. read vpat (we must do) favor the 12 other Mjj. the Mnn It Vulg Syr instead of eue (/ must do) which has in its "h. Cop.; r,p.a. (us) instead of Ms. 126 second part. would be in this case, as de Wette has clearly seen, an improbability in the story ; for the question which the disciples address to Jesus in ver. 2 im plies a more calm condition of mind than that in which they could have been on leaving the temple after the violent scene of chap. viii. Nothing in the authentic text forces us to connect one of these facts with the other. The formula ko.1 irapdyav, and in passing, only requires that there should not be placed between them a too considerable interval. If the scene in viii. 30-59 occurred in the morning, that which follows may have taken place in the evening of the same day. This time of the day suits well the figure which the Lord employs (vv. 4, 5). The blind man was sitting at one of the gates either of the temple, or rather of the city, to beg. The disciples learned from him or from others that he was blind from birth. The question which they address to Jesus seems to have been called forth by the marked attention with which he regarded this man {elSev). From the point of view of Jewish monotheism, suffering, it seemed, could only be the consequence of sin. But, how apply this law to the present case ? The only two alternatives which presented themselves to the mind were those which are indicated by the question of the disciples : but they seemed equally inadmissible. The dogma of the pre-existence of souls or that of metempsychosis might have given some probability to the first supposition ; but these systems, although the second especially was not foreign to the Babbinical teaching, were never popular in Israel. It would therefore have been necessary to hold that the misfortune of this man was an anticipatory chastisement of his future sins, or the punish ment of some fault committed by him in the embryonic state (Gen. xxv. 22 ; Ps. Ii. 7). But these two explanations must have both appeared very improbable. The other supposition, that this man suffered for the sins of his parents, might be supported by Exod. xx. 5, but nevertheless it seemed contrary to the justice of God. The disciples, perceiving no reasonable solution, ask Jesus, to decide the question. The Iva preserves always in some measure the idea of purpose : " that he should have been born thus, according to the divine plan." In His reply, Jesus does not deny the existence of sin in this man or his parents ; but no more does He acknow ledge the necessity of a moral connection between this individual or fam ily sin and the blindness with which the unhappy man is smitten. He teaches the disciples that they should direct their attention, not to the mysterious cause of the suffering, but to the end for which God permits it and the salutary effects which we can derive from it. Individual suf fering is not often connected, except in a general way, with the collective sin of humanity (see on v. 14), and does not give us the right to judge the one who suffers. But it always includes a call to fulfill a divine mission towards him by helping him temporally and spiritually. As evil has its work on earth, so God also has His, and it consists in making evil itself an occasion of good. All these acts by which we cooperate in the accom plishment of the divine intention, enter into what Jesus here calls the works of God. The sequel will show that this word comprehends in the thought pf Jesus, together with the outward act which bears (he stamp of the djvine chap. ix. 1-5. 127 omnipotence (the miracle of healing vv. 6, 7), the spiritual effects which will result from it, the spiritual illumination and the salvation of the blind man (vv. 35-38). The summons to help and save this unhappy man made itself felt in the Lord's heart at the very moment when He had fixed His eyes upon him ; hence the elSev of ver. 1. The term Qavepa&y, be made manifest, is explained by the fact that these works are originally hidden in the divine plan, before being executed. This point of view from which Jesus regards suffering is that which He seeks to make His disciples share from the end of ver. 3, and that which He develops in vv. 4, 5, by applying it to His own personal task during His sojourn here on earth. When the master who has entrusted the task to the workman (6 iripfag, he who has sent), gives the signal, the latter must act as long as the day of work ing continues. This signal Jesus has just discerned. Though it is a Sabbath, he cannot defer obeying until the morrow. Perhaps Jesus was at that moment beholding on the horizon the sun which was setting and was in a few moments going to disappear. This day which is about to end is for Him the emblem of His earthly life, which is near its termination (viii. 21). " When the night is come," He says, " the workmen cease their work. My work is to enlighten the world, like this sun; and for me, as for it, 1 the task will be ended in a little while. I must not lose a moment, there fore, of the time which remains for me to fulfill it." The reading {"we must work ") which belongs to the most ancient Mjj., is defended by Meyer, Lange, Luthardt, Weiss, Westcott, Tischendorf, etc. In that case, it must be supposed that a substitution for it was made in the numerous documents which read ipi, I, under the influence of the pe which follows, as well as that of ver. 5. This is possible ; but is it natural that Jesus should apply to all the disciples the duty which He is to fulfill ? And is not the con trary supposition also possible ? Was there not a desire to make of this altogether individual expression a moral maxim, and still more probably was there not a desire to avoid the application to the Lord of the following words which seemed incompatible with His state of heavenly glory : The night comes, when no one can work. It is impossible for me to harmonize the vpdg, we, with the pe, I, which follows. For there is a close correla tion between the two notions: to be sent and do the work of. I think therefore that vpdg has been wrongly substituted for ipi, and that only two MSS. ("L) have been consistent throughout in logically adding to the change of ipi to vpdg that of pe to vpdg. The two others (B D), by neglecting to make this second change, have confessed and condemned the first. It is of importance to remark that the ancient Versions, the Itala and Peschito, support the received reading. The contrast of day and night cannot denote, in this context, that of opportunity and inoppor- tunity, or that of the moment of grace and the hour when it can no longer be obtained ; it can be here only the contrast between the time of working during the day, and that of rest when once the night is come. There is therefore nothing sinister in this figure : the night. But in what sense can the idea of rest be applied to the heavenly life of Jesus Christ ? Does He not continue in heaven, through His Spirit, the work begun 128 second part. here on earth ? True, but, in His heavenly existence, He in reality onh reaps that which He sowed during His sojourn on earth (iv. 38). Conse quently, a single divine call to do good neglected by Him here below a single moment lost on earth, would have left an irreparable void in the work of salvation accomplished by the Holy Spirit after His departure The whole material of the regenerating and sanctifying activity of the Spirit, even to the end of the present dispensation, is derived from the earthly work of Jesus. The expression : I am the light of the world, ver. 5, has no relation to the figure of day and night, ver. 4 ; it is chosen with reference to the special work which the Lord must now accomplish in giving physical and spiritual light to the one born blind. We see from the conjunction brav. when, which can only be rendered by as long as, how His sojourn in this world is to the view of Jesus a transitory and in some sort accidental thing. How should He not hasten to employ well a season which must end so soon? Vv. 6, 7. " Having said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed with this clay the eyes ofthe blind man,1 7 and he said to him ; Go, wash in the pool of Siloam {a name which means, Sent).2 He went away therefore and washed, and came seeing." By the words : having said this, the evangelist presents the following act as the immediate appli cation of the principle which Jesus has just laid down. In Matt. xx. 34 (Mark x. 46), Jesus heals a blind man by a simple touch. In Mark vii. 33 ; viii. 23, He uses, as here, His saliva for effecting cures. He makes use of an external means, therefore, only in some cases. Hence it follows that He does not use it as a medical agency. Is this the vehicle or the conductor of His miraculous power, as some have thought? The same reason prevents us from deciding for this view. We must rather see in this manner of acting a pedagogic measure, not with the aim of putting the faith of the sick man to the test, as He is about to do with the blind man {Calvin), but to the end of entering into more direct and per sonal contact with him. When Jesus had to do with sick persons who possessed all their senses, He could act upon them with a look or with a word. But in cases like that of the deaf-mute (Mark vii. 33 ff.) and of the blind man (Mark viii. 23) we see Him making use of some material means to put them in relation to His person and to present to their faith its true object. It was necessary that they should know that their cure emanated from His person. This knowledge was the starting-point for their faith in Him as the author of their salvation. And if in the case with which we are occupied, Jesus docs more than anoint the eyes of the blind man, if He covers them with a mass of clay, adding thus to the natural blindness an artificial blindness, and sends him to wash in Siloam, the aim of this course of action can hardly be that which Meyer and Weiss suppose,— to 'Instead ofthe reading ofthe T. R. «at t. oif>9. ; A the same, adding tov tvi^ov (he ap- eirexp. tov tt. btti t. otpO. rov rvip\. (he anointed plied his clay to the eyes of). with Ami the eyes of) which is .supported by 14 » This parenthesis is wanting in Syr. and i» MJJ., most of the Mnn. It°»q. Syr»i>, tnctnuc is a Persian translation, read in B C, and in {< B J_ : ovtov top it. eirt chap. ix. 6, 7. 129 give to the organ, which had never performed its functions before, time to be formed and to be made ready to act ; for when once miraculous power is admitted, it cannot be limited in this way ; it is more probable that in this point also the aim of Jesus was of a moral nature. The pool of Siloam had played an important part in the feast which had come to its end. In the solemn and daily libation (p. 75), this fountain had been presented to the people as the emblem of the theocratic favors and the pledge of all the Messianic blessings. This typical significance of Siloam rested upon the Old Testament which had established a contrast between this humble fountain, springing up noiselessly at the foot of the temple- mountain {the waters qf Shiloah which flow sweetly), emblem of the divine salvation wrought by the Messiah {Emmanuel), and the great waters (of the Euphrates), the symbol of the brute force of the enemies of the theocracy (Is. viii. 7). What then does Jesus do by adding to the real blindness of this man, which He alone can cure, this artificial and symbolic blind ness, which the water of Siloam is to remove? In the first place, He expressly gives to the sacred fountain a part in His work of healing, as He had not done in chap. v. with reference to the pool of Bethesda, and He thus places this work more evidently to the eyes of all under the pro tection of God Himself. God is thereby associated, as it were, in this new Sabbatic work {Lange). Then, He presents Himself as the real fountain of Siloam of which the prophet had spoken (Is. viii. 7) and thus declares to the people that this type of the grace of Jehovah is now fulfilled in Him. It is undoubtedly this symbolic significance attributed to the water of Siloam, which explains the remark of the evangelist : a name which signifies : Sent. From the philological point of view, the correctness of the translation given by John is nolonger disputed. It is acknowledged that the name Siloam is a verbal substantive or adjective from nSty, and derived from the passive participle Kal or rather Piel (with the solution of the daghesh forte in the S into '). What was the origin of this title ? The pool of Siloam, dis covered by Robinson near the place where the three valleys of Tyropeon, Hinnom and Jehoshaphat meet together, is fed by a subterranean conduit recently discovered, which starts from the fountain of the Virgin in the valley of Jehoshaphat and crosses in a zigzag way the side of the rock of Ophel, the southern prolongation of the temple mountain. The name sent can therefore be explained in this sense : water brought from far. Or we may think, wjth Ewald, of the jet itself of the spring, that is of the intermittent fountain which feeds the reservoir (see Vol. I., p. 455). Or finally we may see herein the idea of a gift of Jehovah {Hengstenberg), springs being regarded in the East as gifts of God. In any case, this parenthesis has as its purpose to establish a relation between this spring celebrated by the prophet as the emblem of the Messianic salvation (the typical sent) and the sent one properly so-called who really brings this salvation. As Franke remarks (p. 314), this case, being the only one in which Jesus rests upon the meaning of a name, must be explained by the cir- 9 130 SECOND PART. cumstance that Isaiah had already brought the water of Siloam into con nection with the salvation of which He recognized the accomplishment in Jesus. Meyer and others explain this parenthesis by supposing that John saw prefigured iu this name sent the sending of the blind man himself to Siloam. As if there were the least logical correspondence between this sending and the name of this reservoir ; as if the name of sent were not above all the constant title of Jesus Himself in our Gospel. To get rid of this parenthesis which embarrassed him, Liicke had recourse, with hesitation, to the hypothesis of an interpolation. The Peschito actually omits these words. But this omission in a Syriac translation is very naturally explained, since the word translated belongs to that language. According to the Alexandrian reading, we must translate in ver. 6 : " He applied His clay to ..." Weiss, to save this objectionable reading, proposes to refer the pronoun avrov, not to Jesus, but to n-rvaparog, the saliva : " He applied the clay of the saliva." The fact is that here, as fre quently, one must know how to free one's self from the prejudice which attributes to the Alexandrian text a kind of infallibility. The preposition of motion, elg, into, is used with the verb vlfai, wash, probably because the blind man was obliged to go down into the reservoir. Meyer explains the elg, by mentioning that in washing, the blind man would necessarily make the clay fall into the basin ( ! ). It is a matter of course that the blind man found a guide among the persons present. How can Reuss make a charge against the narrative on the point of this omission ? The evangel ist says: He returned seeing; this signifies, no doubt, that the blind man returned to the place where he had left Jesus that he might render thanks to Him, and that, not finding Him there, — Jesus was only passing by (ver. 1), — he returned to his dwelling. This appears, indeed, from the following expression (ver. 8) : the neighbors, as well as fi-om w. 35, 37. Reuss : " We are not told where the man went after having washed, why he did not return to his benefactor ..." What is to be said of such criticism ? Vv. 8-12. " His neighbors therefore, and those who before saw him begging1 said, Is not this he. that sat and begged? 9. Some said, It is he; others, He is like2 him. Hi- said, I am he. 10. Thereupon they sakl to him, How were thine ei/es opened? 11. He answered and said,3 A man4 called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes, and said to me, Go to tlie pool of Siloam6 and wash. Having gone thither and washed, T have recovered rigid. 12. They said to him therefore, Where is this man ? He says, I know not." These verses describe in the most natural and most dramatic way the effect produced by the > T. R. reads rvifrKr . with 9 Mjj. ; X A B C D K with all the rest. I, X 10 Mnn. It"", vulg, Syr. Cop. read irpo- • Kai enrev is omitted by X B C D I lt^i o-aiTtj. (beggar); Itpi-riq-- ; t-"n. Syr"*: etc tov Sa»-f a\Ka o/xoio? (no, but he is like li'iu) instead of instead of ei, tov ko^. tov 3, opoio, (he is like him) which js read by T. R, chap. ix. 8-17. 131 return of the blind man to his home. The evangelist distinguishes from the neighbors all those, in general, who were accustomed to see him (im perfect participle deupovvreg) asking alms. The question of ver. 8 is pro posed by all ; but two slightly difl'erent tendencies immediately manifest themselves in the solutions given in ver. 9. Some frankly recognize the fact : "Yes, it is he." Others seem to be already preparing for themselves a means of eluding it : " He is like him." In the Byzantine reading: He is like him, a resemblance is conceded which is calculated to establish identity. But according to the Alexandrian variant: "No ; but he is like hiin ! " there would be already a denial of identity; everything would be reduced to an accidental resemblance. In any case, it is evidently the latter class who, upon the declaration of the blind man, present to him the questions of ver. 10 and ver. 12. The expression recover sight (ver. 11) arises from the fact that blindness, even from birth, is a state contrary to nature.1 The question of ver. 12 betrays the intention of provoking an inquiry ; it is the transition to the following passage : II.-The Investigation : vv. 13-34. First appearance of the blind man : vv. 13-17. Confronting of the blind man with his parents : vv. 18-23. Second appearance of the blind man : vv. 24-34. First appearance : Vv. 13-17. " They lead the man who was formerly blind to the Pharisees. 14. Now it was the Sabbath when2 Jesus made the clay and opened the eyes of this man. 15. In their turn, the Pharisees also asked him how he had recovered his sight. He said to them, He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed, and I see. 16. Thereupon, some of tlie Pharisees said, This man is not from God, because he does not keep the Sabbath. Others said, How can a wicked man do such miracles ? And they were divided among themselves. 17. Addressing the blind man again, they say to him, What dost thou say of him, in that he opened thine eyes ? He answered, He is a prophet." Those who push for an investigation are the ill-disposed questioners of vv. 10, 12. The term the Pharisees can not designate the entire Sanhedrim (comp. vii. 45).' Had the Pharisaic party a certain organization perchance, and is the question here of its leaders? It is more natural to suppose that the question- here is of the more violent ones. It was undoubtedly the day after the one on which the miracle had taken place. Ver. 14. Keil remarks that the expression is not for, but now {Si). There is therefore no indication here of the reason for which they brought him ; 1 With respect to the term avip\e\lie (liter- Ophitfneus, who was blind from birth (to? Ik ally, he saw again), Meyer cites a passage yeverr/, TvQkov) and who, after a violent attack from Fausanias (Me3sen., iv. 12, 5. ed. Schu- of headache, recovered his sight (avip\e$ev bar.) where that author also uses this term air' a.Tov). Pausanias adds, however, that with reference to the cure of one born blind. he lost it soon afterwards. To the mention of this fact, interesting in 2 Instead of oTe, X B It X If"' read cv n itself, we will add the following details: The npepa, question is of a Messenian diviner, named 132 SECOND PART. ' it is an incidental remark, explanatory of what follows.— The words : He made clay are skillfully added in order to make prominent the anti-Sab batic work in the miracle. Renan says of Jesus : " He openly violated the Sabbath." We have already seen that there is nothing of this (vol. I p. 461). In this case, as in that of chap, v., Jesus had trampled under foot, not the Mosaic Sabbath, but its Pharisaic caricature. The word irdhv again, alludes to ver. 10. This expression, as well as the repeated and in this ver. 15, indicates a certain impatience on the partof the blind man, whom these questions weary. He already penetrates their designs. Thus, also, is the somewhat abrupt brevity of his reply explained. The division which manifested itself in the public, is reproduced in this limited circle. Some, starting from the inviolability of the Sabbath ordinance, deny to Jesus, as a transgressor of this ordinance, any divine mission ; from this results logi cally the denial of the miracle. Others, starting from the fact of the miracle, infer the holy character of Jesus, and thus implicitly deny the infraction of the Sabbath. Everything depends on the choice of the premise, and the choice depends here, as always, on moral freedom. It is at the point of departure that the friends ofthe light and those of dark ness separate ; the rest is only a matter of logic. We must not translate dpapraUg by sinner. The defenders of Jesus do not dream of affirming His perfect holiness; the termination afa>g expresses abundance, custom; thus : a man without principles, a violator of the Sabbath, a publican. The question addressed to the blind man in ver. 17, has as its aim to wrest from him a word which may furnish a pretext for suspecting his veracity. As for him, he recognizes in the miracle, according to the received opinion iii. 2, the sign of a divine mission, and he frankly declares it. Confronting of the blind man with his parents : Vv. 18-23. " The Jews therefore did not believe concerning him, that he had been blind and had recovered his sight, until they had called the father and the mother of him who Jiad recovered his sight ; 19 and they asked them, saying, Is this your son, who you say was born blind ? How then does he now see ? 20. Tlie parents answered them and said, We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind ; 21 but how he now sees, we know not ; or who has opened his eyes, we know not ; he. is of age, ask him ; l he shall speak for himself. 22. The parents spoke thus, because they feared the Jews ; for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should acknowledge him as the Christ, he should be pint out of the synagogue. 23. Tiierefore said his parents, He is of age, ask him." By the term ol 'lovSalot, the Jeivs, John does not mean to designate a group of new individuals. They are still the same; only he designates them now, no longer from the point of view of their position in Israel, but from that of their disposition towards Jesus. The persons in question are the most hostile ones, those to whom ver. 16a refers. They suspect a \ collusion between Jesus and the blind man, and for this reason they wish to make inquiry of his parents. Of the three questions which ver. 19 ' X omits the words avTov epoTjjo-aTe (ask him). B D L X Itpi«i cXci. chap. ix. 18-34. 133 contains, the first two — those which relate to the blindness from birth of their son and the identity of the man who is cured with this son — are immediately answered by the parents affirmatively. There is something comical in the three avrdg, he, by means of which they pass over from themselves to him the burden of answering the third. The term owe- TiBtvro, they had agreed, ver. 22, denotes a decision formed, and not a mere project, as Meyer thinks ; this follows from the word ijSv, already, and from the knowledge which the parents have of this measure. The exclu sion from the synagogue involved for the excommunicated person the breaking off of all social relations with those about him. The higher degree of excommunication would have had death as its result, if this penalty had been practicable under the Boman dominion. We find here a new landmark on the path of the hostile measures adopted with regard to Jesus ; it is the transition between the sending of the officers (chap, vii.) and the decree of death in chap. xi. The cowardice of the parents is, as it were, the prelude of that of the whole people. Second appearance : Vv. 24-34. " They called, for the second time, the man who had been blind, and they said to him, Give glory to God; we know that this man is a wicked person. 25. He answered1 them, Whether he is a wicked person, I know not; one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see. 26. They said to him again,2 What did he to thee? How did he open thine eyes ? 27. He answered them, I told you already, and you did not hear. Why would you hear it again ? Bo you also wish to become his disciples ? 28. They reviled him and said to him, Thou art this man's disciple ; we are disciples of Moses. 29. As to Moses, we know that God has spoken to him ; but as for this man, we know not whence he is. 30. The man answered them and said, Herein3 is the mar vellous * thing, that you do not know whence he is ; and yet, he has opened my eyes ! 31. Now, we know that God does not hear the wicked ; but if any one is his worshipper and does his will, him he hears. 32. Never has it been heard that any one has opened the eyes of one born blind. 33. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing like this. 34. They answered and said to him, Thou wert altogether born in sin, and thou teachest us ! And they drove him out." After this confronting, a deliberation intervenes; it is determined to extort from the blind man the disavowal of the miracle in the name of the Sabbatic principle, in other terms, to annihilate the fact by dogma. The expression : to give glory to God, denotes the homage rendered to one of the divine perfections momentarily obscured by a word or an act which seems to be derogatory to it (Josh. vii. 19 ; 1 Sam. vi. 5). The blasphemy here was the declaration of the blind man : He is a prophet. It was in contempt of the holiness and truth of God to give this title to a violator of the Sabbath. This culpable assertion must be washed away by the op posite declaration : He is a wicked person. "We know "say the rulers 1 The Alexandrian authorities reject icai cv tovtoi yap ; D. Syr. : cv tovtui ovi> ,-XAo ctTrev, which T. R. adds. yap tovTo (this one thing is). 2XBD I.pi«i.™ Vulg. .omit irakiv (again). *X B L 3 Mnn. Chrys. read to before 8 T. R. with 11 Mjj. : ev yap tovtw j X B L : Bavpaarov. 134 SECOND PART. (vv. 24, 29), setting themselves up as representatives of theological know ledge in Israel ; in virtue of their knowledge, the miracle cannot be : therefore it is not. On his part, the blind man, while admitting his incom petency in theological questions, simply opposes fact to knowledge ; his language becomes decidedly ironical; he is conscious of the bad faith of his adversaries. They feel the force of his position, and ask him again as to the circumstances of the fact (ver. 26), hoping to find in some detail of his account a means of assailing the fact itself. Not having succeeded in overthrowing the miracle by dogmatics, they wish to undermine it by criti cism. This return to a phase of investigation already settled at once renders the blind man indignant and emboldens him ; he triumphs in their impo tence, and his reply borders upon irony : " You did not hear ? You are deaf then ! " They then cover their embarrassment by insult; between Jesus and the Sabbath, or, what amounts to the same thing, between Jesus and Moses, their choice is made. The blind man, seeing that there is a wish to argue with him, becomes more and more bold, and sets himself also to the work of arguing. If he has not studied dogmatics, he at least knows his catechism. Is there an Israelite who is ignorant of this theocratic axiom : that a miracle is an answer to prayer, and that the prayer of a wicked person is not answered. The construction of ver. 30 is doubtful. Meyer, Luthardt and Weiss explain : " In such a condition of things {iv tovtu), it is astonishing that you do not know whence he comes, and that he has opened my eyes." But, in this sense, the last words are useless. More than this, the idea : " and that he has opened my eyes " being the premise of the preceding conclusion: "whence he comes," should be placed be fore it. We must therefore make the iv tovtu, as is so frequently the case, refer to the following bn : in this that, and give to the Kal which follows the sense of and yet (as in so many other passages in John) : " There is truly herein a marvel (without t6) ; or (with rd) : " The real marvelous thing con sists in this : that you do not know whence this man comes : and yet He has opened my eyes ! " This last reading is evidently the true one. "There is here a miracle greater than even my cure itself ; it is your unbelief." The ydp {for), in Greek, often refers to an understood thought. Thus in this case: "You do not know this? In fact, there is something here which borders upon the marvelous ! " We know ; that is to say, we simple Jews, in general (ver. 31) ; in contrast to the proud we know of these doctors, in vv. 24, 29. The argument is compact ; ver. 31 is the major premise, ver. 32 the minor, and ver. 33 draws the conclusion. Defeated by his pitiless logic, whose point of support is simply the principle that what is, is, the adversaries of Jesus give way to rage. Say ing to the blind man : Thou wert altogether born in sin, they allude to his blindness from birth, which they regard as a proof of the divine curse under which the man was born (vv. 2, 3) ; and they do not perceive that, by this very insult, they render homage to the reality of the miracle which they pretend to deny. Thus unbelief ends by giving the lie to itself. The expression : they drove him out, cannot designate an official excommunication; for this could not be pronounced except in a regular cHap. ix. 35-38. 135 meeting. They expelled him violently from the hall, perhaps with the intention of having the excommunication pronounced afterwards by the Sanhedrim in pursuance of a formal deliberation. ¦ It is asked what is the aim with which John related this fact with so much of detail. No striking testimony of Jesus respecting His person marks it as worthy of attention. It refers far more, as it seems, to the history and conduct of a secondary personage, than to the revelation of Jesus Himself. Evidently John accords to this fact this honorable place because it marks in his view a decisive step in the progress of Israelitish unbelief. For the first time, a believer is, for his faith, cast out of the theocratic community. It is the first act of the rupture between the Church and the Synagogue. We shall see in the following chapter that Jesus really regards this fact in this light. The whole scene here described has an historical truthfulness which is obvious. It is so little ideal in its nature that it rests, from one end to the other, upon the brute reality of a fact. Baur himself acknowledges this. " The reality of the fact," he says, "is the point against which the contradiction ofthe adversaries is broken." 1 And yet this fact, according to him, is a pure invention ! What sort of a man must an evangelist be who describes, with greatest detail, a whole series of scenes for the purpose of showing how dogmatic reasoning is shattered against a fact in the reality of which he does not himself believe ? Does not criticism meet the same experience which here happens to the Pharisees in ver. 34 ? Does it not give the lie to itself ? This whole chapter presents to modern criticism its own portrait. The defenders of the Sabbath ordinance reason thus : God cannot lend His power to a violator of the Sabbath ; therefore the miracle ascribed to Jesus does not exist. A non posse ad non esse valet consequentia. The opponents of the miracles in the Gospel history reason in exactly the same way, only substitut ing for a religious ordinance a scientific axiom : The supernatural cannot be ; therefore, however well attested the miracles of Jesus may be, they are not. The historical fact holds good against the ordinance, of whatsoever nature it may be, and it will end by forcing it to submit. III. — The moral result : w. 35-41. Vv. 35-38 present the moral result of this miracle, and vv. 39-41 formu late that ofthe activity of Jesus in general. Vv. 35-38. "Jesus heard that they had driven him out; and having found him, he said to him : Dost thou believe on the Son of man ? 2 36. He answered and said, And3 who is he, Lord, that I may believe on him ? 37. Jesus said to him, Thou hast both seen him and he that speaks with thee is he. 38. He said, Lord, I believe. And he prostrated himself before him." 4 In order that the true aim which Jesus proposed to Himself might be attained (vv. 3, 4), 1 Theol. Jahrb. iii., p. 119. Mnn. It. Vulg. a Instead of tov fleov (of Qod,), K B D Sah. < X omits ver. 38 and the first words of ver. read tov av-pun-ov. 39 (as far as ei. Kptua not inclusive). 8 Kat (and) is omitted only in A L many 136 SECOND PART. the spiritual illumination and salvation of the blind man must result from his corporeal cure ; and certainly his courageous fidelity in the face ofthe enemies of Jesus made him worthy to obtain thismew favor. This connection of ideas is indicated by the first words of ver. 35 : Jesus heard . . . and ... In the question which He addresses to this man we for merly preferred the reading : on the Son of God, to that of the three ancient Mjj. which read: on the Son of man. It explains better the act of wor ship with which the scene ends (ver. 38). Westcott rightly observes, how ever, that the substitution of the technical and popular term Son of God for Son of man is much more probable than the reverse. And he cites the very striking example of vi. 69, where the term Son of God has evi dently taken the place in the received text of Holy One of God. If we must read: on the Son of man, the meaning is : on the man who has an exceptional place among all His brethren and who is raised up in order to save them all. The question: Dost thou believe? does not signify: " Art thou disposed to believe ? " {Liicke). It is one of those questions, such as were sometimes put by Jesus, whose import goes beyond the actual light of the one to whom it is addressed, but which is, even for this reason, fitted to call forth the desired explanation. "Thou who hast just conducted thyself with so much of courage, dost thou then believe ? " Jesus ascribes to the conduct of the blind man an importance which it as yet only impliedly possesses. This man had recognized Him as a prophet and had courageously proclaimed Him as such ; he had thus morally bound himself to receive the testimony of Jesus respecting Himself, what ever it might be. The blind man accepts without hesitation this conse quence of his previous words. And this relation it is which is expressed with much vivacity by the particle Kai. and, at the beginning of his ques tion. This copula serves indeed to identify the light which he waits for with that for which the question of Jesus makes him hope ; comp. Luke xviii. 26. Jesus might have answered : It is I, myself. He prefers to designate Himself by a periphrasis recalling to him who was previously blind the work which he has accomplished on his behalf: Thou hast seen him, and which gives a warranty to His present testimony : It is he who speaks to thee. The first Kai in the reply of Jesus : Thou hast both seen him, connects this revelation with the promise of faith which the blind man has just made to Him. The successive Kal set forth the ready, easy, natural linking together of all the moral facts which form the course of tfhis story. In this rapid development, one step does not wait for another. Ver. 38 shows us the consummation of this gradual illumination. In these cir cumstances, in which there was neither pardon to ask for, nor supplica tion to present, the genuflexion could be only a homage of worship, or at least of profound religious respect. The term npoaKvveiv, to prostrate one self, is always applied in John to divine worship (iv. 20 ff. xii. 20). In the presence of this man prostrate at His feet and inwardly illumi nated, Jesus feels Himself called to proclaim a general result which His ministry will have throughout the whole world, and of which the event which has just occurred is, as it were, a first example. chap. ix. 39-41. 137 Vv. 39-41. "And Jesus said, I am come into this world to exercise this judgment, that those who see not may see, and that those who see may become blind. 40. And those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these words 1 and they said, to him, And are we also blind ? 41. Jesus said to them, If you were blind, you would not have sin ; but now you say, We see ; therefore2 your sin remains." 3 Here is a simple reflection to which Jesus gives utterance, and which is connected with the dignity of light of the world which He had attributed to Himself at the beginning of this scene (ver. 5). So the verb elirev, lie said, is left without a limiting personal object such as : to them. The coming of Jesus has for its end, strictly, to enlighten the world ; but as this end cannot be attained in all, because all are not willing to allow themselves to be enlightened, it has another secondary end : that those who reject the light should be blinded by it. It is not necessary to see in the term Kpipa, judgment, the indication of a judicial act. Such a judgment had been denied in iii. 17. The question is of a moral result of the attitude taken by the men themselves with regard to Jesus, but a result which was necessary and willed from on high {vWov elg). The term in this world recalls the expression : light of this world (ver. 5). The greater part of the interpreters {Calvin, Liicke, Meyer, etc.) give to the expression : Those who see not, a subjective meaning : " Those who feel and acknowledge that they do not see." This interpretation arbitrarily weakens the sense of the expression employed by Jesus and it does not suit the context, since the man whose cure occasions these words, did not feel his blindness more than other blind persons, and since, speaking spiritually, he did not simply feel himself more ignorant than others, but he was so in reality. Those who do not see are therefore men who are really sunk in spiritual ignorance. They are those whom the rulers themselves call in vii. 49 : " This multitude who know not the law," the ignorant in Israel, those whom Jesus designates, Matt. xi. 25, Luke x. 21, as the little children {vvinoi) contrasting them with the wise and intelligent. Those who see sire, consequently, those who, throughout this whole chapter, have said, in speaking of themselves : We know, the experts in the law, those whom Jesus calls, in the passage cited, the wise and intelligent (aopol Kal a-overo'i). The former, not having any knowledge of their own to keep, yield themselves without difficulty to the revelation of the truth, while the others, not wishing to sacrifice their own knowledge, turn away from the new revelation, and, as we have just seen in this chapter, presume even to annihilate the divine facts by their theo logical axioms. Hence it results that the former are immediately enlight ened by the rays of the sun which rises upon the world, while the imper fect light which the latter possess is transformed into complete darkness. We must notice the delicate contrast between pr) /)\iivovTeg {those who see not) in the first clause, which denotes a sight not yet developed, and rvtfkol, blind, in the second, which denotes the absolute blindness resulting from the 1 X D Itpi"ii™ Vulg. Cop. omit TavTa. 'DLX: at apapruu .... pevovcriv (instead !SBDKLX some Mnn. Itpi-tiqu- Vulg. of the singular). Cop. omit ovv (therefore). 138 SECOND PART. destruction of the organ. This passage expresses, therefore, the same thought as the words of Jesus in the Synoptics : " I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and intelligent, and hast revealed them unto babes " (Matt. xi. 25 ; Luke x. 21). Meyer objects that in this sense the seeing or not seeing would relate to the law and the becoming blind to the Gospel, that there would thus be a twofold relation which is not to be accepted. But in the view of Jesus (comp. v. 45 ff.), the law, when thoroughly understood, and the Gospel are only one and the same increasing moral light. The knowledge of the law must lead, if it is earnestly applied, to the acknowledgment of the Gospel ; if the latter had not come, the law itself would have covered the sight with an im penetrable veil (2 Cor. iii. 14, 15). The Pharisees who were at this moment in the company of Jesus, ask Him ironically if He ranks them also, the doctors of Israel, in the number of the blind. I do not think that they make a strict distinction between the non-seeing and the blind of ver. 39. They keep to the general idea of blindness and ask if He applies it to them also. The answer of Jesus to this sarcasm (ver. 41) is one of crushing severity. Instead of treating them as blind, as they no doubt expected, Jesus says to them, on the contrary : " It were a thing to be wished for, for your sakes, that you were so ! " The expression : Those who see not, in this answer, designates those who have not the religious knowledge furnished by the profound study of the law. If those who interrogate Him at this moment had belonged to the ignorant portion of the nation, their unbelief might have been only a matter of surprise or of seduction, something like that sin against the Son of man which can be forgiven in this age or even in the other. But such is not their position. They are possessed of the key qf knowledge (Luke xi. 52), they possess the knowledge of the law and the prophets. It is, then, with full knowledge that they reject the Messiah : Behold the Son, this is the heir ; come, let us Mil him, and the inheritance shall be ours. Here is the exact rendering of their feeling. Their unbelief is the rejection ofthe truth discerned ; this is what renders it unpardonable: ayapria pivei, their sin remains. Weiss gives to this last word a slightly different sense : the sin of unbelief remains in them because the pride of their own knowledge prevents them from attaining to faith. But the expression sin which remains has certainly a more serious meaning (iii. 36); it has reference to the divine judgment. The meaning of this verse which we have just set forth (comp. Luthardt, Weiss, etc.) appears to me more natural than that given by Calvin, Meyer and most: "If you felt your ignorance, I could heal you ; but you boast presumptuously of your knowledge ; for this reason your malady is incurable." The expression : You say {yourselves say), proves nothing in favor of this meaning and against that given by us, as Meyer asserts. These words contain, indeed, an allusion to the ironical question of the Pharisees (ver. 40), by which they had denied their blindness. Their own mouth had thus testified that it was not light which had been wanting to them. " You yourselves acknow ledge, by saying constantly, We know, that you are not of those who are CHAP. x. 1-21. 139 ignorant of the preparatory revelations which God has granted to His people. You are therefore without excuse." The relation here indicated between the ignorant and the learned in Israel is reproduced on a large scale in the relation between the heathen and the Jews, and with the same result. The sin of the heathen, who so long persecuted the Church, has been forgiven them, while the crime, con sciously committed by Israel, of rejecting the Messiah, still rests upon that people. Jesus knew well that this judgment, in which His coming must issue, embraced the whole world ; this is the reason why He said in ver. 39 : "I am come into this world, in order that ..." We shall find the same sentiment at the basis of the following section. Comp. x. 3, 4, 16. SECOND SECTION. X. 1-21. The Fibst Discourse. The following discourse includes three parables : that of the shepherd (vv. 1-6), that of the gate (vv. 7-10), and that of the good shepherd (vv. 11-18) ; the section closes with an historical conclusion (vv. 19-21). This discourse is not, like those of chaps, v. and vi., the development of a theme relating to the person of Christ, and suggested by the miracle which had preceded. Jesus does not explain here, on occasion of the healing of the man born blind, how He is the light of the world (ver. 4). But the discourse is, nevertheless, in close connection with the facts related in the preceding chapter ; it is, properly speaking, only the reproduction of those facts in a parabolic form. The violent breaking in of the thieves into the sheepfold represents the tyrannical measures of the Pharisees in the theocracy, measures of which the ninth chapter has just presented a specimen ; the attraction which the voice of the shepherd exercises upon the sheep and the fidelity with which they continue to follow his steps, recalls the simple and persevering faith of the blind man ; finally, Jesus' action, full of tenderness towards this maltreated and insulted man, is found again in the picture of the good shepherd intervening on behalf of his sheep. These three parables form three progressive pictures. On the occasion of the violent expulsion of the man born blind, Jesus sees the true Messianic flock separating itself from the ancient Israelitish community and "group ing itself around Him ; this is the first picture, vv. 1-6. Then, He describes the glorious prerogatives which, by His means, the flock once formed shall enjoy, in contrast to the cruel fate which is reserved for the ancient flock which remained under the egoistic and mischievous direction of its present leaders ; this is the second picture, w. 7-10. Finally, He places in a clear light the sentiment which is the soul of His Messianic ministry : disinterested love of the flock, in contrast to the mercenary spirit of the earlier shepherds ; this is the third picture, vv. 11-18. We see that there is nothing vague or commonplace in these descriptions. They are the 140 SECOND PART. faithful reflection of the state of things at the very moment when Jesus was speaking. Thus three ideas : 1. The way in which the Messiah forms His flock ; 2. The way in which He feeds it ; 3. The motive which urges Him to act thus ; and in each case, as a contrast, the description of the ministry opposed to His own, as the theocracy at that time presented the example of it. I.— The Shepherd : w. 1-6. Vv. 1-5. " Verily, verily, I say unto you that he who does not enter by the door into the sheep-fold, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber ; 2 but he who enters in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3. To him the porter opens ; and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls 1 his own sheep by their name and leads them out. 4. And when he has put forth all his own sheep,2 he goes before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice; 5 they will not follow3 a stranger, but will flee from him, because they know not the voice of strangers." This picture deserves the name of allegory rather than that of parable. In the parable, there is a story which assumes a form independent up to a certain point of the moral application ; in the allegory, the application makes itself felt immediately through every feature of the representation : the image does not take a form independ ent of the thought. The parable is a picture, the allegory a transparency. The Synoptics also present pictures of this sort ; for example, that of the leaven and the grain of mustard-seed. It has been supposed that the figures employed here by Jesus must have been borrowed from the spectacle which He had before His eyes at this very moment ; that it was the hour when the shepherds brought back their flocks from the surrounding country into the city of Jerusalem;4 and this supposition might be extended to the second picture by holding that Jesus was near the sheep-gate when He uttered the words of ver. 7 ff.5 These suppositions have no impossibility. But as Jesus, in the preceding discourses, has applied to Himself several theocratic symbols, it is possible that He continues the same method. David invoked the Lord as his shepherd (Ps. xxiii.). Jehovah, in His highest manifestation, as Messiah, was represented by the prophets as the shepherd of Israel : Is. xl. 11 ; Ezek. xxxiv.; Zech. xi. The last passage in particular offers a quite remarkable analogy to the present situation. Like the shepherd of Zechariah, Jesus at this moment, after having vainly sought to gather Israel, renounces the hope of saving the nation ; and leaving to the Phari sees (the foolish shepherd of whom Zechariah speaks) the direction of the main portion of the flock, He confines himself to bringing out of this fold which is about to be destroyed the few_poor sheep who, like this blind man, look te> Him. 1 Instead of «a\ei, X A B D I_ X some Mnn. ' Some (A B D etc.) : aico-iov-rio-ovo-iv ; T. R. read ,\„.,r., with others (XXL etc.) auvei— or he summons them to follow him by calling them by their name ; this is what the read ing mliei signifies. In both cases, the question is of something more special than the general call to faith indicated by the words his voice. When they have once come to Him with faith, He gives them a sign of recognition and favor which is altogether personal. The name, in the Scriptures, is, as Hengstenberg says, the expression of the personality. This special designation which is given to each sheep is the proof of the most indi vidual knowledge and the most intimate tenderness. Becall the name oi Peter given to Simon (i. 43), and the apostrophe : Mary (xx. 16), in which Jesus sums up all that Mary is to Him and all that He is to her. Becall also the " Believest thou ? " addressed to the blind man who was cured, ix. 35. In the general picturing of the parable, the words : " And he leads them out," designate the act of the shepherd leading his flock to pasturage. But the question is whether this feature refers only to the care which every shepherd gives daily to his flock, or whether it is not intended here to describe a definite historical situation : the going forth of the Messianic flock from the theocratic inclosure devoted to ruin. This sense only seems to me to correspond to the idea of the entrance of the Messiah into the sheepfold. In this is a historical fact to which that of the going forth of the shepherd and his sheep answers. Reuss resorts to ridicule, as usual : " If," he says, " the question were of making the believers go forth from the ancient theocracy, these same believers would be found two lines below entering it again " (alluding to ver. 9 : will go in and go out). But this critic forgets that this last expression is borrowed from another para ble, where the figures, as we shall see, take an altogether different mean ing. Jesus has recognized the signal of the inevitable separation in the treatment to which the man who was born blind has been subjected, in his violent expulsion (ix. 34), as well as in the decree of excommunication which strikes Him Himself in the person of his adherents (ix. 22) ; in general, in the violent hostility of which He sees Himself to be the object (chaps, vii. and viii.). And it is the result of this condition of things which He describes in the term to lead out, as in the words : he calls them, He had described the historical formation of His flock. Thus the shepherd has called and then has given a mark of tenderness to the sheep who have come to gather themselves about him ; and now he 144 SECOND PART. causes them to go forth from the inclosure where they had been shut up. The term iKJidXkeiv, to drive, cast forth, ver. 4, sets forth with emphasis the principal idea of the passage, as we have just pointed it out. This word designates an energetic and almost rough act by which' the shepherd helps the sheep, which still hesitates, to break away from the other sheep of the fold and to give itself up to the chances ofthe new existence which the shepherd's call opens before it. The rest of the verse describes the life of the Messianic flock, thus formed, in the spiritual pastures into which its divine leader introduces it, then the persevering fidelity of the sheep, of which that of the blind man has just offered an example, and finally the intimate relation which exists henceforth between these sheep and their shepherd. There is great tenderness in the words : " When he has put them forth, he goes before them." While they were still in the inclosure, he remained behind to put them forth, that there might not be a single one left {n-dvra, all, according to the Alexandrian text). But when the'departure Is once accomplished, He places Himself at their head, in order that He may lead the flock. We see how accurate are the slightest features of the picture. QlSaoi, they know, means more than dmmi, they hear (ver. 3); the latter term designated the acceptance of the first call; the other refers to the more advanced personal knowledge which results from daily intercourse. Hence it is, no doubt, that we have the plural olSaai following the singular forms which precede. All along the way which the sheep follow, strange voices make them selves heard, on the right hand and the left, which seek to turn them aside from the steps of the shepherd ; they are those of thieves who, not being able to play openly the part of robbers, use means of seduction or intimi dation, as did the Pharisees in the preceding scene (ix. 14-40). But they succeed no better in breaking the bond which has been formed, than these had succeeded by violence in preventing its formation. The sheep is for the future made familiar with the voice of the shepherd, so that every voice which is not his produces upon it a strange and repellant effect » We have already refuted the interpretation of those who apply this picture to the pastors of the new covenant. Their principal reason (ver. 7: I am the door) has no weight, the two pictures being different, as we shall see. The figure changes, in any case, from the second to the third parable; comp. ver. 7 : " I am the door ; " and ver. 11 : "I am the good shepherd." Why not also from the first to the second ? The application to Christian pastors wholly breaks the connection of the discourse, both with the pre ceding scene, and with the situation ofthe work of Christ at this moment, and finally with the representation of the development of the national unbelief which is the object of this whole part of the Gospel. In this passage there comes out anew, in the clearest way, the idea of ¦ The incident is well known of the Scotch iguised, undertook to oall the sheep to him. traveler who, having met under the walls of \They remained immovable. The true shep- Jerusalem a shepherd leading home his flock, |herd then made his voice heard. AU ran to exchanged clothing with him, and, thus dis- him, notwithstanding his new dress. chap. x. 6-9. 145 the organic unity of the Old and New Covenant, an idea of which Reuss and the Tubingen school assert that no trace is to be found in the fourth Gospel. Ver. 6. " Jesus spoke this similitude to them; but they did not understand what that meant which he spoke lo them." The word, -n-apoipla, similitude, properly designates a by-path, hence an enigmatical discourse. It is sometimes used in the translation of the LXX. to render maschal; it is taken in the sense of proverb in 2 Pet. ii. 22. The idea of a comparison is not so expressly brought out in this term as in the term ¦xapafio'kv (see Westcott). The forcible expression rlva frv, what was, for what meant, is derived from the fact that the true essence of a word is its meaning. They did not understand ; because it was morally impossible for them to apply to the Pharisees the figure of thieves and robbers. II.— The door: vv. 7-10. Vv. 7-10. "Jesus therefore spoke to them1 again, saying, Verily, verily I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep. 8. All 2 those who came before me 3 are thieves and robbers ; but the sheep did not listen to them. 9. I am the door : if any one enters in by me, he shall be saved ; and he shall go in and go out, and shall find pasture. 10. The thief comes not but to steal and to kill and to destroy ; I am come that they may have life,*- and that they may have it abun dantly." Jesus has described the simple and easy way in which the Messiah forms His flock, in contrast with the arbitrary and tyrannical measures by which the Pharisees had succeeded in getting possession of the theocracy; He now depicts, in a new allegory, which has only a remote relation in form to the preceding (comp. the two parables which follow each other in Mark ; that of the sower and that of the ear of corn, iv. 3 ff, v. 26 ff.) what He will be to His flock when once formed and gathered, the abundance of the salvation which He will cause them to enjoy, as opposed to the advantage taken of the old flock by those intruders and the destruction to which they are leading them. The word ndXiv, again (ver. 7), was wrongly rejected by the Sinaitic MS. ; the copyist thought that this picture was only a continuation of the preceding (because of the analogy of the figures). This is likewise held by some modern interpreters, but, as we shall see, is untenable. IldXiv indicates therefore, as in Luke xiii. 20 (where it is placed between the parables of the grain of mustard seed and of the leaven ; comp. Matt. xiii. 44, 45, 47), that Jesus adds still another parable to the preceding. The picture vv. 1-5, which described the formation of the Messianic flock and its going forth from the theocratic inclosure, was borrowed from a morning scene ; the second similitude, vv. 7-10, which describes the life full of sweetness of the flock when once formed and everything which it 1 X omits iraKiv, and X B avTots. Cop. place these words after nkQov. They are a Havre* is omitted by D b. entirely omitted in the 9 other Mjj., 100 Mnn. 3 n»o ej_ov is placed before ijAfov by T. R. It. Vg. Syr**. with Mnn. only. ABDKI-XA60 Mnn, * X adds aiariov (eternal). 1Q 146 SECOND PART. enjoys through the intermediation of the Messiah, places us at mid-day. In the pasturage is an inclosure where the sheep enter and whence they go out at will: If they seek for shelter, they retire to it freely.- If hunger impels them, they go forth— for the gate is constantly open for them — and they find themselves in full pasturage. They have thus at their pleasure security and food, the two blessings essential to the prosperity of the flock. In this new figure, the person of the shepherd entirely disappears. It is the door which plays the principal part. The inclosure here no longer represents the old covenant ; it is the emblem of the perfectly safe shelter of salvation. Liicke, Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Keil explain the words : J am the door of the sheep, in this way : I am the door for coming to the sheep, the door by which the true shepherds enter into the midst of the flock. But in this sense the words refer either to the shepherds of the old cove nant or to those of the new. In the former case, we must suppose that the iya, I, designates the I of the Logos as a. spirit governing the theoc racy. Who can admit a sense like this ? In the second, it has no fitness of any kind. Moreover, this sense is very forced. The term : door of the sheep, naturally means ; the door which the sheep use for their own going in and going out (ver. 9). The privilege, represented by the use which the sheep make of the door, is that which Jesus gives the believing Israelites to enjoy, by fur nishing them, like the one born blind, everything which can assure their rest and salvation. Reuss himself, abandoning the relation established by him (vv. 1, 2) between the two parables, says : " Yet once more Jesus calls Himself the door, but this time He is so for the flock itself" (thus: no longer for the shepherd, as in the first parable). The persons designated in ver. 8 as thieves and robbers can only he the Pharisees (ver. 1). They are characterized here from the point of view, no longer of the manner in which they have established their power in jthe theocracy, but of the end in view of which they exercised it and of I the result which they will obtain thereby. Not only had this audacious caste unlawfully taken possession, in the midst of the people of God, of the most despotic authority, but they were still using it only in a way to satisfy their egoism, their ambition and their cupidity. Hence follows the explanation of the expression, so variously interpreted : All those who are come before me. Whatever certain Gnostic writers may have said in former times or Hilgenfeld may even now say in his desire to make our Gospel a semi-Gnostic writing,1 Jesus certainly could not thus speak of Moses and the prophets, and of any legitimate theocratic authority. The constant language of the evangelist protests against such an explanation (v. 39, 45-47 ; vi. 45 ; x. 34, 35, etc.). The verb slot {are), in the present tense, shows clearly that He has in view persons who were now living. If He says fjl-Sov, came, and irpd ipov, before me, it is because He found them already at work when He began His own working in Israel. The '"This before me, embraces the whole Jew- to all the preceding leaders of the flock o( ish past s and the ; all those who . . . , applies God," chap. x. 7-9. 147 term come indicates with relation to them, as with relation to Jesus, the appearance with the purpose of exercising the government of souls among the people of God. The parable of the vine-dressers in the Syn optics is the explanation of this saying of Jesus. This interpretation of the first words of ver. 8 follows from the context and enables us to set aside, without any long discussion, the numerous, more or less divergent, interpretations which have been proposed ; that of Camerarius, who took npb iyov in a local sense : " passing before and out side the door," that of Wolf and Olshausen, who gave to irpd the sense of xaplg : " separating themselves from me, the true door ; " those of Lange who understands irpd in the sense of dvri : " in my place," and Calov, who makes the expression before me signify : " before I had sent them ; " that of Gerlach: "before the door was opened in my person; " as well as that of Jerome, Augustine, Melanchthon, Luthardt : " came of themselves, with out having received a mission ; " finally, that of Chrysostom and many others even to Weizsacker : "came as false Messiahs." History does not mention any case of a false Messiah before the coming of Jesus. There is no need of renouncing, with Tholuck and de Wette, the possibility of any satisfactory solution, and declaring, with the latter, that this saying does not answer to the habitual gentleness and moderation of Jesus. As to the variant which rejects the words irpb ipov, before me (x and others), it is only an attempt to do away with the difficulty. The present eld, are, indicates with sufficient clearness that we need not go far to find these persons. The last words : The sheep did not hear, remind us of the profound dissatisfaction which was left in the hearts of a multitude of Israelites by the Pharisaic teaching. John vi. 68 : " To whom shall we go ? " Matt. xi. 28-30 : " Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, learn of me, for lam meek and lowly in heart; my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." The man who was born blind was a striking ex ample of these souls whom the Pharisaic despotism roused to indigna tion in Israel. In opposition to these pretended saviours who will be found to be in reality only murderers, Jesus renews in ver. 9 His affirmation : I am the door; then He develops it. Meyer and Luthardt maintain here their expla nation of ver. 7, according to which Jesus is the door by which the true shepherd enters into the presence of the flock. They do not allow them selves to be held back either by the cuttvoerai, shall be saved, which they understand in the sense of 1 Tim. iv. 16 : " Thou shalt both save thyself and them with thyself," nor by the vop?)v eip^aet, shall find pasture, which they apply to the discovery by the shepherd of good pasturage for the flock ! Weiss and Keil acknowledge the impossibility of such interpreta tions and, resting upon the omission in ver. 9 of the complement tov irpopdrai/, of the sheep (comp. ver. 7), they adopt a modification in the meaning of the word Mpa, door, and think that it is now the door by which the sheep themselves can go in and go out. But the repetition of this declaration : I am the door, is simply introduced by the antithesis pre sented in ver. 8, absolutely as the second declaration : J am the good shep- 148 SECOND PART. herd, ver. 14 (comp. ver. 11) will be by the antithesis presented in ver. 13. This is shown by the two iya at the beginning of vv. 9 and 14. There is here then no new idea. There is a more energetic reafiirmation of the same thought ; and the omission of the complement of the sheep results quite naturally from the uselessness of such a repetition. By saying : If any one enters in by me, Jesus means to speak of the entrance into the state of reconciliation, of participation in the Messianic salvation by faith. Reuss : " Jesus is come to open to His own the door of refuge, by receiving them into His arms. The expression go in and go out does not mean that the sheep will go out of salvation to enter into it again. This is what Keuss would be obliged to hold, however, if he were consistent with the objection which he makes to the interpretation which we have given of ver. 3. These two verbs only develop the contents of the word o-_.i9^_-_t<_., shall be saved. To go in and go out is an expression frequently employed in the Scriptures to designate the free use of a house, into which one goes or fi-om which one departs unceremoniously, because one belongs to the family of the house, because one is at home in it (Deut. xxviii. 6 ; Jer. xxxvii. 4 ; Acts i. 21). To go in expresses the free satisfac tion ofthe need of rest, the possession of a safe retreat; to go out, the free satisfaction of the need of nourishment, the easy enjoyment of a rich pasturage (Ps. xxiii.). This is the reason why the word shall go out is im mediately followed by the words which explain it : and shalt find pasture. Ver. 10. From the idea of pasture Jesus deduces that of life ; He even adds to this that of superabundance, of superfluity. By this He certainly does not designate, as Chrysostom thought, something more excellent than life, glory, for example ; but He means to say that the spiritual pas turage will contain still more nourishment than that which the sheep can take to itself; comp. vi. 12, 13, and the expressions : fulness, grace upon grace, i. 16. Such is the happy condition of the Messianic flock; Jesus puts it in contrast with the terrible fate reserved for the mass of the people which remains under the leadership of the Pharisees. After having served for the satisfaction of their pride, ambition and cupidity, they will perish morally, and at last even externally by the effect of this per nicious guidance. It seems that the three verbs express a gradation: KMipi) {steal), the monopoly of souls ; Man {kill) the advantage taken of them and their moral murder ; diroMon {destroy), the complete destruction which is to result from it — all this as an antithesis to the salvation through the Messiah (vv. 9, 10). To understand such severe expressions, we must recall to mind the measures of this haughty sect in Israel. The Pharisees disposed as masters of the Divine kingdom : they assumed the attitude of accredited intercessors, distributed the certificates of orthodoxy, and caused even the legitimate rulers to tremble (xii. 42 ; Matt, xxiii. 13, 14, and in general the whole chapter, and Luke xi. 39, 44). chap. x. 10-12. 149 III. — The good shepherd : vv. 11-18. Vv. 11-13. "I am the good shepherd ; the good shepherd gives1 his life for his sheep. 12. But2 the hireling, who is not a shepherd and to whom the sheep da not belong, sees the wolf coming and abandons the sheep3 and flees ; and the wolf snatches them and scatters the flock. 13. But tlie hireling flees* be cause he is a hireling and does not care for the sheep." The first picture was all resplendent with the fresh tints of the morning ; the second depicted the life and activity of the flock during the course of the day ; the third seems to place us at the moment when the shadows of the night are spreading, and when the sheep, brought back to the common inclosure by the shepherd, are suddenly exposed to the attack of the wolf which at evening lies in wait on their path. Jesus here appears again in His char acter as shepherd. But this third allegory is not confounded with the first. The governing element in the first was the contrast between the shepherd and the thief ; in this one which we are about to study, it is the antithesis of the good shepherd and the hireling guardian. The salient feature is not, as in the first picture, the legitimacy of the Messianic mis sion, but the disinterested love which is the moving cause of it. It is this sentiment which makes Christ not only the shepherd, but the good shepherd.. The word m%6g, beautiful, designates with the Greeks goodness, as the highest moral beauty. The sequel will show in what this beauty consists. This word KaUg explains the article 6, the : He who perfectly realizes this sublime type. Then Jesus indicates the first trait of the character of this shepherd. It is love carried to the point of complete abnegation, even to the entire sacrifice of oneself. Some {Meyer, Luthardt) find in the expres sion Tpvxv^v rt&ivai (literally : to put his life) the idea of a pledge given : Jesus pledges His life as a ransom for ours. But this idea of a ransom is foreign to the imagery of the shepherd and the sheep, and still more to that of the wolf under which the enemy is represented. This expression may be compared with that which we find in xiii. 4 : Ipdna nD-ivai, to lay aside his garments. The idea is that of laying down His life. Comp. Huther on 1 John iii. 16. Keil, however, alleges against this second sense the words in-ip rav irpopdrav, on behalf of the sheep. We must therefore give to ntiivai the sense of : to place at the disposal of another, to sur render, to sacrifice ; comp. xiii. 37. In ver. 12, we must not add the article and translate, as Ostervald, Arnaud, Crampon do : who is not the shepherd. Jesus means : who is not a shepherd, who has the place of a hireling. It is not the owner of the flock who acts thus, but a hired servant to whom the owner has intrusted it. Whom did Jesus mean to designate by this person ? No one, say some interpreters in reply, particularly Hengsten berg and Weiss: there is here an imaginary figure intended to make prominent by means of the contrast, that of the good shepherd. But in •X D I-""- Vulg. Aug. read -iS-io-.? instead 'HBLH some Mnn. omit Ta irpopara. of.i-V|_-iv. *XBDL omit the words of T. R. : Se 2 B Q L omit fie after j_.-_-.Wo.. /-to-oWo. ajev-yet (but the hireling flees). 150 SECOND PART. that case it would be strange for it to be described throughout two entire verses as the counterpart of that of the good shepherd, and as quite as real as the latter. Most of the interpreters think that this person repre- ents the Pharisees. But they would be presented here in too different a light from that in which they were depicted in the two preceding simili tudes. A cowardly guardian is a different thing from a robber and an assailant. And, if the hireling represents the Pharisees, who will then be typified by the wolf? According to Luthardt, this person is the principle hostile to the kingdom of God, the devil, acting by means of all the adver saries of the Church. But Jesus, in chap, viii., has completely identified Pharisaism with the diabolic principle. He cannot therefore represent the first here as a mere hireling, a cowardly friend, the other as a declared enemy. Lange, in his Life of Jesus, understands by the wolf the Boman power. But it was not really under the blows of the Boman power that Jesus fell. Meyer had at first applied the figure of the wolf to all anti- Messianic power, Pharisaism included ; but the result of this was that the hireling fleeing before the wolf was the Pharisees fleeing before the Phari sees ! He has accordingly abandoned this explanation in the 5th edition. The wolf represents, according to him, the future hireling shepherds in the midst of the Christian Church. But what could have led Jesus to express at that moment an idea like this, and how could His present hearers have caught a glimpse of this meaning ? It seems to me that the figure is explained if we recall to mind, on the one hand, the fact that a pioBardg is a servant for wages, and, on the other, that there were in the theocracy no other accredited and paid functionaries except the priests and Levites. These were the ones to whom God had officially entrusted the instruction and moral guidance of His people. But, during the most recent times, the Pharisaic party had so far obtained the mastery over the minds of the people, by turning to their advantage the national pride, that whoever, even among the lawful rulers of the theocracy, did not submit to them, was immediately put under the ban and brought into discredit, as in our own days whoever in the Boman Church dares to cope with the spirit of Jesuitism. There were many, undoubtedly, in Israel who would have willingly maintained the truth of God. We have as a proof of this xii. 42, so far as relates to the rulers in general, and Acts vi. 7, so far as relates to the priests in particular. But, like so many intelli gent and pious bishops in the present Catholicism, they in a cowardly manner kept silent. One man alone had the courage to face this formid able conflict with the dominant party, and to expose His life for the maintenance of the divine truth and for the salvation of the sheep. The : Crucify ! crucify ! was the answer of Pharisaism, cut to the heart by the " Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " The wolf represents therefore the principle positively hostile to the kingdom of God and to the Messiah, the Pharisees; and tho hireling, the legitimate functionaries who by their station were called to fulfill the task which Jesus accom plished by voluntary self-devotion, the priests and Levites, accredited doctors of the law. The passage ix. 16, had already given us a glimpse CHAP. X. 13-16. 151 within the Sanhedrim itself of a party well disposed towards Jesus, but which did not dare openly to oppose the violent threats of the Pharisees against Him. Jesus presents here only the historical factors which have co-operated in the accomplishment of the decree of His death. He has nothing to say of the profound and divine reasons which presided over the decree itself. The word dp-n-d&i, snatches, applies to the individuals whom the wolf assails (aira), while the action of oKopi.K,eiv, to scatter, ex tends to the entire flock : rd npdpara, the flock, a word which we must be careful not to reject-with the Alexandrian authorities. Ver. 13. The Alexandrian authorities reject the first words : " but the hireling flees." In that case, the because which follows, refers not to the last two propositions of ver. 12, but to the one which precedes them : he flees. After having thus described the cowardly guardians, Jesus returns to the description of the good shepherd and his conduct towards the flock, and expressly applies to Himself {iya, I, ver. 14) this figure. Vv. 14-16. "As for me, I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep, and I am known by my sheep ; * 15 as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I give2 my life for the sheep. 16. And I have other sheep which are not of this fold ; these also I must bring; and they shall hear 3 my voice ; and there shall be one flock, one shepherd." The repetition of these words of ver. 11 : I am the good shepherd, is introduced through the contrast with the figure of the hireling (comp. ver. 9) ; and the epithet good is explained here by a new point, that of the relation full of tenderness which unites Jesus and His sheep. It is on this second point that the first — the self- devotion thus far described — rests. The word to know does not mean : I distinguish them from the rest of the Jews {Weiss). The import of this word is much more profound ; and the meaning distinguish is not suitable in the three following sayings. Jesus penetrates with the eye of His loving knowledge the entire interior being of each one of the sheep, and perfectly discerns all which He possesses in them. For there is a close relation between this verb "I know," said the possessive "my sheep." This knowledge is reciprocal. The believers also know what their shep herd is, all that He feels and all that He is willing to do for them. They thus live in the untroubled light of a perfect mutual knoweldge. From this intimate relation between Him and His sheep, Jesus goes back to that which is at once the model and source of it : His relation to the Father. The term KaBag, as (literally, according as) does not express a simple comparison, as uairep, as, would do. This word characterizes the knowledge which unites Jesus with his sheep as being of the same nature as that which unites Him to God. It is as if the luminous medium in which the heart of the Son and the heart of the Father meet each other, were enlarged so as to become that in which the heart of Jesus and that of His sheep meet each other. The Kai signifies : "And consequently." It is in 1 T. R. reads with 11 Mjj., all the Mnn. Syr. 2 x D : StSuut instead of Ttflijut. ¦yivi__7cofi.ai vto to* epiav. X B D L It. Vulg. 8 The MSS. are divided between aKovo-ovo-ir Cop.: ytvaio-zcovo-t* ue ra ep.a (and my sheep know (B D etc.), and okovo-uo-iv (X A etc.). me). 152 SECOND PART. virtue of this relation pf such intimate knowledge that He consents to give Himself for them. The words : I give my life for the sheep, form a sort of refrain (comp. vv. 7, 11, 18), as we have found several similar refrains in our Gospel, in moments when the feeling is exalted (iii. 15, 16 ; iv. 23, 24 ; vi. 39, 40, 44, 54). In the context, the expression for the sheep must be applied to believers only ; but yet this phrase does not contradict that according to which "Jesus is the propitiation, not only for ouir sins, but for those of the whole world " (1 John ii. 2). For the death of Jesus, in the divine intention, is for all, although in reality it profits only believers. Jesus knows full well that the im-ip, on behalf of, will be realized only in these latter. From these two points by which Jesus characterizes Himself as the per fect shepherd, springs the third, ver. 16. It would be impossible that the holiest and most devoted work of love should have for its object only these few believers, such as the disciples and the one born blind, who consented to separate themselves from the unbelieving people. The view of Jesus extends more widely (ver. 16), in proportion as He penetrates both the depth and the height (ver. 15). The death of a being like the Son must obtain an infinite reward. The other sheep, the possession of whom will compensate Him for the loss of those who to-day refuse to follow Him, are evidently the believing Gentiles. Jesus declares that Ho has them already {ixa, I have), and not merely that He will have them, for all that are of the truth, throughout the entire body of mankind, are His from before His coming. The question is not, I think, of a posses sion by reason of the divine predestination. We find here again rather one of the most profound and habitual thoughts of our Gospel, a thought which springs directly from the relation which the Prologue establishes between the Logos and the human soul (ver. 4 and ver. 10). The life and the light of the world, the Logos did not cease, even before His incarnation, to fill this office in the midst of the sinful world ; and, among the heathen themselves, all those who surrender themselves and yield obedience to this inner light, must infallibly recognize in Jesus their ideal and give themselves to Him as His sheep as soon as He shall present Himself; comp. xi. 52 (" the children of God who are scattered abroad ") ; viii. 47 ("he that is of God hears the words of God ") ; xviii. 37 (" he that is qf the truth ") ; iii. 21 (" he that does tlie truth, comes to the light "). The demon strative adjective ravrvg, placed as it is after the substantive: "This fold," implies, according to de Wette, that Jesus regards the heathen nationali ties also as a sort of folds, of preparatory groupings divinely instituted in order to prepare for the Gospel. But perhaps Meyer, Weiss, etc., are right in thinking that there is here a notion introduced into the text. How ever, it is incorrect to set xi. 52 in opposition to this idea, which verse by no means declares the contrary of this. The believing heathen may very well be scattered throughout their respective nationalities, as the believing Jews are in their own (answer to Weiss). Meyer, committing here again the error which he committed in the explanation of the first allegory — that of explaining the figures of one similitude by those of another— chap. x. 17, 18. 153 understands the expression ayayeiv in the sense of feed, according to the figure of vv. 4, 9, and he is followed by Luthardt and Weiss. But the end of the verse {Kal, " and so there shall be ") shows clearly that the Lord's idea is an altogether different one ; it is that of bringing these sheep, to join them with the former ones. The Vulgate, therefore, rightly translates adducere. The parallel passage xi. 52 : owayayeiv elg iv, leads likewise to this explana tion. When the historical application of the first similitude is missed, the meaning of the whole discourse is lost. The work of St. Paul, with the workings of the missionaries who have followed him even to our own days, is essentially what this term bring describes. This third similitude, announcing the call of the Gentiles, corresponds thus to the first, which described the going forth of the believers from the Synagogue. The words : They will hear my voice, recall the expression of the end of the Acts : " The salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles and they will also hear it " (xxviii. 28). There is a solemnity in the last words simply placed in juxtaposition : one flock, one shepherd. They contain the thought which forms the text of the Epistle to the Ephesians : the breaking down of the old wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles by the death of Christ (Eph. ii. 14-17). This prophetic word is accomplished before our eyes by the work of missions in the heathen world. As to the final conversion of Israel, it is neither directly nor indirectly indicated. \ These so new ideas of the death of the Messiah and of the call of new non-Jewish believers to participation in the Messianic salvation were fitted to raise many doubts in the minds of the hearers. Jesus clearly perceives it ; this is the reason why He energetically affirms that the good pleasure of God rests upon this work and upon Him who executes it, and that it is the true aim of His mission to the world. Vv. 17, 18. " Therefore does my Father love me : because I give my life that I may take it again; 18 no one takes it away1 from me, but I give it of my self; I have power lo give, and I have power to take it again : this commandment I received of my Father." Aid tovto, for this reason, refers ordinarily in John to a previously expressed idea, but one which is about to be taken up and de veloped in the following clause, beginning with an {because). The same is the case here. It is because of His voluntary devotion to this great work (vv. 15, 16) that His Father loves Him ; that is to say, He adds, because He sacri fices His life to it, and this not in order absolutely to give it up, but with the express intention of recovering it, and thus of finishing the work of which He only makes a beginning here on the earth. No doubt, the Father eternally loves the Son ; but, when once made man, the Son can not be approved and loved by Him except on condition of perfectly real izing the new law of His existence, as Son of man. Now this law, which results for Him from the solidarity in which He is bound together with a fallen race, is that of saving it by the gift of His life ; and the constant disposition of the Son to accept this obligation of love, is the object of the infinite satisfaction (of the ayairav) of the Father. It is in this sense that 1 X B read npev (took away) instead of aipet (takes away). 154 SECOND PART. St. Paul calls the death of Jesus "an offering of a sweet smell" (Eph. v. 2). The last words serve to complete the preceding idea : " because I give my life, and because I give it that I may take it again." The self- devotion of the Son who consents to give His life is infinitely pleasing to the Father, but on one condition ; that this gift be not the abandoning of humanity and of the work begun in it, which would be at the same time the forgetting of the glory of the Father. In other terms, the devotion to death would be of an evil sort if it had not for its end the return among men by means of the resurrection. As Luthardt with perfect correctness remarks : " Jesus must wish to resume His life again in order to continue, as glorified, His ministry of shepherd to the Church, espe cially to the Gentiles whom He has the mission to gather together (Eph. ii. 17)." The supreme end indicated in ver. 16 requires not only His death, but also His resurrection. It appears from the words : that I may take it again, that Jesus raises Himself from the dead. And this is true, for if it is in the Father that the power lies which gives Him hfe, it is Himself who by His free will and His prayer calls upon His person the display of this power. Ver. 18 is the emphatic reaffirmation of this character of freedom in the work of the Son, which alone makes it the object of the Father's satisfaction. Hence the asyndeton. It is not through powerlessness that the shepherd will succumb to the hostile power; there will come a mo ment when He will Himself consent to His defeat (xiv. 31). The word ovSeig, no one, includes every creature ; we may include in it God Him self, since if, in dying, the Son obeys the decree of the Father, He yet does it freely ; God neither imposes on Him death nor resurrection. The words i^ovaiav ixa, I have the power (the competency, the authority), are repeated with a marked emphasis ; Jesus had no obligation to die, not only because, not having sinned, He had the right to keep His holy life, but also because, even at the last moment, He could have asked for twelve legions of angels, who would have wrested Him from the hands of His enemies. In the same way, in giving up His life, it de pended on Himself to demand it again or not to reclaim it. As Luthardt says : " In these two acts, the action of the Son comes before the action of the Father." The last words : I have received this command ment, are ordinarily referred to the commandment to die and rise again which had been given to Him by the Father. But would not such an idea tend to weaken all that Jesus had just developed ? The true movement of the passage is the affirming of the full independ ence of the Lord. This is the reason why it seems to me that it is better to apply the term -ri)v ivroXvv, this command, to the commission with which Jesus has come to the earth and which gives Him the right to make free use of His own person, to die and to revive at will. The tenor of this commission, when the Father sent Him, was this : "Thou canst die or not die, rise again or not rise again, according to the free aspirations of thy love." Jesus calls it a command in order to cover with the veil of humility this incomparable prerogative. chap. x. 19-21. ' 155 IV. — Historical Conclusion : vv. 19-21. Vv. 19-21. "There was therefore1 again a division among the Jews be cause of these, discoursings. 20. Many 2 of them said, He is possessed of a demon, and is mad; why do you listen to him? 21. Others said, These are not the discoursings of one possessed; can a demon open the eyes of the blind ?" Always the same result; a division, which forms the prelude to the final choice ; comp. vii. 12, 30, 31, 40, 41 ; ix. 8, 9, 16. The word ixaXiv, again, awakens the attention of the reader to the constant repetition of this result. The words : Why do you listen to Him ? show with what un easiness the decidedly hostile party observed the favorable impression produced by the discourses of Jesus on those who were better disposed. The answer of these latter (ver. 21) contains two arguments in juxtaposi tion. The first is the simple avowal of their impression : the discourse of Jesus does not appear to them to be that of a madman. But imme diately they seem to be ashamed of this avowal and withdraw behind another argument which is less compromising : thepatentfact ofthe cure of the blind man. The second argument might be connected with the first by an And besides. Thus continually more and more do the sheep of Jesus in the vast inclosure of the theocracy separate themselves from the mass of the flock ; and for the theme : I and you, which was that of chap. viii. is sub stituted more and more that theme which is to sum up the new situation: I and mine. THIED SECTION. X. 22-42. The Second Discourse. In chap, vii., vv. 19-24, we have seen Jesus return, in a discourse pro nounced at the feast of Tabernacles, to the fact of the healing of the impotent man (chap, v.), and thus finish His justification of Himself which was begun at Jerusalem several months before (v. 17-47), at the preceding feast. The same is the case here. In the second part of chap. x. (22-42), He resumes the thread of the discourse pronounced after the cure of the man who was born blind, at the feast of Tabernacles, and thus completes the teaching begun in the previous visit. We have explained this mode of action (vol. I., p. 450). The exasperation of His adversaries in the capital not permitting Him to treat the questions in full, He takes them up with a new beginning at a succeeding visit. The feast of the Dedication (ver. 22) was celebrated about the middle of December. Two months must therefore have elapsed between the feast of Tabernacles and this feast. Where did Jesus pass all this time ? As no change of place is indicated and as, in ver. 42, Jesus is plainly again in Jerusalem, Hengstenberg, Meyer, Weiss, and others infer from this that Jesus 1 X B L X It. reject ov*. _ X D add ov* here. 156 SECOND PART. remained during this whole period in the capital and its neighborhood; the last named, without hesitation, treat as a harmonistic expedient every opposite idea. But there is nothing less certain than the conclusion thus drawn from the silence of John. At the end of chap. v. the evangelist does not in any way mention the return of Jesus to Galilee, and yet it is there that the Lord is found again in the beginning of chap. vi. Still more ; there is nothing more improbable than so prolonged a sojourn of Jesus in Jerusalem or in its neighborhood at this time. Let us recall all the precautions which Jesus had been obliged to take, in order to repair to that city at the feast of Tabernacles, that He might give to this visit the character of a surprise. Why? Because, as is said in vii. 1, "Jesus would not go into Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him." And yet in such a state of things, He could have remained two whole months peaceably in Jerusalem in the presence of the hostile party, and after the conflict had been still further aggravated by the violent scenes related in chaps, vii.-x. 21 ! Such a sojourn could only have determined the catas trophe before the time (vii. 6). This impossible supposition is, moreover, positively incompatible with John's narrative. In the discourse in x. 25—30, Jesus reproduces in substance that which He had pronounced after the cure of the man who was born blind ; He even expressly cites it (ver. 26 : as I said to you). This fact implies that it was the first time that He found Himself face to face with the same hear ers since the feast of Tabernacles, where He had used this allegory of the shepherd and the sheep. Finally, this supposition of a sojourn of two months in Judea between the feast of Tabernacles and that of the Dedication is certainly false, if the narrative of St. Luke is not a pure romance. Luke describes in the most circumstantial and dramatic way the departure of Jesus from Galilee, and His farewell to that province, in order to repair to Jerusalem (Luke ix. 51 ff.). He shows how Jesus gave to this act the most striking notoriety by the solemn threatenings addressed to the cities where He had accomplished His ministry, and by the sending out of the seventy disciples, who should prepare His way in southern Galilee, as far as Persea, that is to say, in all the country through which He was about to go to Jerusalem for the last Passover. How could this departure accomplished with such great publicity be identified with the journey to the feast of Tabernacles mentioned by John in chap, vii., a journey which, according to ver. 10, was made as it were in secret and which brought Jesus suddenly to Jerusalem ? It is to this, however, that the matter must resolve itself, if, after the journey in John vii., Jesus did not return to Galilee. Would it be true historic impartiality to condemn purely and simply one of the two narratives, when they can be so easily reconciled with each other ! Jesus, after the feast of Tabernacles, returned to Galilee which He had left so suddenly, just as He had returned thither after the feast of Purim (end of chap. v.). He resumed His work there also for a certain time. Then (Luke ix. 51 ff.) He called upon Hia adherents to sever the last bonds, in order to follow Him to Jerusalem ; He sent before Him the seventy disciples, to the end of preparing by this chap. x. 22-24. 157 means the last appeal which He desired Himself to address to the cities and villages of southern Galilee which had not yet been visited, and it was then that He pronounced the condemnation of the cities on the borders of the lake of Gennesareth, the constant witnesses of His min istry. This prolonged pilgrimage, the account of which fills nine chapters of the Gospel of Luke (ix. 51-xviii. 18), must have been interrupted, accord ing to this same Gospel — a strange circumstances — by a brief journey to Jerusalem ; for the story in Luke x. 38-42 (Jesus in the house of Martha and Mary) which is placed, one knows not how, in the midst of this journey, transfers the reader all at once to Bethany, and the parable of the Good Samaritan, which immediately precedes, seems also to be con nected with a visit to Judea. What means this excursion to Jerusalem implied in the narrative of Luke, perhaps without a knowledge of it on his part (for he does not mention Bethany) ? How is it possible not to be struck with the remarkable coincidence between this journey and the journey to the feast of the Dedication related by John ? After this rapid excursion to Jerusalem, Jesus proceeds to resume His slow journeying in the south of Galilee ; then He crosses the Jordan to go into Persea, as is distinctly stated by Matthew and Mark. This sojourn in Persea, a little while before the Passion, is the point where the four Gospel narratives meet together. Compare indeed Matt. xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1, and Luke ix. 51 ; then Luke xviii. 15 ff., where the parallelism recommences between the narrative of this last writer and that of the other two Synoptics (the presentation of the young children, the coming up of the rich young man), and finally John x. 40-42. While following their own particular course, the four narratives are thus without difficulty harmonized.1 The following passage includes an historical introduction (vv. 22-24), a first address of Jesus, in which He shows the Jews the moral separation which exists between them and Himself (w. 525—31), and a last teaching by means of which He seeks yet once more to remove what was for them the great stumbling-stone, the accusation of blasphemy (w. 32-39). The passage closes with the description of the sojourn in Persea (vv. 40-42). I. — Historical Introduction: w. 22-24. Vv. 22-24. " Now 2 they were celebrating the feast of the Dedication at Jerusalem ;*it was winter. 23. And Jesus was walking about in the temple, in Solomon's porch. 24. The Jews therefore surrounded him ; and they said to him, How long wilt thou hold our minds in suspense ? If thou art the Christ, tell* us plainly." The feast of the Dedication {iyKaivia) was instituted by the Maccabees in remembrance of the purification of the temple after its profanation by Antiochus Epiphanes (1 Mace. iv. ; Josephus, Antiq., xii. 7. 6). It continued eight days, following the 25th of Cisleu, which, if it was 1 It was in an analogous way that Tatian in 'BL substitute totc (then) for Si. the 2d century established the succession of >||BIlGLXn It=i<. Cop. omit not before the events, in the first known Gospel . Bar- x"^10* 1*> which is read by T. R. with all the mony, the Diatessaron; comp. Zahn, Tatians rest. Diatessaron, p. 259. * {« : e.iro*, instead of we. 158 SECOND PART. then the year 29 of our era, fell in that year, according to the work of M. Chavannes cited on page 42, on the 19th or 20th of December. It was called rd ara, the lights, because of the brilliant illumination with which it was celebrated, not only at Jerusalem, but in the whole country. Jesus took advantage of it to address once more, before the Passover, a last appeal to His people. We may conclude from what precedes that He probably made this rapid journey to Jerusalem while the seventy disciples were accomplishing in Galilee the mission which He had intrusted to them, and were there preparing the way from place to place for His last appeal. We have seen that He Nhad probably accomplished the journey at the feast of Purim (John v.) while the Twelve were fulfill ing a similar mission in Galilee (vol. I., p. 453). It was the unfavorable season of the year ; and it was not possible to remain in the open air. Jesus, therefore, took his position in Solomon's porch, an ancient peristyle situated in the eastern part of the court, above the valley of Jehoshaphat. It was the last remnant of the ancient temple. This place which had been rendered dear to the heart of the evangelist by the remembrance of the circumstance which he is about to relate, seems to have been equally sacred to the Christians of the primitive church of Jerusalem (Acts iii. 11). The nature of the place facilitated {therefore, ver. 2A) the kind of manoeuvre which was executed at the moment by the Jews and which is described by the term imiCkaaav, they surrounded him. While Jesus was walking about in this peristyle, they took advantage of a favorable moment to place themselves between Him and His disciples and to force Him to speak. It appears to me that this must be the meaning of this strange expression : they surrounded Him in a circle. The scene of viii. 25 is renewed here in an intensified degree. They are weary of His answers which seem to them ambiguous. Some among them feel indeed that no man had ever so nearly approached the Messianic ideal. Let Him finally consent to play in earnest the part of the Messiah and to free the country from the Boman power, as formerly Judas Mac- cabseus purified the temple from the Syrian profanations, and they will willingly hail Him, and that at this very festival ; if not, let Him frankly .avow that He is not the Messiah, and not continue to excite the expectation of the people ! We thus picture to ourselves the general sentiment. Some, more ill-disposed, wished perhaps — this is the idea of Weiss — to extort from Him the term Christ, in order that they might accuse Him. The expression rvv -fox^v aipeiv, properly, to raise the mind, is applied to all lively emotions ; see in the Greek tragic poets. Here it expresses the expectation which an activity like that of Jesus excited, an activity which awakened all the national hopes without ever satisfying them. Philo uses the term pereapl&iv in exactly the same sense. II. — First address : vv. 25-31. Vv. 25, 26. " Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe; the worjcs which I do in my Father's name, these works bear witness of me, 20. chap. x. 25, 26. 159 But, as for you, you do not believe ; for 1 you are not of my sheep, as I said to you." 2 The position of Jesus with relation to the Jews had never been so critical. To answer yes, is not possible for Him ; for the meaning which they give to the term Christ has, so to speak, nothing in common with that which He Himself attaches to it. To say no, is still less possible ; for He is indeed the Christ promised of God, and, in this sense, the one whom they expect. His reply is admirable for its wisdom. He refers, as in viii. 25, to His testimonies in which He had applied to Himself the Messianic symbols of the old covenant and in some sort spelt out His title of Christ, so that if they were willing to believe, they had only to pronounce it them selves.3 Thus is His reply explained. The verb : I said to you, has no object; it is easy to supply the ellipsis : that which you ask me. To His own testimony, if it does not appear to them sufficient, there is added, moreover, that of the Father. His miracles were all works of the Father; for they were wrought with the invocation of His name; if Jesus were an impostor, would God have answered him thus ? If these testimonies failed with them, it is the result of their unbelief (ver. 26). He is not the Messiah whom their heart demands : this is the reason why they affect not to understand what is so clear. The subject vpelg, you, placed at the beginning, signifies : It is not I, it is you, who are responsible for this result. And the following declaration : You are not of my sheep, shows them that the moral disposition is what is wanting to them that they may recognize in Him the divine Shepherd. The formula of quotation : as I said to you, is omitted by tho Alexandrian MSS. But perhaps this omis sion arises from the fact that these words were not found textually in the preceding discourses. The authority of 12 Mjj., supported by that of the most ancient Vss., appears to us to guarantee their authenticity. In our first edition, we made them the preamble of ver. 27, especially because of the relation between the contents of this verse and that of vv. 3-5. The pronoun vpiv, you, however (" as I said to you "), favors rather the connec tion of this formula of quotation with ver. 26. For Jesus has never ap plied to the unbelieving Jews the promises of ver. 27 ; while He has fre quently addressed to them charges equivalent to that of ver. 26. The charge of no. beingHis sheep really formed the basis ofthe parables, vv. 1-5 and vv. 7-10, in which Jesus had distinguished clearly from His sheep the mass of the people and their rulers, His interlocutors in general. Reuss : " Jesus had nowhere said this." Then again : " The allegory of the sheep," he says, "had been presented to an entirely different public." Finally, he maliciously adds : " It is only the readers ofthe Gospel who have not left 4. B D L X 12 Mnn. Itpi<*iq™ Vulg. Syr»°>» agreement which is here manifest between Orig. read on ouk instead of ov yap. John and the Synoptics. In these latter also 2 X B K L M n some Mnn. It"U_ Vulg. Cop. Jesus, while accepting (in the conversation omit the words /ca.i_i ei?. o* v/ui* which are in Csesarea) the title of Christ from His dis- supported by 12 Mjj., nearly all the Mnn. ciples, forbids them to pronounce this word Itpi-riq-. Syr. ; some Mnn. and Vss. repeat before the people. As in John, He desires them : "As 1 said to you (ver. 26), Did I not the fact of faith, and not the word (Matt. _^vi. say to you . " ( ver. 27). 20 and parallels). 3 Gess (p. 09) rightly sets forth the complete 160 SECOND PART. the scene." We have shown that Jesus had said this, and it is not difficult to show that He had said it to the same hearers. For the discourse in x. 1-18 had not been addressed, as Keuss asserts, to pilgrim strangers who had come to the feast of Tabernacles and afterwards had departed, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, in response to some of the Pharisees (ix. 40) who had asked : " And are we also blind ? " No doubt, we cannot hold that it was identically the same individuals who were found there again after two months ; but it was the same population all whose members were alike in their dependence on the rulers and their general hostility to Jesus. The essential aim of the following words, in which Jesus describes the privileges of His sheep, is certainly that of making His hearers feel what an abyss separates them from such a condition. Never theless this description naturally becomes an invitation to come to Him, addressed to those who are the least ill-disposed. Vv. 27, 28. "My sheep hear 1 my voice, and I know them; and they follow me 28 and I give to them eternal life ; and they shall never perish and no one shall snatch them out of my hand." Luthardt has divided the six clauses of these verses into two groups of three : on one side, the faith of the believer, his personal union with the Lord, and the fidelity with which he persists in this union (ver. 27) ; on the other, the gift of life which Jesus makes, the salvation which He assures to him, and the divine protection which He causes him to enjoy (ver. 28). But this division into two groups does not accord with the two Kayo, and I, at the beginning of the second and fourth clauses. These two pronouns indicate a repeated reciprocity between the conduct of the believer and that of Jesus, and thus speak in favor of the division of Bengel, who divides into three groups of two : 1st pair : faith of the believer in the word preached (" hear my voice ") and personal testimony of Christ given to the believer (" I know them "). 2d pair : practical fidelity of the believer thus known and loved (" they follow me "), and, on Christ's part, communication of the highest good, eternal life (" I give them . . . "). The 3d pair states the indestructible character of the salvation which the believer thus possesses (" they shtyll never perish "), and the cause of this certainty, the fidelity of Jesus which will preserve them from every enemy {"no one shall seize tliem . . . "). The first pair refers rather, like the first similitude, vv. 1-6, to the formation of the bond ; the second, like the second similitude, vv. 7-10, to the life in this position; the third, like the picture, vv. 11-18, to the indestructible nature of this relation. The hand is here less the emblem of power, than that of prop erty : " They shall not cease to be mine." Vv. 29, 30. " My 2 Father wlw has given 3 them to me, is greater * than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of myb Father's hand ; SO I and tlie 1 X B L X Olem. Homil. anovovo-tv, instead (he who has given me) which is read by T. E. of aicov.i which is read by the T. R. with 14 with 14 Mjj . Syr. — D : o fiefiu/no.. Mjj., etc. UBXlt Vulg. Cop. : jt.'fo*, instead oi 2 x itpi..iq_. omit (tov. fteifu* which is read by T. R. with 15 Mjj. 3 X B Ij It. Vulg. Cop. read o _e_u«e* (that • X B L Orig. reject (tov. which he has given me), instead of os _e_wK<* chap. x. 27-30. 161 Father are one." We might be tempted to find, with Luthardt, a strict syllogism in the thoughts expressed in vv. 29, 30. Major : My Father is greater than all (ver. 29). Minor : I and my Father are one (ver. 30). Conclusion : Therefore I shall victoriously defend them against all (ver. 29). But, in general, the reasoning of Jesus tends rather to extend in a spiral manner than to close in upon itself like a circle. This is the case here : the sentiment rises and enlarges. Jesus begins by indicating the absolutely certain guaranty of His right of property in the sheep : God who has given them to Him is more powerful than all the forces of the universe. That any one should be able to wrest them from Him, it is necessary that He should begin by wresting them from God. Then, from this point, His thought rises still higher, even to the idea of the relation in virtue of which everything is common between the Father and the Son. We see in this gradation the filial consciousness displaying itself even till it has reached its utmost depth (ver. 30). There are four principal readings in ver. 29 : 1. That of the T. E. and the eleven less ancient Mjj. (r A n etc.) : bg and pelfav : "The Father who has given them to me is greater than all." 2. That of B. It. b and pel^ov -. " That which the Father has given me is greater than all." 3. That of A and X : bg and pelfrv : " The Father who has given them to me is some thing greater (neuter) than all." 4. That of X L, 6 and pel^av, which has really no meaning unless we consent to give a masculine attribute {pelC,av) to a neuter subject 6 (" what the Father . . . "). It is the same with the third, in which the subject is masculine and the attribute neuter. How could God be represented as a thing ? Finally, one must be singularly blinded by prejudice in favor ofthe text of B, to prefer, as Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort do, the second reading to the first. Not only do the ordinary documents of the Alexandrian text contradict one another ; but the sense which is offered by the reading ofthe Vatican MS. has not the least internal probability. John would say, according to that reading, that what the Father has given to Jesus is greater than all or everything. It would thus be the flock of Jesus which is here called greater, in the sense of more precious, more excellent than all. But what a strange ex pression ! Believers are of more value than the whole universe, per chance. But the Scriptures never express themselves in this way. They glorify God, not men, even the most faithful men. Moreover, the expres sions : no one shall snatch them (ver. 28), no one can snatch them (ver. 29), show that the point in hand is a comparison of power, not between the sheep and their" enemies, but between God Himself and these enemies. So Luthardt, Weiss and Keil, in this case, give up the reading against which we are contending. The following is the way in which these vari ants may have arisen. Offense may have been taken at seeing SiSaKe, has given, without an object, and, through a recalling of the expression in vi. 37, 39 {that which the Father gives me, has given me) and xvii. 3 {that which thou hast given me), the copyists may have changed bg (who) into b {that which) and made 6 warvp, the Father, the subject of has given. The trans formation of pelt; av into peifrv was the inevitable consequence of the first II 162 second part. change. The other readings are mixtures resulting from the embarrass ment in which the subsequent copyists found themselves. The hand, when the Father is in question, represents power rather than pos session. God has transmitted this to the Son ; but His power remains the safe guard of the property of the Son which is common to Him with the Fathers. Can this guaranty insure believers against the consequences of their own un faithfulness, as Hengstenberg asserts? The text says nothing like this. The question is of enemies from without, who seek to carry off the sheep, but not of unfaithfulness through which the sheep would themselves cease to be sheep. According to Weiss, ver. 30 is intended to resolve the apparent contra diction between " guarded by my Father " and " guarded by me." I do not believe in this relation between ver. 30 and ver. 29, because in what precedes the idea of guarding has been in reality attributed only to God ; the end of ver. 28 referred, as we have seen, to the right of property, not to the guarding of the sheep. Ver. 30 serves rather to explain why the Father inviolably guards that which belongs to the Son. It is because they have all things common, because they are one. If such is indeed the connection of ideas, ver. 30 cannot refer either to the unity of moral will (the Socinians), or of power {Chrysostom- and many others, as Liicke, de Wette, etc.), or even solely to the community of action for the salvation of mankind {Weiss), as it has been described in vv. 19, 20, and in the sense in which Paul says, 1 Cor. iii. 9, of himself and Apollos: " He that planteth and he that watereth are one {ev eio-l)," namely, as to the end which they propose to themselves in their work. Here the question is of the relation, not between two workmen, but between Christ as man and God. And if Jesus had only meant this, why did He not determine more clearly this notion of co-working, as Paul does in the following words (ver. 10), when he comes to speak of his relation to God : We are God's fellow-workers ? Why above all give needlessly, and as it were wantonly, an offense to the Jews by employing an expression which appeared to say more than what He in reality meant to say ? No, Jesus neither meant : " We desire one and the same thing," nor " We have the same power," nor, " We labor in the same ivork." In saying " We are one," He has affirmed a more pro found unity, that which is the inner and hidden basis of all the preceding statements and which Jesus here allows to break forth, as in viii. 58 He had suffered the deepest foundation of His personal existence to show itself. Reuss, being altogether indifferent to the question, since he ascribes the discourses of John to the evangelist, recognizes without hesi- l:i tion the true meaning of this verse: "The filial relation here, as throughout the whole book, is not only that of love or of the community ( if will and of action (the ethical relation), but also that of a community of nature and essence (the metaphysical relation)." The term one. expresses the consciousness of union, not only moral hut essential, with God Himself; the expression we are establishes the difference of persons. As to we, it would be in itself alone a blasphemy in the mouth of a creature ; God and I, we (comp. xiv. 23) ! ' It has been objected that the > The minister of state, Thiers, who allowed himself one day to say: "The king and I, chap. x. 31-33. 163 expression : to be one, is elsewhere applied to the relation between Jesus and believers, which would prove that it has a purely moral sense. But the uiiion of Jesus and believers is not a mere agreement of will ; it is a consubstantial union. The incarnation has established between Jesus and ourselves a relation of nature, and this relation embraces henceforth our entire personality, physical and moral. Ver. 31. " The Jews therefore 1 bought stones again to stone him." Ovv, tiiere fore, by reason ofthe blasphemy (ver. 30) ; comp. ver. 33. Weiss claims that, even understanding the words of ver. 30 in the sense which he gives to them, the Jews may have found therein a blasphemy. But, taken in the sense of a common action of God and Jesus, this thought certainly did not go beyond what in their view the Christ might legitimately say. But they had just asked Him whether He was the Christ. What was there in it, then, which could so violently offend them ? UdXiv, again, alludes to viii. 59. Only vpav, they took up, was used in the former case, while John now says ijidaraaav, they brought. Probably they did not have the stones at hand in the porch ; it was necessary to go some distance to find them in the court. There was here, no longer a mere demonstration, as in chap, viii., but a serious attempt. The ques tion was of accomplishing at length the act of stoning, which had several times been threatened. Shades of expression like this reveal the eye-wit ness, whose eyes followed anxiously this progress of hatred. III. — Second address : v. 32-39. The reply of Jesus treats of two subjects : 1. That of the blasphemy which is imputed to Him (vv. 32-36) ; 2. That of His relation to God which is contested (vv. 37-39). Vv. 32-36 : The accusation of blasphemy. Vv. 32, 33. " Jesus answered them : I have shown you many good works by the power of my2 Father; for which of these works do you stone me? 33. The Jews answered him3 it is not for a good work that we stone thee, but for blas phemy, and* because, being a man, thou makest thyself God." This time Jesus does not withdraw, as in viii. 59 ; He makes the stones fall from the hands of His adversaries by a question. Instead of good works, the trans lation should properly be beautiful works {Rilliet). The epithet mU desig nates indeed not the beneficent character of the works, but their moral beauty, their perfection in holiness, in power, as well as in goodness. The term iSei£a, strictly, I have shown, characterizes these works as grand spe cimens of all those which the Father holds in reserve, and as the sensible and glorious proofs of the favor which the Son enjoys with Him. The Father shows Him these works in the ideal sphere (v. 19, 20), and He shows them to the world in the sphere of reality. The preposition .«: indicates that the will and power by which Jesus accomplishes these works pro- we . . ." provoked a smile in the whole Cham- 'SBD reject jtov. ber; what would the creature deserve who 8T.R. adds Aeyo*Te; (saying), with 9 Mjj. (D should venture to include himself with God B G etc.) against 8 Mjj. (X A B etc.) 20 Mnn. Himself in the pronoun we . It. Vulg. Syr. l 05* (therefore) is wanting in X B L It"".. 4X omits «at (and). 164 SECOND PART. ceed from the Father (v. 36). The question of Jesus contains a keen irony, an expression of the deepest indignation. Undoubtedly, the ground on which the Jews intended to stone Him was not that which Jesus here ascribes to them ; but in alleging another ground they imposed upon their con sciences, and Jesus reveals to them the true condition of things by means of this question. Was it not on occasion of the healing of the impotent man that their murderous hatred had first manifested itself (chap, v.) ? Had it not been increased in violence by the healing of the man born blind (chap. ix.) ? And will it not be a third miracle, the resurrection of Lazarus (chap. xi.), which will bring it to its fatal limit ? Jesus knew this full well : it was these great and beautiful works which, by marking Him as the Son, caused Him to be the object of their fury : " This is the heir ; let us kill him ! " Apart from this hatred, they would not so readily have accused Him, who was by His whole life glorifying God, of being a blasphemer. This question in a sense paralyzes them ; Jesus is able to speak to them again. The Jews formulate the point in dispute, in ver. 33, as it presents itself to their perverted consciences. The term : a blasphemer, expresses the general idea, and the following clause : and because. . . , specifies the charge, by applying it to the present case. Vv. 34-36. "Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your1 law2 1 said ye are gods ? 35. If it called them gods to whom the word of God was addressed, — and the Scripture cannot be broken, — 36 do you say of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ! because I said, I am the Son of God ?"3 This argument has often been presented as an im plicit retractation ofthe expressions in which Jesus seemed to have affirmed His divine nature. In this sense, He is supposed to say : " Mere crea tures have been called gods, because they represent God in some one of His functions, that of judge, for example ; this is the only sense in which I have ascribed divinity to myself." But Jesus would thereby, at the same time, retract all His earlier testimonies, the meaning of which we have established. Jesus is occupied solely, in this first part of His reply, vv. 3-.T-36, with repelling the accusation of blasphemy. With this end in view, He reasons as follows : " The Scripture called mere human beings gods, as being invested with an office in which they were the representa tives and organs of God on earth ; were I then nothing more than a mere man, sent to accomplish a divine work, I should not deserve, according to the Scripture itself, to be treated as a blasphemer for having called myself Son of God." As an argument ad hominem the reasoning is irrefut able. Nevertheless, it still leaves room for this objection : Jesus called Himself God in an altogether different sense from that in which the Scripture gave this title to the Israelite judges. But a second point is to be observed here : it is the gradation in vv. 35, 36 : " If the Scripture did not blaspheme in calling the persons gods to whom the revelation was ad dressed, how can I have spoken blasphemy in declaring myself God, I, whom God sends into the world as His revelation itself?" This alto- 1 X I> It»"q omit vpmv. » X D E G : 9eov instead of tov deov, !XBDLXadd on here. chap. x. 34-36. 165 gethur different position of Jesus as regards the divine revelation justifies the higher sense in which He attributes to Himself the title of God. The monotheism of the Bible differs absolutely from the cold and dead Deism which Jewish orthodoxy had extracted from the sacred books, and which separates the Creator by a gulf from man. This petrified monotheism is the connecting link between degenerate Judaism, Mahometanism and modem rationalism ; but it is only a gross caricature of the Scriptural conception. Every theocratic function exercised in the name of Jehovah, who has conferred it, places its depositary in living connection with the Most High, makes him participate in His inspiration, and constitutes him His agent. Thereby the man, king, judge or prophet, becomes relatively a manifestation of God Himself. "At that time, the house qf David shall be as Elohim, as the angel of the Lord." Zech. xii. 8. The Old Testament is, in its deepest tendency, in a constant advancing progress towards the incarnation, the crowning-point of the increasing approxi mation between God and man. This is the true basis of the reasoning of Jesus : If this entire course has nothing in it of blasphemy, the end in which it issues, the appearance of a man who declares Himself one with God, has in itself nothing in contempt of the majesty of God. The quotation is derived from Ps. lxxxii. 6 ; and the term law denotes here, as in vii. 49, xii. 34, etc., the entire Old Testament, not as a denomina tion a potion parte, but rather inasmuch as this whole book formed a law for the Israelitish thought and hfe. On the expression your law, see on viii. 17. Asaph, in this Psalm, addresses the theocratic judges. Ver. 1 describes their greatness, in virtue of their function as organs of the divine justice, which has been intrusted to them. God Himself sits in the midst of them; it is from Him that their judgments emanate. Then in vv. 2-5, Asaph contrasts the sad reality, the injustice of the actual judges, with the ideal greatness of their function. In ver. 6, he returns to the idea of the first verse, that of their official dignity. The words : I said, refer undoubtedly to the expression of Asaph himself in ver. I : " God is present in the congregation of God." And thus he prepares for the transition to the warning of vv. 7, 8, in which he reminds them that they will them selves be one day judged, for an account will be demanded of them respect ing this divine function with which they had been clothed. Jesus draws from the words of the Psalmist a conclusion a minori ad majus, precisely as in vii. 23. The basis of the reasoning is the admitted principle : that the Scriptures cannot blaspheme. By those to whom the word of God is addressed, Jesus evidently understands those judges, to whom the Holy Spirit addresses Himself, saying : You are . . . The parenthetical remark : And the Scripture cannot be broken, shows the unlimited respect which Jesus feels for the word of Scripture. Let us suppose that it was the evangelist who invented all this argu ment ; could he, the so-called author of the theory of the Logos, have resisted the temptation to put into the mouth of Jesus here this favorite title by which he had designated Him in the Prologue ? This would be the altogether natural gradation : The law calls them judges to whom the 166 SECOND PART. Word is addressed ; how much less can I be accused of blasphemy, who am the Word itself, when I attribute to myself the title of God ! John does not yield to this temptation ; it is because it did not exist for him, since he limited himself to giving a faithful report of what his Master had said. Jesus designates Himself as Him whom the Father has sanctified and sent. The first expression might strictly refer to a fact in the earthly life of Je sus, such as that of the miraculous birth {Luthardt) or that of the baptism ( Weiss). But in that case it would be necessary to refer the following expression : sent into the world, to an act later than the one or the other of these two events : according to Weiss, for example, to the command to begin His public ministry. Or it would be necessary to admit a retrograde order in the position of the two terms sanctify and send-, which is quite as unnatural. The term to send into the world can of course only designate the mission which He received when He came from God to fulfill His work as Bedeemer ; and the term to sanctify must consequently designate the celestial act by which God specially set Him apart and consecrated Him for this mission. It was to this commandment, previous to the incarnation, that we were already referred by the expression command ment, ivrolii, used in v. 18 ; comp. 1 Pet. i. 20. There was a consulting together between the Father and the Son before the coming of Jesus to the world, of which He Himself formulates the result when He says : " I am come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me " (vi. 38). How great is the superiority of such a being to all those to whom the divine revelation addresses itself here below ! In re producing the charge alleged against Him, Jesus passes to th^ direct discourse : Thou blasphemest. It is the lively repetition of the accusation, as it was still sounding in His ears. The following words : because I said, depend not on thou blasphemest, but on you say. The title Son of God evi dently here reproduces the substance of the declaration of ver. 30 : I and my Father are one. This example shows again how erroneous it is to see in the title Son of God the indication of a function, even of the highest theocratic function. Taken in this sense, this term does not involve absolutely any blasphemy at all. These Jews who had just addressed to Him the question : " If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly," evidently could not have found in this title of Christ a blasphemy. And, as for Jesus, He is here thinking, as ver. 30 shows, on something altogether dif ferent from His dignity as Messiah. That is only a corollary following from His altogether peculiar union with God. He is only endeavoring therefore to awaken in the hearts of His hearers the feeling of His close relation to God, being certain, not only that the conviction of His Mes siahship will naturally result from it, but "also that in this way only that idea will not be erroneously conceived. Hence what follows : Vv. 37-39: The proof of the divinity of Jesus. Vv. 37-38. "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; 38 but if I do them, though you believe not me, believe l my works, to the end that you 1 Readings : irioTev ere (X B D, etc.) and irto-Tev'o-aTe (T. R. with AEG, etc.). CHAP. x. 37-39. 167 may know and may understand1 that my Father is in me and I am in him." 2 There is much of gentleness in the manner in which Jesus here expresses Himself and reasons. He appeals with calmness from passion to sound reason. He consents that they should not believe on the ground of the word, although the testimony of a being like Himself ought to carry its proof in itself. But to His testimony there are united the ivories which the Father has accomplished through Him. If they have not ears, they have eyes ; and what they do not infer from His words, they should, at least, infer from such works. The words: " If you do not believe me," mean: "If you do not accord belief to my personal affirmations." The reading of some Alexandrian authorities : "wa yvure Kal yivaanvre, seems to me the best one: " To the end that you may learn to know {yvare) and at last may understand {yivuo-Kvre)." These two terms taken together express , the long and painful labor of that discovery which might have resulted from the first glance : " Come and see " (i. 47). The apparently pleonastic ' sense of this reading not having been understood by the copyists, they gave to the text the more common form which we find in the received reading : to the end that you may understand and believe. The words : the Father in me, and I in the Father, which indicate the contents of this ob tained knowledge, recall the declaration of ver. 30 {weare one), but it does not follow from this, that, as Weiss will have it, it exhausts the sense of that declaration. It must not be forgotten that vv. 30 and 36 are the im mediate expression of the contents of the consciousness of Jesus Himself, while ver. 38 formulates these contents only in the measure in which they can and should become the object of the moral apperception of be lievers. By beholding with the eye of faith, they will discover more and more clearly two things : the full communication which God makes of His riches to this human being, His organ on the earth {the Father in me) ; and the complete self-divesting by which Jesus, renouncing His own life, draws everything solely from the fullness of the Father and His gifts {I in him). This is the form in which faith can apprehend here below the unity of the Father and the Son. This relation is the manifestation of their essential unity, which Jesus had affirmed as the contents of His own consciousness. Ver. 39. " They sought therefore3 again* to take him ; but he went forth out of their hands." Perhaps this softened form in which Jesus had just repeated the affirmation of His divinity had had the effect of calming somewhat the irritation of His hearers ; they abandon the purpose of immediately stoning Him. But, while they are plotting that they may arrest Him and bring Him to judgment, He succeeds in breaking the circle which they had formed around Him, and, after having rejoined His disciples, in leaving the temple with them. Nothing in the story leads to the supposition of a miracle. >T. R. reads with 13 Mjj. (A r etc.) more.- i(!BDIX read ev t_i iraTpt; T. R. with ai)Te (that you may believe) ; but B L X some 12 Mjj. : ev avra. Mnn. Cop. read yivao-Knre (may understand). 3 9 Mjj. (B E Gete.) 40 Mnn. omit ov*. X: !.._Te.r|Te. D Itpi™ either before or after ot p.a_., and -reject 176 SECOND PART. they thought that he was speaking ofthe rest of sleep." The words ravra slire, he spoke thus, and . . . , are not superfluous. They signify that this gen eral maxim which He had just stated was applied by Him on the spot to the present case. Weiss wrongly asserts that this application is not found in what follows. It is in the words : I go to awaken him. The epithet : our friend, appeals to their affection for Lazarus, just as the expression : he whom thou lovest, in ver. 3, had made an appeal to His own friendship for him. Some interpreters have thought that it was at this moment that, either through a new message {Neander); or through His prophetic consciousness {Weiss), Jesus Himself learned of the death of Lazarus. But the promise of ver. 4 has proved to us that He had known this cir cumstance in a supernatural way, from the moment when the message of the two sisters had drawn his attention to the condition of His friend. Jesus likes to present death under the figure of sleep, a figure which makes it a phase of life. Strauss found the misunderstanding of the disciples in ver. 12 incon ceivable. Reuss calls it " a misapprehension which has precisely the import of that of Nicodemus." He adds : " Men do not ordinarily sleep several days in succession." But after having heard the words of ver. 4, it was natural that the disciples should not have believed in the possibil ity of the sick man's death. They might therefore think that this sleep of which Jesus was speaking was the crisis of convalescence, and that He wished to bring the sick man out of it healed by awaking him. It is very evident that, in their extreme desire not to go into Judea, they seek for a pretext, good or bad, for deterring Jesus from departing thitherward. In this situation, what improbability is there in this reply ? The word aa-Svoerai signifies here : will be healed of himself, without participation on thy part. The general term Koipvaig {sleep, ver. 13) is derived from KeKoipvrai (ver. 11), and must be determined here by a special complement (rot) virvov). Vv. 14-16. " Then Jesus therefore said to them openly, Lazarus is dead; 15 and I rejoice for your safes that I was not there, to the end that you may be lieve; but let us go to him. 16. Whereupon Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him." After having set aside (vv. 9, 10), the motive alleged by the disciples against this journey, and indicated the reason (vv. 11, 12) which obliges Him to undertake it, Jesus concludes by explaining Himself and gives the order for departing. Tlapptialp, as in xvi. 25 : in strict terms, without figure. There would have been, as we have already seen, a manifest falseness in our Lord's expressing Himself, as He does in ver. 15, if this death had been the intentional effect of His own mode of action. The words : to the end that you may believe are the commentary on the limiting words : for your sakes. Undoubtedly the disciples were already believers; but, as Hengstenberg says, by growing, faith comes into being. At each new stage which it reaches, the preceding stage seems to it in itself nothing more than unbelief. Jesus knows how the increase of faith which is about to be produced in them around this tomb will be necessary for them, in a chap. xi. 14-19. 177 little time, when they shall find themselves before that of their Master. There is something abrupt in the last words : But let us go to him. It is a matter of constraining them and of overcoming in them the last remnant of resistance. They yield, but not without making manifest the unbelief hidden in the depths of the hearts of some of them. The words of Thomas to the other disciples betrays indeed more of love for the person of Jesus than of faith in the wisdom of His course of ac tion. Their meaning is this : " If He actually desires to have Himself killed, let us go and perish with Him." The Thomas who speaks thus is indeed the same whom we shall meet again in xiv. 5, xx. 25 ; much of frankness and resolution, but little of disposition to subordinate the visi ble to the invisible. This quite undesigned consistency in the role of the secondary personages, is, as has been admirably brought out by Luthardt, one of the striking features of John's narrative and one of the best proofs of the historical truth of this work. The name Thomas (in the Aramaic KDXn, Hebrew OXn) signifies twin. The name Didymus, which has in Greek the same meaning, was undoubtedly that by which this apostle was most commonly designated in the churches of Asia Minor, in the midst of which John wrote. Thus is the repetition of this translation in xx. 24 and xxi. 2 explained. Hengstenberg, Luthardt, and Keil see in this name of twin an allusion to the fact that Thomas carried in himself two men, a believer and an unbeliever, a Jacob and an Esau ! He was a Siipvxog man {Keil) ! What wisdom and what love in the manner in which Jesus prepares His disciples for this journey which was so repugnant to their feeling! What elevation in the thoughts which He suggests to their hearts on this occasion ! What grace and appropriateness in the images by which He endeavors to make these thoughts intelligible to them ! II.— The Miracle : w. 17-44. 1. Jesus and Martha : vv. 17-27. Vv. 17-19. " Jesus on his arrival found that he had been in the tomb four days already. 18. Now Bethany was near to Jerusalem, at the distance of about fifteen furlangs; 19 and1 many of the Jews had come to2 Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother's3 death"— For the four days,' see on ver. 6.— 'Spipag is objective, rather than circumstantial. See on v. 6. The expression : He found, marks the situation as it was accord ing to the information given Him on His arrival. John sets forth the nearness of Bethany to Jerusalem, in order to explain the presence of such a large number of Jews (ver. 19). Fifteen stadia make a distance of about forty minutes. This distance is reckoned from Jerusalem as the starting-point, iyyig tov 'lepooolvpuv ; in this way the following preposition 1 X A B C D L X : iroAAot Se instead of «at Mnn., while X B C D1X4 Mnn. read jrpo, 'roAX<"- (or irpo? TT,*) Map_>av K. M. 2T. R, reads 7rpo5 rat irepi Maptfa* «. M. «X B D L Omit av™*, with 12 Mjj. (A. r.etc.), and nearly all the 12 178 SECOND PART. di.6 is explained. The imperfect was refers to the part played by Bethany in this event which was already remote in time at the moment of John's writing. It is unnecessary to suppose that John is thinking of the de struction of this village in the Boman war. The turn of expression which is so common among the Greeks, ai irepi Mdp-8av{Yer. 19), is removed by the Alexandrian reading, but wrongly, even according to Meyer and Tischendorf. It occurs again twice in the New Testament (Acts xiii. 13, xxi. 8). That it was introduced here by the copyists seems to me very questionable. This form of expression points to Martha and Mary as surrounded by the servants of their household ; it implies that the two sisters were in easy circumstances. It is commonly inferred from 1 Sam. xxxi. 13 and 1 Chron. x. 12, that the ceremonies of condolence con tinued for eight days ; but the question in those passages is of royal per sonages. The passages cited by Lightfoot (pp. 1070 ff.) also seem to me insufficient to prove this usage. The sequel proves that the term Jews which is here used preserves the unfavorable sense which it has through out this entire Gospel. Notwithstanding the fact that Martha and Mary were closely connected with these persons, they yet mostly belonged to the party hostile to Jesus. This point is mentioned in order to make prominent the change of feeling which was produced in a certain number of them (vv. 36-45). Vv. 20-24. " When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him; but Mary still sat in the house. 21. Martha therefore said to Jesus : Lord,1 if thou hadst been here, my brother would not have died; 2 22 And3 even now, I know that whatsoever thou shall ask of God, God will give it thee. 23. Jesus says to her, Thy brother shallrise again. 24. Martha says to him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day." Martha, no doubt occupied with her household affairs, was the first to receive the news of the Lord's arrival, and, in her eagerness, she ran to meet Him, without the thought of telling her sister, whose grief was keeping her in the inner apartment. Such as the two sisters are represented to us in Luke x. 38 ff, such precisely we find them again here. The narrative of John seems even to allude to that of his predecessor. On the opposite supposition, the harmony in the characters is only the more striking. The words of Martha (ver. 21) are not a reproach. How could she be ignorant that her brother was dead even before Jesus had received the news of his sickness? How, especially, could she allow herself to complain of His mode of act ing, at the very moment when she is about to ask of Him the greatest of gifts? She simply expresses her regret that Jesus had not been there at the time of the sickness, and this regret serves only to prepare the way for the request which she has to make. She says, according to the T. B. and the Byzantine authorities : ovk iredvfiKei, "would not be at this moment sunk in death," instead of awidavev, " would not have gone through the act of dying," which is read by the Alexandrian authorities (see on ver. 32). 1 B omits Kvpie (Lord). aireSave* is read in X B C D K L X n. s Instead of .Te-VijKtt which is read by A s X B C X reject the aAXa (but) of the T. R, EF?HM8Ufft A nearly all the Mnn., before k»i *v*. chap. xi. 20-26. 179 The T. K. adds, with several Mjj., dXkd before Kal vvv : " but even now." This but is unnecessary : " I know that even now in his death my brother can experience the virtue of Thy prayer." The indefinite expression whatsoever leaves that to be understood which is too great to be expressed. There is an evident reserve of delicacy in this indirect request. It is no doubt the greatness of the work expected which is expressed in the repe tition of the word Bebg, God, at the end of the two clauses of ver. 22 : " Thou art the well-beloved of God, God will give Thee the life of my brother." This confidence is inspired in Martha not only by the general knowledge which she has of Jesus and by the resurrections which had been effected in Galilee, but more especially by the message of ver. 4, and by this sudden arrival, which involved in itself also a promise. There is in Martha's faith more of vivacity than of light. She believes in the miracle of power ; but she is not yet initiated into the spiritual sphere within which alone such an act will assume its true meaning and value. Before satisfying her request, Jesus endeavors to put her into a con dition to receive it. He proceeds, with this end in view, as He did in chaps. v. and vi., by giving to His promise at first the most general form : Thy brotlier shall rise again. Hengstenberg even supposes that He makes no allusion in these words to the approaching resurrection of Lazarus, which, according to him, does not deserve the name of a resurrection. For the return to this wretched earthly existence cannot be called by this fair name. But is it not doing violence to the text, to refuse to see in these words the promise of the event which is to follow? The belief in the resurrection of the pious Israelites, as the opening act of the Messianic kingdom, had been already announced in Dan. xii. 2 and 2 Mace. vii. 9, 14, etc. ; it was generally spread abroad in Israel, and that especially "in the circles in which the Pharisaic teaching prevailed." 1 There is not by any means, in the answer of Martha, an indication, as has been supposed, of a fall from the height of faith to which her heart had been raised. Only, in speaking thus, she wishes to assure herself of the meaning which Jesus Himself attaches to His promise. If she speaks only of the/.?.... resurrection which is to her mind certain, it is that she may give to Jesus the opportunity to explain Himself, and to declare ex pressly what she scarcely dares to hope for in the present case. There is as it were an indirect question here. Everything in Martha breathes a masculine faith, full of energy and activity. But this faith is not as spir itual as it is strong ; it has not yet in a sufficient degree the person of the Lord as its object. Jesus, on His part, endeavors, in His reply, to develop it in this direction. Vv. 25, 26. " Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believes on me, even though he were dead, yet shall he live ; 26 and whosoever lives and believes on me shall never die; believest thou this?" Martha has just spoken of the resurrection as of a future event ; Jesus sets in opposition to 'Schurer, Neutest. Zeitgesch., p. 395 ff. The this general expectation of the resurrection differences which existed in the matter of are completely set forth by this author, 180 SECOND PART. this event His person {iya, I; siul, I ami), as being in reality the resurrec tion. Victory over death is not a physical fact ; it is a moral work, a personal act ; it is the, doing of Jesus Himself (v. 28, 29 : vi. 39, 40, 44) ; and consequently He can accomplish it when he pleases, to-day even, if He wishes, as well as after the passing of ages. Jesus thus brings back the thought of Martha to Himself and gives to her faith its true object. He substitutes for adherence to dogmatic truth confidence in His person. This is what He had also done in chaps, iv. and vi., where, after some moments of conversation, He had substituted Himself for the abstract notions of liv ing water and bread from heaven. After having declared Himself to be the resurrection, Jesus proclaims Himself as the life. It might be supposed that He means to speak of the glorious and perfect life which follows the resurrection. But according to the explanation which follows (vv, 25, 26), it is better to hold, with Luthardt, that Jesus passes from the outward resurrection to the more profound fact which is its spiritual condition. If He is the principle of the physical resurrection, it is because He is that of life in the most exalted sense of that word (v. 26, vi. 51). The spiritual life which He communicates to His own is for them, if they are dead, the pledge of a return to corporeal life ; and, on the other hand, while still living, they are raised by it above the passing accident of physical death. The first declaration applies to Lazarus and to the other believers who were already dead. In virtue of the new life which they have received by faith, they continue living, and consequently they may, at the moment when Jesus wills, be recalled to corporeal existence. The second declaration (ver. 26) applies to the two sisters and to all the believers who were still living ; they remain sheltered from death ; for to die in full fight, in the serene brightness of the life which is in Jesus, and to continue to live in Him (ver. 25) is no more the fact which human language has designated by the name of death (see on vi. 50, viii. 51). Jesus means therefore : In me the dead lives, and the living does not die. The terms to die, in the first clause, and to live, in the second, are to be taken in the strict sense. This saying, by carrying the thought of Martha from the momentary and corporeal fact of the resurrection to its spiritual and permanent prin ciple, gives to the person of Christ its true place in the miracle, and to the miracle its true religious significance. The resurrection of her brother becomes for her as if an emanation of the life of Jesus Himself, a ray of His glory, and thus the means of uniting the soul of Martha to Him, the source of life. Reuss sees in this answer of Jesus a means of setting aside the popular idea of the corporeal resurrection, or at least of divesting it of all theological value. One must be singularly preoccupied by his own theory to draw from this reply a conclusion which is so foreign to the ¦context and so contrary to the perfectly free and clear affirmation of v. 28, 29. Jesus thus returned to the subject from which Martha had turned aside, the resurrection of Lazarus. Before acting, He asks her further : " Believest thou this ? " Ver. 27. " She says to him, Yes, Lord, I believe that thou art the Chiist, the jSo.i of God, who was to come into the world." To see in this confession of CHAP. xi. 27-30. 181 Martha, as some have done, only a simple avowal of a want of understand ing with reference to the preceding words of Jesus : " I do not comprehend all these profound things of which thou art speaking to me, but I hold thee to be the Messiah," is strangely to depreciate its significance. This meaning would give to this scene which is of so grave import a character almost ridiculous. By her answer : Yes, Lord, Martha certainly appro priates to herself all that which Jesus has just affirmed respecting His person. Only, she does not feel herself in a condition to formulate spon taneously her faith in the things which are so new for her, and she makes use of terms which are familiar to her in order to express the thought that Jesus is to her all that which is greatest, and that, whatever He may affirm respecting His person, He will never say too much for the faith of her who speaks to Him. The Christ : the end of the theocratic reve lations and dispensations; the Son of God : evidently something else than the Christ, unless there is an idle tautology here : the personage in whom God manifests Himself as in no other, and who is in an intimate and mysterious relation with God. The expression : who comes into the world, is not a third title, but an apposition explanatory of the two others. The present participle ipxdpevog, who comes, is the present of idea : the one who, according to the divine promise, should come, and in fact comes. The world : the foreseen theatre of his Messianic activity. There is a great psychological truth in this reply of Martha : by designating Him thus, she implicitly acknowledges that He is indeed all that which He has said : the resurrection and the life. — 'Eya -. I whom thou art questioning; renlaTevKa (perfect) : this is a conviction which I have gained. 2. Jesus and Mary : w. 28-37. Vv. 28-30. "And having said this,1 she went away and called Mary, her sister, secretly, saying, The Master is here and calls thee. 29. She, as soon as she heard this, rises2' directly and comes3 to him. 30. Now, Jesus was not yet come into the village, but was still* in the place where Martha had met him." The words : He calls thee, are sufficient to prove that Jesus had indeed given this commission to, Martha. He must have desired to prepare Mary, as He had prepared her sister ; the miracle could not be really beneficial to the one or the other except on this condition. Very prob ably, though Weiss does not admit this idea, the precaution which Martha takes in discharging His message {MBpa, secretly) had been recommended to her by Jesus ; He had heard how Mary was surrounded ; and, if He did not flee from danger, no more did He seek it (see on ver. 30). The liveliness of Mary's emotion on hearing this message is pictured in the verbs in the present tense : iyelperai, she rises, and ipxerai, she comes. -This reading, indeed, is preferable to the Alexandrian readings vyip&v and VPXero, she rose and she came, as in this case Tischendorf and Weiss acknowl- 1 X B C L X ; tovto instead of TavTa, which 'The same (except D) : ijpxero (came) in- is read in the 14 other Mjj. nearly all j;he stead of epXeTat. Mnn. It. Vulg. Syr. « X B C X It. Vulg. Cop. : nv eTt (was still) 'X BCD I. X It. Sch. : ny-pSi) (rose) in- insteadof vv (was). Stead of eyetperat. 182 SECOND PART. edge, who think that the aorist and imperfect were substituted for the present under the influence of the preceding vKovoev, she heard. The Alexandrian reading appears to me to have been formed under the influ ence of iv. 30 ; but there are not the same reasons for presenting in the picturesque form the arrival of Mary here, as that of the Samaritans in chap. iv. In these cases it is painful to see how the position taken by Westcott and Hort deadens their critical tact. Jesus had not entered into Bethany. This was not only because the tomb must necessarily have been outside of the village {Luthardt). There must have been some important reason which detained Him ; otherwise He would have gone directly where His heart summoned Him, to the house of mourning. His purpose was undoubtedly to avoid everything which could attract attention ; and the intention of the following verse is precisely to show how this design failed by reason of a will superior to His own, which had resolved to give to this miracle the greatest possible splendor. Jesus had done what He ought; God did what He wished. There happened here something like what is related in Matt. ix. 31 ; Mk. vii. 24, 36. Vv. 31, 32. " The Jews therefore who were with her in tlie house and were comforting her, when they saw that she rose up suddenly and went out, followed her, supposing l that she was going 2 to the tomb to weep there. 32. When therefore Mary had come to theplace where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell at3 his feet, saying to him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brether* would not have died." One and the same thought had filled the soul of the two sisters and perhaps that of the dying man in his last hours : If Jesus were here ! But on this common foundation of grief and regret some significant differences between the two sisters appear. We have remarked the mas culine character of Martha's faith. Mary, on the contrary, seemed to be altogether overwhelmed by her grief: hers was a nature wholly feminine. And, like persons of vivid impressions, she makes no energetic effort to overcome the dejection which got the mastery of her. She lets herself fall at Jesus' feet, which Martha had not done ; it is, moreover, the place which she loves (Luke x. 39 ; John xii. 3). She does not add to the ex pression of her grief, as does her sister, a word of faith and hope. There are, finally, in the exclamation which is common to her and Martha, two shades of differences which are not accidental. Instead of ire&vvKet, he is dead (the actual state), which the Byzantine authorities place in the mouth of Martha, ver. 21, she says : diridave : he has done the act of dying; it is as if she were still at the cruel moment in which the separation was ac complished. This shade of difference in the received reading (ver. 27) speaks in favor of its authenticity. Then the pronoun yov, of me, is placed in the mouth of Mary before o &Se?.avei>, cMap. xi. 31-34. 183 sensibility given up, without the least trace of reaction, to the feeling which absorbs her. What truth in every feature of this picture ! Jesus knows the human heart too well to attempt to apply to Mary the method which He has just employed with Martha. With a grief like hers, there is no need of teaching and speaking; there is need of sympathizing and acting. Vv. 33, 34. " When therefore Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who were with her weeping, he shuddered in his spirit and was troubled,1 34 and he said, Wherehaveyoulaidhim. They say unto him, Lord, come and see." The particle therefore establishes a relation of causality between the grief of Mary and those with her and the extraordinary emotion by which Jesus is seized at this moment. This relation is likewise indicated by the words : when He said, and by the repetition of the participle weeping, which, dike a refrain, ends the two clauses. It is now generally acknowledged that the term ipfipip-i aaBai (from flpipd&iv, to neigh, to roar) can only designate a shudder of in J dignation. See the thorough demonstration in the essay of GumlicW, Stud. u. Krit, 1862, pp. 260-269. This sense is applicable even to passages such as Matt. ix. 30,*Mark i. 43, in which this word marks the stern tone of menace. We must set aside therefore, first of all, the meaning : to be seized with grief {Liicke), and to groan deeply {Ewald). But what can be the object of Jesus' indignation ? According to Chrysostom, Cyril, and other Greek interpreters, this is the same emotion which He experiences on hearing the sobs and which He endeavors in vain to master. Accord ing to Chrysostom, to wevpan, His spirit, designates the object of His indig nation (He is indignant against His own spirit, that is to say, against the inward weakness which He feels), while Cyril sees in the Spirit the divine nature of Jesus reacting against His human nature ; the same nearly, even at the present day, Hilgenfeld. The meaning given by Chrysostom, having very little naturalness in itself, would in any case require the use of fvxv, the soul, instead of izvevpa, the spirit. For the soul is the seat of the natural emotions ; comp. xii. 27 ; nvevpa, the spirit, designates the domain of the higher impressions appertaining to the relation of the soul to the divine. And if Jesus really struggled against a sympathetic emo tion, how was it that He surrendered Himself to it the very next moment with perfect simplicity (ver. 35) ? The explanation of Cyril tends to make the divine being and the human in Jesus two distinct personalities. Meyer and Weiss think that Jesus was indignant at the hypocritical tears of the Jews, which form a shocking contrast to the sincere grief of Mary. Reuss also inclines to this idea : Jesus revolts at the ostentation of this insincere grief. But the two participles weeping are in a relation of agreement, not of contrast. Others apply this movement of indignation to the want of faith which Jesus discerned at once in Mary and in the Jews {Keim, Strauss). But in the word weeping, twice repeated, the notion of grief is expressed, rather than that of unbelief ; and a moment later, Jesus also weeps Himself! Some interpreters {Calvin, Olshausen, Luthardt, Hengstenberg, Keil) think 1 D some Mnn. Sah. : erapax^-, tw itvevpari to. epfipiptiipevo,. 184 SECOND PART. that the indignation of Jesus is directed against the power of death and against Satan, the invisible enemy who wields this terrible weapon against men (viii. 44). It would be necessary to admit, with this explanation, that, while the indignation felt by Jesus (ver. 33), is directed towards the murderer, the tears which He sheds in ver. 35 are the expression of the pity with which the victims inspire Him. But how does it happen that nothing of a like nature manifests itself in Jesus in the other resurrections which He has effected ? There must be in this case a peculiar circum stance which produces this altogether exceptional emotion. An analo gous emotion is mentioned only in xiii. 21, at the moment when Jesus sees the treason of Judas in preparation: " He was troubled in his spirit." The spirit is the seat of the religious emotions, as the soul is that of the natural affections. Thus in xii. 27, Jesus says : My soul is troubled, because the foreseeing of His sufferings makes His nature shudder, while here and in chap. xiii. it is in His spirit that He is agitated, because in both cases He sees Himself in immediate contact with evil in its blackest form, and because with a holy horror he feels the nearness of the invisible being who has taken possession of the heart of Judas, and (in our passage) of that of His declared enemies. This parallel throws fight on the groaning of Jesus in ver. 33. On one side, the sobs which He hears around Him urge Him to accomplish the raising of His friend to life ; but, on the other hand, He knows that to yield to this solicitation, and to cause the glory " of the Father to break forth conspicuously at this moment, is to sign the sentence of His own death. For it is to drive to extremes His enemies and him who leads them to act. From the most glorious of His miracles they will draw a ground of condemnation against Him. A portion of these very persons whose sighs were pressing Him to act, will be among those who will cause Him to pay with His life for the crime of having van quished death. Horror seizes Him at this thought; there is a diabolical perversity here which agitates His pure soul even to its lowest depths. We may recall the words of Jesus : " I have done many good works ; for which do you stone me?" This is what is most directly referred to in these words. This agitation extended so far as to produce in Jesus an outward commotion, a physical trembling, expressed by the words : He was troubled. But the expression is chosen by the evangelist in such a way as to remove any idea of an unreasonable or merely passive agitation : the question therefore is not of a simple reaction of the moral on the physical with the purpose of restraining within Himself the impression produced upon Him ( Weiss), or with that of preparing Himself by an energetic resolution for the conflict which He was about to engage in with the devil and with death {Augustine, Calvin, Hengstenberg, Keif). The Greek term can scarcely express such ideas. It seems to me that the physical agitation indicated by these words : He was troubled, is the mark of an energetic reaction by which Jesus, in some sort, threw off the emo tion which had for a moment overpowered Him and recovered the full control of His being. This internal revolution terminated in this sudden and brief question ; . Where have you laid him ? The two Kai, and, bring out chap. xi. 35-37. 185 the intimate connection between these different emotions which succeed each other so rapidly within Him. Vv. 35-37. "Jesus wept.1 36. The Jews therefore said, Behold how he laved him. 37. But some of them said, could not lie who opened tlie eyes of Ihe blind, have caused that this man also should not have died ? " The storm has passed; on approaching the tomb Jesus feels only a tender sympathy for the grief which had filled the heart of His friend at the moment of separation and for that which the two sisters had experienced at the same hour. The term SaKpheiv, to weep, does not indicate, like Kkakiv (ver. 33), sighs, but tears; it is the expression of a calm and gentle grief. Baur does not allow that one can weep over a friend whom one is to see again. This feature, according to him, proves the unauthenticity of the narrative. Assuredly, if this Gospel were, as he believes it to be, the product of speculative thought, this thirty-fifth verse would not be found in it; Jesus would raise His friend to life with the look of triumph and a buoyant heart, as the true Logos who had nothing human but the appearance of mail. But the evangelist has said from the first : " The Word was made flesh" and he maintains the proposition with perfect consistency. "One does not raise the dead with a heart of stone," says Hengstenberg. Heb. ii. 17 teaches us that he who wishes to assist an unfortunate one, should, first of all, sink deeply into the feeling of the suffering from which he is about to save him. It is a strange fact that it is precisely the Gospel in which the divinity of Jesus is most strikingly affirmed, that leads us also best to know the profoundly human side of His life. The very criticism of the German savant proves how little such a Jesus is the child of specu lation. The solemn brevity of the clauses in these verses, 34, 35, must be observed. Even at the side of this tomb we find the inevitable division which takes place about the person of Jesus at each of His manifestations in acts or words. Among the Jews themselves there are a certain number whose hearts are moved at the sight of these tears ; sympathy for misfortune is neutral ground, the purely human domain, on which all souls meet which are not completely hardened. But some among them find in these tears of Jesus a reason for suspecting His character. One of two things : either He did not have the friendship for Lazarus which he now affects to feel, or He did not really possess the miraculous power of which He claimed to have given the proof in the healing of the man born blind ; in any case, there is something suspicious in His conduct. Some inter preters give a favorable meaning to this question of the Jews, ver. 37 {Liicke, Tholuck, de Wette, Gumlieh and also, up to a certain point, Keil). But the evangelist identifies, by the very form of the expression {some , among them), these Jews of ver. 37 with those of ver. 46. And with this sense it is not easy to understand the relation which can have existed between this question of the Jews and the new emotion of Jesus, ver. 38. Strauss finds it strange that these Jews do not appeal here to resurrec- 1 X D some Mnn. read «at (and) before e.aicpvo-e*. 186 second part. tions of the dead which Jesus had accomplished in Galilee, rather than to the healing of the man born bhnd. But it is precisely an evangelist of the second century who would not fiave failed to put into the mouth of the Jews an allusion to these resurrections, which were at that time well-known throughout all the Church by the reading of the Synoptics. The historical fidelity of the narrative of John appears precisely from the fact that the inhabitants of Jerusalem appeal to the last striking miracle accomplished by Jesus in this very city and before their eyes. This heal ing had occasioned so many discussions and so many different judgments that it naturally presents itself to their thought. 3. Jesus and Lazarus : vv. 38-44. Vv. 38, 39. " Jesus therefore, shuddering in himself again, comes to the sep ulchre; it was a cave and a stone was placed before it. 39. Jesus says, Take away the stone. The sister of the dead man 1 Martha, says to him, Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he has been dead four days." The new inward dis turbance which Jesus feels is evidently called forth by the malevolent remark of the Jews (ver. 37) ; John himself gives us to understand this by the therefore (ver. 38). But this agitation seems to have been less pro found than the first, and more readily overcome. This very natural detail is a new proof ofthe fidelity of the narrative. The sepulchre was a cave dug in the rock, either horizontally or verti cally. The verb iniKeiro signifies, in the first case, that the stone was placed before the entrance of the cave ; in the second, that it was placed on its opening. Numerous tombs are seen around Jerusalem both of the one form and the other. If the tomb which is shown at the present day as that of Lazarus, was really such, it was of the second sort. It is a cave hollowed out in the rock into which one descends by a narrow staircase of twenty-six steps. Robinson has proved the non-authenticity of the tra dition on this point, as on many others. The stones by which these caves were closed might easily be removed ; they were designed only to keep off wild beasts. There is between the second movement of indignation in Jesus and the decisive command : Take away the stone, a relation anal ogous to that which we have noticed between the first emotion of this kind and the question : Where have you laid him ? We can easily im agine the state of expectation into which this question threw the whole company. Did the remark of Martha (ver. 39), proceed, as some interpreters think, from a feeling of incredulity. But could she who hoped for the return of her brother to life before the promise of Jesus (vv. 22, 23), have doubted after such a declaration ? This is impossible. By this remark she does not by any means wish to prevent the opening of the sepulchre ; she simply expresses the anxiety which is caused in her mind by the painful sensation about to be experienced by Jesus and the spectators because of one who was so near and dear to her. As the dead man's sister, she feels ' The MSS. are divided between nOvriKOTo, (T. R. with the Byzantines) and TeTe^evTijicoTo. (X A B C D K L II). chap. xi. 38-4... 187 a kind of embarrassment and confusion. We must recall to mind how closely the idea of defilement was connected, among the Jews, with that of death and corruption. Here, therefore, is an exclamation dictated by a feeling of respect for Him to whom she is speaking : " Lord," and by a sort of delicacy for the person of him who is in question : the sister of the dead man. It has been thought {Weiss, Keil) that the affirmation of Mar tha : by this time he stinketh, was on her part only a supposition, since she justifies it logically by adding : For he is there four days already. But we must rather see in these words the declaration of a fact which she has herself ascertained by visiting the sepulchre; comp. ver. 31. The words : For he is there . . . already, indicate the cause, not the proof, of the fact which the care of the two sisters had not been able to prevent. This reflection, far from proving, as Weiss thinks, that Lazarus had not been embalmed, implies, on the contrary, that he had been, with all pos sible care, but only after the manner of the Jews. Among the Egyptians the entrails and everything which readily decays were removed, while among the Jews the embalming was limited to wrapping the body in perfumes, which could not long arrest corruption. The expectation of Jesus' arrival had certainly not prevented them, as some have supposed, from performing this ceremony. Does not ver. 44 show that Lazarus had his limbs enveloped with bandages hke other dead persons (comp. xix. 40) ? But even if Martha's remark did not arise from a feeling of incred ulity, the fact indicated might nevertheless occasion in her a failing of faith at this decisive moment ; so Jesus exhorts her to raise- her faith to the whole height of the promise which He has made to her. Vv. 40-42. " Jesus says to her, Did I not say to thee, that if thou believest thou shalt see1 the glory of God? 41. They took away the stone2 therefore. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. 42. As for myself, I knew indeed that thou dost always hear me ; but I said it because of the multitude who surround me, that they may believe that thou didst send me." Some interpreters refer the words : Did I not say . . . ? to the conversation in w. 23-27. And it is certainly, indeed, to the expressions : He who believes on me (vv. 27 and 26), and Believest thou this? (ver. 27) that our thoughts are turned by the words of Jesus: If thou believest . . . But the characteristic expression of our verse : the glory of God, is wanting in these declarations, while it constitutes the salient feature of the promise of ver. 4. It is therefore this last promise that Jesus especially recalls to Martha. He well knew that it had been re ported to the two sisters by the messenger ; it had formed the starting- point of the conversation of vv. 23-27, which was only its confirmation and development. The glory of God is here, exactly as in Bom. vi. 4, the splendid triumph of the omnipotence of God, in the service of His love, over death and corruption (ver. 39). This is the magnificent spectacle 1 Instead of oipci which is read by T. R. words ov i\v o te. iojku, Kctue*o. (where the dead with K U r n, 15 Mjj. read oifnj. was laid) ; A K n more briefly: ov ij* fwhere 2 X BCDLX; to* ktdov (the stone) simply. he was). T. E. adds, with 9 Mjj. Byz. (E G H etc.), the 188 SECOND PART. which Jesus promises to Martha, and which He sets in opposition to the painful impressions which she apprehends for the bystanders and her self, when once the stone shall have been taken away. There is no reproach in the words : Did I not say . . . ? as if Martha were wanting in faith in speaking as she did. In the presence of the manifest signs of dissolution already commenced, Jesus exhorts her to a supreme act of faith, by giving her His promise as a support. She has already climbed the arduous slopes of the mountain ; only one last summit to reach, and the spectacle of the glory of God, of life triumphant over death, will display itself to her eyes. Man would always see in order to believe ; Martha is called to give an example of the opposite course : to believe in order to see. These words of Jesus do not imply that He makes the ful fillment of His promise depend, as Meyer, Weiss and others think, on Martha's faith. He is now decidedly pledged and cannot withdraw. What He subordinates to the supreme act of faith which He demands of her, is not the miracle, it is the joy which she will have from it {"see the glory"). The bodily eye beholds only the external wonder ; but the divine love putting itself at the service of man to triumph over death — this is a spec tacle which one beholds only with the eyes of the soul. It was the inner sense for beholding it which Jesus had endeavored to form in Martha in the conversation which He had just had with her ; He must not lose, at the decisive moment, the fruit of this effort. The received reading : the stone from the place where the dead was laid, seems to be a paraphrase. The Alexandrian text reads briefly : the stone; see our translation. This reading, however, does not easily explain the origin of the other two. May not that of A K n : the stone from the place where he was, be the primitive text? Its brevity {ov vv) explains, on one side, the Byzantine gloss, and, on the other, the omission, in the Alexandrian documents, of this explanatory clause. Jesus lifts his eyes : the visible heaven is for man the most eloquent witness of the . invisible wealth and power of God. By penetrating with His look its infinite depths, Jesus seeks inwardly the face of the Father ; what more human ! it is indeed in reality the Word made flesh (comp. xvii. 1). The miracle is already accomplished to the view of Jesus ; this is the reason why He renders thanks as if for a thing which is done : Thou hadst heard me. He thus confirms the view pronounced by Martha with relation to His miracles (ver. 22) ; they are so many prayers heard. But what distinguishes His position from that of other divine messengers, who have accomplished similar works by the same means, is the perfect assur ance of being heard, with which He addresses God. He draws freely, as Son, from the divine treasure. Besser admirably says: "No doubt, He performed all His miracles through faith, but through faith which was peculiar to Him, that of being the Son of God manifested in the flesh." If Jesus expresses His gratitude aloud, as He does here, it is not, as He Himself adds, because there is anything extraordinary in the conduct of the Father towards Him on this occasion. This act of thanksgiving is anything but an exclamation wrested from Him by surprise at an excep tional hearing of prayer ; constantly heard by the Father, He thanks Him chap. xi. 43, 44. 189 continually. That which, at this solemn moment, impels Him to give thanks to His Father aloud, is the sight of the people who surround Him. He has prepared His disciples and the two sisters, in the special conversa tions with them, to behold and understand the work which He is about to do. He desires also to dispose the people whom His Father has unex pectedly gathered around this tomb, to behold the glory qf God, that is to say, to. see in the miracle, not only a wonder, but a sign. Otherwise the astonishment which they experience would be barren ; it could not result in faith. Here is the reason why Jesus expresses aloud, at this moment, the sentiment of filial thankfulness which incessantly fills His heart. Criticism has called this prayer "a prayer of ostentation" {Strauss, Weisse, Baur), and has found in this circumstance a ground for suspecting the authenticity of the narrative. It has not grasped the meaning of the act. Jesus does not render thanks because of the people, but He expresses aloud His act of thanksgiving because of the people. The Jews had said of the healing of the man born blind : As an infraction of the Sabbath, this cannot be a divine work. By rendering thanks to God on this day in presence of all the people, even before performing the miracle, Jesus positively calls upon God to grant or to refuse Him His cooperation. In the face of such a prayer God must be recognized either as the guarantor of His mission or as the accomplice in His imposture. Comp. the test of Carmel in the life of Elijah, and the quite similar expression of Jesus Himself in Luke v. 22-24. If Lazarus rises and comes forth at the call of Jesus, it will be God who has displayed His arm ; Jesus will be recog nized as sent by Him. If not, truly let all His other miracles be attributed to Beelzebub, and let Him be declared an impostor ! Such is the situation as Jesus' act of thanksgiving establishes it. It is interesting to compare this expression : Thou hast heard me, with the assertion of Reville, following Scholten and saying: "The fourth Gospel has no knowledge of Jesus praying as a man." {Revue de thiol., 1865, iii., p. 316.) Vv. 43, 44. "And after having spoken thus, he cried with a laud voice, Laz arus, come forth. 44. And x the dead man came forth, his feet and hands bound with bandages ; and his face was wrapped in a napkin. Jesus says to them, Loose him and let him2 go." The loud voice is the expression of a determined will which has the feeling of its own sovereignty. As one awakens a man from sleep by calling him by his name, so Jesus brings back Lazarus from death which is only a more profound sleep (vv. 11, 12) by loudly calling him. " Undoubtedly these external signs are only, as Hengstenberg says, for the persons present ; the power of raising to fife resides, not in the voice, but in the will which expresses itself through it;" we will rather say: in the power of God of which Jesus disposes by virtue of the hearing of His prayer. In speaking to the daughter of Jairus and to the young man of Nain, He simply 6aid : Arise, or : Awake, because they were lying on the bed or the bier ; here 1 Kai is wanting in B C L Sah. It is found »B C L read «vtov after aeT», in all the other Mjj. (including X) and Vss. 190 SECOND PART. He says : Come forth, because Lazarus is shut within the sepulchre. The simplicity and brevity of these two words : Seipo _|_j (literally, Here with out !) form a magnificent contrast with their efficacy. How can Weiss assert that the voice of Jesus does nothing but recall to the light Lazarus whom God had raised to life ? Do not the words of vv. 19, 520 show us the power of God really acting through Jesus, and Jesus Himself raising the dead to life by this power of which He is the organ ? The act of coming forth, ver. 44, presents no difficulty, either because the bandages by which the shroud was fastened were sufficiently loose to allow movements, or because each limb was wrapped separately, as was the practice among the / Egyptians. The detail : His face was wrapped about with a napkin, is the pencil-stroke of an eye-witness and recalls the ineffaceable impression produced on the bystanders by this spectacle of a living man in the costume of the dead. While they remained motion less with astonishment, Jesus, with perfect composure and as if nothing extraordinary had occurred, invites them to participate in the work: Each to his office ; I have raised to hfe ; it is for you to loose him. The com mand : Let him go, recalls that which Jesus gave to Jairus and his wife after having raised their child to life. Nothing disturbs His calmness after these unparalleled works which He has just accomplished. The term virdyeiv, go away, has something victorious in it, altogether like the command of Jesus to the impotent man who was healed: Take up thy bed, and walk! The resurrection of Lazarus is the miracle of friendship, as the wonder of Cana is that of filial piety ; and this, not only because the affection of Jesus for the family of Bethany was the cause of it, but especially be cause Jesus performed it with a distinct consciousness that, in raising His friend, He was rendering more certain and hastening His own death (comp. vv. 8-16 and vv. 33-38). The self-devotion of friendship rises here to the point of heroism. John had understood this. This thought is the 'soul of his narrative ; it appears clearly from the following passage. III. — The effect produced by the miracle : w. 45-47. 1. And first, the immediate effect on the spectators : Vv. 45, 46. " Many therefore l of the Jews, those who had come2 to Mary and had seen that which3 lie had done, believed on him. 46. But some ofthem went away to the Pharisees and told them, that which3 Jesus had done." Again a division among the spectators, and a still more profound one than on any of the previous occasions. For it penetrated even into the midst of the Jewish party. It is impossible, indeed, to include the some of whom ver. 46 speaks in the class of the nalTuol, many, of ver. 45, and to ascribe to them, as a consequence, a benevolent intention in the step which they take before the enemies of Jesus, as Origen thought. There is an anti thesis between the two subjects : many and some, as between the two verbs : 1 X : -e instead of ov*. 8 Instead of a, o is read in B C D iu ver. 45, 2 D ; tw* • a .. ovtio v instead of oi « k,,0 vice, and in C P M in yer. 46, chap. xi. 45-50. 191 believed (ver. 45) and went away (ver. 46). Only it must be carefully no ticed that the first (the iroXkol, of ver. 45) are not merely a part of the visitors of Martha and Mary, but include them all ; this is indicated by the participles in the nominative with the article ol : Those who had come and who had seen. In the opposite case, the participles ought to be in the genitive : many of those who came and saw. The some of ver. 46 are therefore other Jews (sf avrov refers to the word 'lovSalav alone), who saw without having come, either inhabitants of Bethany, or visitors who were not with Mary when she had run to the tomb and who had not been present at the scene. This explains the difficult expression : " who came to Mary." Why to Mary only ? Is she named here as the one best known {Weiss) or as the most afflicted {Luthardt, Keil) . Both of these explana tions are very unnatural. She is named because it was near her that the Jews who came found themselves when they went to the sepulchre and with her that they had been witnesses of the miracle (comp. vv. 31, 33). 2. The more remote effect of the resurrection of Lazarus : vv. 47-53. Vv. 47-50. " The chief priests and Pharisees therefore gathered an assembly, ahd they said, What shall we do? For this man does many miracles. 48. If we let him alone, all will believe on him, and the Romans will come and they will destroy both1 our place and nation. 49. But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high-priest of that year, said to them : You know nothing at all, 50 and you do not consider 2 that it is better for us 3 that one man should diejor the people, and that the whole nation should not perish." The resurrection of Lazarus was not the cause of Jesus' death; but it occasioned and hastened the decree of His condemnation. The cup was full ; this made it overflow. The Pharisees are specially named because they were the instigators of this hostile meeting (ver. 46; ix. 45); but it was the chief priests who officially convoked it. The absence of the article before awiSpwv might be explained by supposing that John is here using this word as a proper name. It is more natural, however, to take the term in the general meaning of assembly or council, which it has also in the pro fane Greek. The present nrowvpev, " what do we " takes the place of a future ; it makes prominent the imminence of the danger. " It is abso lutely necessary to do something, but what?" "Ore because ofthe fact that. " His doing must decide ours." The fear expressed in ver. 48 was not without foundation. The least commotion might serve the Bomans as a pretext for depriving the people of Israel of the remnant of inde pendence which they still enjoyed, and in that case what would become of the power of the Sanhedrim? The disquietude of the rulers has ref erence especially to the destruction of their power. This is emphatically expressed by the position of the pronoun j/iov {of us, our) before the two substantives. Jesus reproduced this thought of the rulers in the words of the laborers in the vineyard, Matt. xxi. 38 : "Let us kill him and secure the inheritance." Jerusalem, Israel, belong to them. " Our place " natur- - » n T. T° V8S' r" "r. befOTe 7" ™°V- 3The MSS- ^ diVlded between W* (™) X B D L some Mnn. Orig. read Koyii,a9, (T. R. with AEG etc.), and vat* (you (B D L ID-tent, of -taAoyt^., M X T). X omits boijh * 192 SECOND PART. ally designates the capital, as the seat of their government, rather than the temple {Liicke, de Wette, etc.), or the whole of Judea {Bengel). In the first sense, this term is also more naturally connected with the following expression : our nation; that which we govern from this place. As they speak from a political point of view, contrasting nation with nation, they employ the term eiS-voc, and not ladg, which is the name of honor for the people of Israel. The expression : one of them, hardly allows us to suppose that Caiaphas was presiding over the assembly. Although, indeed, it seems now to be proved that the high-priest was at the same time president of the Sanhe drim {Schurer, Lehrb. der N. T. Zeitgesch, p. 411), we must not forget that this was not a regular meeting (ver. 47). In the midst of a company of irresolute spirits, who are wavering between conscience and interest, an energetic man, who boldly denies the rights of conscience and unscrupu lously puts forward reasons of state, has always the chance of carrying his point. If this had occurred in the best days of the theocracy, the expression : High-priest of that year, would be incomprehensible ; for, ac cording to the law, the pontificate was for life. But, since the Boman dominion, the masters of the country fearing the power which a perma nent office gives, had adopted the custom of frequently replacing one high-priest by another. According to Josephus {Antiq., xviii. 2. 2), the Boman governor Valerius Gratus "took away the high-priestly office from Ananus and conferred it on Ishmael ; then, having deposed the latter a little while afterwards, he estabhshed as high-priest Eleazar, the son of Ananus : after a year had elapsed, he deposed this last person and nomi nated Simon in his place ; he held the office only one year, and Joseph, surnamed Caiaphas, was made his successor." Caiaphas remained in office from the year 25 to the year 36 of our era; consequently, the entire ministry of Jesus was passed under his pontificate. These frequent changes justify the expression of the evangelist, and deprive criticism of the right to assert that the author of our Gospel was ignorant of the fact that the high-priesthood, from its foundation, was a life-office. But if Caiaphas had been high-priest for eleven official years, how could St. John use three times (vv. 49-51 ; xviii. 13) the expression : " High-priest of that year ? " We find the pronoun heivog used here in the particularly em phatic sense which it has so frequently in this Gospel ; not, that more remote year, in opposition to some other nearer one, but, that unique, decisive year, in which the Messiah was put to death and the priesthood, with the theocracy, came to its end. The apostrophe of Caiaphas to his colleagues has a certain character of rudeness. This feature, as Hengstenberg ob serves, agrees with the behavior of the Sadducean sect to which Caiaphas belonged; comp. Acts iv. 6 and v. 17, and Josephus, Antiq., xx. 9. 1. In Bell. Jud., ii. 8, 14, this historian says : " The Pharisees are friendly to each other, and cultivate harmony among themselves with a view to the com mon benefit ; but the manners of the Sadducees are much more rude both towards each other and towards their equals, whom they treat as strangers." Hengstenberg takes Sialoyl^eaBe in an intransitive sense and the chap. xi. 51, 52. 193 following on in the sense of because : You do not consider, seeing that it is more advantageous that ..." But it is more natural to make the clause which begins with bn the content of Sia%oyl&a8e : " You know nothing and you do not consider that . . ." The reading StaMyt&ade : " You do not know how to clear up by reasoning ..." is preferable to the simple Xoyi&aBe which results from negligence or from a mistaken correction. The reading iiplv, for us, has fundamentally the same sense as the variant vpiv,for you; but it somewhat better disguises the egoistic and personal character of the opinion expressed (comp. the f/pav of ver. 48). The use ofthe terms habg and iBvog in ver. 50 is not arbitrary. The first (corresponding to the Hebrew am) designates the multitude of individuals forming the theocratic nation, in opposition to the single individual who is to perish, while the second, answering to goi, designates Israel as a political body in contrast with the foreign nationality, that of the Bomans. Vv. 51, 52. " Now he did not say this of himself; but being high-priest of that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also that he might gather in one body the children of God who are scattered abroad." This opinion of the high-priest was made especially remarkable by the contrast between the divine truth which it expressed and the diabolical design which inspired it.- The evangelist calls attention to this. Some interpreters {Luthardt, Bruckner) deny that John ascribes the gift of prophecy here to the high-priest as such. It was not as high priest, but as high-priest of that year, that Caiaphas utteredrthis prophetic declaration. But the relation between the present participle av, being, and the aorist, npoe^vTevaev, he prophesied, leads us naturally to the idea that the evangelist attaches to the office of Caiaphas the prophetic character of the words which he uttered at this moment. This must be acknowledged even if we are to find here only a Jewish superstition. In the Old Testa ment, the normal centre of the theocratic people is, not the royal office, but the priesthood. In all the decisive moments for the life of the people, it is the high-priest who is the organ of God for passing over to the people the decision with which its salvation is connected (Exod. xxviii. 30; Num. xxvii. 21 ; 1 Sam. xxx. 7 ff). It is true that this prerogative came not from a prophetic gift, but from the possession of a mysterious power the Urim and Thummim. It is also true that from the time of the captivity and even from the reign of Solomon, there is no longer any question of this power (see Keil, Bibl. Archxol, p. 191). But the high-priest nevertheless remained by reason of his very office the head of the theocratic body and this in spite of the moral contrast which might exist between the spirit of his office and his personal character. If the heart of the hirii- pnest was in harmony with his office, his heart became the normal organ of the divme decision. But if there was opposition in this personage between he disposition of his heart and the holiness of his office, it must be expected that, as in the present case, the divine oracle would be seen coming from t this consecrated mouth in the form of the most diabolical maxmn What, indeed, more worthy of the Divine Spirit than to con demn His degenerate organ thus to utter the truth of God at the very 194 SECOND PART. moment when he was speaking as the organ of his own particular inter est ! Without attributing to Caiaphas a permanent prophetic gift, John means to say that, at this supreme moment for the theocracy and for humanity, it was not without the participation of the Divine activity that the most profound mystery of the plan of God was proclaimed by him in the form of the most detestable maxim. John has already more than once remarked how the adversaries of Jesus, when speaking derisively, were prophesying in spite of themselves : " No one knows whence he is" (vii. 27). " Will he go and teach the Greeks" (vii. 35) ? If the devil often travesties the words of God, it pleases God sometimes to parody those of the devil, by giving to them an unexpected truth. This " divine irony " manifested itself in the highest degree on this occasion, which was the prelude to the accomplishment of the most divine mystery under the form of the most monstrous act. According to some interpreters, the bn is not a direct complement of the verb he prophesied. Meyer : " he prophesied as to the fact that ..." Luthardt,Weiss,Keil: " he prophesied, seeing that really Jesus was to ..." Ver. 52 is what has led them to these explanations, because this verse goes in fact beyond the import of the saying of Caiaphas. But it is quite unnatural to take this word : he prophesied, in an absolute sense : John certainly did not mean to insist so especially on this idea of prophecy. The meaning is simply : " he declared prophetically that to ... " As to ver. 52, it is an explanatory appendix, which John adds in order to indi cate that in the divine thought the force of the expression : one for all, had a far wider application than that which Caiaphas himself gave it. John never forgets his Greek readers, and he loses no occasion of recalling to them their part in the accomplishment of the divine promises. If we take into consideration the parallelism between this ver. 52 and the saying of x. 16, we shall have no hesitation in applying the term children of God to heathen predisposed to faith through the revelation of the Logos (i. 4, 10) ; the sense is the same as that in which John uses the expressions: to be of God (viii. 47), to be of the truth (xix. 37). The term children of God naturally involves an anticipation; it designates the actual condition of these future believers from the point of view of its result which was to come. Meyer, Luthardt and others prefer to explain this term from the standpoint of the divine predestination. But we should be obliged to infer from this that all the rest of the heathen are the objects of an opposite predestination. Ver. 53. "From this day forth, therefore, they took counsel together 1 to the end that they might put him to death." The therefore intimates that the proposition of Caiaphas was accepted {Luthardt), probably in silence and without the intervention of an official vote. From this day forward, a permanent conspiracy was organized against the life of Jesus. The daily conferences of His adversaries became, according to the expression of Lange, " meetings of Messianic murder." There was no more hesitation 'Insteitd of o-v*e/_ovAev_-a*To, x B P4 Mnn, Orig. (once) read epovkevo-am. chap. xi. 53-56. 195 as to the end ; the indecision was henceforth only with reference to the time and the means. Such was the importance of this meeting and con sequently, in an indirect way, that ofthe resurrection of Lazarus. 3. The sojourn at Ephraim : w. 54-57. Jesus is forced to withdraw to a retired place. On their part, the rulers take a new step in the path on which they have now entered. Vv. 54-57. " Jesus tiierefore abode no more openly among the Jews; but he departed thence and went into the country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim; 1 and he remained 2 there with his 3 disciples. 55. Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand; and many went up to Jerusalem out of the country before the Passover, to purify themselves. 56. They sought for Jesus therefore and said among themselves, as they stood in the temple, What think you? Do you think that he will not come to the feast? 57 '. Now the chief 'priests and the Pharisees had also * given commandment 5 that, if any one knew where he was, he should declare it, in order that they might take him." Ephraim is mentioned sometimes with Bethel (2 Chron. xiii. 19 ; Joseph. Bell. Jud. iv. 9. 9). This city was therefore a few leagues northward of Jerusalem; according to Eusebius, eight miles, according to Jerome, twenty miles to the northeast of that capital. This locality, by reason of its retired situa tion and its proximity to the desert, was favorable to the design of Jesus. He might in the solitude prepare His disciples for His approaching end and, if He was pursued, He might retire into the desert. This desert is, as Lange says, the northern extremity of the barren strip of country by which the plateau of the mountains of Judah and Benjamin is separated throughout its whole length from the valley of the Jordan and the Dead Sea. From this place Jesus could, at will, on the approach of the Pass over, either join the pilgrims from Galilee who went directly to Jerusalem through Samaria, or go down to Jericho, in the plain of the Jordan, to put Himself at the head of the caravan which came from Persea. We know from the Synoptics that He took the latter course. Herd (ver. 54) is not synonymous with ovv ; the meaning is : " He confined Himself there to the society of His disciples ; " and not only : He was there with them. 'E/c tv( x"pdg (ver. 55) does not refer to the country of Ephraim in par ticular {Grotius, Olshausen) but to the country region in general, in opposition to the capital (ver. 54) : " They went up from different parts of the coun try." The law did not prescribe special purifications before the Passover ; but, in several passages of the Old Testament, it was ordained that the. people should purify themselves on the eve of any important occasion (Gen. xxxv. 2 ; Exod. xix. 10, 11, etc.). This principle had naturally been applied to the Passover feast (2 Chron. xxx. 16-20). Ver. 56 vividly depicts the restless curiosity of these country people who, assembled in groups in the temple, were discussing with reference i X L It. Valg. Iren. read E0pe^ instead of * n Mjj. (X A B etc.) 35 Mnn. It. Vulg. Syr. /»v T « ¦ , Cop- 0riS- omit *«'. which is read by T. R. X n U Orig. read ejtet*e* instead of Ste- with DEGHISr Mnn. TP„ n"r. i t t, . •_ 6 X B I M 3 Mnn. Orig. read e*ToAa. instead B B D I L r A omit avTov. 0f e*ToAi|*. 196 SECOND PART. to the approaching arrival of Jesus ; comp. vii. 12. — 'HtmiK&rec, standing, in the attitude of expectation. — "Or. does not depend on Somi ; it is more natural to separate the two clauses and to make two distinct questions. The aorist iXBy may perfectly well refer to an act which is to be accom plished in the immediate future. To the other grounds which rendered the coming of Jesus improbable, ver. 57 adds a new one, which is more special. It would not have been very difficult for the authorities to discover the place of Jesus' retreat. The edict which is here spoken of was therefore rather a means of intimi dating Him and His followers, and of accustoming the people to regard Him as a dangerous and criminal person. It is a new link in the series of hostile measures so well described by St. John from chap. v. onward ; comp. v. 16, 18; vii. 32; ix. 22; xi. 53; and this is indicated by the xai, also, in the T. B. ; perhaps the word was omitted in the Alexandrian text, as not being understood. The chief priests were the authority from which the decree officially emanated; the evangelist adds the Pharisees, because this party was the real author of it. Comp. vii. 45. In the Babylonian Gemara (edited from ancient traditions about 550) the following passage is found : ' " Tradition reports that on the evening of the Passover Jesus was crucified (hanged), and that this took place after an officer had during forty days publicly proclaimed : This man who by his deception has se duced the people ought to be crucified. Whosoever can allege anything in his defense, let him come forward and speak. But no one found any thing to say in his defense. He was hanged therefore on the evening of the Passover " (Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. et. Talm., p. 490). This remarkable passage may be compared with this of John. In both, we discover, a few weeks before the Passover, a public proclamation on the part of the Sanhedrim, relative to the approaching condemnation of Jesus. On the other hand, the difference between the two accounts is so marked that one of them cannot have arisen from the other. On the resurrection of Lazarus. " This narrative," says Deutinger, 1 " is distinguished among all tbe narrations of the fourth Gospel by its peculiar vivacity and its dramatic movement. The characters are drawn by a hand at once firm and delicate. Nowhere is the rela tion of Christ to His disciples set forth in so life-like a manner ; we are initiated by this narrative into that intimate intercourse, that affectionate interchange of feelings and thoughts, which existed between the Master and His own followers; the disciples are described in the most attractive way ; we see them in their sim ple frankness and noble devotion. The Jews themselves, of whom we know scarcely anything in our gospel except their obstinate resistance to the efforts of Jesus, show themselves here in a less unfavorable aspect, as friends of the two afflicted sisters ; the man is discovered in the Jew. But above all, how distinct and delicate is the sketching of the character of the two women ; with what nicety and what psychological depth is the difference in their conduct described !" In these 1 Das Reich Qottes nach dem Apostel Johannes, 18G2, vol. ii., p. 62. chap. xi. 57. 197 characteristics of the narrative which are so well summed up by the German writer, we find the first proof of its intrinsic truthfulness : " invented stories are not of this sort." And especially, it was not thus that invented stories were formed in the second century ; we have the proof of this in the Apocryphal narratives. The reality of the event here related appears also from its connection with the whole course of the previous and subsequent history of Jesus. The evangelist is fully conscious of the consequences of the event which he describes; he distinctly marks them in the course of his narrative : ver. 47 {tiierefore) and ver. 53 {from that day forth). Comp. xii. 9-11, 17-19. Renan calls the resurrection of Lazarus " a necessary link in the story of the final catastrophe." The former, therefore, is not a fictitious event, if the latter is not. Finally, this narrative contains with exactness a mass of details which would be in manifest contradiction to the aim of the narrative, provided the latter were composed artificially with the purpose of teaching and illustrating the speculation of the Logos ; thus the tears of Jesus, the moral and even physical agitation which is attributed to Him, His prayer for the securing of the miracle, and His thanksgiving for the hearing of the prayer. Nothing can be more truly human than all these features of the story, which are altogether the opposite of the metaphysics of Philo. Objection is made, 1. That such a miracle is absolutely inconceivable, especially if we explain the words : by this lime he stinketh, in the sense of dissolution already begun. Herein perhaps lies what has led some interpreters, who are defenders of the reality of the miracle ( Weiss, Keil) to find in these words only a logical supposition on Martha's part. " The bond between the soul and the body," says Weiss, " was not yet finally broken so as to allow the beginning of dissolution." Revss does not admit this method of cheapening the miracle. " The odor of the decaying body " seems to him to be an essential feature of the narrative which was designed to illustrate the declaration : "I am the resurrection and the life." And he is the one who is right. When we shall know thoroughly what life is and what death Is, we shall be able to decide what is suited to this domain and what is not. While waiting for this, we must say : He who has created the organic cell within the inorganic matter is not incapable of re-establishing life within the inanimate substance. Objectors allege, 2. The omission of this miracle in the Synoptics. But in the Synoptics themselves are there not many differences of the same kind ? Has not each one of them preserved elements of the highest interest which are omitted in the others ? They are collections of particular anecdotes, of isolated or orally transmitted events. The formation of these collections was affected by accidental circumstances of which we are ignorant. Thus Luke alone has pre served for us the account of the resurrection of the young man of Nain. It is to be observed, moreover, that the three Synoptical narratives are divided into two great cycles : the events of the prophetic ministry of Jesus in Galilee, and those of the week of the Passion in Jerusalem ; they only glance at the intermediate sojourn in Persea. Now the resurrection of Lazarus belongs to this epoch of transition and for this reason it may easily have lost its place in the general tradi tion. Luke himself, says Hase, " has only his fragmentary story respecting the two sisters (x. 38 ff.), the prelude of this one, while ignorant of what belongs to their persons and their abode " (p. 512). Finally, the fact which can more par ticularly explain the omission of this incident in the Apostolic tradition, from 198 SECOND PART. which, for the most part, our Synoptic narratives came, is the hesitation which might have been felt either to open to the view of the public an interior life so sacred as that of the family beloved by Jesus, or of exposing the members of that family themselves to the vengeance of the rulers, who at the time of the first preaching of the Gospel were still the masters of the country. Comp. xii. 10, where they deliberate as to putting Lazarus to death at the same time with Jesus. The case stood thus until the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the San hedrim. This is the reason why John, when these events were once consummated, could feel free to draw forth this scene from the silence into which it had fallen since the day of Pentecost. Meyer, Weiss and others object that the Synoptical authors, writing probably at a time when the members of the Bethany family were already dead, would not have allowed themselves to be stopped by this con sideration. But they forget that the omission was occasioned in the oral tradition from the earliest times of the Church, and that it had passed quite naturally into the written redaction of the primitive proclamation of the Gospel story, that is to say, into our Synoptic Gospels. Moreover, the explanations which have been attempted in order to eliminate this miracle from the circle of the authentic facts of the Ufe of Jesus, present, none of them, any degree of probability whatever. 1. The so-called natural explanation of Paidvs, Gabler and A. Schweizer. In consequence of the message of ver. 3, Jesus judged the malady to be by no means dangerous ; then, after having received notice again {Paulus reckons as many as four messages), He comes to see that the matter is a mere lethargy. Having reached the sepulchre, He observed in the supposed deceased person some signs of life ; whereupon He gave thanks (vv. 41, 42) and called Lazarus forth. The latter revived by the coolness of the sepulchre, by the odor of the perfumes, and at the moment of the opening of the tomb, by the warmth of the external air, rose up in full life. Thus Paulus and GoMer. According to A. Schweizer, the confidence of Jesus in the cure of His friend was founded only on His faith in the divine aid promised in a general way to His cause ; and the pretended miracle was only the happy coincidence of this religious confidence with the circumstance that Lazarus was not really dead. This explanation has not been judged more severely by any one than by Strauss 1 and Baur.2 The former has shown, in opposition to Paulus and Gabler, that the expressions by which Jesus announces the resurrection of Laza rus are too positive to be only conjectures founded upon uncertain symptoms, and that the meaning of tlie entire narrative, in the thought of the narrator, is and can be only that which every reader finds in it : the resurrection of Lazarus, who was dead, by the miraculous power of Jesus. As to the manner in which Schweizer treats our Gospel in general and this passage in particular, the following is Barn's judgment : " Destitute of all feeling for the unity of the whole, he tears our Gospel to shreds, that he may eliminate as superstitious interpolations all things of which he does not succeed in giving a shallow rationalistic explanation, and may leave all which he allows to remain to the marvellous action of chance." These last words are especially applicable to the opinion of Schweizer respecting this miracle- But what explanations do these two critics oppose to this of their predecessors? 2. The mythical explanation of Strauss. The Old Testament related resurrec tions of dead persons effected by mere prophets; the Christian legend could do » Vie de Jesus, t. ii., pp. 164-166. « Theol. Jahrb., vol. iii., 184*. chap. xi. 43-46. 199 no less than ascribe to the Messiah miracles of the same kind. But is it really to be admitted that the legend succeeded in producing a narrative so admirably shaded and in creating personages so finely drawn ? " One cannot understand," says Renan justly, " how a popular creation should have come to take its place in a framework of recollections which are so personal as those which are connected with the relations of Jesus to the family of Bethany." Moreover, legend ideal izes ; how could it ever have invented a Christ moved even to the inmost depths of His being and shedding tears before the tomb of the friend whom He was going to raise to life? Then is not Baur right as against Strauss, when he says: " If a mythical tradition of this sort had really been spread abroad in the Church, it would not have failed to enter, with so many other similar ones, into the Syn optic narrative. It is contrary to all probability that so important a miracle, to which was attributed a decisive influence on the final catastrophe, should have remained a local legend restricted to a very limited circle." Notwithstanding these difficulties, Reville " feels no embarrassment " in explaining the history of Lazarus by the mythical process. The legend meant to represent by Lazarus the Jewish proletariat (comp. Luke xvi. 20), which Jesus rescues from its spiritual death by loving it and weeping over it. " He bent over this tomb (Israelitish pauper ism !) crying out to Lazarus : Come forth, and come to me 1 and Lazarus came forth pale . . . tottering." 1 We may not discuss such fancies. Renan judges them no less severely than ourselves : " Expedients of theologians at their wits' end," he says, " saving themselves by allegory, myth, symbol " (p. 508). There is, above all, one circumstance which ought to prevent any serious critic from at tributing to this narrative a legendary origin. Myths of this sort are fictions isolated from one another ; but we have seen how the story of the resurrection of Lazarus belongs thoroughly within the organism of the fourth Gospel. The work of John is evidently of one cast. With regard to such an evangelist, criti cism is irresistibly driven to this dilemma : historian or artist ? It is the merit of Baur to have understood this situation, and, since by reason of his dogmatic premises he could not admit the first alternative, to have frankly declared him self in favor of the second. 3. The speculative explanation of Baur, according to which our narrative is a fictitious representation designed to give a body to the metaphysical thesis formu lated in ver. 25 : "I am the resurrection and the life." This explanation suits the idea which Baur forms of our Gospel, which, according to him, is altogether only a composition of an ideal character. But is it compatible with the simplicity, the candor, the prosaic character, and if we may be allowed the expression, the com mon-place of the whole narrative? From the one end to the other, the situations are described for their own sake and without the least tendency to idealize (comp. for example, the end of the chapter : the sojourn at Ephraim, the proclamation of the Sanhedrim, the conversations of the pilgrims to Jerusalem). Still more, the narrative offers features which are completely anti-rational and anti-speculative. We have shown this : this Jesus who groans and weeps is the opposite of a meta physical creation. The very offense which these features of the narrative cause to Barn's mind, prove this. The products of the intellect are transparent to the intel lect. The more mysterious and unexpected these features are, the more is it mani fest that they were drawn from reality. The feeling is impressed on every reader 1 Revue germanique, Dec. 1st, 1803, p. 613. 200 SECOND PART. that the author himself seriously believes in the reality of the fact which he relates, and that he does not think of inventing. When Plato comes to clothe his elevated doctrines with the brilliant veil of myths, we feel that he himself hovers above his creation, that his mind has freely chosen this form of teaching and plays with it. Here, on the contrary, the author is himself under the sway of the fact related ; his heart is penetrated by it, his entire personality is laid hold of. If he created, he must be regarded as the first dupe of his own fiction. 4. The more recent critics turn in general towards another mode of explana tion. Weisse had already expressed the idea that our narrative might be merely a parable related by Jesus and that tradition had transformed it into a real fact. The idea reappears at the present day in Keim, Schenkel, Holtzmann, etc. It is the parable of the beggar Lazarus (Luke xvi.), which has given occasion to our nar rative ; the author of our Gospel drew from it the theme of his representation. Renan imagines a similar comparison. He explained originally the resurrection of Lazarus by a pious fraud, to which Jesus Himself was not a stranger. " The friends of Jesus desired a great miracle which should make a strong impression upon the unbelief of Jerusalem. . . . Lazarus, yet pale from his sickness, had himself wrapped with bandages like a dead person and shut up in his family tomb. . . Jesus desired once more to see him whom He had loved. . . " The rest is easily understood. Benan excuses Jesus : " In that impure city of Jeru salem, He was no longer Himself. ... In despair, driven to extremity. . . He yielded to the torrent. He submitted to the miracles which public opinion de manded of Him, rather than performed them." " No enemy of the Son of man," says _Hase rightly, " has ever declared anything worse against Jesus, than that which this romantic well-wisher has here said." At present, Benan, yielding the general feeling of reprobation which this explanation aroused, thinks that in a conversation of Mary and Martha with Jesus, they told Him how the resurrec tion of a dead person would be necessary to bring the triumph of His cause and that Jesus answered them : " If Lazarus himself were to come back to life, they would not believe it." This saying became afterwards the subject of singular mis takes. . . . The supposition in fact was changed . . . ; tradition attributed to Mary and Martha a sick brother whom Jesus had caused to go forth from the tomb. In a word, the misapprehension from which our narrative springs resem bles one of those cock-and-bull stories which are so frequent in the httle towns of the East (13th ed., pp. 372-374). For a complete refutation, we will only call attention to the point that the narrative is of a fact which is just the opposite of the idea expressed by the saying which is said to have furnished the text for it. The idea of Weisse is wrecked against difficulties which are no less serious. There is nothing in common between the parable of Luke xvi. and our narrative ex cept the name of Lazarus, "very common among the Jews" (-Hase). The entire parable has as its starting-point the poverty and complete destitution of Lazarus. In the story of John, on the contrary, the brother of Martha and Mary is sur rounded by friends, cared for, in the enjoyment of consideration and competence. There, Abraham refuses to allow Lazarus to leave Hades and reappear here on earth. Here, Lazarus returns to the earth and is restored to his sisters and friends. The result of this return to life is that many Jews, until now unbeliev ing, "believe on Jesus," a point which is directly contradictory to the last words of Jesus in the parable. So Reuss concludes the discussion by saying: " It must be acknowledged that all the attempts to set aside the miracle are arbitrary. No chap. xii. 1-36. 201 explanation of all those which have been proposed bears in itself a character of probability and simplicity such that one is tempted to substitute it for the tradi tional form of the narrative." We add further one general observation: In its first phase, the apostolic preaching confined itself to proclaiming this great fact : Jesus is risen. This was the foundation on which the apostles built up the Church. The detailed scenes of Jesus' ministry might indeed play a part in the particular conversations, but the great official proclamation did not place anything beside the death and resur rection of the Messiah, the facts on which rested the salvation of the world. Any particular miracle was a fact too accidental and secondary compared with these, to have the importance attached to it which we, from our historical and critical point of view, are tempted to give to the mention or the omission of it. We have one of the most striking examples of this in the silence of the three Synoptics and of John himself respecting one of the most important and most undeniable facts of the evangelical history : that of the appearance of Jesus to the five hundred brethren, mentioned by Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 6. After this let one argue, if he will, from the silence of one, two, or even three evangelical writings against the reahty of a fact of the evangelical history I Spinoza, according to the testimony of Bayle, is said to have declared to his friends, " that if he could have persuaded himself of the resur rection of Lazarus, he would have dashed in pieces his own system and embraced without repugnance the common faith of Christians." Let the reader take up anew the narrative of John and read it again without any preconceived opinion . . . the conviction to which the pantheistic philosopher could not come will form itself spontaneously within him ; and on the testimony of this narrative, every feature of which bears the stamp of truth, he will simply accept a fact which criticism endeavors in vain to do away by means of a series of attempts of which every one is the denial of the one that preceded it. SECOND SECTION. XII. 1-36.- The Last Days op the Ministry op Jesus. This section includes three parts : 1. The supper of Jesus at Bethany : vv. 1-11. 2. His entry into Jerusalem : vv. 12-19. 3. The last scene of His ministry in the temple : vv. 20-36. These three facts are selected by the evangelist as forming the transition from the public ministry of Jesus to His Passion. This appears, in the first part, from the discontent of Judas, the prelude of His treason, and from the response of Jesus announcing His approaching death ; in the second, from ver. 19, which shows the necessity in which the rulers found themselves, after Palm-day, of rendering homage to Jesus or of ridding themselves of Him. Finally, in the third, from the entire discourse of Jesus in answer to the step taken by the Greeks, and from His final fare well to the Jewish nation, ver. 36. In the first two divisions, the evangel ist at the same time sets forth the influence which the resurrection of Lazarus had upon the course of things as he describes it : vv. 2, 9-11 20.. SECOND PART. 17-19. Thus all things in this narrative, though apparently fragmentary, are in reality closely linked together. Luthardt rightly says : " This chapter is at once a closing and a preparation." 1. The Supper at Bethany : vv. 1-11. In the presence of the great struggle of whose approach every one has a presentiment, the devotion of the friends of Jesus becomes loftier ; by way of counter-stroke, the national hostility, which has its representative even among the Twelve, breaks out in this inmost circle ; Jesus announces to the traitor with perfect gentleness the approaching result of his enmity towards Him. Ver. 1. "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came therefore to Bethany where Lazarus 1 was whom he had raised from the dead." It would seem from the Synoptics that Jesus came directly to Jerusalem from Persea, passing through Jericho. In order to bring them into agreement with John, it is enough to suppose that Jesus descended from Ephraim into the valley of the Jordan and rejoined before Jericho the great caravan of pilgrims who came from Galilee through Persea. He thus took, in the reverse way, the same road which Epiphanius afterwards traversed — who relates to us "that he went up from Jericho to the plateau with a man who accompanied him across the desert, from Bethel to Ephraim." In truth, I do not understand why this so simple hypothesis should shock the im partiality oi Meyer. He presents as an objection the statement in xi. 54; but the time of silence was now past for Jesus. We know from Luke that already before entering into Jericho Jesus was surrounded by a consider able multitude (xviii. 36), that he passed the night at the house of Zac- chseus (xix. 1 ff.), and that the expectation of all was excited in the highest degree (xix. 11 ; Matt. xx. 20 ff.). The distance from Jericho to Bethany might be passed over in five or six hours. The main part of the caravan continued its journey even to Jerusalem on the same day, while Jesus and His disciples stopped at Bethany. This halt is not mentioned by the Synoptics ; there is no reason for calling it in question. Very often one or two of the Synoptics present before us similar vacancies, which can only be filled by the aid ofthe third. Twice, a case of this kind is pre sented in the narrative of the following days : Mark xi. 11-15 informs us that one night elapsed between the entry on Palm-day and the expulsion of the traders ; we should not suppose this interval when reading the accounts of Matthew and Luke. According to Mark. xi. 12, 20, a day and a night passed between the cursing of the fig-tree and the conversation of Jesus with His disciples on the subject, while in reading Matthew one would suppose that this conversation followed the miracle immediately. These apparent contradictions arise from the fact that, in the traditional teaching, the moral and religious importance of the facts by far outweighs their chronological interest. If such is the relation of the Synoptical nar- 1 The words o rc9vnKut, (the dead man) which Itp'"iqu- Cop. etc., are omitted by X B L X i_i read here by T. B., with U Mjj. the Mnn. It"". Syr. Tisch. (8th ed.). Chap. xii. 1. 203 ratives to each other, in spite of their general parallelism, it is not sur prising that this phenomenon reappears, ou a. still greater scale, in the relation between the Synoptics and the fourth Gospel, which is absolutely independent of the tradition. The oiv, therefore, is connected with xi. 55 : " The Passover of the Jews was near." The turn of expression wpb _f $y. r. tt., six days before . . . , may be explained by a Latinism {ante diem sextum calendas) in which the preposition is transposed {Baumlein) ; or perhaps the most natural expla nation of this form of expression is the same as that of the construction xi. 18 (where it is applied to local distance). The determination of time (six days) is added, in the genitive, to the word which indicates the start ing-point of the reckoning (the Passover) ; comp. Amos i. 1, LXX : npb Siio hav tov aetapov, two years before the earthquake (Winer, § 61, 5). Jesus knew that He would have need of all this time to make a last and striking impression on the minds of the people of the capital. On what day, accord ing to this expression, are we to place the arrival of Jesus at Bethany ? The answers are very different in consequence of the uncertainty in which writers find themselves respecting the following points : 1. Are we, or not, to include either the day of the arrival at Bethany or the first day of the Passover in the six days mentioned ? 2. Must the first day of the Pass over be fixed, in the language of John, on the 15th, as the first great Sabbatic day of the Paschal week, or already on the 14th, as the day of preparation on which the lamb was sacrificed ? Finally, 3. Must Friday (which is certainly the day of the week on which Jesus was put to death) be regarded as the 15th of Nisan of that year (according to the meaning ordinarily attributed to the Synoptics), or as the 14th, the day ofthe prep aration (according to the meaning which most give— rightly, as it appears to me— to the narrative of John) ? It is impossible to pursue in detail the manifold solutions to which these different possibilities give occasion. The summary result is the following: Some {Tholuck, Lange, Wieseler, Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Lichtenstein, Keil) place the arrival of Jesus at Bethany on Friday, a week before the Friday on which Jesus died; others {Meyer, Ewald, Weiss) on Saturday, the Sabbath which preceded the Passion ; others {de Wette, Hase, Andrese, etc.) on Sunday, the next day ; finally, Hilgenfeld, Bauer, Scholten; Baumlein, on Monday. Among these possible different suppositions, that which appears to me, at this time, the most probable, is that set forth by Andrex, in the excellent essay entitled : Der Todestag Jesu (in the Beweis des Glaubens, July and Sept., 1870). The sixth ofthe days mentioned in ver. 1 is Friday, the day of Jesus' death, that is, according to the very clear meaning of the chro nology of John (see the detailed treatment of this whole question at the end of chap, xix.), the 14th of Nisan, or the day ofthe preparation ofthe Pass over of that year. It would follow from this that the day of the arrival at Bethany was Sunday, the 9th of Nisan, at evening. Jesus, after having passed Saturday (Sabbath) at Jericho at the house of Zacclueus, went up on the next day, Sunday, with the caravan from Jericho to Bethany, where he stopped, leaving the others to continue their journey to Jerusa- 204 SECOND PART. lem, and it was on the evening of the same day that the banquet was offered to Him which is about to be related. The next day, Monday, the solemn entrance into Jerusalem took place. In my first edition, I left out the 14th (Friday, the day of Jesus' death) from the six days, as already included in the Passover feast. In fact, this day plays the principal part in the story of the institution of the Passover in Exodus (chap, xii.), and Josephus {Antiq. xii., 15, 1) counts eight feast days, which shows that he includes the 14th. But, on the other hand, we must recognize that there is a difference between the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of the Passover properly so called : if the former necessarily included the 14th, on which the leaven was removed from the Israelitish houses, the latter did not properly begin until the 15th, to end on the 21st, these two days having the Sabbatical character and forming the begin ning and ending of the Paschal week. Then another difficulty in this way of counting is, that in starting, in the count of six days, from Thurs day the 13th, and in going back from that day, we come to Saturday as the day of the journey from Jericho to Bethany. Now, it cannot be admitted that Jesus made so long a journey on the Sabbath. Meyer, to escape this consequence, holds that Jesus had passed the night in a place quite near to Bethany, in order that He might be able to reach there the next day without violating the Sabbath ordinance, according to which one could not make a journey on that day of more than twentj' minutes. But why, in that case, did He not arrange so as to reach Bethany also on that evening ? And, besides, there was no place where one could stop between Jericho and Bethany. I had proposed a somewhat different solution, which seems to me now to be that of Weiss : Jesus had made most of the journey from Jericho to Bethany on Friday, but He arrived only at the earliest hour on Saturday (from six to seven o'clock in the evening) ; and . thus this Saturday was indeed the first of the six days before the feast. The feast was not offered Him until the next day at evening, towards the end of this Sabbath ; the next day but one, Sunday, He made His entry into Jerusalem. This combination, however, is far less simple than that which has been proposed by Andrese; and how could the rest of the caravan which was going to Jerusalem have still made their journey from Bethany to Jerusalem without violating the Sabbatic prescription ? According to Hilgenfeld, Baur, etc., who take the 15th as the starting- point for the calculation, and include that day in the six, the arrival at Bethany took place on Monday, the 10th of Nisan. According to some of these interpreters, the evangelist sought by this date to establish a typi cal relation between the arrival of Jesus and the Jewish custom of setting apart the Paschal lamb on the 10th of Nisan. Such an intention would evidently compromise the historical character of our narrative. But this alleged relation between the arrival of Jesus and the setting apart of the lamb, is not in any way indicated in the narrative ; and the idea of this comparison could not have entered the minds of the Greek Christians for whom the author designed his work. Vv. 2, 3. " Therefore they made him a feast there, and Martha served; but chap. xn. 2, 3. 205 Lazarus was one of those l who were at table with Mm.2 3. Mary therefore, having taken a pound of ointment of pure nard, which was of great price, anointed the feet of Jesus with it and wiped his feet with her hair; and the whole house was filled with the odor of the ointment." When did this supper take place? Of course, according to our hypothesis, on Sunday evening, the day of Jesus' arrival. The subject of iirolvoav, they made, is indefinite ; this form answers in Greek to the French on. Hence it already follows that this subject cannot be, as is ordinarily represented : the members of the family of Lazarus. Moreover, this appears from the express mention of the presence of Lazarus and of the activity of service on Martha's part, all of them circumstances which would be self-evident if the supper had taken place in their own house. As the undetermined subject of the verb can only be the persons named afterwards, it follows that they are, much rather, the people of the place. A part of the inhabitants of Bethany feel the desire of testifying their thankfulness to Him who by a glorious miracle had honored their obscure village. It is this connection of ideas which seems to be expressed by the therefore at the beginning of ver. 2, and, immediately afterwards, by this detail: "Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead." That which, no doubt, very specially impelled them to render to Jesus, at this moment, this public homage, was the hatred to which they saw Him exposed on the part of the rulers. This feast was a courageous response to the edict of the Sanhedrim (xi. 57) ; it was the proscribed one whom they honored. The text does not tell us in what house the supper took place. Laza rus being there as a guest, not as host (ver. 2), it follows that the scene occurred in another house than his own. Thus is the harmony very naturally established with the narrative of Matthew and Mark, who state positively that the supper took place in the house of Simon the leper, a sick man, no doubt, whom Jesus had healed and who has claimed the privilege of receiving him in the name of all. It is inconceivable that this very simple reconciliation should appear to Meyer a mere process of false harmonistics. Weiss himself says : " The form of expression used excludes the idea that Lazarus was the one who gave the supper." Every one could not receive Jesus : but every one had desired to contribute, according to his means, to the homage which was rendered to Him : the people of Bethany, by the banquet offered in their name; Martha, by giving her personal service, even in the house of another person; Laza rus, by his presence, which in itself alone glorified the Master more than all that the others could do; finally, Mary, by a royal prodigality, which was alone capable of expressing the sentiment which inspired her. The general custom among the ancient nations was to anoint with per fume the heads of guests on feast-days. " Thou preparedst the table before me; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup overflows," says David to Jehovah, when describing under the figure of a feast which his ' X B Lit. Vulg. read e* before to.* «*««.- Mnn. only. All the Mjj. : a*«Ke.ue*u* eg ainrpi rervpvKivai. How are we to understand that Weiss justifies so forced an explanation by asserting that there was no other way of expressing this idea? The meaning given by Meyer is still more impossible. By what right can we suppose that only a part of the ointment had been poured out ; that there was a remainder, and that it is this remainder which is designated by avrb . Moreover, when thus understood, the words of Jesus no longer form an answer to the objection of Judas. The latter had not disputed Mary's right to keep the whole or a part of this ointment for the purpose of using it in the future on a more suitable occasion ; quite the contrary ; that which he charged against her was that she had wasted and not kept it. We must acknowledge therefore with Liicke and Hengstenberg, that, 1 T. R. reads with 12 Mjj. (A I r etc.), the It-tan- Vulg. Cop. : a4e, avrnv iva ei, rnv Vp Mnn. Syr** : ai(ie. avTnv. e.t rnv i)pepav t. evTaiji. t. evraaS. juov TT)pr|cr>) avTo. pov TerrjpnKev a.To. XBDKLQXU4 Mnn 2 p omits ver 8 14 210 SECOND PART. however this reading is interpreted, it offers no tolerable meaning. It is an unhappy correction from the hands of critics who thought that the embalming of a man did not take place before his death. The received reading, on the contrary, offers a simple and delicate sense. Jesus ascribes to the act of Mary precisely that which was wanting to the view of Judas, a purpose, a practical utility. " It is not for nothing, as thou chargest her, that she has poured out this ointment. She has to-day an ticipated my embalming ; " comp. Mark xiv. 8 : " She has been beforehand in embalming my body for my burial ; " in other terms : She has made this day the day of my funeral rites of which thou wilt soon give the signal. 'EvTaftaopbg : the embalming and, in general, the preparations for burial. The word rer^pvKev, she has kept, is full of delicacy. It is as if there had been here on Mary's part a contrived plan and one in harmony with the utilitar ianism on which the reproach of Judas rested. Can ver. 8, which is wanting in D, have been introduced here by the copyists from the text of the two Synoptics, and can this manuscript alone be right as against all the other documents ? It is more probable that it is one of those faulty omissions which are so frequent in D. The sense is : "If the poor are really the object of your solicitude, there will always be opportunity to exercise your liberality towards them ; but my person will soon be taken away from the assiduous care of your love." The first clause seems to contain an allusion to Deut. xv. 11. The present e^cr,, you have, in the first clause, is owing to the navrore, always, and the following pres ent is introduced by the first. Beyschlag correctly observes respecting this passage : " It is asserted that the fourth evangelist likes to depreciate the Twelve ; but why then does he, and he alone, place all to the account of Judas?" It is further said : He has a special hatred to Judas. This is to affirm beyond question the authenticity of the Gospel ; for what writer of the second century could have cherished a personal hatred against Judas ? Let us also remark that the slight modifications which John introduces into the Synoptic narrative are perfectly insignificant from the standpoint of the idea of the Logos. They can only be explained by the more distinct knowledge which he has of the fact and by the more thoroughly historical character of the whole representation. We see, finally, how false is the idea of dependence with relation to the narrative of Mark, which Weiz sacker attributes to the fourth evangelist, by reason of the three hundred. denarii which are common to the two accounts and the coincidences in expressions {Untersuch, p. 290). The superiority of the narrative of John shows its independence. Vv. 9-11. " A great multitude therefore of the Jeivs learned that he was tiiere; and they came, notbrcaitsr qf Jesus only, but that they might see Lazarus also whom he had raised from the dead. 10. But the chief priests took counsel that they might put Lazarus also to death, 11 because many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus." The pilgrims who came from Jericho with Jesus, on arriving at Jerusalem, had spread abroad the report of His approach. And all those inhabitants of the country region of Judea, of whom men- chap. xii. 8-13. 211 tion has been made in xi. 55, 56, and who made Jesus, already many days before His arrival, the subject of their conversation, on learning that He is sojourning so near them, could not restrain their impatience to see Him, as well as Lazarus, the living monument of His power. The term Jews preserves here the sense which it has throughout the whole Gospel : the rep resentatives ofthe old order of things. This was precisely the poignant thing for the rulers ; the very people on whom they had always counted to make head against the people of Galilee, the inhabitants of Judea and even those of Jerusalem, began to fall away. 'TCnayeiv, to go away, but without noise. In this new attitude and particularly in these visits to Bethany some pre cautions were taken. Thus is the way prepared for the solemn entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem. The people are altogether disposed to an ovation. It only needs that Jesus should give a signal and give loose rein to the enthusiasm of the multitude, that the hour of the royal manifestation may strike, which had been so long desired by His mother (ii. 4) and demanded by His brethren (vii. 4), but had been until now refused by Him. II. — The entrance into Jerusalem : vv. 12-19. Jesus had striven on every occasion to repress the popular manifesta tions in His favor (vi. 15; Luke xiv. 25-33; xix. 11 ff., etc.). Now He allows free play to the feelings of the multitude and surrenders Himself to the public homage which is prepared for Him. What precautions had He still to take? Ought He not once at least in His life to be acknow ledged and" saluted in His character of King of Israel? In any case, the hour of His death was near; that of His royal advent had therefore sounded. The tradition of the Christian Church fixes the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem on the Sunday which preceded the Passion. The most probable explanation of ver. 1 has not confirmed this view ; it was probably Mon day. Three of the evangelists do not speak of the time of day when this event occurred. Why then may we not connect our view with the one who positively indicates it? This one is Mark. He says, xi. 11 : "And Jesus entered into Jerusalem and into the temple; and, having looked round about upon all things, as it was already late, he went away to Bethany with the Twelve."- These words imply that, after having entered into Jerusalem, Jesus did nothing further of importance on that day, because the hour was already too late. Hence it follows that the entrance took place during the second half of the day. How is it possible to call this a harmonistic conclusion, as Weiss does? Does John say anything contrary to this narrative of Mark ? Vv. 12, 13. "The next day, a great multitude of persons who had come : to the feast, having heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem took branches of palm-trees 13 and went forth to meet him,2 and they cried,3 Hosanna ! Blessed lliTnl^^T- ¦ i 8«DLQ;e.Pav7ai„* instead of eKpaf„v A K U n 50 Mnn. read awavrno-iv instead X A D K Q X n add keyovre, of vwavrno-iv (11 Mjj.). DGLX: avvavrva-iv, 212 SECOND PART. be he that cometh in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel I " This multi tude is much more considerable than that of which mention was made in vv. 9-11 ; it included most of the pilgrims of all countries who had come to the feast. They had heard from those who had gone to Bethany on the preceding evening, that Jesus was really there and that He was Himself preparing to come to Jerusalem. They went forth, therefore, in large numbers to meet Him, and to form a body of attendants on His entrance into the city. Those who started earliest went even to Bethany ; the rest must have successively met Him on the road. Thus, in proportion as He advanced, already surrounded by many disciples and friends, He found from place to place joyous groups on the way. Hence an easy ex planation is given of the ovation of this day, which, in the Synoptic nar rative, has a somewhat abrupt character and remains in a certain degree inexplicable. Not having mentioned the stay of Jesus at Bethany, the other gospels naturally represent Him as entering into the city with the caravan of pilgrims who come with Him from Jericho. All at once an inspiration of celestial joy passes over this multitude. Their rejoicing and their hopes break forth in songs and significant sym bols. Luke, in particular, admirably describes this moment : " And as he drew near from the descent of the Mount qf Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God for all the miracles which they had seen " (xix. 37). John gives us to understand what was the one among all these miracles which played the greatest part in the enthusiasm of the multitude and which had produced this very general effect both on those who accompanied and on those who met the Lord: namely, the resur rection of Lazarus. — The palm, by reason of the permanent beauty of its magnificent crown of leaves, is the emblem not only of strength, beauty and joy, but also of salvation (see Keil). In 1 Mace. xiii. 51, Simon returns to Jerusalem with songs and branches of palm-trees, to the sound of the harp and of cymbals, because the enemy was driven out of Israel. In Lev. xxiii. 40, in the institution of the feast of Tabernacles, it is said : " Ye shall take . . . branches of palm-trees . . . , and ye shall rejoice seven days before the Lord." On each day during this last feast a procession, in which branches of palm-trees were carried, was made around the altar of burnt-offering ; comp. Apoc. vii. 9. On this day all was done spontaneously. An allu sion has been found in the articles r<_ and rdv before /3<_.<_ and eiotviKav {the branches of the palm-trees) to the branches which were well-known by tradition and which gave the name to the day ; it is more simple to under stand by them : "The branches of the palm-trees which were found on the road," as if John had said : Having stripped the palm-trees of their branches. The term /3atov already in itself means branch of the palm-tree. But the complement rav $oiv'ikov is added by John for the readers who were not acquainted with the technical term. The cries of the multitude, as well as the terms : sew of David {Matt), King of Israel {John), leave no doubt as to the meaning of this manifesta tion; it was certainly the Messiah whom the people intended to salute in the person of Jesus, The acclamations reported by John (ver. 18), the chap. xii. 14, 15. 213 equivalent of which is found in the Synoptics, are taken from the 118th Psalm , particularly from vv. 25, 26. It was probably a chant composed for the inauguration of the second temple, and the quoted words refer to the procession received by the priests on its arrival at the temple. Numerous Babbinical citations prove that this Psalm was regarded as Messianic. Every Israelite knew these words by heart : they were sung at the feast of Tabernacles, in the procession which was made around the altar, and at the Passover in the chant of the great Hallel (Ps. cxiii.-cxviii.) during the Paschal supper. Hosanna (from *» njr'tyin, save, I pray thee) is a prayer addressed to God by the theocratic people on behalf of His Messiah-King; it is, if we may venture to use the expression, the Israelitish God save the 'King. It seems to us more natural to refer the words in the name qf the Lord to the verb comes, than to the participle blessed. The expression : He that comes in the name qf the Lord, designates in a general way, and still quite vaguely, the divine messenger par excellence, on whose person and work Israel implores the benedictions of heaven; then there comes after this the great word whose import every one understands, the by no means equivocal term King qf Israel. Of course, all in this multitude did not cry out exactly in the same way ; this explains the differences in the popular acclamations reported by the evangelists. As in vi. 5, Jesus had seen in the arrival of the multitudes in the desert the call of His Father to give a feast to His people, so in the impetuosity of the multi tude who hasten towards Him with these triumphal acclamations, He rec ognizes a divine signal ; He understands that, in accordance with the words of the very Psalm from which the people borrow their songs, this is " the day which the Lord has made, and we must rejoice in it" (Ps. cxviii. 24); and he responds to the salutation of the people by a true Messianic sign. Vv. 14, 15. " Jesus, having found a young ass, sat thereon, according as it is written, 15. Fear not, daughter1 ofZion; behold, thy king cometh seated, on an ass's coll." The conduct of Jesus is ordered by the nature of things. Since He wishes to-day to accept this homage, He cannot remain min gled with the multitude. On the one hand, He must in some sort put Himself on the scene ; but, on the other, He wishes to do it only in the most humble way and in the way most appropriate to the spiritual nature of His royalty. In the ancient times, the ass does not seem to have been in Israel a despised animal ; comp. Judg. v. 9, 10 ; x. 4 ; 2 Sam. xvii. 23. Later, the horse and the mule were preferred to it ; comp. Sirach, xxxiii. (xxxvi.) 25 (24). The prophet Zechariah himself indicates the meaning which he here attaches to this symbol, when he says (ix. 9) : " Behold thy Icing cometh unto thee just, having salvation and humble." The young ass represents for him the humility of the Messiah and consequently the peaceful nature of His kingdom : " I will cut off the chariots of war . . . and the king shall speak peace unto the nations " (Zech. ix 10). The two ideas of humihty and of peace are closely connected, as, on the other hand, are those of wealth and military power. The expression evpav, having found, »T. R. With 8 Mjj. (KEG etc.) : Svymep; 9 Mjj. (A B D etc); Ovyarvp. 214 SECOND PART. seems at the first glance incompatible with the narrative of the Synoptics, according to which Jesus sends two of His disciples with the express order to bring Him the young ass. But evpav does not signify : having found without seeking ; witness the evpvKa of Archimedes ! This word may be translated by : having procured for Himself, as in the expressions evploKuv Sdljav, ntpSog, plov, to procure glory, gain, subsistence for oneself (see Passow). Nothing, therefore, can be inferred from this term as to the how of this finding, and it is natural to suppose that John, in this summary expression, sums up the narrative of the Synoptics, which was sufficiently well-known in the Church. He also abridges the quotation of Zechariah ; for it concerns him only to establish the general relation between the prophecy and its accomplishment. The expression daughter of Zion designates the popula tion of the city personified. John substitutes : Fear not, for the Rejoice of the prophecy ; it is the same sentiment, but somewhat less strongly ex pressed: "Fear not; -a king who comes thus cannot be a tyrant." If Jesus had never entered into Jerusalem in this way, this prophecy would nevertheless have been realized. His entire ministry in Israel was the fulfillment of it. But, by realizing to the very letter the figure employed by the prophet, Jesus desired to render more sensible the spiritual and true accomplishment of the prophecy. Everything, however, occurred so simply, so naturally, that, at the moment, the disciples did not think of the prophecy and did not grasp its relation to that which had just taken place. Ver. 16. "Now the disciples did not understand these things at the moment; but when Jesus had been glorified, then they remembered that these things were written of him and that they had done these things to him." It was only after wards, when after the ascension, and when enlightened by the Holy Spirit, they retraced the earthly life of their Master, that the}7 discerned the meaning of this event and recognized in it the fulfillment of a prophecy. In the light of the heavenly elevation of Jesus, they understood this fact which had prefigured it {these things). There is, therefore, no reason to turn aside from the natural sense of iSogdoBv, was glorified, and to refer this term, as Reuss does, to the death of Jesus, as the transition to His exalta tion. What a charlatan the pseudo-John of Baur, who, by means of this want of understanding invented by him, would give himself the appear ance of having himself been one of these disciples whom the ascension had enlightened ! We are surprised at the expression " that they had done these things to him " ; for, in the scene related by John, the apostles had done nothing to Jesus. So many take molvaav in the sense in which it is found in ver. 2 : " They (indefinite) had done to him," and assign as subject to this verb tlie multitude (vv. 12, 13). But the subject of they had done cannot be different from that of they understood and they remembered. John wished to set forth precisely the fact that the disciples understood afterwards what they had done themselves in the fulfillment of a prophecy Of which no one of them dreamed.. The co-operation of the disciples, indicated by John, is described in detail in Luke xix. 29-36 and the paral lels. We find here a new, proof of the abridged character. .of his- narrative chap. xn. 16-18. 215 and his thoroughly conscious relation ;to the narrative of the Synoptics. We see from the words : they had done these things to him, how arbitrary is the idea of Keim, according to which John's narrative tends to make the disciples and Jesus passive in this scene, and this because the author wished to give utterance to his repugnance to the idea of the Jewish Messiah ! ' Vv. 17, 18. " Tlie multitude therefore who were with him when 1 he called Lazarus out ofthe tomb and raised him from the dead bore witness to him; 18 and it was for this cause also 2 that the multitude went to meet him, because they had heard that he had done this miracle." John does not have it as his aim to present the complete picture of the entrance of Jesus, but rather to show the double relation of this event to the resurrection of Lazarus (its cause), on the one hand, and to the condemnation of Jesus (its effect), on the other. It is this connection which he brings out in vv. 17-19. If bn, that, is read in ver. 17 with five Mjj. and the most ancient translations, the meaning is : that by coming forward the multitude bore testimony that He had caused the resurrection of Lazarus. There is nothing in this case to prevent the multitude of ver. 18 from being the same as that of ver. 17. John would simply say that the miracle which they were celebrating by accompanying Jesus (ver. 17) was the same one which had induced them to come to meet him (ver. 18). But the reflection of ver. 18 is, with this meaning, an idle one. It is self-evident that the event which they cele brated is also that which made them hasten to Him. If bre {when) is read, with the most ancient Mjj., it is quite otherwise. John relates that the multitude which had been with Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus, and which had been present at his resurrection, by accompanying Jesus bore testi mony to this great miracle of which they had themselves been witnesses. And here are the true authors of the ovation of Palm-day. They were there relating to the numerous pilgrims who were strangers what they had themselves heard and seen. We thus understand better this dramatic amplification, which in the former reading makes the effect quite prolix : When he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead. The mere mention of the fact, with the bn, would have been sufficient. If or. {when) is read, the participle . av is an imperfect : " who was with him when ..." xi. 42. In the 18th verse, John speaks of the second multitude— the one which came to meet Jesus on the road to Bethany. The Sid rovro,for this cause, refers to the following bn, because. And it was for this that the multitude came to meet Him, to wit, because. Not only did this miracle form the principal subject of the conversations of those who came ; but it was also {Kal) this same miracle, which, having come to the knowledge ofthe whole multitude of pilgrims, impelled them to go and meet Him. The compari son of the words of Luke (xix. 37) which we have already cited, shows that which we have so often established : how frequently the outlines of ' Ore (when) is the reading of the T. R. (.») while D E E L Itoteum gyr. and .read on with XABCHMQSTJTAAIOO Mnn., (that). 2 B E H A A omit zcai. 216 SECOND PART. the Synoptic picture are vague and undecided as compared with the so distinctly marked features of the Johannean narrative. Ver. 19. " Whereupon the Pharisees said among themselves, You see that you prevail nothing ; behold, the world is gone after him." Vv- 17, 18 bring out the influence of the resurrection of Lazarus on the scene of Palm- day ; ver. 19 indicates that of this scene on the final catastrophe, llpbg iavrovg, instead of irpbg aAA^Aouf, because, belonging to the same body, it is as if they were speaking to themselves. "ISe, behold, alludes to the unex pected spectacle of which they had just been witnesses. There is something of distress in the term 6 Kbopog, the world, " all this people, native and foreign," and in the aorist hnrpSev, is gone : " It is an accomplished thing ; we are alone ! " — Beapelre may be explained as an imperative ; but it is better to take it as an indicative present. These persons mutually sum mon each other, with a kind of bitterness, to notice the inefficacy of their half-measures. It is a way of encouraging each other to use without delay the extreme measures advised by Caiaphas. It is these last words especially which serve to place this whole passage in connection with the general design of this part of the Gospel. The more closely the narrative of John is studied, the less is it possible to see in it the accidental product of tradition or of legend. Instead of the juxtaposition of anecdotes which forms the character of the Synoptics, we meet at every step the traces of a profound connection which governs the narrative even in its minutest details. The dilemma is therefore, as Baur has clearly seen, real history profoundly apprehended and repro duced, or a romance very skillfully conceived and executed. III. — The last scene in the temple : w. 20-36. Of all the events which occurred between Palm-day and Thursday even ing, the evening before the Passion, John mentions but one, which is omitted by the Synoptics : the attempt of a few Greek proselytes to ap proach Jesus and the discourse in which He expressed the feehngs to which this unexpected circumstance gave rise in Him. If John so specially sets forth this event, it is not in order to relate an event omitted by his predecessors ; it is because it has according to him a peculiar importance, and is in direct connection with the purpose of his whole narrative. He had beheld in it, beyond the closing of the public activity of Jesus, the prelude to the agonies of the Passion. It is therefore an essential landmark in his narrative. He does not say at what moment this event must be placed. According to the words of Mark (xi. 11), it cannot have taken place on Palm-day. It issued, moreover, in the final j. rupture of Jesus with the people ; and we know that, during the days which followed Palm-day, Jesus resided in the temple, as if in His palace, and exercised there a sort of Messianic sovereignty. The next day after His entrance into Jerusalem, Tuesday, Jesus purified the temple by the expulsion of the traders. The following day, Wednesday, He coped with the official authorities, who demanded an explanation as to the origin CHAP. xii. 19-22. 217 of the power which He arrogated to Himself; then, successively, with the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Scribes, who approached him with captious questions ; and in His turn He presented to them, from Psalm ex., the great question of the divinity ofthe Messiah, which was to be the subject of His judicial sentence ; then, after having pronounced the malediction upon the rulers of the people, He withdrew, towards evening, to the mount of Olives, where He displayed before the eyes of four of His dis ciples (Mark) the picture of the judgment of Jerusalem, of the Church, and of mankind. The last words of our narrative (ver. 36) : " Jesus said these things ; then, departing he hid himself from them," may therefore lead us to suppose that the scene related by John occurred on this same Wed nesday evening, at the moment when Jesus was leaving the temple to go to Bethany (comp. the solemn farewell, Matt, xxiii. 37-39). In this case, it must be supposed that Jesus did not return to Jerusalem on Thursday morning, at the time when all the people were expecting Him in the temple, and that He passed the whole of Thursday in retirement at Bethany. This might very well be indicated by the expression : he hid himself from them. But perhaps in this way Wednesday will be too full. It is possible also that Jesus returned again to Jerusalem for a few moments on Thursday morning ; it would then be at that time that the scene here related by John took place. Nevertheless, the expression : he hid himself from them, is more easily justified on the first supposition. Vv. 20-22. " There were certain Greeks among those who went up to Jerusa lem to worship at the feast, 21 who came to Philip, who was of Bethsaida in Galilee, and made this request of him : Sir, we desire to see Jesus. 22. Philip goes and finds Andrew and tells him; and Andrew and Philip tell it again1 to Jesus." The Greeks belonged to the number of those heathen who, like the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts viii.), had in their own country embraced the Jewish religion and who had come to celebrate the great feasts in Jerusa lem. They were not, as some have thought, Jews speaking Greek and dwelling among the heathen {iXknvioTai). The spacious court of the Gen tiles was designed for these proselytes, according to the words of Solomon, 1 Kings viii. 41-43. If these strangers had been witnesses of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem and had been present at the driving out of the traders — that act by which Jesus had restored to its true use the only por tion of the sanctuary which was open to them, — we may the more easily understand their desire to enter into a more intimate relation with such a man. Certainly, they did not desire merely, like Zacchseus (Luke xix. 3) to see Jesus with the bodily eye ; which would limit the intervention of Philip to showing Him to them {Bruckner, Weiss). The request, thus un derstood, would not give a ground for such a step with relation to Philip, nor for Philip's action as related to Andrew, and that of the two as related to Jesus, nor for the solemn reflections of the latter. What these Greeks desired was certainly to have a private conversation with Him on religious 1 T. R. reads «at irakiv A*_pea, Kai *iAi.rn-o. k. *. Kai kcyovo-iv. The Vss. also vary very keyova-iv with 12 Mjj. A B L : cpxerai A*Sp. closing of Jesus' ministry, and in which He devoted Himself to death, is the time — or never — for the Father publicly to set the seal of His satisfaction upon His person and His work. Liicke, de Wette, Hengstenberg, Weiss, regard this voice from heaven as a simple thunder-clap. By reason of the coincidence of this external phe nomenon with His prayer, Jesus, in their view, interpreted it freely in the sense indicated by the evangelist. Is not thunder often called in the Old Testament, the voice of the Lord? The Babbis gave a name to these pro phetic voices, these mysterious inspirations which a word accidentally heard calls up in the hearts of believers, namely, Bath-Kol {daughter ofthe voice). But the text does not favor this interpretation of the phenomenon here related. According to John, it is not a clap of thunder taken to be a voice from heaven ; it is, on the contrary, a voice from heaven which a part of the multitude regard as a clap of thunder; comp. Meyer. How could Jesus say : this voice (ver. 30) ? How could this voice be translated by Him or by John into a definite expression in words ? Whence would arise in these words the contrast between the past (J have glorified) and the future {I will glorify), a contrast which has no connection with anything in the prayer of Jesus ? How, finally, could one part of the multitude itself discern in this sound an articulate language which they attribute to an angel? The text permits us to think only of a divine phenomenon. As to the Babbinical superstition called Bath-Kol, it cannot be cited here, since one would infer from such signs only a human voice. The past I have glorified refers to the ministry of the Lord in Israel, which is close upon its end; the future I will glorify, to the approaching action of Jesus on the whole world, when from the midst of His glory He will enlighten the heathen. Between these two great works which the Father accom plishes through the Son, is placed precisely the hour of suffering and death which is the necessary transition from the one to the other. There is no ground therefore to draw back before this hour. It is, moreover, well surrounded. Before,— the name of God glorified in Israel; after,— the name of God glorified in the whole world. Here indeed is the most consoling response for the filial heart of Jesus (xvii. 1, 2, 4, 5). The two Kal, and, and, bring out the close connection between the work done and the work to be done : " I who have accomplished the one, will also accomplish the other." The whole multitude hear a sound'; but the meaning of the voice is 15 226 second part. perceived by each one only in proportion to his. spiritual intelligence. Thus, in human speech the wild beast perceives only a sound, the trained animal discovers in it a meaning, a command, for example, which it immediately obeys; man only discerns in it a thought. "Ox^og: the greater number ; dXXoi : others in smaller numbers ; comp. Acts ix. 7 with xxii. 9 ; xxvi. 13, 14, where an analogous phenomenon occurs at the time of the appearance of Jesus to Paul. In order to understand a vision, there must be an internal organ and this organ may be more or less favorably disposed. At Pentecost, where some see only the effects of drunkenness, others discern a revelation of the glorious things of God (Acts ii. 11-13). The perfect 'te%al,Kev, instead of the aorist, signifies that to their view Jesus is for the future a person in possession of this heavenly sign. Vv. 30-32. " Jesus answered and said : Not for my sake has this voice 1 made itself heard, but for your sakes. 31. Now is the judgment of this world ; 2 now shall the prince of this world be cast out. 32. And I, when I shall have been lifted up from the earth, will draw all3 men unto me." In declaring that this voice does not make itself heard for His sake, Jesus does not mean to say that He has no need to be strengthened ; but only that He had not needed to be strengthened in this way, that is, by a sensible manifestation. What the procedure of the Greeks has been for Him, in awakening vividly within Him the feeling of the gravity of the present hour, this heavenly phenomenon should be for them, by revealing to them the decisive im portance of the crisis which is accomplished in this moment. And first, as to the world, this hour is that of the most radical revolution (w. 31, 32). It is that of its judgment (ver. 31a), of the expulsion of its former master (ver. 31b), and of the advent of its new monarch (ver. 32). The word vvv, now, at the beginning of the first two clauses, sets forth expressly this decisive character of the present moment for humanity. To judge is to declare the moral state, not only as evil but also as good. I cannot accept, therefore, the meaning which Weiss gives here to the word Kploig, judgment, in applying it only to the condemnation of the world as the consequence of the rejection and the death of Christ. No doubt, the cross is the basis of the condemnation of the world, as it reveals com pletely the moral state of natural humanity. This throne, erected for Jesus by man, shows the depth of hostility to God which is in his heart. But this is not the only side of the judgment of the world by the work of Christ ; comp. iii. 21 following iii. 18-20. Passing before the cross, one part of mankind find in it their salvation through faith, while the other part through unbelief complete their condemnation. Here is the judg ment of the world which is the consequence of Holy Friday. It will begin inwardly on this very day. Its first great outward manifestation will be Pentecost; the second will be the fall of Jerusalem. The final universal judgment will be the solemn ratification of it (ver. 48). 1 T. R. with 11 Mjj. (E F G) ; avrn n 4>w*q, two to* Koa-pov to-tov). instead of n *g impossible. The words : yet a little time, force us to give it the temporal sense. We must, therefore, either understand it in the sense of when which the French comme so often has (comp. for this use of ag in the New Testa ment, Luke xii. 58 : " As thou goest," for : " While thou goes.)," or read iag, while, notwithstanding the Alexandrian authorities. The initial _ of this word was undoubtedly confounded with the final e of the preceding word irepiiraTeire. I should not be surprised, however, if it were otherwise in ver. 36, and if the true reading here were ag. The idea of because of the fact that is much more admissible in this sentence, " Because ofthe fact that you have the light, believe in the light ; " comp. Gal. vi. 10, where the ag may be explained in the same way. This is precisely the reading of the Sinaitic MS. It is the more easily explained, in this case, how in ver. 35 the ag may have been substituted for ewe. In two sentences so near together and so similar, the copyists may have made either the first con form to the second, or the reverse. An equal solemnity reigns in these two appeals of vv. 35 and 36 ; only in the former the tone of pity prevails ; in the latter, that of tenderness. The last word of the Saviour to His people was to be an invitation, not a menace : " Since you still possess in me the living revelation of God {ag, tlie light), acknowledge it, believe on it, to the end that you may become {yivvoBe) children of light." Through faith in Christ man is so penetrated by light that he himself becomes luminous. Such was the farewell of Jesus to Israel. The words : He said these things, signify that He gave them no other response. Thereupon He withdraws; and on the following day He does not reappear. The people waited for Him in the temple as usual (Luke xxi. 38) ; but in vain. It was at this time no longer a mere cloud which veiled the sun ; the sun had set, the night was come. CHAP. xii. 37, 38. 231 THIED SECTION. XII. 37-50. E__tros_? ective Glance at the Mysterious Fact op Jewish Unbelief. This passage forms the close of the second part of the Gospel (v. 1-xii. 36). The evangelist interrupts his narrative that he may give himself up to a meditation on the fact which he has just set forth. What is this fact? Is it, as some interpreters suppose {Reuss, Westcott, for example) the public ministry of Jesus ? The entire part— chaps, v.-xii.— is the rep resentation of the public activity of the Lord, while chaps, xiii.-xyii. describe His private activity. This view appears to us very superficial. Between these two parts, there exists a much more profound contrast than that of a more or less limited circle of activity; it is that of unbelief and faith, of unbelief in the people and of faith in the disciples. Is it not obvious that the real subject of the following epilogue, that which preoccupies the mind of John and becomes for a moment the subject of his meditation, is not the public ministry of Jesus, but the unbelief of the Jewish people. The question to which John replies is this : How ex plain the failure of the work of the Messiah in Israel ? It is indeed one of the most obscure problems of history. It rose in all its greatness, after the preceding part of the Gospel, before the eyes of the historian and his readers. In the first passage, vv. 37-43, Jesus explains the causes of this mysterious fact ; in the second, w. 44-50, he shows the gravity of it by summing up its tragical consequences. I. — The causes of Jewish unbelief: vv. 37-43. If the Jews are the chosen people, prepared of God to the end of receiving the Messiah and of carrying salvation to other nations, ought they not to have been the first to open their arms to Jesus? Or, if they did not, must it not be inferred from this fact that Jesus was not really the Messiah ? Chaps, ix.-xi. ofthe Epistle to the Bomans are designed to examine into this great paradox of the religious history of mankind ; it was the great apolo getic question of the time of the apostles. Thus it is that the following passage in John contains many of the thoughts which likewise form the basis of St. Paul's dissertation. Vv. 37, 38. "Now, although he had done so many miracles in their presence, they did not believe, on him, 38 that the word which Isaiah the prophet had spoken might be fulfilled : Lord, who has believed our preaching and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed ? " However irrational is the fact with which John is about to occupy himself, it must be accomplished, for it was foreseen and foretold. How many motives to believe were there for the Jews in the appearance of Jesus, particularly in His miracles which were the testimony of God, the seal with which He marked His Son, signs the meaning of which it was easy to apprehend, especially for Jews (1 Cor. i . 22) ! The word roaavra, so many, in our gospels, refers always to number, not to 232 SECOND PART. greatness ; comp. vi. 9, xxi. 11 ; it is also sometimes its meaning in the classics ; comp. the expression roaavra re ual Toiavra. These words imply- that Jesus had done a much larger number of miracles than the six related in this book; comp. vii. 3, xx. 30. John did not wish therefore to relate everything that he knew. The term ar/pela, signs, calls to mind the divine purpose in these works, and the words iyirpoadev avrav, in their presence, their complete publicity. The imperfect, they did not believe, sets forth the con tinuance, the obstinate persistency of the Israelitish unbelief, notwithstand ing the signs which were renewed every day before their eyes. Scarcely any one seeks any longer to weaken the sense of ha, in order that, by making it a acre, so that. The passage quoted is Is. liii. 1. The prophet, at the moment of describing the humiliation, the death and the exaltation of the Messiah, asks himself whether there will be any one in Israel who is disposed to welcome with faith a message such as this, so con trary to the carnal aspirations of the people. Now the Messiah to whom the prophecy refers cannot hope for a better welcome than the message itself. These two things, the message and the Messiah who is its subject, are so completely one and the same thing to the view of the prophet that in the second clause, parallel to the first, there is no more any question except of the Messiah {the arm of the Lord recognized). The reply to the question Who has believed? is, in the thought of the prophet, either no one, or a small number of persons ; they can be counted. According to some, the expression dm>i -hpav, our hearing, signifies : that which we hear from the mouth of Jehovah, either we prophets {Hengstenberg), or we Jews who have attained to faith, the prophet being included {Hofmann, Delitzsch, Keil). But it is much more natural to explain : " That which we cause to be heard (we prophets)." It is certainly not the people hearing; it is the prophets preaching who can raise such a question. The first expression : that which we preach, refers to the suffering Messiah described in the follow ing picture ; the second : the arm of the Lord, to the acts of divine power of which He will be the agent, especially at His resurrection and at His exaltation, which are the crowning points of this picture (Is. liii. 10-12). The prophecy had thus declared that a Messiah, such as God should send, would not find faith in Israel ; His humiliation would to such a degree shock this people, who would not even have eyes to discern the manifesta tions of the divine power in His appearance. But the fact might be foretold without being desired by God. Well, it was at once desired and announced, so far that God Himself cooperated in its execution. Such is the advance from ver. 38 to ver. 39. Yes, in this blindness there is some thing supernatural ! Vv. 39, 40. " And indeed they could not believe, because Isaiah said again, 40 He has blinded their eyes and hardened 1 their hearts, that they should not see with their eyes and understand ' with their heart, and be converted, 3 1 The Byz. (r A etc.) read Tren-upufee* ; the 8 X B D : orpao--*. eiriarpc^iaai^. chap. xii. 39, 40. 233 and I should heal L them." The omnipotence of God itself worked to the end of realizing that which His omniscience had foretold, and to make Israel do the impossible thing. Not only they did not believe (ver. 37) ; but they could not believe (ver. 39). The word ndliv {again) reminds us that there is here a second idea, serving to explain the fact by completing the first. This logical relation answers to the meaning of the two expressions of Isaiah quoted by John. The Sid tovto, for this cause, refers, as ordinarily in John (v. 18, x. 17, etc.), to the following "on, because : " And this is the, reason why they could not believe : it is because Isaiah in another passage {naliv) said." It is in vain that Weiss tries to make the Sid tovto, for this cause, also refer to the preceding idea, namely, that of the fact ; it refers to the following bn and consequently to the cause of the fact (see Keil). These words are taken from Is. vi. 9, 10. The word of address, Lord, added by the LXX., passed thence to John. The quotation differs both from the Hebrew text and from that of the LXX., in that according to the former, it is Isaiah who is said to blind and harden the people by his ministry : "Make the heart of this people fat; " according to the latter, this hardening is a simple fact laid to the charge of Israel : " The heart of this people is hardened; " in John, on the contrary, the understood subject of the two verbs {he has blinded, he has hardened) can only be God. This third form is evidently a deliberate correction of the latter, in order to go back to the meaning of the former. For this fact accomplished by Isaiah, being the execution of the command of God, is rightly attributed by John to God Himself. This passage proves that the evangelist, while attaching himself to the Greek translation, was not dependent on it and was acquainted with the Hebrew text (vol. I., p. 197 f). Tva)?u>vv, to make blind, designates the depriving of intellectual light, of the sense of the true and even of the useful, of simple good sense ; -n-apovv, to harden the skin, the depriving of moral sensibility, the sense of the good. From the paralysis of these two organs unbelief must necessarily result; the people may see miracle after miracle, may hear testimony after testimony, yet they will not discern in the one whom God thus points out, and who gives all these testimonies to Himself, their Messiah. The subject of the two verbs is undoubtedly God {Meyer, Reuss), but God in the person of that Adonai who (according to Is. vi. 1) gives the command to the prophet. The read ing of nearly all the Mjj. is Idaopai, and I shall heal them. This future might signify : " And I shall end by bringing them to myself through the means of their very hardening." The two Kal and . . . and, however, are too closely related to each other for such a contrast between the last verb and those which precede it to be admissible. The force ofthe formidable Iva pv, in order that I . . . , evidently extends as far as the end of the sentence. The construction of the indicative with this conjunction has nothing unusual in it (1 Cor. xiii. 3; 1 Pet. iii. 1; Apoc. xxii. 14); it is frequent also in the classic Greek with birag. We might undoubtedly explain in this way: "lest they should be converted, in which case I will 1 All the Mjj., except L r, read lao-o/uai, instead of lao-w^-ai. 234 SECOND PART. heal them " (for : I would heal them). But the other sense remains the more natural one : God does not desire to heal them ; it is not in accord ance with His actual intentions towards them. This is precisely the reason why He does not desire that they should believe — a thing which would force Him to pardon and heal them. If such is the meaning of the words of the prophet and of those of the evangelist, how can it be justified ? These declarations would be inexplicable and revolting if, at the moment when God addresses them to Israel and treats Israel in this way, this people were in the normal state, and God regarded them still as His people. But it was by no means so ; when sending Isaiah, God said to him : " Go and tell this people" (Is. vi. 9). And we know what a father means, when speak ing of his son, he says : this child, instead of my child : the paternal and filial relation is momentarily broken. An abnormal state has begun, which obliges God to use means of an extraordinary character. This divine dispensation towards Israel enters therefore into the category of chastisements. The creature who has long abused the divine favors falls under the most terrible of punish ments ; from an end it becomes for the time a means. In fact man can, by virtue of his liberty, refuse to glorify God by his obedience and salvation ; but even in this case he cannot prevent God from glorifying Himself in him by a chastisement capable of making the odious character of his sin shine forth conspicuously. " God," says Hengstenberg, " has so constituted man, that, when he does not resist the first beginnings of sin, he loses the right of disposing of himself and forcibly obeys even to the end the power to which he has surrendered himself." God does not merely permit this development of evil ; He mils it and concurs in it. But how, it will be said, will the holiness of God, as thus understood, be reconciled with His love? This is that which St. Paul explains to the Jews by the example of their ancient oppressor, Pharaoh, Bom. ix. 17 : In the first place, this king refuses to hearken to God and to be saved ; he has the prerogative to do so. But after this he is passively used for the salvation of others. God paralyses in him both the sense of the true and the sense of the good ; he becomes deaf to the appeals of conscience and even to the calculations of self-interest properly under stood ; he is given up to the inspirations of his own foolish pride, in order that, through the conspicuous example of the ruin into which he precipitates himself, the world may learn what it costs wickedly to resist the first appeals of God. Thereby he at least serves the salvation of the world. The history of Pharaoh is reproduced in that of the Jews in the time of Jesus Christ. Already at the epoch of Isaiah the mass of the people were so carnal that their future unbelief in the Messiah, the man of sorrows, appears to the prophet an inevitable moral fact (Is. liii.). We must even go further and say, with Paul and John, that, things being thus, this unbelief must have been willed of God. What would have become of the kingdom of God, indeed, if an Israel like this had outwardly and without a change of heart received Jesus as its Messiah and had become with such dispositions the nucleus of the Church ? This purely intellectual adherence of Israel, instead of advancing the divine work in the heathen world, would have served only to hinder it We have the proof of this in the injurious part which was played in the Apostolic Church by the Pharisaic minority who accepted the faith. Suppose that the Jewish people en masse had acted thus and had governed the Church, the- work of St. Paul would not have been possible ; the Jewish monopoly would have chap. xii. 41. 235 taken possession of the gospel ; there would have been an end of the universalism which is the essential characteristic of the new covenant. The rejection of the Jews thus disposed was therefore a measure necessary to the salvation of the world. It is in this sense that St. Paul says in Bom. xi. 12 : " that the fall of Israel has become the riches of the world," and ver. 15 : " that its rejection has been the reconciliation of the world." How, indeed, could the Gentiles have wel comed a salvation connected with circumcision and the Mosaic observances ? God was therefore obliged to make Israel blind, that the miracles of Jesus might be as nothing in their eyes and as not having taken place, and to harden them, that His preachings might remain for them as empty sounds (Is. vi.). Thus Israel proud, legal, carnal, rejected and could be rejected freely. This decided position did not in reality make Israel's lot worse ; but it had for the salvation of the Gentiles the excellent results which St. Paul develops in Bom. xi. Far more than this, by this very chastisement, Israel became what it had refused to be by its salvation, the apostle of the world ; and, like Judas its type, it fulfilled, willingly or unwil lingly, its irrevocable commission ; comp. Bom. xi. 7-10. Moreover, it is clear that, in the midst of this national judgment, every individual remained free to turn to God by repentance and to escape the general hardening. Ver. 13 of Isaiah and ver. 42 of John are the proof of this. As to the relation of the Jewish unbelief to the divine prevision (vv. 37, 38), John does not indicate the metaphysical theory by means of which he succeeds in reconciling the foreknowledge of God with the responsibility of man; he simply accepts these two data, the one of the religious sentiment, the other of the moral consciousness. But if we reflect that God is above time, that, properly speaking, He does not foresee an event which is for us yet to come, but that He sees it, abso lutely as we behold a present event ; that, consequently, when He declares it at any moment whatsoever, He does not foretell it, but describes it as a spectator and witness, the apparent contradiction between these two seemingly contradictory elements vanishes. Once foretold, the event undoubtedly cannot fail to happen, because the eye of God cannot have presented to Him as existing that which will not be. But the event does not exist because God has seen it ; God, on the con trary, has seen it because it will be, or rather because to His view it already is. Thus the real cause of Jewish unbelief, foretold by God, is not the divine foresee ing. This cause is, in the last analysis, the moral state of the people themselves. This state it is which, when once established by the earlier unfaithfulnesses of Israel, necessarily implies the punishment of unbelief which must strike the peo ple at the decisive moment, the judgment of hardening. Ver. 41. " This did Isaiah say, when x he saw his glory and spoke of him." John justifies in this verse the application which he has just made to Jesus Christ of the vision of Is. vi. The Adonai whom Isaiah beheld at that moment was the divine being who is incarnated in Jesus. Herein also John and Paul meet together ; comp. 1 Cor. x. 4, where Paul calls the one who guided Israel from the midst of the cloud Christ. Some interpreters have tried to refer the pronoun avrov, of him, not to Christ, but to God. But the last words : and spoke qf him, would be useless in this sense and 1 X A B L M X some Mnn. Cop. Sah. read read by 12 Mjj. (D r A, etc.), the Mnn. It. oti (because) instead of oTe (when) which is Syr. Chrys. 236 SECOND PART. this remark would be aimless in the context. The Alexandrian reading, "because he saw," instead of "when he saw," is adopted by Tischendorf, Weiss, Keil, etc. But it does not appear to me acceptable. Its only rea sonable sense would be : " because he really saw his glory and spoke of Him so long beforehand (a thing which seems impossible)." But this reflection would be very coldly apologetic and quite useless for readers who were accustomed to hear the prophecies quoted. It is much more easy to understand how the conjunction "ore, which is quite rarely used, may have been replaced by "on, which appears in every line, than how the reverse could have taken place. The ancient Latin and Syriac versions are agreed in supporting the received text. The sense of the latter is simple and perfectly suitable. " It was of Christ, who manifested Him self to him as Adonai, that Isaiah spoke when he uttered such words." John proves that he has the right to apply this passage here. It might be inferred from vv. 37-41 that no Jew had either believed or been able to believe ; vv. 42, 43, while completing this historical resume, remove this misapprehension, but, at the same time, explain the want of significance of these few exceptions with reference to the general course of the history. Vv. 42, 43. " It is true, nevertheless, that, even among the rulers, many be lieved on him; but because of the. Pharisees they did not confess their faith, lest they should be put out of the synagogue ; 43 for they loved the glory which comes from men more than1 the glory which comes from God." This excep tion confirms the rule, since it proves that, even where faith had been awakened, the fear of men suppressed the profession and development of it. We _see from this remarkable expression how heavy was the yoke which Pharisaism made to rest as a burden upon Israel (see the parables of chap. x.). The moral cause of the hardening and blinding ofthe peo ple (ver. 40) was precisely this power of Pharisaic fanaticism, which was incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel. Bespecting bpag, nevertheless, comp. Gal. iii. 15 ; 1 Cor. xiv. 7. The words : lest they should be put out of the synagogue, confirm what was said in ix. 22. The word S6£a, in ver. 43, is taken nearly in its etymological sense : opinion, whence : approbation. The difference of reading {vnip and f77r.fi) is probably due to itacism (the pronouncing of v and v as .). If imip is read, there are two forms of com parison combined here, as if for the purpose of better setting forth the odiousness of such a preference. Those who are commonly ranked in the class of these cowardly persons, are men like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. I cannot adopt this application (xix. 38-42). Those rather are in question who remained outwardly attached to the Jewish system, such as Gamaliel and many others, the Erasmuses of that time. On the necessity of profession for salvation, comp. Bom. x. 10. II. — Tlie consequences of faith and unbelief: vv. 44-50. Israel was not only blinded with reference to the signs ; it was deaf as regarded the testimonies which accompanied them, and this is what 1 X L X 5 Mnn. read virep instead of nirep. chap. xii. 42-46. 237 finally renders its unbelief unpardonable. Such is the meaning and spirit of this passage; it is not a summary of the teaching of Jesus in general. It is a resumk made from the special standpoint of Jewish unbelief. The first part sets forth the privilege connected with faith (vv. 44-46) ; the second, the condemnation which will strike unbelief (vv. 47, 48) ; the third, the reason of the gravity of these two moral facts which was so decisive (vv. 49, 50). Criticism rightly disputes the view that Jesus ever delivered the following discourse ; it alleges, with good grounds, the absence of all indication relative to the occasion and locality in connection with which this discourse was given, as well as the want of any new idea (see Keim, for example). But it falls into error in concluding from this that there is an artificial composition here which the evangelist places in the mouth of Jesus {de Wette), and in extending this conclusion to the discourses of Jesus, in general, in the fourth Gospel, discourses which are only the expression of the author's own thoughts {Baur, Reuss, Hilgenfeld). Is it admissible that the evangelist himself would have ever dreamed, at this point of his narrative, of presenting to us a discourse of Jesus as really uttered by him? This is, indeed, what those suppose who make Him speak thus on going out from the temple {Lampe, Bengel), or at the time when he re-entered it again after the departure mentioned in ver. 36 {Chrysostom, Hengstenberg), or in a private conversation in presence of His disciples {Besser, Luthardt, 1st ed.). Of these three suppositions, the first two clash with ver. 36, which evidently indicates the closing of the public ministry of Jesus. The third, withdrawn by Luthardt himself (2d ed.), has against it the term iKpai-e {he cried aloud.) What, in addition, excludes the idea of a discourse really delivered by Jesus at this time, is that the passage contains only a series of reminiscences of all the pre vious teachings, and that it is the only one which is destitute of any indi cation of occasion, time and place. The evangelist has with ver. 36 ended his part as narrator as to this portion of the history. In ver. 37 he con templates the mysterious fact which he has just described and meditates on its causes and consequences. There is then here a discourse composed by John, indeed ; but he does not attribute it as such to Jesus ; he gives it as the summary of all the testimonies of Jesus which the Jews ought to have believed, but which they rejected. Here precisely is the reason why this passage contains no new idea, and bears no indication of time or place. The aorists (_/cpaf_, elirev), recall all the particular cases in which Jesus had pronounced such affirmations respecting Himself; they must be rendered thus : "And yet He had sufficiently said . . . , He had suffi ciently cried aloud ..." Or as Baumlein expresses it : " Jesus hatte aber laut erklart." This interpretation forces itself more and more upon modern exegesis. Hence it follows that each one of the following decla rations will rest upon a certain number of passages included in the pre ceding discourses. To the rejection of the miracles of Jesus which were the testimony of God, (w. 37-43), Jewish unbelief has added the rejection of the testimony of Jesus respecting Himself. Vv. 44-46. " Now Jesus cried, saying, He that believes on me, believes not on 238 second part. me, but on him that sent me; 45 and he that beholds me, beholds him that sent me; 46 lam come as a light into the world, that whosoever believes on me, may not abide in the darkness." How many times had not Jesus borne witness to His full communion with the Father, that relation in which nothing obscured the manifestation in His person of this invisible Father of whoai He was the organ ! To believe on Him, is therefore to penetrate by the act of faith through the human person of Jesus even to the infinite source of every good which appears in Him (v. 19, 20; vi. 57 ; viii. 16, 29, 38 ; x. 30, 38). The negation : He believes not on me, has its complete truth in this sense — that the believer does not believe on the man Jesus as if He were come or had acted in His own name (ver. 43) ; in Jesus, it is really God, and God only, who is the object of faith, since God alone appears in Him. It is not, therefore, necessary, to give to not the sense of not only. The sight, which is in question in ver. 45, is that which is developed along with faith itself, the intuition of the inmost being of the person who is beheld. As to the correlation of the two acts so intimately connected, believing and beholding, see vi. 40, 69. Jesus, the living revelation of God, becomes, by means of this spiritual sight, the light of the soul (iii. 19 ; viii. 12 ; ix. 5, 39). Thus he who believes in Jesus possesses God and by his faith attests the truth of God to tho view of others (iii. 33). What importance there is for a human being in the acceptance of such a manifestation ! To the importance of faith corresponds that of the refusal to believe. Vv. 47, 48. "And if any one hear my sayings and keep1 them not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save, the world. 48. He that rejects me and receives not my sayings has already his judge; the word which I have spoken, this it is which will judge him at the last day." Woe to him who does not believe on Jesus and His word in which He manifests Himself and bears testimony of Himself! As His presence is the pure manifestation of God, His word is the perfect revelation of the thought of God. This will be the one touchstone of the judgment. The declara tion of ver. 47 does not exclude the personal role of Jesus in this great act. It merely says that the sentence which He will pronounce at that time will be simply that which will follow from the position which the man has taken with regard to His word ; it is the idea of iii. 18 {vSv KiKpirai), v. 24; viii. 15. The reading tyvkaZn, keep, is to be preferred to the received reading 7r.oTff.o-?) (and believe not) ; for the former term is less common than the latter ; it applies not to the keeping in the conduct — with this meaning, Jesus employs the word rvpelv — but to inward appro priation and possession. The last words of ver. 47 reproduce the idea of iii. 17 ; comp. ix. 39, 41. In ver. 48, where the rejection of Jesus is identified with that of His words, the express mention of the last day is very remarkable. As Gess observes, "the moral judgment of humanity through the word is inces santly effected even now, according to the entire Gospel. And yet the notion of the last judgment is so indispensable in the thought of the 1 X A B K L X some Mnn. It*"., Syr"', read e)vkafv (keeps) instead of jt.o-t«.ot| (believes). chap. xii. 47-50. 239 evangelist, that he expresses it here as the limit without which the purely moral judgment would fail of its consummation " (II. p. 452). How is it that Reuss, Scholten, Hilgenfeld affirm that the final judgment is denied in our Gospel! And what is striking is that the evangelist mentions, in speaking thus, a fact which is not indicated in the saying of Jesus on which this is founded (iii. 17). The last two verses explain the reason why the position taken by man with regard to Jesus and His word has so decisive an importance. It is because He has nothing of His own mingled in His teaching, and that He has transmitted it, as to substance and form, exactly as He received it from the Father. Vv. 49, 50. "For lhave not spoken from myself; but the Father who sent me has himself given me commandment1 what I should say and how I should say it ; 50 and I know that his commandment is life eternal; what I say there fore Isay even as my Father has said to me." If the word of Jesus is the standard of judgment, it is because it is that of God Himself, both as to substance (r. elira) and as to form {rl la7,vaa). The ivrolv, the commandment, of which Jesus here speaks is not a mandate received once for all before leaving heaven. This idea is incompatible with iii. 34, v. 19, 20, 30, viii. 16 (see Gess, pp. 542, 543). Jesus receives for each case the commission which He has to fulfill ; He hears before speaking, and He hears because He listens. This constant docility arises in Him (ver. 50) from the certainty which he has of the vivifying and regenerating force of that word which the Father intrusts to Him. Whatever may be the objections which it excites, or the doubts which are set in opposition to it, He is conscious of its virtue by means of which it produces in souls eternal life. For this reason {even as, ver. 50&), He gives it to men just as He receives it, with out allowing Himself to make any change in it. Comp. v. 30; vii. 16, 17; viii. 28; then vi. 63, 68. John formulates very exactly in these few propositions the absolute value which Jesus had constantly attributed to His person and His word. This summary can not be that of a discourse which the evangelist had the consciousness of having himself composed. It is not possible that he would have drawn up this formidable charge against the unbelief of Israel in the name of discourses which Jesus had never given ; still more impossible that he could have founded his indictment, in ver. 37, on miracles which were only inventions of his own. To attribute to him such a mode of proceeding would be to make him a shameless impostor or a mad man. And what is to be thought of the writer who should put into the mouth of Jesus these words: "lhave said nothing from myself ; my Father has commanded me what I should say, and how I should say it," and who should make Him say this, while having the consciousness of having himself made Him speak all along and of making Him still do so at this time? Are there not enough impossibilities here ? Let us remark also how this retrospective glance, interrupting the narra tive, fails of appropriateness if we suppose it to have been composed in the second century, at a time when the question of the rejection by the Jews was no longer an actuality ; on the contrary, how natural it is on the part of a man who was himself an eye-witness of this abnormal and unexpected fact of Jewish unbehef. 1 X A B M X 30 Mnn, read SeSwev instead of cSutxev, 240 second part. Before leaving this second part of the gospel story, let us cast a glance backward over the course of the narrative. We have seen in process of accomplishment before our eyes, through all the vicissitudes so dramati cally described, the development of the national unbelief and the pro gressive separation between a people almost wholly fanaticized by its rulers and a feeble minority of believers. Well ! Let us for an instant, by a thought, suppress this entire picture, all these journeys of Jesus to Jeru salem, all these conflicts in the very centre of the theocracy — as must be done as soon as we reject the credibility of our Gospel — behold, we are in presence of the final catastrophe attested by the Synoptics no less than by St. John: How are we to explain this sudden and tragic denouement? Only by the collisions which took place in a retired province of the Holy Land on occasion of a few Sabbath cures ? No : the serious historian, even when accounting for the entrance on Palm-day, can never dispense with this whole series of conflicts in Jerusalem at which we have just been present. THIRD PART. THE DEVELOPMENT OF FAITH IN THE DISCIPLES. XIII. 1— XVII. 26. The third part of the Gospel describes the last moments which Jesus passed with His disciples ; while making us acquainted with the supreme manifestations of His love towards them, it initiates us into the full devel opment of faith in their hearts. John thus contrasts with the gloomy picture of Israelitish unbelief the luminous picture of the formation of faith in the future founders of the Church. Christ accomplishes this work in the hearts of His followers : 1. By two acts, the washing of their feet and the removal of Judas, through which He purifies the apostolic circle from the last remains of carnal Messianism ; 2. By a series of dis courses, in which He prepares His disciples for the approaching separation, gives them the necessary instructions with a view to their future ministry end elevates their faith in His person to the highest point which it can reach at this moment ; 3. By a prayer of thanksgiving, by which he affixes the seal to His work now finished. Under the sway of these last manifestations, the faith of the disciples reaches its relative perfection, as fruits reach their maturity in the warm rays of the autumn sun. This faith is subjected to a double test, that of humiliation, through the deep humility of Jesus in the act of washing the feet, and that of self-sacrifice, through the prospect of a violent conflict to be met from the side of the world and a victory to be gained only through the spiritual force of Christ. With such prospects, what becomes of the earthly hopes which they still entertained in their hearts ? But the faith of the apostles comes forth from this test triumphant and purified. It has laid hold of the divine person of Christ : " We believe that thou camest forth from God " (xvi. 30). This is enough ; Jesus answers : "At last you believe " (xvi. 31). And He blesses His Father with an outpouring of thanks (chap, xvii.) for having given Him these eleven who believe in Him and who will bring the world to faith. Thus therefore there are three sections : 1. Chap. xiii. 1-30 : The purification of the apostles' faith by two deci sive facts. 2. Chap. xiii. 31-xvi. 33 : The strengthening and development of this faith by the last teachings of Jesus, which contain the final revelation of His person. 3. Chap. xvii. : The thanksgiving for this earthly ministry now ended. 16 341 242 THIRD PART. FIRST SECTION. XIH. 1-30. The Facts. 1. The washing of the disciples' feet : w. 1-20. 2. The removal of Judas : vv. 21-30. I. — The washing of the disciples' feet : w. 1-20. This section includes a preamble (w. 1-3), the fact (w. 4r-ll), finally, the explanation of the fact (vv. 12-20). 1. Vv. 1-3: Preamble. We have already discovered at the beginning of several narratives short introductions describing the situation, at once external and moral, in which the fact about to be related is accomplished ; thus ii. 23-25 ; iii. 22- 24 ; iv. 1, 2, 43-45. Each of these preambles is, with relation to the narra tive which is to follow, what the Prologue i. 1-18 is for the whole Gospel, a general glance fitted to give the reader acquaintance with the subject in advance. Such is the design of the preamble in w. 1-3. And as the substance of the general Prologue is borrowed from the teaching of Jesus in the sequel of our Gospel, so in the same way, as we easily discover, this particular preamble is entirely derived from the facts and discourses which will follow. Ver. 1. " Before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour was come,1 when he should leave this world to go to the Father, after having loved his own 2 who were in the world, he perfectly testified to them all his love." The words before the feast of the Passover are connected with the preceding determination of time : six days before the Passover (xii. 1), but with a difference of expression which cannot be accidental. There it was said : " Before the Passover," a word which designates, as ordinarily, the Paschal supper on the evening which ended the 14th of Nisan (Exod. xii. ; Lev. xxiii. 5 ; Num. xxviii. 16). Here John says : " Before the feast of the Pass over ; " this wider term undoubtedly includes the entire day of the 14th of Nisan on which the leaven was removed from all the Israelite dwellings, and which was already counted for this reason among the days apper taining to the feast. This appears from Num. xxxiii. 3 (comp. also Josh. v. 11), where the day of the 15th Nisan is designated as the morrow after the Passover (LXX. : ry in-avpiov tov irdoxa). To prove that the 14th could not be included in the feast, Keil cites Lev. xxiii. 6; Num. xxviii. 17; but it must not be forgotten that in these last passages the complement of the word the feast is not ofthe Passover, but of unleavened bread {t&v d^vpav); the eating of the unleavened bread began indeed only with the Paschal supper, on the evening of the 14th-15th, to continue seven days until the 21st. This was the week of unleavened bread. If, then, we include the 1 T. R. with the Byz. (E F G H etc.) reads «X : IovSaiovs {the Jews) instead of io-ov; t> lAi|.»--l.i' ; the Alex. (X B K h etc.): nktev. chap. xiii. 1. 243 day of the 14th in the expression the feast of the Passover in xiii. 1, the expression before the feast of the Passover places us, at the latest, on the evening- of the 13th. But if, on the contrary, we identify, as some inter preters do {Hengstenberg, Lange, Hofmann, Luthardt, Keil, etc.), the begin ning of the feast with the very moment of the Paschal supper, then this expression places us on the evening of the 14th, a few moments before the opening of this sacred supper. We shall see later the importance of this difference of explanation. This chronological determination refers naturally to the principal verb : vyo-^viev, he loved. As this verb expresses a feeling existing habitually in the heart of Jesus, and not an historical act, some interpreters have denied this reference. Some have made this determination of time : before the feast, refer to the verb iyeiperai, rises, ver. 4 {Bleek, de Wette) ; but what, in this case, can we do with the verb vydirvoEv, he loved ? There is not the least indication of a parenthesis. Others endeavor to make this determination of time refer to the participle elSag, knowing, {Luthardt, 1st ed., Riggenbach), or to vYairi/oag, having loved, {Wieseler, Tholuck). But, placed as it is, at the beginning of this whole section, this chronological indication can refer only to the principal action) the indication of which governs it altogether : 17yd.. ;/o-., he loved. And this relation, which is the most simple, is also that which offers the best sense. How could John say that Jesus had been conscious of His approaching departure {eiSag) or had loved {vyairi/oag) His own before the feast ? The verb ayairav, to love, must designate here, as appears from the aorist, not the feeling only, but also its external manifestations (especially those the story of which is to follow). John means that it was on the evening before the first day of the feast, when He was going to leave His followers, that Jesus manifested all His love for them and in some sort surpassed Himself in the testimonies which He gave them of this feeling. To this first determination of a chronological nature, a second of a moral nature is attached : " Jesus, knowing that ..." It was while having the per fectly distinct consciousness of His impending departure that Jesus acted and spoke as John is about to relate to us. This thought presided over these last manifestations of His love. Hengstenberg and others connect this par ticiple with the principal verb through the idea of a contrast : "Although He knew indeed . . . , nevertheless He loved and humbled Himself thus," as if the prospect of His future exaltation could have been for Jesus a hin drance in the way of acting as He does ! John had no need to deny a supposition so absurd. He means, on the contrary, that because He saw the hour of separation approaching, He redoubled His tenderness towards those whom He had until then so faithfully loved. Who does not know how the foreseeing of an imminent separation renders affection more demonstrative ! Thus most, — His own : those whom He had gained by His love. There is a deliberate antithesis between the terms : the Father, with whom all is rest, and the world, where all is conflict and peril. Then, a third determination, serving to connect the act of vydirvae, he loved, with an entire past of the same character which this last evening was going tQ 244 THIRD PART. complete. The expression : His hour was come, forms a contrast with that which we have so often met : " His hour was not yet come." The phrase elg rilog, for the end, does not have in classical Greek the sense until the end ; at least, Passow does not cite a single example of it ; to express this idea of duration, the classical writers said rather Sid rilovg. In the New Testament we can scarcely fail to find the meaning until the end in the elg rilog of Matt. x. 22 and the parallels (though the idea of duration is found rather in the verb shall persevere). But the phrases ordi narily employed in this sense are either eag riXovg, or yixpi or bxpi riXovg ; 1 Cor. i. 8 ; 2 Cor. i. 13 (ewe) ; Heb. vi. 14 (jiixpt) ; and Apoc. ii. 26 {&xpi). But what prevents us from accepting this meaning here which is adopted by our versions, is that it would be useless. Was it then necessary to affirm that Jesus did not cease to love his own up to the moment when He died for them ? The true meaning of elg rifa>g in the New Testament, as in the classics, is for the end, that is to say, sometimes : at the end, at the last moment ; sometimes, to the utmost, to make an end of it. The first of these two meanings is certainly that which must be adopted in Luke xviii. 5 : " lest she come at the end even to wearying me " ; the second is found in 1 Thess. ii. 6 : " the wrath is come upon them to the utmost," that is to say, to make an end of it with them, in manifesting itself completely. Comp. the elg r.Aoc in the LXX., Josh. x. 20 (even to an entire destruc tion) ; 2 Chron. xii. 12, xxx. 1, and a multitude of other examples in the Psalms of Solomon and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs {Hilgen feld, Einl., p. 243). In our passage, this meaning seems to me the only possible one. But the question is of love, and not of wrath. This phrase signifies therefore : the manifestation of His love even to its complete out pouring, in a way to exhaust it, in some sort. As an analogy to the sense of vydirvae, he loved, including the feeling and its manifestations, Odyss. f, 214, may be cited, where Penelope says to Ulysses : " Pardon me that I did not immediately on first seeing you love you as much as (uiT vyb\wvoa) I now do when I press you in my arms." This first verse must be regarded as forming the preamble, not of this chapter only, but of this whole part of the Gospel, chaps, xiii.-xvii. We shall see, indeed, that it is in the discourses of chaps, xiv.-xvi., and in the prayer of chap, xvii., much more than in chap, xiii., that the thoughts of Jesus which are summed up by John in the knowing that of ver. 1 come to light; comp. xiv. 12 : "I go to my other," xv. 18 : "If tlie world hate you, you knoiv that it hated me before you," xvi. 28 : " I leave the world and go to my Father," xvi. 33 : " Fow shall have tribulation in the world," xvii. 11 : " I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I come lo thee." Comp. also xiii. 34 ; xv. 9, 11, 14 ; xvii. 23, 24, 26, etc. But — and this it is which it seems to me has not been sufficiently marked — with the second verse, there begins a second more particular preamble, relating only to the scene described in the following narrative (chap. xiii.). This second preamble, like the first, contains three determinations; one of time; a supper having taken place; the second, relating to the present condition of things : " the devil having already put into the heart . . . " ; the third, chap. xiii. 2, 3. 245 erf a moral nature : " Jesus, knowing that ..." We easily discover the correspondence of these three determinations with the facts and conver sations of the following narrative. - They serve to place in a clear light the thought of Jesus during the scenes which are immediately to follow, those of the washing of the disciples' feet and of the dismissal of Judas. Vv. 2, 3. " And a supper having taken place1 when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, to betray him, 2 3 Jesus 3 knowing that the Father had given* all things into his hands, and tliat he came from God and went to God." And first, the temporal determination : a supper having taken place. The Alexandrian reading yivopivov, talcing place, seems to me inadmissible. This expression could scarcely refer to any thing but the Paschal supper : " While this supper took place Jesus rises." But for this it would be necessary that the article roi>, the, should be want ing, that is to say, that the substantive should have been sufficiently deter mined by what precedes, which is not the case since the first words of ver. 1 : " before the feast of the Passover " are rather suited to set aside the idea of the Paschal feast than to give rise to it. The present or imperfect, taking place, appears to me to be an adaptation, by the copyists, of this parti ciple to the present iyeiperai, he rises, of ver. 4. It was not understood that the descriptive present rises might perfectly accord with the past tense of the participle : " (a) supper having taken place, Jesus rises." It does not appear to me possible that this supper can be the Israelite Paschal sup per. The word Seiwvov, designating that solemn supper, must necessarily have been marked by the article. The second determination is expressed in the two Alexandrian and Byzantine texts in two quite different forms ; the Byzantine: "the devil having already put into the heart of Judas that he should betray him." The Alexandrian : " the devil having already put into the heart that Judas Iscariot, son of Simon, should betray him." Into whose heart ? That of the devil, Meyer and Reuss answer. They take the Greek phrase: to put into the heart, in the sense of : to conceive the design of. But this sense is not tolerable. And where in Scripture is the devil's heart spoken of? Then, one does not put a thought into one's own heart. And why not say iavrov {of himself). Finally, since when does the devil dispose of men in such a way that it is enough for him to decide to make one of them a traitor, in order that this one should indeed become a traitor. It must therefore be explained : put into the heart of Judas {Baumlein, Luthardt, Weiss) ; but this term : into the heart, could not be thus used absolutely and without any complement fitted to define it. This reading is therefore inadmissible. It is probably due to a correction rest ing on the false idea that the fact expressed by the received reading 1 Tivoaerov (taking place) is read in X (-yei- Mjj., the Mnn., Itp.--.qire Syr., Orig. (3 times), vop.), B L X Orig. (4 times), instead of ye*o- reads tou S.a6. t|_ij /-eS/iijic. e.s r. KapS. lovSa jie*oi> (having taken place) which T. E. reads 2. lo-Kapuarov iva avrov irapa.-.. X B D ; with all the other Mjj. all the Mnn. and Vss. napaSoi instead of irapaSa. Orig. (once). » X B D L X do not repeat o Ii,o-o_ s here. 2 X'BL MX Ifm, Vulg. Orig. (7 times) read «X B D K L Orig.: e.-.™* instead of tov _ia0. nSv BtfikrjK. et. t. KapS. t*a irapaSto .-__.«.*. wto* Iou.a. 5. Irea/uung*. But T. B. with 11 __46 Third part. would constitute an anticipation of that which is to be related afterwards in ver. 27 ; but wrongly ; for at the moment when the supper took place, the treachery was really consummated in the heart of Judas ; still more, according to the Synoptics, everything was already agreed upon between him and the Sanhedrim. The Byzantine reading simply says : the devil having already put into the heart of Judas . . . that he sliould betray him. The design of this indication is not to set forth the long-suffering and benevolence of Jesus {Chrysostom, Calvin, Luthardt), or the perfect clear ness of mind with which He goes to meet His fate {Meyer) ; nor again to indicate that time was pressing {Liicke). John wishes to give grounds for the different allusions which Jesus is about to make to the presence of the traitor throughout the whole course of the following scene (comp. vv. 10, 18, 21, 26) and especially to explain the conduct and the severe word of Jesus in ver. 27. The Alexandrian reading irapaSoi, instead of napaSa (T. B.), is explained in two ways by the grammarians : either as a, con traction of the optative napaSoiv (see in Kuhner, Ausfuhrl, Gramm. a mul titude of examples taken from Plato and other authors), or as a contrac tion of the subjunctive S6v, from SSu (for SiSapi) ; so Baumlein, after Butt- mann. As the first determination : a feast having taken place, answers to the first of ver. 1 {before the feast), so the reflection {the devil having put . . . ) answers to that of ver. 1 : having loved his own. The blackest hatred forms the counterpart to the most tender love. The picture of the external and moral situation is completed by a third indication which helps us to penetrate into the inner feeling of Jesus and unveils to us the true meaning of the act of humiliation which is about to follow : " Jesus knowing that ..." This knowing is by no means the resumption of that of ver. 1 ; for it has a quite different content. It is not the sorrowful feeling of the approaching separation : it is the consciousness of His' greatness which inspires in Him the act of humiliation which He is going to accomplish. Here, more frequently even than in ver. 1, the commentators interpret in the sense of: "Although knowing; although feeling Himself so great, He humbled Himself." This is, according to our view, to misconceive, even more seriously than in ver. 1, the evangel ist's thought, as well as that of Jesus Himself. It is not in spite of His divine greatness, it is because of this very greatness, that Jesus humbles Himself, as He is going to do. Feeling Himself the greatest, He under stands that it belongs to Him to give the model of real greatness, by humbling Himself to the lowest part ; for greatness in the Messianic king dom which He comes to inaugurate on the earth, consists in voluntary humiliation. This kind of greatness, still unknown here on earth, His own must at this moment behold in Him, to the end that His Church may never recognize any other. It is therefore inasmuch as He is Lord, and not although He is Lord, that He is going to discharge the office of a slave. Moreover, it is Jesus Himself who expresses this idea (w. 13, 14) : " You call me Master and Lord . . . If then," and it is from these words that it is derived. Hence we understand the accumulation of clauses which recall to mind the features of the supreme greatness of Jesus : 1. chap. xiii. 4, 5. 24? His sovereign position : everything is put into His hands ; 2. His divine origin : He comes from God ; 3. His divine destiny : He returns to God (the repetition of the word God is to be remarked). It is in the conscious ness of what He is, that He does what no other has ever done. The ex ample becomes thus for His own decisive, irresistible : the servant cannot remain with proud bearing when the Master humbles Himself before him. 2. Vv. 4-11 : The fact. Vv. 4, 5. " [Jesus] rises from the supper and lays aside his garments; and, taking a towel, he girds himself. 5. Then he pours water into the basin; and lie began to wash the feet of his disciples and to wipe them with the towel where with he was girded." . Ver. 3 has initiated us in advance into the meaning of this act. If need were, this would suffice to explain the reason of it. So Ewald and Meyer do not seek to find any outward motive. Jesus, how ever, does not act, in general, by a mere impulse from within ; He yields to a given occasion in which He discerns the signal from the Father. St. Luke relates to us, xxii. 534—27, that there arose at the supper a dispute among the disciples on the question to whom the first place among them belonged. Whereupon Jesus said: "The first among you must take the place of the last." Then, giving Himself as an example: "Who is greater, he that sits at meat or he that serves ? But I am among you as he that serves." This answer of Jesus might be applied to His way of acting, in general, in the midst of His own ; and it is thus, perhaps, that it was understood by Luke to whom this saying of the Lord had been handed down as separated from the story with which we are now occupied. But for ourselves, knowing the act which Jesus performed at this supper, it is impossible not to connect it with the saying and explain the latter by the former. The washing of the feet was undoubtedly occasioned by the dispute of which Luke speaks. Jesus wished to eradicate from the hearts of His disciples the last remnant of the old leaven of pride and Messianic ambition which still infected their faith and manifested itself in so offen sive a manner in the discussion of which Luke has preserved the remem brance. But why give this form to the lesson which He desired to leave with His followers at this final meeting? Luke places the dispute at the very end of the supper, and, if necessary, it might be supposed that, being pained by the fact that no one of them at the beginning of the meal had offered to discharge this humble office, and that, in consequence, the wash ing of the feet had not taken place, Jesus had at first kept His feeling to Himself, but afterwards, an opportunity presenting itself, He expressed it precisely as He did in the case mentioned in Luke vii. 44. The washing thus was performed, as a mere example, at the end of the supper. The natural place, however, for such a ceremony is at the beginning of the meal, and it may be easily supposed that Luke placed as a supplementary detail in the account of the meal a fact which he knew belonged to it, but the exact moment of which he did not know. Indeed, he simply says : " There was also a dispute." Jesus was already seated at table (ver. 4) ; the apostles took their places (vv. 6, 12). It was perhaps on this occasion that 248 THIRD PART. the dispute broke out, each claiming to have the right to be seated next to the Saviour. At this moment Jesus rises and, by charging Himself with the humble office which each one of them should have spontaneously hastened to perform, He gives them to understand who is really the great est in His kingdom. The matter in hand here is not indeed to give His disciples a lesson of kindness, of condescension, of mutual serviceableness. Comp. vv. 13-15, and especially ver. 10 which, from this point of view, is no longer intelligible. Jesus wishes to teach them that the condition for entering and advancing in a kingdom like His own, is the reverse of what takes place on earth, to know how to humble oneself, to efface oneself; and that, the more each one shall outstrip the other in this divine art, the more he will become like Him, at first in spirit, and then in glory. Each feature of the following picture betrays the recollection of an eye witness ; John describes this scene as if beholding it at this very moment. Jesus assumes the garb of a slave. His garments : here, the upper gar ment. Jesus keeps only the tunic, the garment of the slave. He girds Himself with a towel, because He must carry the basin with both hands. Si-KTvpa, with the article : the basin, the one which was there for this pur pose and which belonged to the furniture ofthe dining-hall. Nihil minis- terii omittit, says Grotius. Vv. 6-11. " He comes therefore to Simon Peter, and he1 says to him, Lord,1 Dost thou wash my feet? 7. Jesus answered and said to him, What2 I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter. 8. Peter says to him, No, thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. 9. Simon Peter says to him, Lord,3 not only my feet, but also my hands and my head. 10. Jesus says to him, He that is bathed has need of nothing except to wash his feet* but he is altogether clean; and you are clean, but not all. 11. For he knew him that should betray him; therefore said he} You are not all clean." It must be observed, indeed, that this con versation with St. Peter comes upon this scene as an unexpected episode. Ovv, therefore (ver. 6) : when going from one to another according to the order in which they were seated. The natural conclusion to be drawn from this therefore is that Peter was not the first whose feet Jesus washed ; he was not seated therefore beside Him (comp. ver. 24). The feeling of reverence which called forth this resistance on Peter's part expresses itself in the antithesis of the pronouns ov, thou, and poii, me, and in the title Lord. Here, as in Matt. xvi. 22, it is respect which produces in this apos tle the want of respect. The antithesis of iya and ov {I— -thou) in ver. 7, answers to that of ov and pov {thou — me) in ver. 6. The expression perd ravra, hereafter, signifies according to Chrysostom, Grotius, Tlioluck, Reuss : by the light which the experiences of thy future ministry will give. But the relation between yvaan, thou slialt know, and yivaoKere, know ye (ver. 14), 1 X B . omit : e«ei*o. ; X omits Kvpie (Lord). L : ei pn tou. Trofia. *.i/raa-i7a. (if not to wash " X reads a eyu> instead of o eyu. his feet) ; X c *i\Jiao-#ai (has no need to wash, 8 X rejects xvpic (Lord). but). «T. R. with AEGMSUTAA: n tov. oBCLaddo... jroSa. wfao-t-ai {than to wash his feet) ; BCK CHAP. xiii. 6-11. 249 shows that Jesus is thinking rather of the explanation which He is about to give at the very moment, after having finished the act which was begun. The gentleness of Jesus emboldens Peter ; he had only questioned (ver. 6) ; now he positively refuses, and even for ever. If this refusal of Peter springs from modesty, it is nevertheless true that, as Weiss says, this mod esty is not destitute of self-will and pride. Jesus answers him in the same categorical tone, and there is certainly an echo of Peter's for ever in the no part with me of Jesus. This relation it is which prevents us from hold ing, with Weiss and Reuss, that these words mean : " Thou dost not at this moment share in my feelings," or " Thou art not in communion with me " (present, Ixetg, thou hast). The exeig may perfectly well be a present of anticipation and may refer to the blessedness to come. The phrase pipog ixeiv perd, to have part with, indicates the participation of the inferior in the booty, the riches, the glory of his leader (Josh. xxii. 24 ; 2 Sam. xx. 1 ; 1 Kings xii. 16). The refusal of Peter to accept the humiliating ser vice which Jesus desires to render him, is equivalent to a rejection of the spirit of His work, to the resolution to persevere in the love of the carnal grandeur from which precisely Jesus desires by this act to purify His disciples. In rejecting the humiliation which his Master imposes upon Himself for his sake, Peter rejects in principle thatwhich he was one day to impose upon himself for the sake of his brethren. The reply of Jesus is in harmony with this meaning ; it reproduces with a natural force the warning which He addressed to all the disciples, on occasion of a quite similar dispute among them : " Except you are converted and become as little children, not only will no one of you be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, but you will not enter into it at all " (Matt, xviii. 1—4). Ver. 9 presents to us, in the case of Peter, one of those sudden changes of impression which we frequently observe in him, in the Synoptic narra tive. Here is the same Peter who rushes upon the water and a moment afterward cries " I perish ! " who strikes with the sword and who takes to flight, who enters into the house of the high-priest and yet denies his Master. The perfect accordance between these scattered features, and the image full of life which results from them, admirably prove in this case as in all the others, as Luthardt has so well set forth, the complete reality of the Gospel history. The whole meaning of the act of Jesus was in the fact of washing the feet. The nature of the act changed absolutely as soon as it concerned the head, for in that case it was no longer an act of humilia tion. Jesus follows Peter on this new ground and this is what introduces the different meaning given to the act in His answer. At the foundation, what Peter asked for, without being conscious of it, was, instead of the removal of a stain, a complete renovation and, as it were, a second bap tism ; he implicitly denied the work already done in him (xv. 3). This is what gives the key to the answer of Jesus. This answer has of course a double meaning. Jesus rises immediately, as in the conversation with the Samaritan woman, from the material to the spiritual domain. As after having bathed in the morning, a man regards himself as clean for S50 THIRD PART. the whole day and contents himself with washing his feet when be returns from. without, that he may remove the accidental soiling which they have contracted in walking, so he who, by earnestly attaching himself to Christ, has broken with sin once for all, has no need at each particular defilement to begin anew this general consecration ; he has only to cleanse himself from this stain by confession and recourse to Christ. We must recall here what Jesus says to His disciples, xv. 3: "You are already clean through the word which I have declared to you." In receiving His word, they had received in principle the perfect holiness of which it is the standard in the life in Him. There is nothing more except to change the law into act by ever placing oneself anew on the foundation which has been laid. Weiss thinks that all notion of pardon in the symbol of wash ing is foreign to this context. But the fundamental rupture with sin which Jesus compares to the complete bath, implies a general pardon and reconciliation with God, and each act of destroying a particular sin, rep resented by the washing of the feet, implies the particular pardon of that sin. Reuss objects that the answer of Jesus, thus explained, would turn aside the symbol from its primitive sense. We have seen that the sense of the symbol was altogether different from that of the disposition towards kindness to one's neighbor ; that Jesus desired to eradicate a bad propensity from the hearts of the disciples. This is what gives occasion to the new turn which the explanation of the symbol takes inconsequence of the demand of Peter. I believe with Reuss, that, whatever Weiss may say, Jesus is here thinking of the baptism of water, the symbol of general purification, and means that it is no more necessary to renew this act (that which Peter asked) than that of faith itself whose symbol it is. The reading .. p-f/, if it is not, in a few Alexandrian documents, is a correction of the ij, in the T. B., which is slightly irregular ; v, than, for oiSevbg dUxiv V, nothing else than. The rejection of the words v rovg n-bSag, in the Sinaitic MS., completely changes the meaning : " He who is bathed has no need to wash himself; but he is all clean." This reading is a correction occa sioned by the difficulty of distinguishing between the total bath and the partial washing. The last words : " but he is clean altogether," are to be explained thus : " But, far from having to bathe entirely a second time, as thou dost demand, his body is in general clean. It is enough to cleanse the local defilement which the feet have contracted." But is this state of reconciliation and consecration indeed the state of all ? No ; there is a disciple who has broken the bond connecting him with Jesus or in whose heart this bond has never existed. He it is who would really have need of the inward act of which Peter had just asked for the symbol. Here is the first revelation of the treachery of Judas, in the course of the supper. By expressing in this way the grief which the thought of this crime causes Him to feel, Jesus makes a last effort to bring Judas to repentance. And if He does not succeed, He will, at least, have shown to His disciples that He was not the dupe of his hypocrisy (ver. 19). 3. Vv. 12-20: The explanation. chap. xiii. 12-17. 251 Vv. 12-17. " When therefore he had waslied their 1 feet and 2 taken his gar- mints again, having resumed his seat at table,3 he said to them, Know you what I have done to you ? 13. You call me Master and Lord* and you say well, for so I am. 14. If I then, the Lord and the Master, have washed your feet, you also 5 ought to wash one another's feet. 15. For I have given 6 you an example, that,' as I have done to you, you also may do. 16. Verily, verily, Isay unto you that the servant is not greater than his lord, nor he that is sent greater than he that sent him. 17. If you know these things, happy are you, if you do them." Jesus feared nothing for His Church so much as hierarchical pre tensions. The disciples knew that their Master was establishing a king dom. This single word was fitted to awaken in them ideas of dominion in the earthly sense ; for this reason He shows them that, in this kingdom, the means of mounting higher is to descend, and the way to the first place is to put oneself without hesitation in the last. In ver. 13, ye call me properly means : You designate me thus when you address to me the word : thee, Master. Hence the two substantives in the nominative. The title of Master refers to teaching ; that of Lord, to dominion over the entire life. It is the reproducing of the titles Rabbi and Mar which Jewish -pupils gave to their masters. The most exalted title, that of Lord, is placed second, agreeably to the natural gradation. The T. B. accords here with the Alexandrian authorities. It is from the words : For so lam, that John has properly derived the elSag, knowing, of ver. 3. Since the fourth century, the Church has discovered in vv. 14, 15, the institution of a rite; and it is well known what this ceremony has become where it is still practised in a literal sense.' But neither the term virbSmypa, example, nor the plural, these things (ver. 17), suits the idea of an institution; and, in ver. 15, Jesus would have been obliged to say b, that which, instead of KaBag, as. To humble oneself in order to serve, and to serve in order to save : such is the moral essence of this act, its permanent element. The form was accidental and, as we have seen, borrowed from the given situa tion, consequently a passing thing. The washing of the feet which is mentioned in 1 Tim. v. 10 is a duty of hospitality and is only in a moral relation with what is prescribed in vv. 14, 15. The meaning of the sentence in ver. 16, which is also found in the Synoptics, but with a different appli cation (Luke vi. 40 ; Matt. x. 24, 25 ; comp. John xv. 20) is here, as in Matt, x., that the subordinate should not consider unworthy of him that which his superior has consented to do. But the Lord knows that it is 1 X reads ovtov (his) instead of av™* 7 see in Westcott the summary history of (their). this rite, declared obligatory by a council 2 X A L Itpieriqu. gyr. omit Kai before eXaSe*. held in Toledo (694), celebrated in the " Instead of a*aireo-i_*, X B C Syr. read Kai churches of Spain and Gaul, performed on a*eir._-e* and A L Itpiorique Kal avaneo-uv. Holy Thursday by the Pope as the repre- 4 6 Mjj. (Byz.) read o icvp. «ai o SiSao-ic. ; T. sentative of Christ, received also in the R. with all the rest (12 Mjj.) ; o .... *ai o xvp Greek Church, where it is maintained in (the Master and the Lord). the convents, combated by the reformers ; - D I.pi--i._- Syr. read iroo-io pakkov (how much adopted in England from Wolsey (1530) to the more) before Kai vpei,. reign of James II.; also by the Mennonites 6 X A K M n : .eSuica instead of eSw/ta (13 in Holland and by the Moravian Church in Mjj-)- which it has fallen into disuse. 252 THIRD PART. easier to approve and admire humility than to practise it j for this reason He adds the words of ver. 17. Ei, if, "if truly; " as is really the case; it is the general supposition ; idv, in case that ; it is the more particular con dition. The happiness of which Jesus speaks is not merely that of know ing the duty of voluntary humility ( Westcott), nor the inward delight which the disciple enjoys in performing it {Weiss); it is an actual superiority of position before God henceforth and in the future economy. A man is so much greater in the view of Jesus and so much nearer to Him in propor tion as he consents to humble himself the more, as He did, in order to serve his brethren (Matt, xviii. 4). Vv. 18, 19. u I do not say this of you all ; I1know those whom? lhave chosen.; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, He who eats bread with me 3 has lifted up * his heel against me. 19. From henceforth I tell you before it comes to pass, that when it is come to pass, you may believe that I am he." The idea of the happiness of the disciples, who walk in the path of humility, calls forth in the heart of Jesus the feeling of a contrast ; there is present a person who, indomitable in his pride, deprives himself of this happiness, and draws upon himself the opposite of the pampibTvg (ver. 17). 'Ef _.l_f dpvv, I have chosen, is referred by Reuss to the election to salvation ; in this sense the term would not be applicable to Judas. This would be a new proof of the predestinationism of John. But nothing more, on the con trary, appears in all these narratives than human responsibihty and culpability. Am I mistaken in surmising that the reading rlvag {whom) relating to the character has, in the Alexandrian authorities, been substi tuted for the ovg {those whom) of the T. B. under the influence of this false interpretation ? The election of which Jesus speaks refers to that of the Twelve, inclusive of Judas ; comp. vi. 70. And to know signifies to discern, not, to approve, to love. The words : I know, serve to justify the pre ceding declaration : I do not say this of you all. If the for of 4 Mjj. is a gloss, it is a proper gloss. The in order that might be made to depend on the following verb has lifted: " In order that the Scripture might be ful filled, he who eats has lifted." Jesus would thus insert the Scripture cita tion in His own discourse. But it is more natural to suppose an ellipsis, by explaining, with Meyer: "I have nevertheless chosen him in order that," or, what seems more simple, by supplying " This has happened, in order that," comp. xix. 36 ; 1 John ii. 19 ; Matt. xxvi. 56. This last ellipsis more expressly carries back the responsibility of the choice of Judas to God, whom Jesus has obeyed, see on vi. 64. Ps. xii., from the tenth verse of which the quoted passage is borrowed, is only indirectly Messianic ; its im mediate subject is the afflicted righteous person ; but this idea is perfectly realized only in the suffering Messiah. Among the afflictions by which the righteous person is smitten, the Psalmist (David, according to the title; ac cording to Hitzig, Jeremiah) puts in the first place the treachery of an intimate 1 X A K n 30 Mnn. It""- Cop. Syr. read yap » B C L: uov (my bread), instead of (-er' after ey, 264 THIRD PART. ' ' When therefore he was gone out, Jesus says." — The vvv, now, which begins the following words, puts them quite naturally in connection with the fact which has just taken place, the departure of Judas. Hengstenberg, Weiss and Keil do not believe in such a connection. This now, according to them, refers to the impending end of His earthly activity, the result of which Jesus contemplates with joy. This, as it seems to me, is to fail to recognize the connection of ideas which John himself wished to set forth by saying so expressly : " When he was gone out, He says." — The past tense i8o%dodr), is glorified, sums up all the past life of Jesus, up to the scene which has just occurred, and which, in certain respects, is the crowning point of it. Empty human glory, which He had always rejected, has just been expressly declared to be excluded from His work and that of His apostles. The washing of their feet has condemned it ; it has just gone out with Judas, who was the stubborn representative of it among the disciples. The true glory, that which comes from God, that which consists in humility and charity, has been realized to the utmost in the person of Jesus; it has just triumphed over the false glory. Some interpreters have referred this term is glorified to the future glory of Jesus, either through His death {Meyer), or through His exaltation to the right hand of God {Luthardt, Gess). But, in ver. 32, Jesus sets in opposition to this verb in the past tense the future oofac..., will glorify, to designate His glorification which is to come. Comp. also xvii. 10, where He declares Himself already now glorified {SeSbi-aapai) in the hearts of the apostles. We understand from this why He designates Himself as the Son of man. It is indeed by the humiliation with which He has placed Himself on the level with His brethren and made Himself their servant, that He has obtained this glory. — A glory which consists even in humility does not, like human glory, make him who possesses it a usurper of the glory of God. For this reason He is able to speak of it without scruple as He does here. Its essence is to give all glory to God, as He immediately adds : "And God is glorified in him." In this glory of Jesus that of God Himself has shone forth. The perfection of the paternal character of God has been manifested fully in the person and work of the Son of man, ver. 32. But God cannot abandon him who has made himself the instrument of His glory. " He honors him who serves Him " (xii. 26). — The first words of ver. 32 : If God is glorified in him, are rejected by the Alexandrian authorities. But even Tischendorf condemns this omission. Weiss also : "One cannot set aside the suspicion that the omission of these words in the most ancient Codd. is the result of the confounding of the two h <..>-<_." Westcott and Hort retain them in spite of everything. The examples of such omissions in the Alexan drian text, however, are numerous, especially in the Sinaitic MS. — The clause : If God is glorified in him, fully explains the transition from the past tense is glorified to the future will glorify, ver. 32. The instrument of the glory of God on the earth, Jesus will be glorified by God in heaven. Could God do less than that which the Son of man has done for Him ? This correlation is expressed by the word Kal, also, which is placed for this reason at the beginning of the clause ; comp. xvii. 4, 5. Whether we read chap. xiii. 33-35. 265 h avrip with B. etc., or iv iavru with the T. B. and all the Mjj. except four, the meaning is still : in God. The two limiting phrases : in him (Jesus), and in him or in himself (God), answer to each other. When God has been glorified in a person, He draws him to His boaom and envelops him in His glory. It is thus that the future of Jesus is illuminated to His view in the brightness of His past. And this future is near. The departure of Judas has just revealed to Him the fact of its imminence by announcing that of His death. Soon, says Jesus, alluding to His exaltation through the resurrection and ascension. The second Kai is explanatory : ' ' and that soon." — After having thus, under the influence of what has just occurred, given vent to His personal impressions, Jesus turns to His disciples and makes them the subject of His whole thought. Vv. 33-35. "My little children, yet a little while' I am with you ; you will seek me, and, as 1 said to tlie Jews : Whither I go, you cannot come, so now Isay to you. 34. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another ; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another." 2 — The term of tenderness, reKvla, my little children, is found nowhere else in our Gospels ; it is the soon of ver. 32, implying the near separation, which suggests it to Him. The disciples appear to Him as children whom He is about to leave as orphans on the earth. What a void in their life is that which will result from the disappearance of Jesus ! He Himself feels, in all its vividness, what they will experience. " Tou will seek me; you will wish to rejoin me." And for Himself, how desirous He must be to carry them away immediately with Himself into the divine world which He is about to enter again ! But what He had declared to the Jews six months before (vii. 34, viii. 21) is still for the moment applicable to the disciples : they are not ready to follow Him. Only there is this difference between them and the Jews, that for them this impossibility is merely temporary : comp. xiv. 3 : "I will take you to myself, that where I am, tiiere you may be also, " while Jesus said to the Jews : ' ' You shall die in your sins. " For the Jews the obstacle of the natural condemnation, which faith alone could have removed, will continue for ever by reason of their unbelief. As to the disciples, while waiting till they shall rejoin Him, He leaves to them a duty which will be at the same time their consolation ; the one which results from their new situation and which is indicated in ver. 34 : the duty of loving one another. It is by loving each other that they will supply the outward absence of Him who has loved them so tenderly. The expression ivro'Xv Kaivv, new commandment, has embarrassed the inter preters, because the Old Testament already commanded that one should love one's neighbor as oneself (Levit. xix. 18) and because it does not seem possi ble to love more than this. Or must we say, with Knapp, in his celebrated dissertation on this subject, and, as it seems, also with Reuss and Weiss, that Jesus, by His example and His word, teaches us to love our neighbor more than ourselves ? This thought is more specious than just. Or must we 1 X L X ItaMi add xpovov after pucpov. a X reads per akknktav instead of cv akknkois. 266 THIRD PART. give to the word iuuv% here an extraordinary meaning, such as illustrious {Wolf), ever new, {Olshausen), renewed {Calvin), renewing theman {Augustine), unexpected {Semler), the last {Heumann) ? Nothing of all this is necessary. The entirely new character of Christian love results, in the first place, in an outward way from the circle in which it is exercised : one another ; this love applies not to all the human family in general, like the law of affection written on the conscience, nor, more specially, to members of the Israelite nation, like the commandment in Leviticus ; it embraces all those whom the common faith in Jesus and the love of which they are the object on His part unite. But the term new goes yet far deeper than this : it is a love new in its very nature: it starts from an altogether new centre of life and affection. The love of the Jew for the Jew arose from the fact that Jehovah was the God of both and had chosen them both in Abraham ; every Israelite became for every other, through this common blessing, Uke a second self. Jesus brought into the world and testified to His own a love specifically different from any love which had appeared until then, that which attaches itself to the human personality in order to save it. From this new hearth there springs forth the flame of an affection essentially different from any that the world knew under this name before. In Christ : this is the explanation ofthe word new. It is a family affection, and the family is born at this hour ; comp. 1 John ii. 8. — It is impossible for me to regard the words : as lhave loved you, as Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss and Keil do, as depending on this first clause : that you love one another. The repetition of these last words at the end of the verse thus becomes useless. Jesus begins by saying : that you love one another ; then, taking up this command with a new emphasis, He adds to it, at this time, the characteristic definition : "I mean : that, as lhave loved you, you should also love one another. " Comp. in xvii. 21 the same construction exactly. Kadug, as, indicates more than a simple comparison {ao-rrep) ; it designates a conformity. The love which unites believers among themselves is qf the same nature as that which Jesus testifies to the believer (x. 15) ; each one, so to speak, loves his brother with the love with which Jesus loves both him and this brother. To the obligation resulting from the words : as I have loved you, Jesus adds the loftiest motive, that of His glory. For him who has felt himself beloved by Him, there can be no motive more pressing. — 'E/_o. has perhaps more force as a dative than as a nominative plural : disciples belonging to me, the new Master. The history of the primitive Church realized this promise of Jesus : " They loved one another, even before knowing one another," said Minutius Felix of the Christians ; and the scoffing Lucian said : "Their Master has made them believe that they are all brethren." — Hore begins a series of questions which were all raised in the hearts of the disciples by the thought of the threatened separation. The first is quite naturally this : Is there no means of avoiding this separation, even though temporary ? It is Peter, the boldest of all, who makes himself the organ of this desire, which is incompatible with the words of Jesus (ver. 33). chap, xiii. 36-38. chap. xiv. 1, 2. 26*7 2. xiii. 36-xiv. 4. Vv. 36-38. " Simon Peter says to him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him,1 Whither I2 go, thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards. 37. Peter says to him, Lord,3 why cannot I follow thee now ?* I will lay downmy life for thee. 38. Jesus answered him,'' Wilt thou lay down thy life for me? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied* me thrice." — What especially impressed St. Peter in the preceding words is the thought of ver. 33 : " Whither I go, you cannot come." Jesus is going to glory ; Peter docs not doubt this (ver. 32) ; why then, after having walked with Him on the waters and having ascended with Him the Mount of Transfiguration, can he not follow Him to glory, to return with Him soon to the earth, when he will establish His kingdom ? Peter had merely said : Whither goest thou? but evidently, as a child who, when asking his father : Whither art thou going ? means : Cannot I go with thee ? Jesus understood the purpose of his question, and He replies to it by saying : Thou canst not. The temporary separation is inevitable ; does Jesus think of the task which Peter will have still to accomplish here on earth by his apostolic ministry ( Weiss) ? Or must this word can be under stood in a purely moral sense : "Thou art not yet capable of making the sacrifice necessary for following me" {Tholuck). The words of xiv. 2, 3 cause us rather to think of reasons of another nature, at once objective and subjective. On the one hand, the redemption is not yet effected, and con sequently the place of Peter is not yet prepared in heaven ; on the other, Peter himself is not yet prepared for the place ; the Holy Spirit has not yet made of him a new man. Peter, however, imagines that Jesus speaks thus only because He believes him incapable of facing death ; and in the ardor of his zeal, exaggerating the measure of his moral strength, he declares himself ready to undergo martyrdom (ver. 37). Jesus, who knows him better than he knows himself, then declares to him that, even in this respect, he is still incapable of accompanying Him (ver. 38).— The cock-crowing of which Jesus speaks is that which properly bore this name ; the second, that which precedes the break of day, about three o'clock in the morning (Mark xui. 35). In the, prediction of the denial in Mark (xiv. 30) allusion is also made to the first, the one at midnight. — The prediction of his denial seems to have produced on the apostle a very profound impres sion ; he is, as it were, thunder-struck by it, and from this moment he does not speak any more until the end of these discourses. xiv. 1, 2. "Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2. In my Father's house there are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you;'' I go to prepare a place for you." — The division of the chap- 1 B C ItPl°ri4-e Vulg. Cop. reject avrta after aireKpiQn avrta, an- efcptdn. 6 B D L X : apvnoT;, instead of airapvno-,- 3 X D V add eyu before vi. aV_.. 'XABC__KI_n20 Mnn. If1"" Vnlg. Syr. * X some Mnn. Vulg. Cop. omit nvpie (Lord). Cop. read on (that or became) "before Ttopevopai 4 CD LI read *v* instead of apn. (I go to prepare for you). " X A B C L X : airo/-pi*-Tai, instead of 268 THIRD PART. ters here is very faulty ; for the following words are in close relation with the preceding conversation, and particularly with the words of Jesus : Thou shalt follow me afterwards. Extending this same promise to all the dis ciples (comp. ver. 33), Jesus explains to them in what way they will be able to rejoin Him. He is,going away for the moment to prepare for them their place in heaven (ver. 2) ; then He will return to seek them in order to trans port them thither (ver. 3). We must place ourselves at this particular point of view in order to thoroughly understand the exhortation to confidence, which ver. 1 contains. Very far from bringing trouble to their hearts, His departure should fill them with the sweetest hope. They should have con fidence in God, who directs this work and does not leave their Master to perish through "weakness, and in Jesus Himself, who executes the work on His part, and who, far from being separated from it by death, is going to continue and complete it above. I think, with most, that the two -n-.ffT.fcT_, believe, are more in harmony with the imperative rapaaaiada, let it not be troubled, if they are both taken as imperatives. Others take them both {Luther) as indicatives {you believe)', or only the first {Erasmus, Calvin, Grotius), or only the second {Olshausen). Jesus would, in order to dispel their trouble, remind them of the faith which they already have in Him or in God or in both. This would be quite useless. In the second member, the limiting word in me is placed before the verb ; this is in order better to set forth the an tithesis of the two limiting phrases in God and in me : " Have confidence in God ; in me also have confidence." A first motive for confidence is given in ver. 2 ; it refers rather to confi dence in God. Jesus points out to them that the house of the Father, to which He returns, is wide enough to receive them all and many others with them. The image is derived from those immense oriental palaces in which there is an apartment, not only for the sovereign and for the heir to the throne, but for all the king's sons, however numerous they may be. The term iroXkai, many, does not by any means refer to a diversity among these mansions (as if Jesus would allude to the different degrees of heavenly felicity), but only to their number : there are as many as there are believers ; each one will possess his own in this vast edifice. — This heavenly dwelling is above all the emblem of a spiritual state : that of communion with the Father, the filial position which is accorded to Christ in the divine glory, and in which He will give believers a share. But this state will be realized in a definite place, the place where God most illustriously manifests His presence and His glory — heaven. Lange thinks that when uttering these words Jesus pointed His disciples to the starry heaven ; but xiv. 31 proves that they were still in the room. — According to the Alexandrian reading, or., that or because, must be read after the words I would have told you: "I would have told you that I go away," or " because I go away." The first of these meanings is incompatible with ver. 3, where Jesus says precisely that He is going away and for the purpose of preparing. The Fathers who, in general, adopt this meaning, have not been successful in getting rid of tho contradiction to that which follows, which it implies. Weiss and Keil, with their systematic preference for the Alexandrian authorities, try the chap. xrv. 3. 269 second meaning, because ; the former, by making this conjunction bear on the verb I would have told, but without being able to derive from it an intelligi ble thought ;' Keil, by referring the because to : there are many mansions, which forces us to make a parenthesis of the intermediate words : ' ' There are many mansions . . . — if not ... I would have told you — because I am going to prepare a place for you there." But wherein is the stated proof : I go to prepare, more certain than the fact affirmed : there is room? And this parenthesis, which is not indicated by anything, is unnatural. In this case again it must be acknowledged that the reading of the Alexandrian authorities is indefensible ; the bn is an addition arising from the fact that it was desired to make the following words the contents of the verb I would have said. Some, whether rejecting or preserving the bn, take the preceding words in the interrogative sense : " Would lhave said to you (that I atn going to prepare a place for you) ?" But He had nowhere said anything of this kind. Others translate : " Would I say it to you (at this moment)?" But, in this case, the imperfect {ileyov av) would be necessary. We must, therefore, return to the simplest interpretation : " If it were not so, I would have told you." That is to say : "If our separation were to be eternal, I would have forewarned you ; I would not have waited until this last moment to declare it to you ;" or, as Grotius says, Ademissem vobis spem inanem. Their faith in God must make them understand that the Father's house is spacious. But it is also needful that the access to it should be opened to them, and that they should have their dwelling there assured. Here it is that faith in Jesus intervenes, as the complement of faith in the Father. He is their irpbSpopog, their forerunner, to heaven (Heb. vi. 20). Under this image He causes them to view both His death, which, through recon ciliation, will open for them the entrance to heaven, and His exaltation, by means of which there will be created in His person a glorious state in which He will afterwards give them a share. And the following is the way in which He will prepare it. Ver. 3. "And if I shall have gone and' prepared 3 a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. " — The place being once assured and prepared for them, they must be brought to reach it. It is He who will also charge Himself with this office. The rejection of Kai, and, before iroipdaa in some MSS. (" and when I shall have gone, I will prepare") would introduce an unnatural and even absurd asyndeton between the idea of preparing and that of returning which follows, and would at the same time lead to a complete tautology with the preceding sentence. The reading iroipdoai, to prepare, is a further correc tion which was rendered almost indispensable by the rejection of the Kai. — To the two verbs : "when I shall have gone and shall have prepared," corre- 1 Because He who goes away to prepare for word I them a place must know better than any one ' Kai (and) is omitted byAEGKrAA40 whether there are mansions there to he pre- Mnn. pared. What a proof 1 To prove His word by s D M 60 Mnn. Syr. : eToiuao-ai (to prepare His knowledge and His knowledge by His for you), instead of *ai eioipao-ia. 270 THIRD PART. spond the two verbs of the principal clause : I will come again (literally, I come again) and I will take you to myself. The present I come again indi cates imminence. Notwithstanding this, Origen and other Fathers, Calvin, Lampe, and, among the moderns, Hofmann, Luthardt, Meyer, Weiss, and Keil, refer this term to the final and glorious coming of the Lord. Un doubtedly this promise is addressed to believers in general, but it has in view, nevertheless, first of all, the disciples personally, whom -Jesus wishes to strengthen in their present disheartenment ; and He consoles them, it is said, by means of an event which no one of them has seen and which is still future at this hour ! In thus explaining the word I come, it is forgotten that Jesus never affirmed the nearness of His Parousia, and that, indeed, He rather gave an indication of the opposite : "As the bridegroom delays his coming" (Matt. xxv. 5) ; "If the master comes in the second watch, or if he comes in the third" (Luke xii. 38) ; ".4. evening orat midnight or at the cock-crowing or in the morning" (Mark xiii. 35) ; comp. also the parables of the leaven and the grain of mustard seed. Moreover, we have the authen tic explanation of this word come in ver. 18, where, as Weiss acknowledges, it cannot be applied to the Parousia. Ebrard thinks that the point in question is the resurrection of Jesus. But the true reunion, after the sep aration caused by the death of Jesus, did not yet take place at the resur rection. The appearances of the Lord were transient ; their design was simply, through faith in the resurrection, to prepare for the coming of the Spirit. Grotius, Reuss, Lange, Hengstenberg, and Keil refer the word come to the return of Jesus at the death of each believer ; comp. the vision of Stephen. But in ver. 18 this sense is altogether impossible, and no example can be cited, not even xxi. 23, where it would lead to an intolerable tautology. This coming refers, therefore, as has been recognized by Lucke, Olshausen, Neander, to the return of Jesus through the Holy Spirit, to the close and indissoluble union formed thereby between the disciple and the glorified person of Jesus ; comp. all that follows in vv. 17, 19-21, 23 ; especially ver. 18, which is the explanation of our : I come again. Weiss alleges against our view that the question here is of a personal return. We defer this to ver. 18. — The following verb : J wiU take you to myself, indi cates another fact, which will be the result of this spiritual preparation. This is the introduction of the believer into the Father's house, at the end of his earthly career, cither at the moment of his death, or at that of the Parousia, if he lives until that time. Kal, and, has the sense of and conse- sequently, or of, and afterwards, as is indicated by the contrast between the present {I come) and the future {I will take). This will be the entrance of the believer, prepared by spiritual communion with Jesus, into the abode secured for him by the mediation of this same Jesus. Upbg ipavrbv, to myself (xii. 32) ; He presses him to His heart, so to speak, while bearing him away. There is an infinite tenderness in these last words. It is for Himself that He seems to rejoice in and look to this moment which will put an end to all separation: "That where I am, there you may be also ;" comp. xvii. 24. The community of place {"tiiere where") implies that of state. Otherwise the return of Jesus in spirit would not be necessary iu chap. xrv. 4-6. 271 order to prepare in each particular case this reunion. What touching simplicity and what dramatic vivacity in the expression of these ideas, so profound and so new ! The Father's house, the preparation of the dwelling- place, the coming to find, finally the taking to Himself, this familiar and almost childlike language resembles sweet music by which Jesus seeks to alleviate the agony of separation in the minds of the apostles. Thus ends the first conversation, called forth by the question of Peter : ' ' Why cannot I follow thee ?" Answer : "Even thy martyrdom would not be sufficient to this end ; my return in the Spirit into thy heart : this is the condition of thy entrance into my heavenly glory." Comp. iii. 5. But Jesus observes that many questions were still rising in their minds, that their hearts were a prey to many doubts, and, in order to incite them to ask Him, He throws out to their ignorance a sort of challenge, by saying to them : Ver. 4. " And whither I go you know, and the way you know." 1 — We trans late according to the received reading, which has in its favor 14 Mjj., the Peschito and most of the manuscripts of the Itala. According to it, Jesus attributes to the disciples the knowledge both of the end and of the way. According to the Alexandrian reading : "And whither I go, you know the way," He attributes to them only the knowledge of the loay. The differ ence is not great. For if, according to the second reading, the knowledge of the end is not declared, it is certainly implied, and this by reason of ver. 2, where the end {the Father's house) had been clearly pointed out. But did the apostles know the way to reach it ? Yes and no ; yes, since this way was Jesus and Jesus was what they knew better than anything else. No, in the sense that they did not know Him as the way. This is the reason why, if Jesus can say to them with truth : Tou know the way, Thomas can answer him with no less truth : We know it not. Preoccupied until then with another end, the earthly kingdom of the Messiah, their imagination had not transferred their hopes from the world to God, from the earth to heaven ; they were thinking, in fact, like the Jews (xii. 34) : ' ' We have heard that the Christ abides forever (on the earth, which is glori fied by Him) ; how then dost thou say, The Son of man must be lifted up ?" Comp. Acts i. 6. And this false end to a certain extent veiled the truth from them. It is Thomas, the disciple who was particularly positive in his spirit, who becomes here, as at other times, the organ of doubting thoughts and discouraged feelings which exist more or less in them all ; comp. xi. 16, xx. 25. , 3. Vv. 5-7. Vv. 5, 6. "Thomas says to him, Lord, we know not whither tliou goest, and1* how do welcnow the way?" 6. Jesus says to him, lam the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me." — Peter desired to follow 1 Instead of the words oiSaTe «ai ttj* oSov - the way f) instead of SwapcB a rvv oSov ciSevai oiSare, X B C L Q X, read oiSaTe ttj* o_o*. (can we know tlie way f) in T. R, with 15 Mjj. * B C L It"»i omit itai before ir _)s. Syr. It""', s B C D IV"> ; oi-aue* ti;* oSov (<._• we know _.!_. THIRD PART. Jesus immediately ; this request having been rejected, Thomas wishes at least to understand clearly what is to take place, whither Jesus is going and by what way, and the more because the disciples are one day to follow Him. Thus far, the departure of Jesus leaves him nothing but obscurity. End and way, everything is lost for him in vacancy. Jesus, in His reply, lays hold especially upon the idea of the way while recalling to mind clearly the end in the second part of the verse. From the connection of these words with the question of Thomas it follows that the dominant idea of the three following terms is that of way, and that the other two must serve to explain it. From the second part of the verse it is also clear that the way which is in question is that which leads to the Father and His house, and not the way by which one can come to the truth and the Ufe, as Reuss formerly supposed. The figurative expression . way is therefore explained without a figure by the two terms : truth and life. Truth is God revealed in His essence, that is to say, in His holiness and love (ver. 9). Life is God communicated to the soul and bringing to it a holy strength and perfect beatitude (ver. 23). And as it is in Jesus that this revelation and communication of God to the soul are effected, so it is through Jesus also that the soul comes to the Father and obtains through Him the entrance into the Father's house. The three terms, way, truth and life, are not, therefore, co-ordinated {Luther, Calvin : beginning, middle, end) ; no more do they express a single notion : vera via vitm {Augustine). Jesus means to say : I am the means of coming to the Father (the way), in that I am the truth and the life. — Reuss justly observes with reference to the word I am, that this expression excludes every other means parallel to this. Gess : " A man can at the most show to others the right way ; he cannot be either the way or the truth or the life." — In the following clause, the words : to the Father, set forth a nearer end than the figurative expression of ver. 2. The question here is of communion with the Father here on earth, which is the condition of communion with Him in heaven (His house). Ver. 7. "If you had known' me, you would have known1 my Father also ; and " from henceforth you know him and have seen him." — This verse reproduces the idea of the last clause of the preceding verse, that of coming to the Father through Jesus. If Jesus is really the manifestation of God (ver. 6), to have well known Him Himself would be enough for the arriving through Him at the knowledge of God (pluperfect iyvaKeire). This is the sense of the received reading which is perfectly suitable ; it is also that of the read ing of some Alexandrian authorities which read vSeire for the second ,j- vaKeire. It seems that Jesus hereby denies to them this twofold knowledge ; and in fact it is only after having received the Spirit that they will possess it fully (ver. 20). Yet He afterwards partially concedes it to them, because they possess the beginning of it already. Meyer takes the term from henceforth literally : " since my preceding declaration" (that of ver. 6). This sense is too restricted and even insignificant. Chrysostom and 1 X n : ev*_)KaT« (have known), instead of ANT, etc. : ey*->/ceiTe a* (you would have e,vu>«ene (had known'). known) ; B C L Q X : a* >)__«•«. ' X 1> : yvuia-eaee (you will know) ; T, R, with • B C L Q X omit k> instead of !KBQ itp'">i Vulg. Cop. 1.105 instead of .00-0. Tor xpo*o*. flat irws, 18 274 THIRD PART. heart of man ? Comp. the request of Moses, Exod. xxxiii. 18. It was the same point of view as that of the Jews when they asked of Jesus a sign from heaven. This desire would be well founded if the essence of God consisted in power ; the true theophany might in that case consist in a resplendent manifestation. But God is holiness and love ; the real mani festation of these moral perfections can only consist in a moral Ufe such that in it, in its acts and words, the moral perfection of the divine charac ter shall shine forth. Now this unique spectacle, this perfect theophany, the visible resplendence of God, the disciples have had before their eyes for more than two years ; how is it that they have not better appreciated the privilege which has been accorded to them ? What majesty in this reply ! The foundation of the human consciousness of Jesus is so thoroughly the feeling of His divinity, that He scarcely understands that the knowledge of His true nature has not formed itself in the hearts of His disciples. — The word of address : Philip, serves to recall this disciple to himself as he for gets himself at the point of making such a demand. We may, like Luthardt, write this vocative with the preceding sentence which is addressed to the disciple individually, or connect it with the following, which, as a general maxim, serves to bring back the apostle to the truth. The perfect tenses, iyvaKag, iapaKag, iapaKe, hast known, has seen, contrast the perma nent state with the sudden and isolated act expressed by the aorist Sei^ov, show us. — The idea of the simple moral union of Jesus with God cannot exhaust the meaning of these words. A Christian, even a perfected one, would not say, "He who has seen me has seen the Christ." How much less could a man, even a perfect man, say, "He who has seen me, has seen the Father." This expression is understood only as the Son continues here below, under the form of the human life, the revealing function which He possesses, as the Word, in His condition of divine life. Vv. 10, 11. "Believest thou not that I am in tlie Father, and that the Father is in me f The words that I speak1 unto you, I speak not of myself ; and the Father, who dwells in me, lie does tlie works. i 11. Believe me when I say to you that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me; and, if not, believe me3 because of the works." — Jesus indicates to Philip two signs by which he ought to have recognized and may even at this moment recognize in Him the true appearance of God. He does not say that the Father and Himself are one and the same person. He constantly prays to the Father, saying : Tliou. But it is a union by which they live the one in the other (comp. Gess), and this relation has as its background the life of the Logos. The words Believest thou not? show Philip that his prayer must be regarded as incon sistent with his faith. — There are in the union of Jesus with the Father two aspects : 2" in the Father : Jesus emptying Himself in order to transfer Him self to God ; and tlie Father in me : God communicating to Jesus all His wealth of strength and wisdom. On one side, Jesus making a void in Him self ; on the other, God filling this void. — After this, Jesus characterizes 'BLHX Cop. read Aeyu instead of kaku. n-oiei ra epya. 3 XBDreadavTov after epya (Ms works) and > The noi(m_) is omitted by XBLIt""'' Vulg. reject avns. ,I|o-aTe (keep), B L Cop. : s X B a omit the second avro. rnpno-eTc (you will keep) ; X : rnp-nnnTe. * X B Q omit Se after vjm.. ¦KBL Q X ltpi»'ii»» Cop. Syr. : n (may be) • B D 5 Mnn. It. Syr. : e) ahfiivrj, the real vine, lead us naturally to suppose that Jesus wishes to establish a contrast here between His person and any vine whatsoever which is not in His view the true vine. What outward circumstance leads Jesus to express Himself in this way ? Those who hold that Jesus has not yet gone out of the room, or give up the attempt to resolve the question (de Wette), either have recourse to the use of the vine in the institution of the Holy Supper (Grotius, Meyer), or suppose that Jesus pointed the disciples to the shoots of a vine which pro jected into the room (Knapp, Tholuck), or even that He was thinking of the golden vine which adorned one ofthe gates of the temple (Jerome, Lampe ; see Westcott). Hengstenberg, Weiss and Keil think that Jesus wishes to contrast His Church with Israel, which is so often represented under the figure of a vine, in the Old Testament (Is. v. Iff., Ps. Ixxx. 9 ff.). But the continuation of the figure (branches, fruits, pruning, burning, etc.) shows that it is not a symbolic vine which occupies His thought. If we hold that when uttering the words of xiv. 31, Jesus has really gone out from the room and the city, the explanation becomes very simple. On the way to Gethsemane, Jesus stops before a vine covered with branches ; He looks upon His disciples grouped about Him, and finds in this plant the emblem of His relation to them. What significance has the objection of Weiss that any other plant might have served Him as a symbol ? It was this plant which was there ; and it offered Him points of agreement which no other presented to Him. Among all the plants, the vine has certainly a special dignity resulting from the nobleness of its sap and the excellence of its fruits ; this is what explains the use which the Old Testament makes of it as a figure of Israel, the noblest of the nations. The word vine includes here the stock and the branches, as the term 6 xpiaT6g, 1 Cor. xii. 12, designates Christ and the Church. The point of comparison between Christ and the vine is the organic union by which the life of the trunk becomes that of the branches. As the sap which resides in the branches is that which they derive from the vine, the life in the dis ciples will be that which they will draw from Jesus as glorified. God is compared to the vine-dresser because it is He who, by the sending of Jesus, has founded the Church, who possesses it and cultivates it, without by His dispensations, within by His Spirit. Jesus means thereby to make them appreciate the value of this plant which God Himself has planted, and for which He, in such a personal way, has a care. What is said here does not preclude the fact that God accomplishes this work by the intermediate agency of Jesus as glorified. Only the figure does not allow this aspect of the truth to be noticed ; for Jesus is here compared to the vine itself, and it is in the relation of His unity with His own that He appears in this 294 THIRD PART. parable. In the remarkable words of Eph. i. 22, Paul has found the means of uniting this twofold relation : Jesus one with the Church ; Jesus pro tecting and governing the Church. — The culture of the vine includes two principal operations : the purification of the vine and the purification of the branches. The first is that by which every sterile branch is cut off (the aipeiv) ; the second, that by which the fruitful branches are pruned, that is to say, are freed from useless shoots; in order that the sap maybe concen trated in the cluster which is forming (the Kadalpeiv). As the question in this passage is only of the relation of Jesus to~the members of His com munity, apparent or real, the first of these images cannot be appUed, as Hengstenberg has applied them, to the rejection of unbelieving Israel. If an example is presented to the view of Jesus, it can only be that of Judas, and of those disciples who, in ch. vi. , had broken the bond which united them to Him. In any case, He is thinking of the future of His Church ; He sees beforehand those professors of the Gospel, who, while being outwardly united to Him, will nevertheless Uve inwardly separated from Him, whether in consequence of a decree which will prevent them from being truly converted, or as the effect of their neglecting to sacrifice even to the uttermost their own life and to renew daily then union -with Him. — 'Ev ipol, in me, may refer to the word branch : every branch in me, united with me by the profession of faith ; or to the participle X omits the words eo* . . . e* tij ayawn mov ¦ A B D It. Vulg. read >j (may be) instead of (confusion with ver. 20). /_..*>) [may abide). a X D It. : eyio instead of «a-yu>. chap. xv. 9-13. 299 loved me andas I have loved you." For the principal verb, which would, in that case, be : abide, is not in any logical relation to the first clause of ver. 9 : as my Father has loved me. The meaning is : " And I also, I have loved you ; continue therefore the objects of this love." — And how so . By faithfulness to His injunctions like to that which He Himself testifies with reference to the will of the Father (ver. 10). — In demanding this of them Jesus is assured by His own experience that He is not imposing on them a burden, but rather is revealing to them the secret of perfect joy (ver. 11). It is this constant rejoicing in the love of the Father in the path of obedience which has constituted His own joy here on earth ; and this joy will be re produced in His disciples in the same path. It is then, indeed, Ilk.joy into which He initiates them and to the possession of which He invites them in these words : "lhave said this to you in order that ..." My joy cannot therefore here signify : the joy which I will produce in you (Cal vin) ; or the joy which I feel on your account (Augustine) ; or the joy which you feel on my account (Euthymius). The question is of the joy with which He Himself rejoices in feeling Himself to be the object of the Father's love. Comp. the analogous expression my peace, xiv. 27. — Thus through obedience their joy will increase even to fulness. For every act of fidelity will draw closer the bond between Jesus and themselves, as every moment in the life of Jesus drew closer the bond between Him and His Father. And to feel oneself included with the Son in the Father's love — is not this perfect joy ? The reading y seems preferable to peivy. The notion of being is sufficient ; that of abiding would be superfluous ; comp. xvii. 26. Ver. 12. " This is my commandment, that you love one another as lhave loved you." — Comp. xiii. 34. This is the normal relation of the branches to one another, which has as its condition the normal relation of each one to the vine. So Hengstenberg finds in vv. 1-11 the resume of the first part of the summary of the law, and in vv. 12-17, that of the second. — In vv. 13-16, Jesus raises the mutual love of His own to its full height by giving as a model for it that which He has had for them. These four verses are the commentary on the word as in the words : "As lhave loved you." And first, ver. 13 : the point to which His love has carried devotion — death ; then, vv. 14, 15 : the character of full intimacy which He has given to this relation of love ; it was the confidence of the friend rather than the author ity of the master ; finally, ver. 16 : the free initiative with which He has Himself laid the foundation of this relation. The meaning of this whole development is this : " When therefore you ask yourselves what limits are to be set to your mutual love, begin by asking yourselves, what limits, in these various points, that love which I have had for you has set for itself 1" Or : "And when you would know what it is to love, look at me 1" (Gess). Ver. 13. "No one has greater love than this, that a man1 lay down his life for his friends." — In the relation to friends, there is no greater proof of love than the sacrifice of one's life on their behalf. There is undoubtedly a greater proof of love, absolutely speaking, — it is to sacrifice it for enemies, 1 X D It. omit ti. after i*a. 300 THIRD PART. Bom. v. 6-8. "Iva keeps the idea of aim : ' ' the highest point to which love, in this relation of friends, can asp-ire to raise itself. " Vv. 14, 15. " Tou are my friends, if you do whatsoever1 I command you. 15. I call you no longer servants, because tlie servant knows not what his master does; but lhave named you friends, because I have made known to you all things which lhave heard from my Father." — In ver. 14, the emphasis is, not on the condition : If you do, . . . but on the affirmation : Tou are my friends ; Jesus means : " It is not without reason that I have just said : for his friends (ver. 13), for this is indeed the relation which I have formed with you and which will be maintained if you show yourselves obedient and faithful." What more touching than a master who, finding a servant really faithful, gives him in the house the rank and title of friend ! Ver. 15 serves to prove the reality of this position of friends which He has given them. He has shown an unbounded confidence in them by initi ating them unreservedly into the communications which His Father made to Him with relation to the great work in which He had called them to labor with Him. The master employs his slave without explaining to him what he intends to do. Jesus has communicated to them the whole thought of God with regard to the salvation in which they are to co-operate. No doubt there remain yet many things to teach them (xvi. 12). But, if He has not yet revealed these to them, it is not from a want of confidence and love ; it is in order to spare their weakness and because only another can discharge this task. It has been objected to this ot)/c.r. (" I no longer caU you "), that the address my friends is found in Luke xii. 4, much earlier than the present moment ; as if the tendency to make them His friends had not existed in Him from the beginning, and must not have manifested itself already on certain occasions ! It has also been objected , that the apostles continue to call themselves servants qf Jesus Christ; as if, although it pleases the master to make the servant his friend, the latter were not so much the more bound to remind himself and others of his natural con dition ! Ver. 16. " Tou have not chosen me; but lhave chosen you and appointed you, that you shouldgoand bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain ; that, whatsoever you may ask the Father in my name, he may give7 it you. " — The very origin of the relation thus formed between them depends only on Him. Jesus has the consciousness of the greatness of the proof of love which He has given them by associating them of His own impulse in that work which constitutes the highest activity of which man can be judged worthy. By the term : I have chosen you, He alludes, as in vi. 70 and xui. 18, to the solemn act of their election to the apostleship, related in Luke vi. 12 ff. The word _6ya, have appointed, designates their gradual installation into this office, as well as their spiritual education, for which He had labored with so much persever ance. — The expression virdy.re, that you should go, refers to their apostolic mis sion in the world, and sets forth the relative independence which they will . 1 The MSS. read either o (B It°»i) or a (X D L • Instead of i*a o . i a* and «_> (or Sari), X X It"1' - Vulg. Cop), or with T. R. oo-a (18 Mjj. reads oti av and -wo-ei. Mnn. Syr). chap. xv. 14^20. 301 enjoy as they take His place in this task.— The fruit designates here, more specially than in ver. 2, the communication to other men of the spiritual life which they themselves possess. This fruit does Dot perish, as that of earthly labor does : it remains. — The second Iva, in order that, cannot be dependent on the first, as Hengstenberg, Luthardt and Keil would have it, as if Jesus meant that they would go and bear fruit in order that, being thus in communion with the Father, they might he heard by Him. This thought is unnatural. The second in order that is simply co-ordinate with the preceding, as in xiii. 34 ; comp. as to the substance and form, the two clauses dependent on "on, xiv. 12, 13. Jesus reminds them that the very efficacy of their labor will be due to the revelation which He has given them of His person and the prayer which will result from it, the prayer in His name. Thus, through their dependence on the verb : 2" have appointed you, these words mean : "And you are now, through my name which you know, in the glorious position of gaining for yourselves directly from the Father whatsoever you will have to ask from Him." All this as the fruit of the free initiative of His love towards them. Ver. 17. " 1 give you tiiese precepts, that you may love one another." — The pronoun ravra cannot refer to the "iva which follows : "I command you this, that you love one another." For the plural proves that this expression in cludes all the preceding instructions and suggestions since xv. 1, particularly the words of vv. 12-16. The "iva must therefore be translated by in order that; it indicates, in conformity with the idea of ver. 12, the purpose of these injunctions. — This work is all love ; love in its first origin, the love of the Father ; love in its great manifestation, the love of Christ ; finally, love in its end, the full flowering of mutual love among believers. Love is its root, its trunk and its fruit. This is the essential characteristic of the new kingdom, whose power and conquests are due only to the contagion of love. This is the reason why Jesus leaves no other law than that of love to those who, through faith, have become members of His body. Luthardt observes that in the first seventeen verses of this chapter, there is found only one particle of connection. This long asyndeton has an especial solemnity. Here is the last wish of Jesus speaking to His own (see xvU. 24). — Such a style could not belong to a Greek author ; these words\came forth from Hebrew thought. 2. xv. 18-xvi. 4. Opposite to this spiritual body whose inward life and outward activity He has just described, Jesus sees a hostile society arise, which has also its princi ple of unity, hatred of Christ and of God : the world, natural humanity, which will declare war against the Church, and which is represented at this moment by the Jewish people. Jesus draws a first picture of its hatred to believers, vv. 18-25. Then, after having pointed out in passing, as if to reassure the disciples, the succor which will be given them, He reproduces with still more living colors the description of the hostility of the world, ver. 26-xvi. 4. Vv. 18-20. " If the world hates you, know that lhave been the object of its 302 THIRD PART. hatred before you.1 19. If you were of the world, the world would love what belongs to it ; but because you are not of the world and I have drawn you out qf the world, therefore the world hates you. 20. Remember the word which I have said to you :a the servant is not greater than his master ; if they home persecuted me, they will also persecute you ; if they have kept my ward, they will keep yours also." — Jesus does not wish merely to announce to His disciples the hatred of which they are going to he the object on the part of the world ; He wishes to fortify them against it ; and He does so by saying to them, first : it will hate you ass me (vv. 18-20) ; then : it will hate you because of me (vv. 21-25). Nothing makes us more ready to suffer as Christians than the thought that there happens to us only what happened to Christ,, and that it happens to us for Him. Vivaomre may be taken as an imperative, like pvr/povevers (remember), ver. 20: "Consider what has happened with regard to me, and you will understand that everything which happens to you is in the natural order." The indicative sense, however, is more simple : " If a similar experience befalls you, you know the explanation of it already : you know indeed that. . . . "—By their union with Christ, the disciples repre sent henceforth on earth a principle foreign to humanity which lives apart from God, to the world. This manifestation therefore appears strange to the world ; it is offended by it ; it will seek to get rid of it. — 'S^ele^dprrv, lhave chosen, indicates here the call to faith, not to the apostleship ; by this word to choose Jesus would designate the act by which He has drawn them to Himself and detached them from the world ; the thought of divine predestination is not found here, any more than in ver. 16. The close relation formed by this act of Jesus between Himself and the disciples is formulated in ver. 20 by the expressions master and servant. The quoted axiom has the same sense as in Matt. x. 24, but a different sense from John xui. 16. In ch. xiii. it is an encouragement to humility ; here it is an encouragement to patience. — It is natural to regard the two cases set forth by Jesus in ver. 20 as both real. The mass of the people will no more be converted by the preaching of the apostles than by that of Jesus. But as Jesus has had the satisfaction of rescu ing isolated individuals from ruin, this joy will also be granted to the disci ples. This meaning seems to me preferable to that of Grotius, who gives to the second clause an ironical sense, or to that of Bengel, who takes rvpelv, to keep, in the sense of maliciously watching, or, finally, to the interpretation of Liicke, Meyer, de Wette, Hengstenberg, Weiss, who see in the two sides of the alternative proposed only two abstract propositions between which the apos tles can easily decide which one will be realized for them ; as if Jesus and themselves had not also gained some of the members of the Kbapog. Vv. 21-25. " But they will do all this to you' for my name's sake, because they know not him who sent me. 22. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had sin ; but now they have no excxise for their sin. 23. He who hates me, hates my Father also. 24. If Ihad not done among them works 1 X D ltj>i°ru-o omit vpoiv (you). 'BDL It""« Syr. : en vpa, instead of -pi*. 2 Instead of tov Aoyov ov e-y_> euro*, x reads X omits this word. to* Ao-yo* o*, D: tov. Ao-yov. ov. ekakno-a, chap. xv. 21-24. 303 such as no other has done, 1 they would not have had sin ; lut now they have seen, and nevertheless have hated both me and my Fatlier. 25. But this is so, that the word may be fulfilled, which is written in their law : They hated me without a cause." — The apostles should not be disturbed' because of this so general hatred, imagining that they have themselves provoked it, and believing that they see in it the proof that they are on a wrong path : "But (d^Ad) take courage ; it is because of me." — " Because qf my name," says Jesus ; that is, because of the revelation of my person which you have received, and which you will declare to them. — The reason why this revelation, which should make Israel rejoice, will exasperate that people, is that they do not truly know God. The idea of God has been perverted in the heart of this people. This is the reason why they are offended at the appearance of Jesus, and will be offended at the preaching of His apostles. The book of the Gospels is the setting forth of the first of these facts, and the book of the Acts that of* the second. In consequence of their blindness, Israel will rather see in the holiest man an impostor than the one sent from God. Ver. 22. This blindness which has prevailed in their entire history (see the discourse of Stephen, Acts vii.) might have still been forgiven them, if, at this decisive moment, they had finally yielded. But the rejection of this supreme divine manifestation characterizes their state as an invincible antip athy, as the hatred of God, a sentiment which constitutes the unpardonable sin. Some (Bengel, Luthardt, Lange, Hengstenberg, Keil) think that the sin which would not have been imputed to them is their very unbelief with reference to Jesus. But this sin, if Jesus had not come, would not have been even possible (Weiss). It would be necessary, therefore, to understand the first words in this sense : "If I had not come in such or such a way, for example, with the holiness which I have displayed, and had not borne witness for myself in so convincing a manner." But Jesus simply says : If I had, not come — that is, as Messiah. The meaning, therefore, is this : " The former sin of Israel, its long resistance to God, would have been for given it, if it had not now crowned all by the rejection of Jesus as He came as Saviour, and bore testimony to Himself as such. " This last sin destroys all the excuses which Israel could have alleged for its conduct in general ; it proves incontestably that this people is animated by an ill-will towards God ; that it does not sin through ignorance. The idea is not altogether the same as in ix. 41. Ver. 23. In the rejection of Jesus there is hatred towards Him, and in this hatred towards Him, the Jewish malignity reveals itself clearly as hatred of God : it is distinguished thereby from a mere ignorance, like that of the heathen. More than this : Ver. 24. If the testimony which Jesus bore to Himself did not succeed in enlightening them, His works ought at least to have procured credence for His testimony. The one who did not have a consciousness sufficiently devel oped to apprehend the divine character of His teachings, had at least eyes to behold His miracles. — For the first two mi, see vi. 36 : they have caused 1 The MSS. are divided between Tr-Troupe* (T. R. with E G H etc.) and erronjo-e* (X ABD etc.). 304 THIRD PART. things which seemed incompatible to move together : seeing and hating ; and this at once (the two following Kai) with ref erence tome and my Father: these last two Kal are additive, not adversative. Ver. 25. 'AXXd : " But there is nothing astonishing in this." The right eous man of the old covenant had already complained by the mouth of David (Ps. xxxv. 19, Ixix. 5) of being the object of the gratuitous hatred of the enemies of God. If their hatred was wholly laid to their own charge, notwithstanding the faults of the imperfectly righteous man, with how much stronger reason can the perfectly righteous One appropriate to Him self this complaint, which is, at the same time, His consolation and that of those who suffer like Him and for Him ! — Weiss asserts here, as with refer ence to the other quotations of this kind, that the evangelist puts in the mouth of even the Messiah these words of the Old Testament. The evange list would then imagine the Messiah as also uttering these words of ver. 6 from Ps. Ixix : O God, Thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from Thee ; or he could never have read them ! As for Ps. xxxv., it is impossible to find in it a line which could have led any reader whatever of the Old Testament to the Messianic appUcation. — In order that depends on a "This has happened," or " This must have happened," understood, as in so many other cases (ix. 3, xiii. 18, 1 John ii. 19, Mark xiv. 49, etc.). On the term "their law," see on viii. 17. De Wette finds irony in these words : "They practise faithfully their law." This meaning seems far-fetched. Vv. 26, 27. " But1 when the support shall have come, whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he shall tes tify qf me; 27. and you also sliall testify, because you are with me from the beginning." — Weiss sees in this intervention of the Spirit's testimony a fact which Jesus alleges in order to demonstrate the truth of the word without cause, ver 25. But this connection is unnatural ; it would have required a yap in ver. 26. It is more simple to suppose that, in speaking of the hatred of the world, Jesus interrupts Himself for a moment in order to show immediately to the disciples the power which will sustain them in this terrible conflict. He only indicates this help for a moment in passing. The idea will be completely developed in the following passage, xvi. 5-15, when the picture of Jewish hostility will be finished. — In saying : whom I will send, Jesus is necessarily thinking of His approaching reinstatement in the divine condition ; and in adding : from tlie Father, He acknowledges His subordination to the Father, even when He shall have recovered that condition. — Jesus here designates the Spirit as Spirit of truth, in order to place Him in opposition to the falsehood of the world, to its voluntary ignorance. The Spirit will dissipate the darkness in which it tries to envelop itself. — Most of the modern interpreters, Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Keil, refer the words : wlw proceeds from tlie Fatlier, to the same fact as the preceding words: whom I will send you from the Father, — to the sending of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. The attempt is made to escape the charge of tautology by saying that the first clause indicates the relation of 1 X B 4 omit .. after ora*. chap. xv. 25-27. 305 the Spirit to Christ, and the second His relation to God (Keil) • as if in this latter were not already contained the from God, which, repeated in the second clause, would form the most idle pleonasm. It must be observed that the second verb differs entirely from the first ; innopeveodai, to proceed from, as a river from its source, is altogether different from to be sent : the -k, out from, which is added here to itapd,from the presence of, also marks a difference. But especially does the change of tense indicate the difference of idea : whom I will send and who proceeds from. He whom Jesus will send (historically, at a given moment) is a divine being, who emanates (essentially, eternally) from the Father. An impartial exegesis cannot, as it seems to me, deny this sense. It is that the historical facts of salvation, to the view of Jesus, rest upon eternal relations, as well with reference to Himself, the Son, as to the Spirit. They are, as it were, the reflections of the Trinitarian relations. As the incarnation of the Son rests upon His eternal generation, so the mission of the Holy Spirit is related to His eter nal procession from the very centre of the divine being. The context is not in the least contradictory to this sense, as Weiss thinks ; on the contrary, it demands it. What Jesus sends testifies truly for Him only so far as it eomes forth from God. — The Latin church is not wrong, therefore, in affirm ing the Filioque, starting from the words : I will send, and the Greek church is no more wrong in maintaining the per Filium and subordination, starting from the words -.from the Father. In order to bring these two views into accord, we must place ourselves at the Christological point of view of the Gospel of John, according to which the homoousia and the subordination are simultaneously true. — The pronoun 'tKelvog, "he, that being, and he alone, " sums up all the characteristics which have just been attributed to the Holy Spirit, and makes prominent the unique authority of this divine wit ness. — Does this testimony given to the person of Jesus consist only in the presence of the Spirit on the earth, as proof de facto of His glorification ? This sense would not suit either the name support nor that of Spirit of truth, and would not account for the pronoun you, in the promise : "I will send to you." The question here is rather of the testimony given before the world, in answer to its hostile attitude, by the intermediate agency of the apostles ; for example, by the mouth of Peter and the one hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost. — But if it is so, we ask ourselves how can Jesus afterwards distinguish this testimony from that of the apostles them selves, in ver. 27 : And you also shall bear witness for me ; and the more, since the particle ml Si indicates a marked gradation (comp. vi. 51) ; Kai, and also ; Si, and besides. To understand the distinction, we must begin with ver. 27, which is the simplest one. The apostles possess a treasure which is peculiar to them, and which the Spirit could not communicate to them— the historical knowledge of the ministry of Jesus from its beginning to its end. The Spirit does not teach the facts of history ; He reveals their meaning. But this historical testimony of the apostles would, without the Spirit, be only a frigid narrative incapable of creating life. It is the Spirit which brings the vivifying breath to the testimony. By making the light of the divine thought fall upon the facts, He makes them a power 30 306 THIRD PART. which lays hold upon souls. Without the facts, the Spirit would he only an empty exaltation devoid of contents, of substance ; without the Spirit the narrative of the facts would remain dead and unfruitful. The apostolic testimony and the testimony of the Spirit unite, therefore, in one and the same act, but they do so while bringing to it, each of them, a necessary element, the one, the historical narration, the other, the inward evidence. This relation is still reproduced at the present day in every living ser mon drawn from the Scriptures. Peter, in like manner, distinguishes these two testimonies in Acts v. 32 : "And we are witnesses of these things, as well as the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him." We understand, after this, why, when the apostles wished to fill the place of Judas, they chose two men who had accompanied Jesus from the baptism of John even to His resurrection (Acts i. 21, 22). — The ml vpeig signifies therefore : "And you also, you will have your special part in this testimony." — The present paprvpelri, youbear witness, which we have translated by the future, does not by any means refer, as Weiss and Keil think, to the present moment, when the disciples are already bearing wit ness. Besides the circumstance that the fact was at that time true only in a very limited sense, why should it be mentioned here, since the question is of the future and the testimony of the Spirit ? This present transports the disciples to the time whenthe Spirit shall speak : "And then, on this foun dation you bear witness also." xvi. 1-4. ' ' I have spoken these things to you, that you may not be offended. 2. They shall put you out of their synagogues ; yea, the hour is coming that whoever kills you will think that he is doing service to God. 3. And they will do these things to you,1 because they have not known the Father nor me. But lhave told them to you in order that, when the hour shall have come, you may remember7 that I told you of them. I did not say them to you at the beginning, because 1 was with you." — After this interruption, designed to encourage the apos tles, Jesus comes to the more serious things which He has to announce to them on the subject which occupies His thought. The preceding picture makes especially prominent the culpability of the persecutors ; the following words describe rather the sufferings of the persecuted. The faith of ths apostles might have been shaken in view of the impenitence and hostility of their people. — 'A/Ud, as often, a term of gradation (2 Cor. vii. 11) : " Not only this ; but you must expect what is worse." "Iva designates the contents of the hour, as willed of God. The fanatical zeal of Paul, at the time of Stephen's martyrdom, is in certain respects an example of the spiritual state described in ver. 2 (Acts xxvi. 9), although in him ignorance surpassed hatred, and hatred of Jesus was not in his heart hatred of God, as in the case indicated in xv. 23 ; comp. I Tim. i. 13. Ver. 3 describes the climax of moral blindness : to imagine oneself to be serving God by the very act which is the expression of the most intense hatred against Him I 1 T. R. reads vpiv after t. oitjo-ovo-i* with X hour of these things) and after pvnpovevirre. L D L some Mnn. ltr>i°'Wu- rjop.; 12 Mjj. Mnn. Mnn. It. Vulg. read it after opa only ; X Yl Xt»uq syr. reject it. A A and 7 Mjj. Cop. after u*nf«o*--i[Te only. D UBn Syr. read avTw* twice, after wpa (the omits it both times. chap. xvi. 1-7. 307 Such a mode of action can proceed only from the fact that one has reached the point of absolutely failing to know God and Christ. Ver. 4 returns, after the digression, to the thought of ver. 1, and closes it by uniting itself with vv. 2, 3. The d\\d, but, has been explained in various ways. It seems to me to form an antithesis to the understood idea : "I under stand the horror which the prospects that I open before you must inspire within you ; but I have thought it more useful to reveal them to you freely at last, a thing which I should not have been willing to do until the present moment." — These events, which in themselves would have been for them a cause of stumbling, will, when once foretold, be changed by the words which He utters at this hour, into a support for their faith ; comp. xiii. 19 and xiv. 29. — As long as Jesus was with them, it was upon Him that the hatred fell ; He sheltered them, so to speak, with His body. Now that they are about to find themselves unprotected, they must be forewarned ; comp. Luke xxii. 36, 37, words which, in another form, contain an analogous thought, and which must have been pronounced nearly at the same moment with these of John. It seems to us impossible to reconcile with these words : "I did not say these things to you from the beginning," the place which is occupied in the discourse of Matt. x. by the positive prediction of the persecutions of which the Church will be the object. It cannot be said, with Chrysostom and Euthymius, that the sufferings here predicted are much more terrible than those of which Matt. x. 17, 21, 28 speaks ; nor, with Bengel and Tholuck, that the present description is more detailed than that ; nor again, with Hofmann and Luthardt, that Jesus makes this pre diction of the persecutions the more exclusive object of the discoursing at this farewell moment. All these distinctions are too subtle. It is in vain that Westcott rests for support upon the expression _f dpxvg, which would indicate a continuity, and not merely, like an' apxvg, a point of departure. It is better to recognize the fact that Matthew unites in the great discourse of ch. x. all the instructions given at different times to the Twelve re specting the future persecutions of which they will be the object, as in chs. v.-vii. he unites all the elements of the new Christian law, and in chs. xxiv., xxv. all the eschatological prophecies; and this because, in the composition of the Logia, he did not take account of the chronological order, but only of the subjects treated. This characteristic finds its explanation as soon as the mode of composition of the first Gospel is understood (see my Etudes bibliques, ii. pp. 18, 19, 3d ed.). 3. xvi. 5-15. Jesus now describes the victory which the disciples will gain over the world which has risen up against Him. He first connects with His depart ure the coming of the divine agent (already announced in xv. 26, 27), who will gain the victory through them, vv. 5-7 ; He then describes the manner of this victory, vv. 8-11 ; finally, He speaks to the disciples of the interior operation of the Spirit, which is the condition of it, vv. 12-15. Vv. 5-7. "But now I go away to him who sent me; and no one of you asks 308 THIRD PART. me, Whither goest thou f 6. But, because lhave said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7. But I tell you the truth : it is expedient for you that I go away ; for, if I1 go not away, the support will not come to you; but when I shall have gone away, I will send him to you." — The idea of the departure in vv. 5, 6 is naturally connected with the last words of ver. 4 : "because I was with you." It forms the transition to the promise of the Paraclete in ver. 7, since the departure of Jesus is the condition of the sending of the Holy Spirit. De Wette and Lucke have needlessly proposed to place ver. 6 between the two clauses of ver. 5. — The connection is clear ; from the great conflict Jesus passes to the great promise. Jesus is grieved at seeing His disciples preoccupied only with the separation which is approaching, and not at all with the glorious goal to which this departure will lead Him. Love should impel them to ask Him respecting that new state into which He is about to enter (xiv. 28). Instead of this, He sees them preoccupied only with the desolate condition in which His departure is to leave them, and plunged thereby into a gloomy dejection. Weiss thinks that Jesus means : " You do not ask me further because now you understand." But the light does not come into their minds until later (vv. 29, 30). There is evidently in the words : "No one of you asks me," a friendly reproach. As Hengstenberg says : ' ' Jesus would have been glad to find in them at this moment the joyous enthusiasm of hearts which open themselves to the prospects of a new epoch, and which do not unceasingly continue to put presumptuous questions respecting what it promised them." The questions of Peter, Thomas and Philip did not bear upon this luminous side of His near departure, and besides, at the moment when Jesus was speaking, they were already quite at a distant point of the conversation. The words : Because I have said these things to you (ver. 6), signify, as following upon ver. 5 : Because I have spoken to you of separation, of conflict, of sufferings. In ver. 7 Jesus makes appeal first, as in xiv. 2, to the conviction which they have of His veracity. The iy6, I, at the beginning, emphasizes in opposition to their ignorance the knowledge which He Him self possesses of the true state of things. Then He announces to them spon taneously a part of these joyful things which they were not eager to ask of Him. This departure is His re-establishment in the divine state, and the latter is the condition of the sending of the Spirit which He will secure for them. We find here again the idea of vii. 39 : " The Spirit was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified." That He may on their behalf dis pose of this supreme agent, it is necessary that He should be Himself restored to the divine state. This mission implies, therefore, the complete glorification of His humanity. — He does not, in this passage, make any mention of the sacrifice of the cross and of the reconciliation of the world, that first condition of the gift of the Spirit. This silence is explained by the declaration of ver. 12 : "lhave yet many things to say to you; but you cannot bear them." John explains himself very distinctly on this point in his Epistle (ii. 1, 2, v. 6, 8) ; which proves, indeed, that he has not allowed > T. R. with X B D L Y If" omits eyu, which is found in 10 Mjj., 130 Mnn. Itpi"'i« Syi. chap. xvi. 8-11. 309 himself to make Jesus speak here after his own fancy. Besides, Reuss is himself obliged, indeed, to acknowledge that this part of the discourse is addressed expressly to the Eleven, and not, as he always affirms, to the readers of the evangelist, and he tries in vain to escape the consequence which follows from this fact in favor of the historical truth of these dis courses. Vv. 8-11. ' ' And when he shall have come, he will convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment ; 9, qf sin, because they believe not1 on me; 10, of righteousness, because I go to my1 Father and you will see me no more ; 11, of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." Here is the description of the victory which, through the agency of the disciples, the Holy Spirit will gain over the world. The discourse of St. Peter at Pentecost and its results are the best commentary on this promise. It will be a victory of a moral nature, the mode of which is expressed by the term iliyxei-v, to con vince of wrong or qf error ; here both the one and the other. ¦ — This word does not also designate a definitive condemnation, as the Fathers, and then de Wette and Bruckner, thought, as if the Holy Spirit were to demonstrate to lost humanity the justice of its condemnation. Ver. 11 proves that the prince of the world alone is already judged. If, then, the world can profit by the reproof of the Holy Spirit, it is still capable of salvation. This is proved by the effect of the apostles' preaching, in the Acts, in the case of a portion of the hearers. The reproof given by the Spirit may lead either to conversion or to hardening ; comp. 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16. The apostles are not named as instruments of this internal operation of the Spirit. Their persons disappear in the glory of the divine being who works by their means. But it is certainly through their intervention that it takes place, >as the irpbg vpdg of ver. 7 proves i; comp. also vv. 13-15. The error of the world on the one side, and the divine truth on the other, will be demonstrated with regard to three points. The absence of the article before the substantives, sin, righteousness, judgment, leaves to these three notions the most indefinite meaning. Jesus will give precision to the appUcation of them by the three bn, in that or because, which follow. If this explanation of Jesus Himself failed us, we should undoubtedly regard the idea of righteousness as the intermediate one between the two others : righteousness applying itself to sin to produce judgment. But the explanation of Jesus places us on an altogether different path. Only it con cerns us to know whether we must translate the three bn by in that or because. In the first case, the fact mentioned afterwards is that in which the sin, righteousness, judgment, consist, and the conjunction bn may be regarded as dependent on each of the three substantives ; in the second, the conjunction in each instance depends on the verb convince, and announces a' fact which will establish the truth of God and the error of the world on these three points. The first interpretation, as it appears to me, cannot be applied to the second of these.points. The world, here the Jewish world, was in error respecting sin, seeking to 'Some Mnn. If er"<" V-Jg.read ovk emo-Tewa* * X B D L some Mnn. If '"i"° Vulg. Cop. (did vat believe), omit f-ov after irarepa. 310 THIRD PART. find it only in the shameful excesses of tax-gatherers and the gross infrac tions of the Levitical law. Israel condemned and rejected Jesus as a male factor because of His violations of the Sabbath and His alleged blasphemies. The Spirit will reveal to it its own state of sin by means of a crime of which it does not dream, unbelief towards its Messiah, the messenger of God ; comp. the discourse of Peter, on the day of Pentecost, Acts n. 22, 23, 36 ; and iii. 14, 15. Sincere Jews recognized immediately the truth of this reproof (Acts ii. 37). And this office of the Spirit continues always. Jesus is the good ; to reject Him is to prefer the evil to the good and to wish to persevere in it ; comp. iii. 19, 20. This is what the Spirit without cessation makes the unbelieving world feel by His agents here on earth. — Thus n-spl dpapriag bn does not mean : He will convince the world of sin which con sists in unbelief ; but He will convince it of its state qf sin in general, and this by rendering it palpable to it by means of a decisive fact, its unbelief with regard to the Messiah. It goes without saying that this work of the Spirit is not to be confounded with the usus elenchticus of the law. The Jewish world is also in error as to the way in which it has under stood righteousness. Exalting itself with pride in its meritorious works, Israel has taken its position in opposition to Jesus as the representative of righteousness, and has rejected Him from its midst as an unworthy member. The Holy Spirit will fulfil with reference to this judgment the function of a court of appeal. Holy Friday seemed to have ascribed sin to Jesus, and righteousness to His judges ; but Pentecost will reverse this sentence ; it will assign righteousness to the condemned One of Golgotha and sin to His judges. This meaning results first from the contrast between the two terms sin and righteousness, then from the following explanatory clause, according to which the righteousness which is here in question is that which glorifica tion will confer upon Jesus in the invisible world, and which the sending of the Spirit by Him to His own will proclaim here below. This righteous ness cannot therefore be, as Augustine, Melanchthon, Calvin, Luther, Lampe, Hengstenberg, etc., think, the justification which the believer finds in Christ, or, as Lange supposes, the righteousness of God, who deprives the Jews, as a punishment for their unbelief, of the visible presence of the Messiah and of His earthly kingdom ("you shall see me no more"). In the words : because I go to my Father, Jesus presents His ascension, the end in which His death issues, as intended to afford the demonstration of His righteous ness ; and He adds what follows : and you will see me no more, to complete this proof : " You will feel me to be present and active, even when you shall see me no more." The body of Jesus will have disappeared ; but His divine activity in this state of invisibility will prove His exaltation to the Father, and consequently His perfect righteousness (Acts ii. 24, 26). The judgment, of which the Holy Spirit will furnish to the world the demonstration, will not be that great judgment of the Gentiles which the Jews were expecting, nor even that of the Jewish world convinced of sin. For the final sentence of the one party and the other is not yet pronounced. The prince of this world alone has from henceforth filled up the measure of his perversity, and can consequently be finally judged. Until Holy Friday. chap. xvi. 12, 13. 311 Satan had not displayed his murderous hate, except with reference to the guilty. On that day, he assailed the life of the perfectly righteous One. In vain had Jesus said : He lias nothing in me. Satan exhausted on Him his murderoun rage (viii. 44 and 40). This murder without excuse called forth an immediate and irrevocable sentence against him. He is judged and deprived of power. And it is the Holy Spirit who proclaims this sentence here on earth, by calling the world to render homage to a new Master. This summons reveals the profound revolution which has just been wrought in the spiritual domain. Every sinner rescued from Satan and regenerated by the Spirit is the monument of the condemnation of him who formerly called himself the prince of this world. Thus by the testimony of the Spirit the world, righteous in its own eyes, will be declared sinful ; the condemned malefactor will be proved righteous ; and the true author of this crime will receive his irrevocable sentence : such are the three ideas contained in this passage, whose powerful origi nality it is impossible not to recognize. It does not differ except as to form from xii. 31, 32 ; the three actors mentioned — the world, Satan and Jesus — are the same, as well as the parts which are attributed to them. Our passage only adds this idea : that it is the Holy Spirit who will reveal to men the true nature of the invisible drama consummated on the cross. The result of this reproof of the Spirit is that some remain in the sin of unbelief and participate thus in the judgment of the prince of this world, while others range themselves on the side of the righteousness of Christ, and are withdrawn from the judgment pronounced upon Satan. — But if this victory of the Spirit is to be gained by means of the apostles, it must be - that previously the work of the Spirit has been consummated in them. This is the reason why Jesus passes from the action of the Spirit on the world through believers to His action in believers themselves (vv. 12-15). - Vv. 12, 13. "lhave yet many things to say to you ; but you have not now1 the strength to bear them. 13. When he, the Spirit of truth, shall have come, he will lead you into all the truth f for he shall not speak of himself ; but what soever' he shall have heard,4, he shall speak, and he shall announce to you the things to come." — Jesus begins by assigning a place to the teaching of the Spirit following upon His own. At this very moment He had just told His disciples so many things which they could only half understand ! From the standpoint of confidence, He had concealed nothing from them (xv. 15) ; but with a view to their spiritual incapacity, He had kept to Himself many revelations which were reserved for a later teaching." This subsequent revelation will, in the first place, bear upon the very contents of the teaching of Jesus, which it will cause to be better understood (xiv. 25, 26) ; then, on various points which Jesus had not even touched ; for example, redemp- 1 X omits apn (now). s A* is omitted hy X B D L 4 Mnn. ST. R, with 11 Mjj. Mnn.: ei, nao-av ttj* «T. R. with 10 Mjj.: aKovo-,. B D E H Y. a-oifleia*. A B Y Orig. : ei, t. aA. Trao-a*. DL Orig.: axovo-ei (shall hear). X L: a/covei Xtpierlqiu : ev fy aArjoeia irao-i). X : cv ttj (hears). aAvjdeia, 312 THIRD PART. tion through the death of the Messiah, the relation of grace to the law, the conversion of the Gentiles without any legal condition, the final con version of the Jews at present unbelieving, the destiny of the Church even to its consummation — in a word, the contents of the Epistles and the Apocalypse, so far as they pass beyond those of the teaching of Jesus. The Spirit is presented in ver. 13 by the term bSvyeiv, to show the way, under the figure of a guide who introduces a traveller into an unknown coun try. This country is the truth, the essential truth of which Jesus has spoken — that of salvation — and this truth is Himself (xiv. 6). This domain of the new creation, which Jesus can only show them from without, in the objec tive form, the Spirit will reveal to them by making them themselves enter into it through a personal experience. — The two readings elg and iv har monize with the verb bSvyeiv ; according to the second, the disciples are con sidered as being already within the domain where the Spirit leads them and causes them to move forward. — The word all brings out the contrast with the incomplete teaching of Jesus. The infallibility of this guide arises from the same cause as that of Jesus Himself (vii. 17, 18) : the absence of all self-originated and consequently unsound productivity. All the revelations of the Spirit will be drawn from the divine plan realized in Jesus. Satan is a Uar precisely because he speaks according to an altogether different method, deriving what he sa.ya from his own resources (vni. 44). The term oo-a av, all the things which, leads us to think of a series of momentary acts. On every occasion when the apostle shall have need of wisdom, the Spirit will communicate to him whatever of the objective truth will be appropriate to the given moment. — Whether we read the future with the Vatican, or the present with the Sinaitic MS., or the aorist subjunctive with the T. B. , the verb shall hear must in any case be completed by the idea : from God respecting Christ (xv. 26). The question is evidently of the teaching of things not yet heard on the earth (ver. 12), consequently of the special revelation granted to the apostles, distinct from that which every Christian receives by means of theirs. That revelation has a primordial character, while this latter one is a mere internal reproduc tion of the light contained in the apostolic teaching, first oral, then written. It is therefore only indirectly included in this promise. The expression " all the truth" contains the thought that during the present economy no new teaching respecting Christ will come to be added to that of the apostles. — To this teaching of the Spirit belongs, as a peculiarly important element, the revelation of the destiny of the Church, of the things to come. Kai, and even. As Jesus is not only the Christ come, but also the Christ coming (b ipxbpevog, Apoc. i. 4), these things to come (ipxdpevd) are also contained in His person. The words of xiv. 26 contained the formula of the inspiration of our Gospels ; ver. 13 gives that of the Epistles and the Apocalypse. Vv. 14, 15. "He sliall glorify me, for He shall take of what is mine and shall announce it to you. 15. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he takes1 of mine and shall announce it to you." — The asyndeton » T. R. with A K n, a part of tho Mnn. Itp<-m-- yuig. Cop. reads Xij^eTai (shall take). chap. xvi. 14, 15. 313 between vv. 13 and 14 proves that Jesus only reproduces under a new and more emphatic form in ver. 14 the thought of vv. 12, 13. The work of the Spirit introducing the apostles into the truth will be only the increasing glorification of Jesus in their hearts. After the Father shall have exalted Christ personally to glory, the Holy Spirit will cause His celestial image to beam forth from on high into the hearts of the disciples, and, through them, into the hearts of all believers. There is a mysterious exchange here and, as it were, a rivalry of divine humility. The Son labors only to glorify the Father, and the Spirit desires only to glorify the Son. Christ, His word and His work— herein is the sole text on which the Spirit will comment in the souls of the disciples. He will, by one and the same act, cause the dis ciples to grow in the truth and Jesus to grow greater in them. For the un derstanding of this word glorify, comp. the experience admirably described by St. Paul in 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18 and iv. 6. In designating the source from which the Spirit will draw as that which is mine, Jesus seems to contradict what He has said in ver. 13 ; at least, if "from the Father" is understood after shall hear. Jesus gives the expla nation of this apparent contradiction in ver. 15, by means of the words : " All that the Father has is mine." The Father's treasure is common to Him with the Son. This word reveals, as does no other, the consciousness which Christ had of the greatness of His manifestation. The Christian fact is the measure of the divine for humanity. There is nothing essentially Christian which is not divine ; there is nothing divine which does not concentrate and reaUze itself in the Christian fact. — " Therefore I said" means here: "Therefore I have been able to say." — The present takes is better attested by documentary evidence (ver. 15) than the future shall take, and it is more in accordance with the present tenses, has, is ; the future is a correction in accordance with ver. 14, He takes : it is the present of the idea, designat ing the permanent function. After the present takes, the future will declare signifies: "and, after having taken, He will announce in each particular case." Westcott cal.s attention to the three : and He will announce to you (vv. 13, 14, 15), which form, as it were, a consoling refrain. Thus there is not a real breath of the Spirit which is not at the service of the person of the historic Christ-. So St. Paul makes the cry of adoration : "Jesus Lord!" the criterion of every true operation of the divine Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 3) ; comp. also 1 John iv. 3. If we recall to mind how the glorifying of the creature constitutes in the Scriptures the capital crime, we shall understand what such words imply with relation to the person of Christ. All these discourses, and in particular this masculine ineivog, he, ver. 14, rest on the idea of the personality of the Holy Spirit. As Weiss says on account of xv. 26 : " The Spirit is conceived as a personal manifestation like to that of Christ Himself." Bat BDEGLMSUYAA Syr. most of the 15th verse (a confounding of the two a*ayyeAet Mnn. read kapfiavei (takes'). X omits the whole v>u*). 314 THIRD PART. UI.—Thelast Farewell: xvi. 16-33. From these distant prospects which He has just opened to the disciples with respect to their future work (xv. 1-xvi. 15), Jesus returns to the great matter which occupies the thought of the present moment, that of His im pending departure. This is natural ; thus He should close. At the same time, the conversational form reappears, which is no less in the natural course of things. Vv. 16-18. " Tela little while, and you see me no more;1 again, a little while, and you shall see me, because I go to the Father* 17. Therefore some of his disciples said among themselves : What does this mean, which he says to us : Tet a little while and you do not see me ;' again, a little while and you will see me? And that other word : Because I1 go to the Father. 18. They said tiierefore : What does he mean by this word .-6 A little while ? We do not under stand what He says." — The promise of Jesus' return, in order to be consol ing, must not be at too long a remove. Jesus affirms its very near realiza tion. Two brief periods of time and it will take place ! Weiss, with Lange, Hengstenberg, etc., refers this return to the appearances of Jesus after His resurrection. The sequel (see especially vv. 25, 26) will show the impossi bility of this explanation. But from this point the asyndeton between vv. 15, 16 leads us to suppose a much more profound connection of thought between these two sayings than could be the case with this meaning. If, in con formity with what precedes, the passage in ver. 16 ff. is referred to the spiritual seeing again through the coming of the promised Paraclete, as in xiv. 17-23, everything in what follows is simply explained. Filled with the idea of His glorification by the Spirit in the hearts of the disciples (vv. 13-16), Jesus calls this return a mutual seeing again (vv. 16, 22). It is in this Uving reappearance in the soul of His own that the approaching separa tion will end without delay. — The first pmpbv, a little while, refers to the short space of time which separates the present moment from that of His death ; the second, to the interval between His death and the day of Pente cost. Four Alexandrian authorities reject the words which close the verse : Because I go to my Father ; they would, in this case, have been introduced here in the other documents from ver. 17. But it seems to me rather that the expression : Tou will see me because I go away, appeared absurd and con tradictory, and that these last words were omitted here. If they were al lowed to remain in ver. ,17, it was because there the on might be regarded as depending on 8 Myei, in the sense of that, and not on you will see in the sense of because. But it was not considered that, by preserving them in ver. 17, their omission in ver. 16 was condemned, since ver. 17 is the repetition of ver. 16. A glance at Tischendorf '. note shows that Origen is probably the au thor of this omission, as of so many other errors in the Alexandrian text. This 1 Instead of ov (not), X B D L A read ovkcti (confusion of the two i-.«po* icai). (no more). « E-y_> is omitted hyXABLMAH, 11 Mnn. "XBDLTf "Cop. omit the words oti .... I.pi""u-. iraTepa, which are read in 18 Mjj. most of the » Instead of tovto ti e. o Aeyei, B L Y It Mnn. If " Syr. etc. Orig. road ti e. tovto o k., and X D ti e. tovto, ' X omits the words juu-po* xai .... iraAi* chap. xvi. 16-20. 315 because, which embarrassed Origen, is clear as one refers this seeing again to Pentecost. It is because Jesus returns to the Father that He can again bo seen by believers through the Holy Spirit (vii. 39, xvi. 7). — -Nevertheless, in expressing Himself as He does, Jesus proposed a problem to His disci ples ; He is not unaware of it. These two brief delays (a little while), which were to have opposite results, and the apparently contradictory idea : " Tou will see me because I go away," must have been for them enigmas. We find here again the educational process which we have already observed in xiv. 4, 7. By these paradoxical expressions, Jesus designedly calls forth the revelation of their last doubts, to the end of having the power entirely to remove them. The kind of aside which took place among some of the apostles (ver. 17) would not be easily explained, if they were still surrounding Jesus, as had been the fact at the time when He uttered the words of xv. 1 ff. It is probable, therefore, that, when uttering the 16th verse, Jesus puts Himself again on His course of march, the disciples following Him at some distance. This explains how they can he conversing with each other, as is related in vv. 17, 18. The words : I go away to my Father, were perhaps the signal for starting. — The objections of the disciples are natural, from their point of view. Where for us all is clear, for them all was mysterious. If Jesus wishes to found the Messianic kingdom, why go away ? If He does not wish it, why return ? Then, how can they imagine these contrary phases which are to be accomplished one after another ? Finally : I come, because I go away ! Is there not reason for their crying out : We do not understand what He says (ver. 18) ? All this clearly proves the truth of the narrative ; could a later writer have thus placed himself in the very quick of this situation ? Kai bn : "and this, because." This word increases for them the difficulty of under standing. There is, as it were, a kind of impatience in their manner of expression in ver. 18. Vv. 19, 20. " Now1 Jesus knew that they desired7 to ask him, and he said to them : Do you inquire among yourselves concerning this that I said : In a little while you will not see me, and again in a little while you will see me. 20. Verily, verily, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice ; you3 will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy." — Jesus antici pates their question, and gives them a last proof of His higher knowledge, not only by showing them that He knew of Himself the questions which occupy their thoughts, but also by solving, as far as possible at this moment, all these enigmas. Only, instead of explaining to them the supreme facts which are about. to succeed each other so rapidly — an explanation which they could not understand — He limits Himself to describing to them the opposite feelings through which they will themselves suddenly pass, and which will be the consequences of these facts : the greatest joy will sud denly succeed to the greatest grief ; and all this will be brief, like the hour of childbirth for a woman ; there would only be needed for Jesus time for 1 X B D L omit ov* after eyvu. * X A D A ltpi"ii»« Syr."* Cop. omit Se' (but). 7 X : rjfieAAo* instead of ifickov. 316 third part. going to His Father and returning. It is a terrible hour for them to pass through ; but He cannot give them escape from it ; and after this, their joy will be unmingled and their power without limits. Such are the contents of vv. 20-24. — The tears and lamentations of ver. 20 find their explanation in ch. xx., in the tears of Mary Magdalene and in the entire condition of the disciples after the death of Jesus. The appearances of the Bisen One only half healed this wound ; the perfect and enduring joy was only given on the day of Pentecost (ver. 22). The words : But the world shall rejoice, as far as : sorrowful, are not the real antithesis of the first clause. They form only a secondary contrast. The real antithesis of the first clause is in the last words of the verse : But your sorrow shall be turned into joy. The aMd, but, expresses this opposition strongly, while marking the contrast with the clause which immediately precedes. Vv. 21, 22. " A woman, when she is in travail, has sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she has brought forth the child, she remembers no more her an guish for the joy she has that a1 man is born into the world. 22. And you also now have sorrow ;7 but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice ; and your joy no one shall take7 from you." — The point of comparison is the sud den passage from extreme sorrow to extreme joy. It must be Umited to this. The idea of the bringing forth of a new world, which is to result from this hour of anguish, does not seem to be in the thought of Jesus. — The ex pression her hour perhaps alludes to the sorrowful hour through which Jesus Himself is to pass (my hour). The word a man sets forth the greatness of the event accomplished, and gives the ground of the mother's joy. Ver. 22 makes the application of the comparison. The term : I will see you, cannot be synonymous with : you shall see me (vv. 16, 17, 19). The fact of the spiritual seeing again is presented here from the point of view of Jesus, not of the disciples. The death of Jesus not only separated the dis ciples from Him, but also Him from the disciples. He Himself, when trans porting Himself to this moment, said in ver. 4 : "When I was with you ;" and after His resurrection, in Luke xxiv. 44 : " When I was yet with you." It is for this reason that, not being able at that time to keep them Himself, He prays the Father to keep them in His stead (xvii. 12, 13). There is no longer between Him and them the bond of sensible communion, and there is not yet that of spiritual communion. For this reason, when He shall return to them spiritually, it will be a seeing again for Him as well as for them. After this interval, in which He no longer Himself held the reins of their life, will come the day of Pentecost, when He will again have the flock under His own hand, and will sovereignly govern them from the midst of His divine state. The resurrection in itself alone could not yet form this new bond. Weiss has therefore no good foundation for finding in this expression : I will see you again, a proof in favor of his explanation (comp. ver. 25). The last words : and no one, are to be explained according to him in the sense that, even when the Bisen One had once departed, the joy of the resurrection never- 1 X reads o hefore a*.p_.i.o.. s B D r If" : apei (shall take), instead of 7 A D L 12 Mnn, If" Cop. : e£ere instead of aipei (takes). «x«t«. chap. xvi. 21-24. 317 theless continued in the hearts of the disciples ; but see on ver. 24. — The present alpei, takes away, is the true reading. 'Jesus transports Himself in thought to that day. Vv. 23, 24. "At tliatday you shall not question me as to anything : verily, verily, Isay to you, that all that which1 you shall ask the Father,7 he will give it to you in my name. 24. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name ; ask, s and you sliall receive, that your joy may be fulfilled. " — Jesus here describes the privileges connected with this spiritual seeing again, the source for them of the joy promised in ver. 22. They will be : a full knowledge (ver. 23a) and a full power (ver. 23b). In the first clause the emphasis is on ipi, me (the accentuated form) ; they will have no need to ask Him, as visibly present, concerning what shall appear to them obscure and mysterious, as they had the intention to do at this moment (ver. 19). Having the Paraclete within them, they will be able to ask all freely and directly from the Father (comp. xiv. 12-14). The reading oi A : b, ti av, whatsoever, may well be the true one. After having changed this 5, rt into bn, because, one of the pronouns 5 or baa was necessarily added as an object ; then the on was omitted as useless (Meyer). Weiss prefers, with Tischendorf, the av n of the Vatican MS., which was altered in consequence of the introduction of the recitative bn. In any case, the sense is the same. It is very evident that so consider able a change in their relation to God and Christ as that which is here promised to the apostles could not have resulted from the appearances of the Bisen One. Weiss endeavors in vain to maintain this application. Acts i. 6 proves clearly that after the resurrection the disciples did not cease to ask questions of Jesus personally when they saw Him again. So Weiss gives to iparav here, not its ordinary meaning to ask a question, but the meaning to ask for a thing, a meaning which it sometimes has certainly (iv. 31, 40, 47, xiv. 16, etc. : to ask whether one will give). But why in this case use two different verbs (iparyv and alre'iv) to say the same thing . And, above all, the relation to ver. 19 and ver. 30 absolutely excludes this meaning. The word iparav has certainly the meaning to inquire (to ask light), and alre'iv the more general sense of praying, to ask a gift or help. Jesus therefore means : "You will no longer address your questions to me, as when I was visibly with you ; and in general I declare to you that as to what you may have need of, you will be able, because1 of the communion established hence forth through the Holy Spirit between yourselves and Him (your Father), to address yourselves directly to Him." — The limiting phrase in my name would refer, -according to the T. B., which has in its favor someMjj. and the ancient versions, to the word ask ; to this ver. 24 also points ; nevertheless, this reading may come from the parallel passages in xiv. 13 and 26, and from the following verse. These words should he placed with the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS. , etc. , at the end of the verse, in connection with the verb to give. 1 Instead of oti oo-a a* which the T. R. reads ju.ov (in my name) after Swo-ei vpiv (will give with 10 Mjj. Mnn., A reads oti (probably o ti) you), while T. R. with A D r 1 II It. Syr. av, B C D L Y It. Orig. a* ti, X oti o av, X place these words after to* jrarepa (the Father). some Mnn. oti o eav. 3 X some Mnn. read amjo-ao-oe instead of 2XBCLXY__ Sah. Orig. place e* t. ovop. aiTeiTe. 318 third part. It is on the basis of the divine revelation which God has given of Jesus to believers and of the knowledge which they have received from Him, that He will give to them the gifts and helps thus promised. — But as this full reve lation of Jesus is made in their hearts only by the Spirit (xiv. 17-23), it fol lows that until the day of Pentecost the disciples could not have really prayed in the name of Jesus. There is therefore no reproach in the words : ' ' Hitherto you have not prayed in my name, " as if Jesus meant that they had been wanting in faith or zeal ; it is simply the true indication of their moral state up to the time of the inward revelation which the Spirit will effect within them. From that moment, united in heart with Him, they will be able to pray as if they were Himself. By the present imperative : ask (aire'tTe), Jesus transports Himself to this great day which is foretold. Per fect and enduring joy will then take the place of the extreme grief of a moment.. — Jesus, however, perceives how all this must remain obscure to them. He acknowledges this, and refers them to that very day itself which He has just promised them, when everything will be finally made clear for them. Vv. 25-27. — " lhave spoken these things to you in similitudes ; but1 the hour is coming when7 I shall no more speak to you in similitudes, but when I shall speak7 to you openly of the Father. 26. In that day ye will need only to ask in my name ; and I say not to you that I will pray the Father for you ; 27, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God."* — It is not necessary to understand by the similitudes of which Jesus speaks the figures of the vine and the branches or the woman in childbirth, which He has just used, still less of the parables which have been preserved for us by the Synoptics. He means to charac terize in general the manner of speaking of divine things in figurative lan guage ; comp. the terms Father's house, way, to come, to see again, to mani fest oneself, to make one's abode, etc. It belongs only to the Spirit to speak the language which is really adequate to the divine truth. All teaching in words is but a figure, so long as the Spirit Himself does not explain. Jiappriaia here : in appropriate terms, which do not compromise the idea by exposing it to a false interpretation ; comp. xi. 14. On the word irapoipia, see x. 6. — -We may hesitate between the two verbs dirayyiXXeiv which signi fies rather to announce (Alex.) and dvayytXkeiv, to declare (Byz.).- — From the words irepi tov irarpbg, concerning tlie Father, Weiss concludes that this prom ise can bear only upon the contents of vv. 23, 24, and that the expression to speak in figures refers only to the symbolic term Father by which Jesus has just designated God. But how can we in a natural way explain in this sense the plurals ravra and napoiplai . Then Keil asks with good reason if the name of Father was for Jesus a simple figure. Is it not evident that the question here is of the teaching of the Holy Spirit, which will be a revela tion of the Father, of His character, His will, His plans with relation to 1 X B C D r X Y If ""»• Orig. omit akka (X A B etc.) and avayyeku (E G H etc.). (but). * Instead of Seov (God), BCDLXSMnn. 2 X reads on-ov Instead of ot.. Syr">& Cop. Sah. read i.aTpo. (the Father). 3 The MSS. are divided lu-twwn anayycku chap. xvi. 25-27. 319 humanity ?, Besides, Weiss finds himself obliged, from ver. 25 onward, to acknowledge that there can be no longer a question as to the appearances of the Bisen One, since the language in which Jesus spoke with His disciples after His resurrection did not differ at all from the ordinary human language which He had made use of previously. But how is it that he does not see that in acknowledging that the state described from ver. 25 onward is that which will follow the day of Pentecost, he retracts by this very fact his whole previous interpretation from ch. xiv. onward ? For ver. 26 evidently does not describe a different state from that in vv. 23, 24 ; the day of which ver. 26 speaks and that of which vv. 23 and 25 speak cannot be any other than that of xiv. 20-23. Why should not the speaking openly of the Father be the inward fact described in xiv. 23: " The. Father and I, we will come and make our abode with him. " And if the expression : I will openly announce in our ver. 25 refers to the day of Pentecost, as Weiss concedes, why should ' it not be the parallel of the : I will come again of xiv. 18 ? The declaration of ver. 26 seems, at the first glance, to contradict that of xiv. 16. But in this latter passage, Jesus is still speaking of the time which will precede the day of Pentecost ; He says that. He will pray for the disciples, in order that He may be able to send the Spirit to them ; here, on the contrary, the Paraclete is supposed to be already present and acting in them ; this is the reason why they pray themselves to the Father in the name of Jesus, because they are in direct communication with Him. Con sequently, as long as they abide in this state of union with God, the inter cession of Jesus (Bom. viii. 34, Heb. vii. 25) is not necessary for them. But as soon as they sin, they have need of the advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John ii 1, 2). The expression : I say not that I will pray, is very admirably adapted to this state. He does not say that He will pray ; for so long as they shall be in the normal state of fideUty, they will have no need of this ; He prays then through them, not for them. Never theless, He does not say that He will not pray; for it may be that they will still have need of His intercession, if any separation intervenes between them and the Father. We see how completely Grotius and others have mistaken the idea in understanding the words : "I say not to you that ..." in the sense: "not to say that I also will pray for you." This is to make Jesus say just the contrary of His thought, as is clearly shown by ver. 27. On the words : The Father loves you because you have loved me, comp. xiv. 21, 23. The perfect tenses indicate a condition already gained : " Because you are become those who love me and believe. ..." In general Jesus does not place faith after love ; but here He speaks of a special faith, of the be lief in His divine origin. They were heartily attached to His person for a long time before comprehending all His greatness, as they were beginning to comprehend it now. — Jesus comes back in these words from the future, the day of Pentecost, to the work ' now accomplished in them, because this is the condition and basis of that future (xiv. 17). And in fact the su preme moment is approaching : it is time to affix the seal to this faith now already formed, To this end, Jesus formulates the essential contents of it 320 THIRD PART. in a definite proposition : " you have believed that I came forth from God." Tischendorf himself rejects the reading of the Sinaitic MS. and the other thirteen Mjj. which read : from the Father, instead of : from God. It is the divine origin and mission of Jesus, and not His filial relation with God, which must be emphasized at this moment as the essential object of the apostles' faith. The case is wholly different in ver. 28. The preposition irapa, from, and the verb i^jjXBov, I came forth, express more than the sim ple mission, which would be designated by airb and fkijlvda ; these terms characterize the divine sphere, in general, from which Jesus derives His origin. They well bring out the heroism of the apostles' faith. In this being of flesh and bones, this weak, despised man, they have been able to recognize a being who came to them from the divine abode. Ver. 28. "J came forth from1 the Father, and am come into the world; and again I leave the world and go to the Father. " — What the disciples had the most difficulty in understanding was that Jesus should leave the world where, in their thought, the Messianic kingdom was to be realized. They had, moreover, no clear idea of the place to which He was going. Jesus starts from what is. more clear, in order to explain to them what is less so. They have believed and understood that His origin is divine, that He has not, like the rest of men, behind His earthly existence, nothingness, but the bosom of the Father (ver. 27). Hence it follows that this world is for Him only a place of passage, that He has come to it, and come only to do a work in it, not to establish Himself here. What more natural, then, than that, when once this work is accomplished, He should leave the world, in which He found Himself only for a special purpose, and should return to God His true home . The ascension is the natural counterpart of the incarnation, and the divine future derives its Ught from the divine past. The symmetry of the four clauses of this verse throws an unexpected light on the history of Jesus and on each of the four great phases in which it is summed up : self-renunciation, incarnation, death, ascension. The expression come forth from God indicates the renouncing of the divine state, the divesting Him self of the popfv Beov (the form of God) according to the language of Paul (Phil. ii. 6) ; the : come into the world, the entrance into the human state and into the earthly existence, the : being made flesh (i. 14), or the : taking the form of a servant (Phil. ii. 7). The leaving the world does not indicate the abandoning of the human nature, but the rupture of the earthly form of human existence. For Stephen also beholds Jesus glorified in the form of the Son of man (Acts vii. 56), and it is as Son of man that Jesus reigns and comes again (Matt. xxvi. 64, Luke xviu. 8). — Finally, the going to the Father designates the exaltation of Jesus, in His human nature, to the divine state which He enjoyed as Logos before the incarnation. — The Alexandrian reading _/c, out of, has, as Liicke himself has remarked, a dogmatic savor which is of too pronounced a character to be the true one (comp. i. 18). Jlapd, from, in the Sinaitic MS. and the other Mjj. includes, as in ver. 27, the two ideas of the origin and the mission. — Jesus here says the Father, in- 1 Instead of irapa (from), B C I. X 2 Mnn. Cop. Orig. road ex (out of), chap. xvi. 28-33. 321 stead of God (ver. 27). The question is no longer, indeed, of the contents of the apostolic faith, as in ver. 27. All the tenderness of His filial relation to the Father, which He has renounced, pictures itself to His thought. The term ird'kiv, again, which might be translated by : in return, indicates the correlation between the coming and the departure ; it is as it were a : consequently ; for the one justifies the other. The apostles understand that if He goes away, it is because He has come ; and that if He goes to God, it is because He has come from God. Vv. 29, 30." "His disciples say to him,1 Lo, now ihou speakest plainly, and dost use no similitude ; 30, now we know that thou knowest all things and hast no need that any one should ask thee ; for this we believe that tliou earnest forthfrom God." — On hearing this simple and precise recapitulation of all the mysteries of His past, present and future existence, the disciples are, as it were, surrounded by an unexpected brightness ; a unanimous and spontaneous confession comes from their lips ; the doubts which were tor menting them from the beginning of their conversations are scattered ; it seems to them that they have nothing more to desire in the matter of illu mination, and that they have already arrived at the day of that perfect knowl edge which Jesus has just promised to them. Not'that they have the folly to mean to affirm, contrary to the word of Him whose omniscience they are proclaiming at this very moment, that the time is already come which has just been promised them as yet to come ; but the light is so clear that they know not how to conceive of a more brilliant one. By answering so directly the thoughts which were agitating them in the centre of their hearts, Jesus has given them the measure of the truth of His words in general and of the certainty of all His promises. They have just had, Uke Nathanael at the beginning, experience of His omniscience, and, like him, they infer from it His divine character. — The relation of the words : Thou hast no need that any one should ask thee, to those of ver. 19 : Jesus knew that they wished to ask him, is beyond dispute ; only this relation must be understood in a broad sense and one worthy of this solemn scene (in answer to Meyer). — In the confession of the disciples, as in the expression Son of God, i. 50, the two ideas of divine mission (airb) and origin (H-ijMeg) are mingled. Vv. 31-33. " Jesus answered them : Now youbelieve. 32. Behold, the hour is coming, and is now7 come, when you shall be scattered every one to his own home, and when you shall leave me alone ; but I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 33. I have said these things to you, that in me you may havepeace; in the world you shall have3 tribulation; but be of good courage, lhave overcome the world." — Here is for Jesus a moment of unutterable sweetness ; He is recognized and understood — He Jesus — by these eleven Galileans. This is for Him enough ; His work is for the moment ended ; the Holy Spirit wUl finish it by glorifying Him in them, and through them in mankind. There remains nothing further for Him but to close the conversation and give thanks. John alone understood the greatness 1 X B C D A n 2 Mnn. If" reject avra. 8 Instead of ef eTe (you shall have) which T. aX A B C D L X Cop. omit vvv before R. reads with D some Mnn. If '"i"°, cxctc (you. eAij.iv. e*. have) is read in the other documents, 21 322 THIRD PART. of this moment, and has preserved for us the remembrance of it. The words : Now you believe, must not therefore be understood in an interrog ative, and in some sort ironical sense, as if Jesus would call in ques tion the reality of their faith. I do not think even that dpn, now, forms a contrast with the very near want of fidelity to which Jesus is about to allude, as if He would say : " True, you believe now ; but in a short time, how will you be acting !" Could Jesus, in ch. xvii., give thanks to His Father with such outpouring of heart for a faith which He had just characterized in such a way ? Comp. especially xvu. 8 : " They have known truly (alvdag) that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me," words in which Jesus certainly alludes to our ver. 30. The word now, therefore, seems to me rather to mean here : "Now at last you have reached the point to which I have been laboring to lead you : you have rec ognized me for what lam, and have received me as such." — The connection in ver. 32 is not a but ; it is a simple no doubt ; in ver. 33 will be found the final but answering to this no doubt. This scarcely formed faith is about to be subjected, it is true, to a severe test ; the bond will be broken, at least externally. But the spiritual bond will remain firm and will triumph over this trial and all others. — The vvv, now, which we have rendered by already, is omitted by the Alexandrian authorities ; it may have been re jected because it seemed that the moment indicated was not yet present. — The first aorist passive oKopinodvTe, you shall be scattered, is more suited to extenuate than to aggravate the fault of the disciples ; it is, as it were, a violent blow which will strike and stun them. These words recall the quotation from Zechariah in the Synoptics : "I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered" (Matt, xxvii. 31). It is in the following words : " you will leave me alone," that the idea of culpable desertion is expressed, but in the tone of sadness rather than of reproach. — "Efcoo-T-of elg ISta, each one to his own; each to his respective abode. Weiss finds in this expression the idea of the breaking, off of the communion between them, as a sign of the shaking of their faith in the Messiah. It indicates rather the seeking of a secure shelter, far from the danger which touches their Master. — Kal, evi dently in the adversative sense : und yet. Ver. 32 reassures the disciples as to the person of their Master ; ver. 33 tranquillizes them for themselves. Everything that Jesus has said to them on this last evening should breathe into them a complete quietness, resting upon the foundation of the faith which they have in Him (xiv. 1). No doubt, He could not conceal from them that they would have to sustain a struggle with tho world (xv. 18-xvi. 4). But in the presence of the trib ulations which this struggle will bring, it is necessary that their peace should take tho character of assurance and become courage, 8dpaog. — There is an opposition between the two limiting terms : in me and in the world ; the first designates the sphere from which peace is drawn ; the other, the domain whence anguish arises. 'Ey.-, I, brings out with force the unique personality of Him who, having already overcome for Himself, makes His victory that of His followers. — The victory which Jesus has already gained is, above all, internal ; He has resisted the attractions of the world chap. xvii. 1, 2. 323 and surmounted its terrors. But there is more : this moral victory is about to be realized externally in the consummation of the redemptive work, on the cross accepted in advance, which will be hencefdrth the cause and the monument of the world's defeat. This victory will be continued by means of the Eleven, who will be the bearers of it here on earth. THIED SECTION. XVII. 1-26. The Peayek. The shout of victory with which Jesus closed His conversations with the disciples was an anticipation of faith. To transform the victory which was announced into a present reality, nothing less we* needed than the action of the omnipotence of God. It is to Him that Jesus turns. This prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts : 1. The prayer for His own person, vv. 1-5 ; 2. The prayer for His apostles, vv. 6-19; and 3. The prayer for the Church, vv. 20-26. And this is indeed the course' of the prayer. But the thought is one : when Jesus prays for Himself, it is not His own person that He has in view, it is the work of God (see on vv. 1, 2) ; when He prays for His apostles, He commends them to God as agents and continuers of this work ; and when He extends His regard to all believers present or future, it is as if to the objects of this work, in other terms because these souls are the theatre where the glory of His Father is to shine forth ; for His work and the glory of the Father are for Him one and the same thing. The framework of the prayer is accordingly that which is indicated by the generally adopted division, but the single thought is that of the work of Christ, or the glory of the Fatlier. This prayer is thus throughout an inspiration of the filial heart of Jesus. This prayer is more than a simple meditation. Jesus had acted (ch. xin.) and spoken (chs. xiv.-xvi.) ; now He uses the form of language which is, at the same time, word and act : He prays. But He does not only pray, He prays aloud ; and this proves that, while speaking to God, He speaks also for those who surround Him ; not to show them how He prays, but to asso ciate them in the intimate communion which He maintains with His Father, and to induce them to pray with Him. It is an anticipated realization of that communion in glory which He asks for them in ver. 24 : " Tliat they may behold the glory which thou hast given me ; that where I am, they also may be with me. " He lifts them to the divine sphere where He Himself lives. This prayer has been called sacerdotal. This is, indeed, the act of the High- 1 Priest of mankind, who begins His sacrifice by offering Himself to God with all His people present and future. Vv. 1-5 : Jesus asks again His divine glory. Vv. 1, 2. " Ihese things spoke1 Jesus ; then he lifted up7 his eyes to heaven 1 X : kekakj}Kev instead of eAaArjo-e*. instead of eirijpe . . . ko-l enrev, which T. R reads ¦SBCBLX 7 Mnn. If" Vulg. Cop. : with A and 12 Mjj. If" Syr. etrapa, . , . enrev (having lifted up . . . he said), 324 THIRD PART. and said : Father, the hour is come ; glorify thy Son, that thy Son1 also7 may glorify thee; 2, as thou hast given3 him power over all flesh, that to all those whom thou hast given him lie should give* eternal life." — If Jesus had uttered the pre ceding words on the way from Jerusalem to Gethsemane, He must now have been on the point of crossing the brook Cedron. At this decisive moment, He collects Himself and prays. — The words : He spoke these things, clearly dis tinguish the preceding discourses from the solemn act of prayer. This also is indicated by the lifting the eyes towards heaven. Until this point, Jesus < had looked upon the disciples while speaking to them. To raise the eyes | towards heaven is a natural effort of the soul to the end of escaping from the earthly prison, an aspiration after beholding the living God, whose glory is, above all, resplendent in the_ pure serenity of the heavens. No doubt this act can have taken place in a room (Acts vii. 55) ; but it is much more easily intelligible in the open ajr ; comp. xi. 41, Mark vii. 34. The words : And he said, mark the moment when, beyond the visible heaven, His heart met the face of God, and when in the God of the universe He beholds His Father. The Alexandrian reading : ' ' having lifted up his eyes, he said, " is more flowing and more in the Greek style ; the received reading : "he lifted up his eyes and said," is more simple and Hebraistic ; could this be a proof in favor of the first ? — The name Father expresses the spirit of the whole prayer which is 1 to follow. Jesus certainly employed the Aramaic term Abba ; comp. Mark xiv. 36. This term, in which He was accustomed to concentrate the holiest emotions of His filial heart, became sacred to the Christians, and passed as such into the language of the New Testament, as the expression of the senti ment of divine adoption and filial adoration (Bom. viii. 15, Gal. iv. 6). — The hour is that of which John and Jesus Himself had said many times, in the course of this Gospel, that it was not yet come : it is that of His exalta tion through death. But in order that it may result in the glorification of the Son, the intervention of the Father will be necessary ; this is what Jesus asks for by the word : Glorify ! Some explain this glorification of Jesus by the moral perfection which, with the divine aid. He will cause to shine forth in His sufferings, and by the attractive power which He will thus exercise over the hearts of men. These explanations are, as Reuss acknowledges, incom patible with ver. 5, where we see beyond question that Jesus is thinking of His personal reinstatement in the divine state which He had had before His incarnation. Only it is not necessary to restrict this glory which Jesus asks again — as the orthodox interpreters in general suppose— to the enjoyment of divine blessedness and glory. For the aim of this request of Jesus is not His own satisfaction, but the continuation and finishing of His work, as is shown by the following words : that thy Son may glorify thee. What He desires is new means of action. He asks consequently for the restoration to His com plete divine state, the possession of the divine omnipresence, omniscience and 1 X B C If" omit o-ov after viot (the son, in- ant is almost constantly repeated throughout stead of thy son). this passage). a X A B 0 D 8 Mnn. iii'i-Hm. yulg. Syr. Cop. * Instead of -uotj ovtoi. (T. R. with 7 Mjj), Orlg. omit /tai (also) after i*a 9 Mjj (BIE etc.): Swo-ei avToi. ; X : °'l»<"' 3 Alex, : ...,''„,.,..,.,, instead of e-wKa. (this vari- avTio. chap. xvii. 2. 325 omnipotence of which He had divested Himself in order to appropriate to Himself a true human state. He cannot continue to glorify God and to de velop the work of salvation, the foundation of which is now laid, except on this condition. His personal state must be transformed quite as much as it was transformed when Jesus passed from the divine state to the human exist ence. He speaks of Himself in the third person : thy Son. This is what we always do when we wish to draw the attention of the one to whom we address ourselves to what we are for him. There is nothing suspicious, therefore, in this manner of speaking which John attributes to Jesus. It is, moreover, in conformity with the ordinary manner in which He speaks of Himself in the Synoptics, where He habitually designates Himself by the title : the Son of. man. What would be more justly open to suspicion, would be the form presented by the Alexandrian reading, which is adopted by Tischendorf and defended .by Weiss and Westcott : " that the Son may glorify thee." Instead of expressing the filial feeling of Jesus, as the received text " thy Son " does, this reading has a purely dogmatic tinge, precisely as in the analogous passages i. 18 and xvi. 28. — The particle Kal after 'Iva, "that also," is omitted by the Alexandrian authorities and is rejected by Tischendorf, etc. But this little word may easily have been omitted. It brings out well the relation between the glorification of the Father by the Son and that of the Son by the Father, and consequently the filial spirit which animates this petition : Jesus wishes to be glorified by His Father only that He may be able in His turn to glorify Him. Ver. 2 is an explanatory annex to ver. 1. Jesus reminds the Father of that which gives Him the right to say to Him : Glorify me ! In praying thus, He acts only in conformity with the decree of God Himself : As thou hast given him power. This gift consists in the decree by which God con ferred the sovereignty over the whole human race (all flesh) upon the Son, when He sent Him to fulfil here on earth His mission of Saviour (x. 36) ; comp. Eph. i. 10. — The work of salvation which He has to fulfil in the midst of mankind has indeed as its condition the position of Lord ; comp. Matt, xxviii. 18 : " All power has been given to me," a passage in which the sovereignty which has been gained serves as a basis for the command to teach and baptize all the nations — that is to say, to take possession of them. — The second clause : that he may give life, is parallel to the second clause of ver. 1 : that he may glorify thee. The. true means of glorifying God is to communicate eternal Ufe — that is to say, to associate men with the life of God. In presenting the aim of His petition under this new aspect, Jesus therefore gives the ground for it in a different way. His petition is equivalent to saying : ' ' Grant me the Ascension, that I may be able to bring to pass the Pentecost." For it is through the gift of the Holy Spirit that Jesus communicates life to believers (vii. 37-39). Weiss does not recognize this relation, which is so simple, between tho life and the Spirit, and wishes to see here only the extension of the action of Jesus to the whole world. — -Tov, all, designates the future body of believers, that unity, that iv (of which ver. 33, xi. 52, Eph. ii. 14, speak) which God has eternally completed and given to the Son (Bom. viii. 28). The word irav is a nominative absolute ; 326 THIRD PART. comp. vi. 39. Afterwards, the same idea is taken up again and placed in its regular case in the limiting word avroig, to them. This plural pronoun in dividualizes the contents of the totality, which is the object of the gift. For if the gift made by God to Christ is a collective act including everyone who believes, the communication of life by Christ to believers is an individ ual fact. — The term : that which thou hast given him, recalls the expressions of ch. vi : " those whom the Father teaches, draws, gives to the Son " (vv. 37, 44, 45, 65) ; they are those whom the influence of the law and prophecy lead with eagerness for salvation to the feet of Jesus. — The form Siiav is not Greek ; it recurs, however, in Apoc. viii. 3 and xiii. 16 in some MSS. We must see in it either a future subjunctive, a later form of which some examples, it is thought, are found in the New Testament (Baumlein cites bipvcfte, Luke xiii. 28 ; KavBrjaapai, 1 Cor. xiU. 3 ; KepSvSvaavrat, 1 Pet. iii. 1 ; evpvang, Apoc. xviii. 14) ; or may it be the subjunctive of an incorrect aorist iSaaa, instead of ISam ? It would indeed have been difficult to say SCikv. But the true reading is perhaps Saoei (Vatic), of which it was thought a subjunctive must be made because of the "iva (comp. the reading yivaoKaai in ver. 3). The reading Saou in the Sinaitic MS. is incompatible with the third person used throughout the whole passage. The reading avnp, to it (the irav), in the same MS., is also an evident correction. — The meaning of the expression : all that which thou hast given him, is less extensive than that of the term all flesh ; it refers only to believers. If Jesus has received power over every man livipg, it is with reference to believers whom it is His mission to save. Comp. Eph. i. 22 : " He has given Him to the Church as head over aU things, " that is to say, as its head, who, at the same time, is on its behalf estabUshed over all things. Ver. 3 establishes the connection between the idea of glorifying God (ver. 1) and that of giving eternal life (ver. 2) : to Uve is to know God ; to glorify God is, accordingly, to give life by giving the knowledge of Him. Ver. 3. "Now this is eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom Hum has sent,. Jesus Christ." — Jesus contemplates that eternal life in which He is to make mankind participate ; He fathoms tho essence of it ; it is the knowledge of God. Such a knowledge is certainly not, in His thought, a purely rational fact. The Scriptures always take the word know in a more profound sense. When the question is of the relation between two persons, this word designates the perfect intuition which each has of the moral being of the other, their intimate meeting together in the Same luminous medium. Jesus has described in xiv. 21-23 the revealing act from which there will result for His own this only real knowledge of God. It is the work of the Spirit, making Jesus, and with Him God, dwell in us. — The epithet only neither refers, as Luthardt says, to the word true, nor to the word God, but to the entire phrase true God. The term a'fa.b'ivbg, true, declares that this God is the only one who answers perfectly to the idea expressed by the word God. How is it possible not to find here, with Meyer, tho contrast to manifold divinities and divinities unworthy of this name which appertained to the reigning polytheism ? I do chap. xvii. 3. 327 not see how Weiss can refuse to admit this tacit antithesis. It suits precisely the idea of the extension of Christ's action beyond the limits of Israel, which is, according to him, the idea of ver. 2. Does not the word all flesh call up the image of all these peoples foreign to Israel, which compose the idolatrous portion of mankind . — But Meyer is certainly mistaken in making the words : the only true God, the attribute of oi, thee : "recognize thee as the only. ..." In this construction the word know takes a meaning too intellectual and one contrary to the part here ascribed to tho knowledge as being one with the life itself. The expression : the only true God, is appositional with oi : "to know thee, thyself, the only true God." Thus the word to know preserves the profound and living sense which it should have. This does not at all exclude the contrast with polytheism indicated above. If Jesus had prayed only with a view to Himself, He would have limited Himself to these words : " That they should know thee, the only true God." But He prays aloud, and consequently associating in His prayer those who surround Him, This is the reason why He adds: "and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ." While rendering homage to God, as the first source of eternal life, He has the consciousness of being Himself the sole intermediate agent through whom those who listen to Him can have access to this source ; for it is in Him that God manifests and gives Himself (xiv. 6). The possession of eternal life is identified therefore in His view, for all that is called man, with the knowledge of Himself, Jesus, as well as with that of God. Since Augustine, some interpreters (Lampe, etc.) have made the words " (him) whom thou hast sent," etc., a second apposition to ai, thee. The aim of this impossible construction is evidently to save the divinity of Christ ; but this is exposed to no danger with the natural con struction. The words : "Him whom thou hast sent," are certainly the object of the verb that they should know. No more need we make the word Christ the attribute of Jesus : ' ' that they should know Jesus whom thou hast sent as the Christ ; " this construction would bring us back to the in tellectual sense of the word know. The words Jesus Christ are in apposi tion with the object, him whom thou hast sent. But we need not unite them in one single proper name, in conformity with the later use of this phrase, as Weiss, Reuss and some others do, who see in such an expression, which could not, as they say, be placed in the mouth of Jesus Himself, a proof of the freedom with which the evangelist has reproduced this prayer. Tholuck also finds here a coming in of the later ecclesiastical language ; even West cott regards these words, as well as the preceding ones : the only true God, as glosses due to the evangelist who is explaining the Master's prayer — an explanation which is indeed certainly superfluous. Bretschneider is the one who has most severely criticised this form ; he sees in it a gross historical impropriety from which he derives a proof against the authenticity of the Gospel. We think that this objection, on the contrary, springs from the fact that one does not place himself, in a sufficiently living way, in the historical situation in which this prayer was uttered. Until now\ Jesus I had always avoided assuming before the people the title of Christ. Bather 328 THIRD PART. than use this term, subject to so many misapprehensions, when the ordinary designation Son of man was not sufficient, He had had .recourse to more strange circumlocutions (viii. 24, x. 25 ff.). He had acted in the same way in the circle of His disciples (xiii. 13, 19). Once only, and by way of ex ception, in Samaria, on non-Jewish ground, He had openly assumed the title of Messiah (iv. 26). In the Synoptics, He conducts Himself in the same way. Matt. xvi. 20, while accepting Peter's confession, He takes occasion to forbid the disciples to designate Him publicly as the Christ. This reticence must not continue to the' end. And since the moment was come when the new word of command for mankind, Jesus Messiah, was to be proclaimed throughout the whole earth by the apostles, it was necessary that once at least they should hear it coming expressly from the lips of their Master Himself. And under what more favorable circumstances and in what more solemn form could this watchword of the new religion be proclaimed than in this last conversation with His Father, which was setting the seal upon His whole work ? This is what Jesus does in this solemn formula : Jeschouah hammasehiach (Jesus Messiah). John has not therefore committed an inadvertence here. He has faithfully reproduced this inexpressibly serious and thrilling moment, when he heard Jesus Himself, by this declaration, expUcitly sanction at last the faith which had not ceased to develop itself within him since the day when he for the first time drew near to Jesus (i. 42) — that faith which he and his colleagues had henceforth the mission of preaching to the world. Would to God that all the confessions of faith, throughout the Church, had always been, like this, acts of adoration 1 — It has been objected that the word xPWT^>v\ without the article, can only be regarded as a proper name. But comp. ix. 22, where John says, " If any one confessed him as the Christ," without using the article. As to i. 17, we have there the technical form indeed, but as a reproduction by the pen of the evangelist of the more living form which is found in our prayer. — This second clause of the verse separates the new religion from Judaism, as the first does from Paganism. — The Arians and Socmians have combated the divinity of Jesus Christ by means of this verse in which Jesus is placed beside and apart from the only true God. But John takes the same course in speaking of the Logos, i. 1. No one is more express in his statements of subordination than John. And yet, at the same time, no one teaches more distinctly the participation of Jesus, as the Word, in the Divine nature. In this very verse Jesus is presented as the object, and not only as the intermediate agent, of the knowledge which is eternal life. How could the knowledge of a creature be the life of the human soul ? — The conjunction iva, tliat, is used here rather than on, because this knowledge is presented as an end to be reached, the supreme good to be obtained. — After this outpouring, Jesus returns to the prayer of ver. 1 ; He presents to God in a new form the same ground to justify the petition : Glorify me ! He insists on all that He, Jesus, has already done, to establish on the earth this twofold knowledge which is eternal life, and on the actual necessity of a change in His position in order to finish this divine work (vv. 4, 5). chap. xvii. 4, 5. 329 Vv. 4, 5. "lhave glorified thee on the earth ; lhave accomplished1 the work which thou hast given me to do. 5. And now, Father, glorify thou me, with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." — After having thus described the life which He desires to communicate to the world, Jesusreturns to His request : Glorify me, in ver. 1. He has founded this request on what He is to do in the future ; He now justifies it by what He has already done hitherto. As far as He has been able to do it here below, in His earthly condition. He has glorified God, He has caused His holy and good character to shine in the hearts of men. But to do more than this, He must have a new position, with new means of activity. It is thus that in ver. 4 the way is prepared for the repetition of His petition in ver. 5. — The Alexandrian reading releiaaag, having accomplished, seems to me much more after the Greek than the Hebrew style, — in other terms, much more Alexandrian than apostolic. The juxtaposition of the two verbs in the T. B. is therefore, in my view, preferable to their syntactic fitting to each other in the other text. — The words : " lhave accomplished the work," express with a sublime candor the feeling of a perfectly pure conscience. He does not perceive in His life, at this supreme moment, either any evil committed or even any good omitted. The duty of every hour has been perfectly fulfilled. There has been in this human life which He has now behind Him, not only no spot, but no deficiency with reference to the task of making the divine perfection shine forth resplendently. Ver. 5. The most potent means of action of which He has need in order to continue this task, He can only obtain by recovering His state anterior to the incarnation. And this is the purpose for which He asks it again. There cannot be any temerity on His part in doing this, since : this state of divine glory appertains to His nature, and He has voluntarily renounced it in order to serve God here on earth. — By the words : with thyself, Jesus opposes the divine sphere to that in which He is at present living (on the earth, ver. 4.)", xiii. 32. — The expression : the glory which Iliad, is opposed to His present humiliation. No doubt, in His human state He has also a glory, even a glory " as that of the only begotten Son having come from the Father" (i. 14). But it differs from His heavenly glory as the dependent form of the human existence differs from the autonomous form of the divine existence. This filial position in relation to God, which He has as man, is only a reflection of the filial position which He has had as God. Reuss thinks that this verse does not imply absolute pre-existence, eternity, but only a certain priority with relation to the world. But from the biblical point of view, the world embraces all that appertains to the sphere of be coming, and beyond this sphere there is only being, eternity. Comp. the opposition between ylveadai and elvai, i. 1, 3, vin, 58, and Ps. xc. 2. — Hapd, aol, with thee, cannot have the purely ideal sense which the Socinians give to it, and which now again Beyschlag7 and Sabatier endeavor to maintain in somewhat different forms. This theory does violence to John's terms no 1 X A B C L n 5 Mnn. It01" Syr. Cop. : 2 Beyschlag at present appears to me to TeA.iu.-a. (having accomplished) instead of modify his point of view and to ad-opt two eTcAeitoo-a. contradictory theories in onr Gospel. 330 THIRD PART. less than to those of Paul (Phil. ii. 6-11). He who says, I had . . . with thee, emphasizes His own personality previous to the incarnation, no less than that of God (ver. 24). The I who asks for the glory is the one who has had it. It is equally impossible to find here the least trace of the idea which Sabatier finds in the passage of Paul (Phil.), — that of a progress from the glory of Christ before His earthly life to His glory afterwards. The only difference between these two conditions is that this latter glory is possessed by Him even in His humanity, elevated to the sphere of the divine existence (Acts vii. 55, Matt. xxvi. 64, where the term Sonof man is still applied to the glorified Christ). See on viii. 58. — From the fact that Jesus says : before the world was, and not " before I came into the world," Schel ling1 concluded that the humiliation of the Logos began from the time of the creation, and not only with the incarnation. This conclusion is not well founded exegetically. For Jesus only means here to oppose this glory to a glory which may have had some sort of beginning in time. Vv. 6-19 : Jesus asks for the support of His apostles in faith and their full consecration to the divine work. It seems to me that it is altogether wrong for Weiss, with Lucke, de Wette, etc. , to connect the passage, vv. 6-8, with what precedes, as developing the work of Christ on the earth, and as still intended to give a ground for the first petition : glorify me. The question henceforth is rather of what the disciples have become through the work of Christ, to the end of giving a ground for the prayer on their behalf (ver. 9). As it is with a view to the work of God that He asks His own glory again, it is also in view of this work that He commends to His Father the instruments whom He has chosen and prepared for the purpose of continuing it. This prayer has first an alto gether general character : I pray for them, ver. 9 ; then it is given, with precision and in form, in two distinct petitions : rvpvaov, keep them (ver. 11), and dyiacov, sanctify them (ver. 17), which are the counterpart of the Sbgacbv pe, glorify me, for Jesus Himself. Vv. 6-8 prepare the way for the first general petition, for which vv. 9, 10 will finally give the grounds. Vv. 6-8. "lhave manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given7 me out of the world ; thine they were, and thou hast given them to me ; and iliey have kept3 thy word. 7. Now they liave known* that all that thou hast given me is from thee. 8. For the words which thou hast given me lhave given them; and they have received them, and they have known' truly that I came forth from thee, and they have believed that tliou didst send me." — The general idea expressed in these words is that of the worth which the apostles have acquired by the min istry of Jesus among them and by the success of this work. Thus is the way prepared for the prayer by which Jesus is about to commend them to the care of the Father. And first, what Jesus has done for them. The aorist ia)avipaoa, lhave manifested, is connected with the similar aorists in ver. 4. The most important portion of the work which Jesus felicitates Himself in 1 In his oral courses. Te-njpriica*). 2 Here, as elsewhere, the Alexandrian an- ' X : ey*_>*, instead of eywoica*. thoritles read e.m*a. Instead of _e_-»ca.. B Kai eyvao-av is omitted by X A D It""'. 3 X : cTfipno-av, Instead of TeTijpijicao-i (B D L: chap. xvii. 6-8. 33l having accomplished (ver. 4) was precisely the preparation and education of these eleven persons. — The name of God, which He has revealed to them, designates the divine character fully manifested to the consciousness of Jesus Himself, and through Him to the disciples in proportion as the con sciousness of their Master has become their own (Matt. xi. 25, 26). It is by revealing Himself as Son, that Jesus has revealed God to them as the Father. This is the reason why He must necessarily testify of Himself, as He does in the Fourth Gospel ; it was an essential element of His teaching respecting God. — After having recalled His labor on their behalf, Jesus re calls to the Father what He has Himself done for them. The apostles were His, and He has given them to Jesus. The question here is not of what they were as men and as Jews, but of the relation which they sustained to God through their inward disposition, as faithful Jews ; comp. the expressions : to be of God (vii. 17, viii. 47), to be of the truth (xviii. 37), to do the truth (iii. 21). These expressions designate the moral state of the Israelites or heathen who adhere to the light of the law or of conscience. These beings who belong to God, God has led to Jesus by the inward drawing or teach ing of which He has spoken in vi. 37, 44, 45, 65. And He possesses them now as gifts of the Father.— Then, to what God and Jesus have done for the disciples, JesUs adds what the disciples have themselves done. This gift of themselves, once accomplished, they have faithfully maintained. Notwithstanding all the temptations to unfaithfulness which have assailed them during these years (Luke xxii. 28), they have kept in their heart the teaching of Jesus. They have preserved intact and pure from all alloy this name of God imprinted by Him upon their consciousness. The words ' ' thy word," instead of "my word," are explained in ver. 7 : the word of Jesus has been only a reproduction of that of the Father. Finally, Jesus sets be fore the Father all that which the disciples have become through this com munication which He has made to them of His Word. They have discerned its divine origin, and they have received it in this character. There is at the first glance a tautology in the two expressions : which thou hast given me, and : is thine. But the first is derived from the consciousness of Jesus ; the second is borrowed from that of the apostles : ' ' They have recognized that all which I gave them from thee came really from thee." It is, that in fact (ver. 8.) Jesus never added anything to it from His own resources. Then, from the recognition of the absolutely divine character of His word, they are raised finally to the faith in the divine origin of His person (I, came forth) and His mission (thou hast sent me). In these words there breathes also the feeUng of inward joy and lively recognition which Jesus has just experienced a few moments before : for it is very recently that this result for which He blesses the Father at this moment has been obtained (xvi. 29-31). The harvest seems scanty, no doubt : eleven Galilean artisans after three years of labor ! But this is enough for Jesus : for in these eleven He > beholds the pledge of the continuance of the divine work on the earth. — There is an advance in the three verbs of these two verses : " They have known : " on the authority of their consciousness ; " they have received:" by submission to this testimony ; "they have believed:" by the surrender of 332 THIRD FART. their whole being to Him who thus manifested to them His divine eharac* ter. The forms iyvamv, Tirfipvmv, are Alexandrian, and the question to be determined is, as in so many other similar cases, whether the apostles them selves used them or whether they were introduced by the Alexandrian copyists. — After having thus prepared the way for His petition, Jesus utters it, and ends by giving the ground of it : Vv. 9, 10. " I pray for them ; I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me, because they are thine. 10. And all that which is mine is thine, and tliat which is thine is mine,1 and I am glorified in them." — From the infinite value which these antecedents give to the person of the disciples, Jesus draws this conclusion : "I pray for them." 'Ey-j, I, at the beginning : "I, who have labored so much to bring them to this point and to whom they now belong." Then, immediately afterwards, and before the verb, the limiting words irepi aiirav, for them : ' ' For them, this fruit of my labors, this present which thou hast made to me. " This general prayer is equivalent to an : "I commend them to thee." Thus is the antithesis explained : I pray not for the world. Jesus has not the same grounds for commending the world to God ; if He wished to pray here for the world, He would formulate His petitions on its behalf quite differently. Luther rightly says : "What must be asked for the world is that it should be converted, not that it should be kept or sanctified." Assuredly the refusal of Jesus to pray for the world is not absolute. He Himself says on the cross: "Father,- forgive them ! " Is not this to pray for the world ? Only He does not, as here, allege this ground : They have known (ver. 8) ; He says, on the con trary, " For they know not what they do." He cannot make an appeal to God for the world, as for a precious being which belongs to Him, as He does here for His disciples. All that He can do on the cross is to make an appeal to His compassion towards a being who is guilty and is lost. Moreover, the words of Ver. 21 : " That the world may know that thou hast sent me," contain also an implicit prayer on behalf -of the world. Comp. ni. 16. The refusal of Jesus to pray for the world becomes absolute only when its moral character of opposition to God is irrevocably fixed, and when it has become the society "of those who not only are enemies of God, but who desire to remain such " (Gess). — Before expressing the more special peti tions included in this general prayer, Jesus presents again the two principal claims which the disciples have to the divine interest : 1. God has Himself given them to Jesus, and He must keep this gift for Him. Still more, by thus becoming the property of Jesus, they have not ceased to be that of God. For all property is common between them, and this bond connect ing them with Jesus strengthens forever that which bound them to God. Would a mere creature express himself in this way ? Luther says : ' ' Every man can say, What I have is thine ; hut the Son alone can say, What is thine is mine." The present, " are thine, " is purposely substituted for the imperfect, "were thine," ver. 6, in order to express the idea that the gift made to Jesus has only served to confirm their belonging to God. 2. 1 Instead of (cat Ta eua . . . o-a epa, X reads icai euoi avTov. e.coKa.. chap. xvii. ^-11. 333 The second ground which commends them henceforth to the Father's in terest is, that they are become the depositaries of the glory of the Son (perfect, SeSSS-ao-pai). We must not make this clause depend on the. bn of ver. 9, which would render the sentence dragging, and would force us to make a parenthesis of the first part of ver. 10. — The expression : lam glorified in them, has been understood in different ways. There is no reason to depart from the constant sense of the term : to be glorified. Notwith standing His form of servant, Jesus has been manifested to them inwardly in His divine character ; even before having been restored to His glory, He has regained it within them by the fact that they have recognized Him as the Son of God. Thjs is the testimony which Jesus has borne to them, vv. 7, 8. — With this general commendation there are connected two more precise petitions. The first : keep them, is prepared for by ver. 11a, ex pressly stated ver. lib, and supported by reasons vv. 12-15. Ver. 11. " And I am no more in the world ; but they1 are in the world ; and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name, them whom7 thou hast given me, that they may be one, as7 we are." — At the moment of asking God more specially for His protection for His disciples, the thought of Jesus naturally turns towards the dangers to which they will be exposed in the state of desertion in which His departure is about to leave them : ' ' Keep them, these precious vessels (vv. 6-10), which are from this moment so exposed (vv. 11-15)." Jesus is no longer with them, in the world, to keep them, and He is not yet with God so as to be able to protect them from the midst of His heavenly glory. There is a sorrowful interval, during which His Father must charge Himself with this care. This reason would be abso lutely incomprehensible, if the Fourth Gospel really taught, as Reuss thinks, that the Logos is susceptible neither of humiliation nor of exaltation, or, as Baur affirms, that death is for Him only the divesting of bodily appearances. Ver. 5 has proved that, when once His divine state is abandoned, there remains for Him, as a mode of existence, only His earthly presence with His own, and vv. 11, 12 prove that, when this presence comes to an end, there is nothing else to do for them except to lay them in the arms of the Father. Weiss thinks that even in His state of exaltation He will do nothing except through asking it of the Father. The passages which he alleges do not seem to me to prove this (xiv. 13, 16) ; and this idea is in direct con tradiction to Matt, xxvni. 20. The title : Holy Father, must be used in connection with the petition presented. Holiness, in man, is the consecration of his whole being to the task which the divine will assigns to him. Holiness, in God, is the free, deliberate, calm, immutable affirmation of Himself who is the good, or of the good which is Himself. The holiness of God, therefore, as soon as we are associated therewith, draws a deep line of demarcation between us and the men who live under the sway of their natural instincts, and whom the 1 X B read avToi instead of ovtoi. 11 Mnn. Syr. : o (which) If1'™' omits all from 7 T. R. with Mnn. only If" Vulg. Cop. a (ov.) to ripei,. reads ovt (those whom) ;XABCBGHKLM 3BMSTJY12 Mnn. read icai after /ta.io.. SYrAAn.someMnn. : w (which); DUX 334: THIRD PART. Scriptures call the world. The term : Holy Father, here characterizes God as the one who has drawn this line of separation between the disciples and the world. And the petition : keep them, has in view the maintenance of this separation. Jesus supplicates His Father to keep the disciples in this sphere of consecration, which is foreign to the life of the world, and of which God is Himself the centre and the author. The words : in thy name, make the relation of the divine character which is granted to the apostles as it were the inclosing wall of this sacred domain in which they are to be kept. — The reading which nearly all the Mjj. present would signify : "in thy name which thou hast given me. " But where in the Scriptures is the name of God spoken of as given to the Son ? The expression : " My name is in him" (Exod. xxiii. 21), is very different. I do not accept this reading even though it is so strongly supported ; comp. ver. 12, where it is even far more improbable. Since the received reading : those whom (ovg) thou hast given me, has in its favor only Mnn., I think that the reading 5 SiSamg, "that which thou hast given me," must be preferred, which is preserved in the Cambridge MS., but that we must make these words the explanatory apposition of avrovg, them, which precedes ; it is the reverse construction of that in ver. 2, where the plural avrolg is the explanatory apposition of the singular irav. Comp. also ver. 24 (in case the reading 6 for ovg must be adopted in that verse) : ' ' Keep them in my name, them, that which thou hast given me." This reading gives the same sense as that of the T. B. (oiic) ; and it easily explains the origin of the Alexandrian reading (

(which). They add «ai before e^vAaf a. Cop. omit. X readB *ai e^vAao-ow instead of ov. _.-<-«as . , . > Instead of ovs (those wliom) which T. R. e^vAafn. chap. xvn. 12-15. 335 the idea of : I am no more . . . (ver. 11). The words of the T. B. : in the world, are probably a gloss. — The iya, I, contrasts Him who has kept them hitherto with Him who is to do it for the future. The irvpovv, I kept them, indicates the result obtained (conservabam) ; the ia>vla$a, I liave guarded, relates to the action put forth for this end (custodivi). — The read ing u is still more inadmissible in this verse than in the preceding. It has only three Mjj. in its favor, instead of sixteen in ver. 11. The reading 8 is also abandoned by the three Mjj. which supported it, and has here in its favor only the Egyptian Versions. It only remains to read ovg (those whom), with theT. B. and the majority of the Mjj., which suits the meaning of ver. 11. — By the word son of perdition and the citation of the prophecy, Jesus discharges Himself from responsibility, without lessening that of Judas. As to the latter, he has freely yielded himself to play the part traced out beforehand by the prophecy. We may compare here what is foretold con cerning Antichrist. We know through prophecy that this person will exist, and yet this fact will not prevent the man who shall accept this part from freely doing so. Comp. p. 235, the remarks on the relation between the divine foreknowledge and human freedom. In the Hebraistic phrase son qf the abstract complement indicates the moral principle which determines the tendency of the individual thus designated. The passage of which Jesus is thinking is Ps. xii. 10, cited in xiii. 18. Must we conclude from the expression el pr/, if it is not, that Jesus counted Judas also in the number of those whom the Father had previously given Him f I do not think that this form of expression obliges us to draw this conclusion ; comp. Matt. xii. 4, Luke iv. 26, 27, etc. This remark was a parenthesis intended to justify, with regard to the loss of Judas, the watchfulness of the Lord. After this Jesus returns (ver. 13) to the idea of His approaching departure ; this is the fact which gives the ground for His petition. And He adds that, if He utters aloud (this is the meaning of XaXa) these words in presence of His disciples, before leaving them, it is that He may associate them in the joy which He Himself enjoys. This joy is that which is inspired in Him by the certainty of the protection with which the Father shelters Him at all times, a certainty which is also to become theirs. — The need which they have of being kept is set forth in the following words in a still more pressing way than before. They are not only going to remain alone in the world, but as objects of its hatred. Vv. 14, 15. "lhave given them thy word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, as lam not of the world. 15. I ask not that tliou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil." — The word of Jesus, which they have faithfully received, has made them strangers in the worlcl, as Jesus Himself was. They are become thereby, like Him, beings antipathetic to purely earthly humanity. Jesus might therefore easily allow Himself to ask of God to withdraw them from the world with Himself. But no ; for He has separated them from the world for the precise purpose of preparing them to fulfil a mission to the world. It is necessary that they should remain here to fulfil this task ; only it must not be that the line of demarcation which He has succeeded in 336 THIRD PART. drawing between the world and them, by placing His word in them, should be effaced. While remaining in the world, they must he kept from the evil which reigns therein. Jesus thus closes this passage by presenting again the petition which was its text. The limiting word tov irovvpov, it seems to me, must be taken here in the neuter sense : from the evil, and not : from the evil one ; for the preposition _/c, out of, refers rather to a domain, from the midst of which one is taken, than to a person from whose power one escapes. It is otherwise in the Lord's Prayer, where the preposition dirb and the verb pveadai are used, two expressions which rather refer to a personal enemy (Matt. vi. 13). It is wrong, therefore, for Reuss, Weiss, etc., to explain here : "from the power of the devil." Hengstenberg observes that the form rvpeiv ,/c does. not appear again except in the Apoc. (in. 10). — From the prayer : Keep them, which has rather a negative aim (to prevent their return to the world), and which especially refers to their own salva tion, Jesus passes to the second petition, which has a positive end in view, and which refers rather to their mission : Sanctify them. It is prepared for in ver. 16, stated in ver. 17, then justified and developed in vv. 18, 19. Vv. 16, 17. " They are not of the world, as I am not of the world. 17. Sanctify them by thy truth ; l thy word is truth." ¦ — Ver. 16 is the transition from the first petition to the second. Jesus has introduced them into the sphere of holiness in which He Himself Uves; but it is not only necessary that they should abide there (keep them) ; they must also penetrate farther therein, that they may be strengthened ; for they have the mission to intro duce the world into it. — 'Aylaaov, sanctify: this word does not merely designate their own moral perfection (Lucke, de Wette), but also the conse cration of their whole life to the service of God's work (ver. 18). Accord ing to x. 36, a consecration preceded the sending of Jesus to the earth : "me whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world." He was marked with a seal- of holiness that He might establish here on earth the kingdom of holiness. The same thing is to be repeated for His disciples. The word dytdfriv, to sanctify, is not synonymous with Kadapl&iv, to puHfy. Holy is not the opposite of impure, but simply of natural or profane (with out the idea of defilement). To sanctify is to consecrate to a religious use what hitherto had appertained to the common life, without the idea of sin. Comp. Exod. xl. 13, Levit. xxii. 2, 3, and Matt. xxui. 17 : "Which is greater, tho gold or the temple which sanctifies the gold ? " But from the Old Testament point of view, the consecration was an external, ritual act; in the new covenant, where all is spiritual, the seat of consecration is above all the heart, the will of the consecrated person. Jesus, therefore, in saying Sanctify them, asks for them a will entirely devoted to the good — that is, to God and to His service, and consequently to the task which God gives them to discharge in the world. All their forces, all their talents, all their life, are to be marked wdth the seal of consecration to this great work, the salvation of men ; a thing which implies the renouncing of all 1 2ov, which T. R. reads with 12 Mjj., nearly oAij.eia (confusion of the two aAij.eia), nil tho Mnn. Syr. Cop. is omitted by X A B C « B reads ij (the) before oAt|9ei«, t_ j, TtPi.,i,|„o Yulg.; X omits the words o-ov . . . chap. xvii. 16-19. 337 self-gratification, however lawful it may be, the absence of all interested aims, of all self-seeking. This is the sublime idea of Christian holiness, but regarded here, where the question is of the apostles, as about to be realized under the special form of the Christian ministry, in the same way as each believer is to realize it under the form of the special task which is providentially assigned to him. We have given to iv, in the translation, the instrumental sense by, as in i. 31, 33. The divine truth is thus desig nated as the agent of the consecration. Meyer, Weiss and others translate in: " In this sphere of truth, where I have placed them, complete the work of sanctifying them." But to what purpose, in this case, the addition of the words : "Thy word is truth"? Must they not serve to present the truth as the means by which alone this consecration can he effected? Weiss tries in vain to give another sense. — The T. B. reads aov (of thee) with the words the truth in the first clause ; this pronoun is wanting in the Alexan drian authorities, and was probably added from the following clause (thy word). — The truth is the adequate expression of the character of God and of His relation to us. This truth is found only in the word of God addressed to the world by the mouth of Jesus. The second d?.vf>ela does not have the article : This word is truth, nothing but truth. — In support of this prayer, Jesus alleges two reasons, one drawn from what they will have to do for the world (ver. 18), the other from the work which He accomplishes upon Himself on their behalf (ver. 19). Their mission is His, and His holi ness will be theirs. Vv. 18, 19. "According as thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19. And for their sokes I1 sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth." — If Jesus asks for them the spirit of their charge (ver. 17), it is because He has confided to them the charge itself. The term airiareika, I have sent, alludes to the title of apostles which He has given them. But how does Jesus say that He has sent them into the world, when they are already in it? It is because He has drawn them to Himself and raised them into a higher sphere than the life of the world (ver. 16), and it is from thence that He now sends them to the world, as really as He was Himself sent from heaven. And the mission which He gives them is only the continuation of that which the Father has given Him (mdag, according as) ; herein is the first reason which He presses in support of His petition : Sanctify them. The second is set forth in ver. 19. The force of Kai, and, at the beginning of this verse, is this : " And to obtain for them this consecration which I ask for, I begin by consummating my own." Jesus asks nothing of the Father except after having done, or when doing Himself what depends on Him self to the end of making possible the realization of His prayer ; comp. vv. 4, 6, 8, 12, 14. It is on what He does for His own sanctification that theirs will be founded. The words virep avrav, for them, are at the beginning be cause they set forth the aim of His work with reference to Himself. The word sanctify does not by any means imply, as we have seen, the removal 1 X A omit eyto, 23 338 THIRD PART. of defilement ; for it is not synonymous with purify (mdapi&iv) • it is there fore a wrong course in some interpreters to find in this word a proof of the existence of sin in Jesus. The majority of interpreters (vhrysostom, Meyer, Reuss, Weiss, etc.) apply this word to the consecration which Jesus makes of His person at this moment in view of His expiatory death. Weiss sus tains this meaning by the ordinary use of the word hiquedisch in the Old Testament to designate the idea of sacrificing. But this last reason proves nothing; for this term, as well as the Greek word, designates all consecra tion, even that which does not issue in death ; comp. Matt, "xxiii. 17, which we have just cited. And this sense is not admissible here, because it is in applicable in the following clause, unless we see, with Chrysostom, in the sanctification of the apostles their acceptance of martyrdom, or refer it, as Meyer and Reuss do, to the gift of the Holy Spirit as the result of the ex piatory death, or give up, as Weiss does, assigning the same meaning to the verb dyidQev in the two clauses, and find therein a special nicety of ex pression ; all which interpretations are quite improbable, the first, because the greater part of the apostles do not seem to have been martyrs ; the second, because the relation between the two acts of consecration would be much too indirect ; the third, because the Iva, that, as well as the mi, them also, implies two consecrations of a homogeneous character. We must, therefore, with Calvin, abide by the natural meaning of dyid&iv : to take athing away from a profane use in order to consecrate it to the service of God. Jesus possessed a human nature, such as ours, endowed with inclinations and re pugnances like ours, but yet perfectly lawful. Of this nature He continually made a holy offering ; negatively, by sacrificing it where it was in contra diction to His mission (the culture of the arts and sciences, for example, or the family life) ; positively, in consecrating to the task assigned Him of God all His powers, all His natural and spiritual talents. It is thus "that He offered Himself to God without spot, through the eternal Spirit " (Heb. ix. 14). When the question was of sacrificing a gratification, as in the desert, or of submitting to a sorrow, as in Gethsemane, He incessantly subjected His nature to the work to which the will of the Father called Him. And • this was not effected once for all. His human life received the seal of con secration increasingly even till the entire and final sacrifice of death, when " by the things which He suffered " He finished the "learning obedience " (Heb. v. 8). — The pronouns I and myself set forth the energetic action which Jesus was obliged to exercise upon Himself in order to attain this result. — Thereby Jesus realized in His own person the perfect consecration of the human life, and Ho thus laid the foundations of the consecration of this life in all His followers. This is what is expressed by the following clause : That they also may be sanctified, which develops the meaning of the first words : for them. According to Weiss, Jesus speaks here of a purely negative fact : the removal through the expiatory sacrifice of Christ of the guilt resulting from the defilements contracted by the believer, a guilt which would prevent his consecration to God. This is to fail to recognize the difference in meaning between the two terms sanctify and purify, and arbitrarily to change tho meaning which the word sanctify had in the pre- chap. xvii. 20, 21. 339 ceding clause. The meaning is indeed as follows : The sanctification of every beUever is nothing else than the communication which Jesus makes to him of His own sanctified person. This is what He had already intimated in vi. 53-57 and 63, and what St. Paul develops in Bom. viii. 1-3, where he shows that Christ began by condemning sin in the flesh (condemned to non-existence), in order that the (moral) righteousness, required by the law, might be realized in us. Jesus created a holy humanity in His person, and the Spirit has the task and the power to reproduce in us this new humanity : " The law of the Spirit of life which is in Jesus Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death." In this point, as in all others, the part of the Spirit consists in taking what belongs to Jesus (this perfectly holy human life), to give it to us. If this holy life had not been realized in Christ, the Spirit would have nothing to communicate to us in this regard, and the sanctifica tion of humanity would have remained a barren aspiration. It is difficult to understand how Weiss can say that, with this interpretation, everything is reduced to the imitation of the example of Christ. — Let us remark finally that by reason of ver. 17, the question here is of the apostles, not only as Christians, but especially as ministers (ver. 18). Jesus Himself, while sanctify ing Himself as man and for the purpose of reaUzing in Himself the ideal of human holiness, sanctified Himself at the same time as Saviour and for the purpose of giving Ufe to mankind. In the same way, the task of the apostles will not only be to realize the consecration in that general form under which' all believers are called to it ; by freeing them from every earthly vocation and sending them into the world as His ambassadors, Jesus desired that their personal sanctification might be effected under the par ticular form of the apostleship. This form is not more holy, but it has, more than any earthly vocation, the character of a special consecration to the work of God. 'Ev dhr/Oela, in truth, must have here, because of the want of the article, the adverbial sense : in a true way, in opposition both to the false Pharisaic consecration and to the ritual consecration of the Levitical priesthood. Thus from the general petition : I pray for them, there have been evolved these two clearly progressive petitions : ' ' Keep them in holi ness ! Consecrate tliem by an increasing, holiness, to the end that they may become, after me and like me, the agents ofthe sanctification ofthe world." It is natural that Jesus should pass from this to a prayer on behalf of the world itself, at least as to the future believing portion of it, vv. 20-26. Jesus prays for the believers and asks for them two things : vv. 20, 21, spiritual unity ; vv. 22-24, participation in His glory ; finally, He justifies these petitions in vv. 25, 26. Vv. 20-26. Jesus prays for the union of believers with Himself and among themselves. Vv. 20, 21. " And it is not for these only that I pray, but for all those who believe1 on me through their word, 21, that they all may be one ; that, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, they also may be* in us, that the world may 1 T. B. with D2 some Mnn. nn-i..-- Vulg. (who I Sah.: Trio-Tevo-ovToiv (who shall believe). The 19 2 E* before uo-i* is rejected by BCD If" Mjj. all the other Mnn. Syr. Cop.: TriorevovT-.* Sah. 340 THIRD PART. believe1 that thou hast sent me." — Jesus has commended to God the author und the instruments of the work of salvation ; He now prays on behalf of the object of this work, the body of believers. The Church appears here elevated by faith into unity with God, and rendered capable thereby of beholding and sharing the glory of the Son. It is the realization of the supreme destiny of humanity which He contemplates and asks for, the contents of that " hidden wisdom which God had foreordained before the ages for our glory " (1 Cor. ii. 7). The question therefore is not only, as is often supposed, of the union of Christians among themselves, but above all of the union which is the basis of this, that of the body of believers with Christ and, through Him, with God Himself. This sublime unity it is which Jesus, in what follows, contrasts with that of the world. The true reading is certainly the present participle iricTsvbvTuv, the believers, and not, as the T. K. reads, almost without any authorities, the future iriorevabvTav, those who shallbelieve. These believers are undoubtedly not the believers at the moment when Jesus is praying, since they had believed through His word and not through that of the apostles. But He pictures to Himself all believers, speaking absolutely. He sees them in spirit, these beUevers of all times and places, and by His prayer He unites them in one body and transports them, in some sense, to glory. This present cannot be rendered, in French, in an altogether exact way. In Reuss's view, this present participle proves that it is the evangelist and not Jesus who is speaking. This is to ascribe great unskilfulness to so able a composer. — The last words assign to the apostolic teaching a capital part in the life of the Church. Jesus recognizes, in the future, no faith capable of uniting man to God and preparing rn'm for glory except that which is produced and nourished by the word of the Eleven. The term word Qibyog) does not, as the term testimony (paprvpla) might do, designate merely the narration of the evangefical facts; it con tains also the revelation of the religious and moral meaning of the facts. It is the contents of the Epistles, as well as that of the Gospels. Men can not really come to faith in Christ (elg ipi, on me), at any time, except through this intermediate agency. How can Reuss infer from this passage that the apostles have no other privilege relatively to other believers but that of priority t This saying assigns to them a unique place in the Ufe of the Church. No teaching capable of producing faith can be other than a reproduction of theirs. — The following verses present the object Of the petition under the form of an end to be attained by this very prayer (Iva, in order tliat) ; ver. 21 designates this end in itself; ver. 22 states what Jesus has done already to the end of the possibility of its realization; ver. 23 shows it perfectly attained. — It seems to me that the first clause of ver. 21 is formed only of the words: that all may be one, which indicate the general idea ; then, that the clause : as thou, Father, . . . depends on the following that, by an inversion similar to that of xiii. 34. There is, there fore, here an explanatory resumption : " That they may he one ; that, Isay, as thou, Father, . . . they also may be in us." This construction does not 1 X B C : n-iore-if, instead of iriorevo-ij. chap. xvn. 22, 23. 341 * have the dragging character of that which makes the as depend on the first that. After having asked for the general unity of believers (all), Jesus describes it as a unity of the most elevated order ; it partakes of the nature (mdag) of that of the Father and the Son. As the Father lives in the Son and the Son in the Father, so the Son lives in the believers and, by living in them, He unites them closely one with another. Instead of : " that they may be one in us," some Mjj. read: "that they may be in us." It may be said that the context requires the idea of the unity of believers, and that the small word iv was easily lost in the iv -hpiv which precedes. The idea, however, does not imperatively require this word. It is by being in Christ and through Him in God (in us), that believers find themselves living in each other. That which separates them is what they have of self in their views and will ; that which unites them is what they have of Christ, and thereby of the divine, in them. It is clear that this dwelling of Christ and consequently of God in them is the work of the Spirit, who alone has the power to cast down the barrier between personalities, without confounding them. — Such an organism, exercising its functions on the earth, is a mani festation so new that the sight of it must be a powerful means of bringing the world to faith in Him from whom it proceeds. Here is the content of the third that, which is subordinate to the two preceding ones, and indicates the final purpose of them. The word believe is never taken in the New Testament otherwise than in a favorable sense (except in James ii. 19, which relates to an altogether pecuUar case). It cannot therefore designate a forced conviction, such as that which may be found in Phil. ii. 10 f. No doubt, Jesus does not mean to say that the whole world will believe ; this would be contradictory to what He said of the world in xv. 20, 22, 24. We must recall to mind the fact that the question is of an end which cannot be accomplished for all. In. any case, Jesus declares that in the world estranged from God there are yet elements capable of being gained for faith. And what the sight of a local and passing phenomenon, like that of the primitive Church in Jerusalem, produced among the Jewish people (Acts ii. 44-47), — will not the same spectacle, when magnified, produce this also on a grander scale, one day, throughout the entire world ? Perhaps even Jesus is thinking more especially of the conversion of the Jews at the end of time, when they shall see the Church realized in all its beauty among the Gentiles. In xv. 18, 20, the word world designates, above all, the Jewish people. This supposition is confirmed by the words : that it is thou who hast sent me, that is to say : "that I, this Jesus of Nazareth, whom they have rejected, am really the promised Sent one whom they were expecting." Bom. xi. 25, 31. Comp. 1 John i. 3; Eph. iv. 13. — After having presented to God this end worthy of His love, Jesus recalls in ver. 22, as in vv. 4, 6, 14, 18, how He has Himself prepared the work of which He asks the com pletion, and in ver. 23 He describes its glorious consummation. Vv. 22, 23. "And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given them, that they may le one, as we are one,1 23, I in them and thou in me ; that their 1 B C D L reject ecpev, and X e* e_v_e*. 342 THIRD PART. unity may be perfect, that1 the world may know that thou hast sent me and that thou hast loved7 them as thou hast loved me."— In this whole prayer, Jesus rests His petitions on the fact that He has already begun that of which He asks the completion. Hence the iya, 1, placed at the beginning. — What is the glory of which Jesus has already made a gift to His own, and by means of which He has laid the foundation of the unity which He asks for ? Chrysostom and, at the present day, Weiss understand by it the glori ous power of sustaining their apostolic ministry by miracles. But this out ward sign has nothing in common with the inward sphere in which the thought of Jesus is here moving. How could a result like this, which is ex pressed by the following "iva, that, proceed from a miraculous power, an ex ternal, passing and individual phenomenon ? Hengstenberg refers this term glory to the participation of believers in the unity of the Father and the Son ; but this explanation leads to a tautology with the following clause. De Wette, Reuss, Meyer, apply this term glory to the kingdom which is to come, and the word give to a property only by right ; but this is to antici pate the meaning of ver. 24. Jesus starts, on the contrary, in ver. 22 from a fact already accomplished, in order to make it the point of departure for n coming good (ver. -23) which will precede the final glory (ver. 24). We read, ver. 24, that the glory of Jesus consists in being the eternal object of the Father's love ; the glory which He has communicated to believers is, therefore, the becoming by faith what He is essentially, the objects of this same -di vine love ; comp. ver. 23 (that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me) and ver. 26. This glory, which is that of adoption, Jesus has communicat ed to His own by bringing things to this point, — that God can, without obscuring His holiness, convey to them the love which He has for Jesus Himself. By this means we understand the following clause : that they may be one, as we [are] one. This love of the Father, of which they are all the objects in common, unites them closely among themselves and makes them all one family of which Jesus is the elder Brother (Bom. viu. 29, Eph. i. 10).The first words of ver. 23, in a clause which is simply placed in juxta position with the preceding : "that they may be one as we are," remind us of the mode of this unity : God Uving in Christ, Christ living in each be liever, and this to the end that the limit of a perfect unity may be attained, and that the organism of humanity consummated in God may appear. — The aim of this admirable unity is that the world may knoio. This word is un doubtedly not the synonym of believe, ver. 21. The term know includes with the faith of believers (ver. 21) the forced conviction of rebels. For how could the word nbopog, the world, designate only the believers ? The question is of the universal homage, voluntary or involuntary, rendered to Christ — such as is described in Phil. ii. 10, Bom. xiv. 10-12. The whole universe renders homage to the divine messenger who, by transforming be lievers into His own image, has succeeded in making them loved as He is Himself loved. — Thus is the way prepared for the pointing out of the final 1 X B C D L X If" Cop, Orig. reject Kai > D 7 Mnn. It"1" Cop.: Tiyanvaa (that I have (and) before i*a yi*-.o-Kij. loved them), instead of qyamjo-a.. chap. xvn. 24. 343 end of the ways of God towards the Church of Christ, its participation in the glory of the Son of God : Ver. 24. "Father, my will is that those whom thou hast given me1 be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovedst me before the foundation ofthe world." — Perfect unity is the last step before the goal of perfect glory. The repetition of the invocation Father, vv. 24, 25, indicates the increasing urgency with which Jesus prays, as He draws nearer the end. The reading 8 SiSamg, "that which thou hast given me," is probably the true one ; it brings out the unity of the believers, that perfect ev which the body of the elect will form (ver. 23). — 8iXa : Jesus no longer says, I pray, but I will I This expression is found nowhere else on His lips ; it is ordinarily explained by saying that the Son expresses Himself thus, because He feels Himself fully in accord on this point with the Father. But was not this the case in general in all His prayers ! This unique expression must he in harmony with the unique character of the situation. And the unique point in this latter is that it is a question of Jesus as dying. It is His testament which Jesus here places in the hands of His Father, and, as the expression is, His last will. — All that which Jesus has just asked for them had for its aim to render them fit for the immediate beholding of His glory, from the very moment of their death (xiv. 3). There is no question here of the Parousia, as Weiss thinks. The sphere of this divine manifestation is at once inward and heavenly. — Meyer thinks that the glory, of which Jesus says that the Father has .given it to Him, cannot he His divine glory before the incarnation, and must designate His glory after His exaltation, and He sees in the follow ing words : for thou lovedst me before, . . . the ground on which God thus glorifies Jesus. But the ground of the exaltation of Jesus is quite differ ently described, not only by Paul (Phil. ii. 9-11), but also by John him self, x. 17, xiii. 32, xv. 10 : it is His perfect obedience even to death and even to the death of the cross. The on' therefore means : in that, and serves to explain wherein this glory of the Son consists : it is in having been the eternal object of the Father's love. Is there any glory to be compared with this ? The word given may be incompatible with a certain conception of the divine Trinity ; it is not so with that of John, which includes as a necessary element the relation of subordination between the Son and the Father ; comp. i. 1 (with God) ; i. 18 (in the bosom qf the Father) ; v. 26 ("it has been given him to have life in himself "), etc. The words: before the foundation qf the world, imply eternity, for the world includes all that which has come into existence. This saying of Jesus is that which leads us farthest into the divine depths. It shows Christian speculation on what path it must seek the solution of the relations of the Trinity ; love is the key, of this mystery. And as this love is eternal, and consequently has no more an end than it has had a beginning, it may one day become for be lievers the permanent object of an immediate contemplation, through which they will find themselves initiated into the mystery of the essence of the i Instead of ov. (those whom), X B D Cop. o (that which). 344 THIRD PART. Son and of His eternal generation. Far more ; as, by the complete com munity which the Son has succeeded in establishing between them and Him, they are the objects of a similar love to that of which the Son is the object, they will find themselves thus introduced into the eternal move ment of the divine life itself. This appears from the word behold. One does not behold a fact of this order without being in some manner associat ed with it. Here is the height to which Jesus elevates the Church. After having drawn His spouse from the midst of a world sunk in evil, He intro duces her into the sphere of the divine life. Vv. 25, 26 have as their aim to justify this last will of Jesus, not only from the standpoint of grace, but even from that of righteousness, precisely that one of the divine perfections which might seem opposed to the petition of Jesus in behalf of His own. Vv. 25, 26. "Righteous Father, tlie world, it is true, has not known thee ; but as for me, lhave known thee ; and these have known that thou hast sent me. 26. And lhave made known to them thy name, and will make it known, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me ' may be in them, and that I may be in them." — Jesus does not say, as He did in ver. 11 : "Holy Father." And He certainly has His reasons for substituting here for the title holy the title righteous. What follows does not permit us to doubt that He takes this word in the sense of justice strictly so-called, retributive justice. Hengstenberg, Meyer, Weiss, Keil, Westcott, etc., have clearly seen this. In fact, Jesus opposes to the world, which has refused to know God and has thus rendered itself unwor thy to be admitted to the contemplation of His glory, His own (oiroi, these), who have consented to know God and have thus become worthy of the privilege which He asks for them (ver. 24). Hence, as it appears to me, it follows that in the first words of ver. 25 the Kal before ovtoi and the Kai before 6 Kdapog are two /cat of contrast, such as we have seen so many times in John (i. 10, vi. 36, xv. 24), serving to bring together, by reason of their very opposition, the two contrary facts. But what has prevented inter preters from apprehending this relation is the fact that John intercalates between the two terms of the principal contrast a third term intended to introduce the second : "But as for me, I have known thee." If the believers have arrived at the knowledge of God, it is not of themselves, but only by means of the knowledge which their Master had of God and which He has communicated to them. The Si, but, indicates a first antithesis with reference to the ml, which precedes, relatively to the world, — a fact which makes the second mi, before ovtoi, appear no longer other than the com pleting of the antithesis expressed by this St which accompanies the iya. We may compare xvi. 20, as an example of an antithesis in some sort broken by a secondary antithesis intercalated between the two members of the principal contrast. This explanation draws near to that of Baumlein, and is in the main accepted by Keil. Meyer also explains the first mi as indicating an opposition, but an opposition to the idea of righteousness expressed in the invocation Righteous Father! "And yet (although thou 1 X readB ovtov. (them) instead of pe. chap. xvii. 25, 26. 345 ftrt righteous) the world has not known thee as such." This non-recogni tion is, according to this view, that of which Paul speaks in Bom. i. 19, which consisted in the blindness of men with reference to the revelation of God in the works of nature. But this idea has not the least connection with the context. Jesus has Himself said (in xv. 22, 24) that all the sins pre vious to His coming would not have been imputed to the world, if it had not put the crowning point upon them by the rejection of Him. The terms to know and not to know God can refer here only to the acceptance or rejec tion of the revelation of the character of God in the appearance of Jesus. — ¦ Weiss sees in the first Kai, not an opposition to the second, but a particle which connects this verse with that which precedes. But what logical connection is it possible to establish between the admission of believers to the spectacle of the glory of Christ (ver. 24) and the refusal of the world to know God! This, then, is the meaning of this prayer : "The world, it is true, is the just object of Thy rejection by reason of its refusal to know Thee; hut these, in receiving me, who have brought to them the knowl edge of Thee, are become worthy of the privilege which I now ask of Thee for them." Ver. 26. No doubt the light which has dawned in the hearts of the disciples through the revelation of God in Christ as yet only begins to appear. But Jesus pledges Himself to communicate to them for the future the fulness of the knowledge of the Father which He Himself possesses. — The future : I will make known, does not refer to the death of Jesus, as Weiss supposes, but, according to the preceding chapters (xiv. 21, 26, xvi. 25), to the sending of the Holy Spirit and the entire 'work of Jesus in the Church after the day of Pentecost. Reuss well renders the admirable thought contained in the words : And that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them : ' ' The love of God which, before the creation of the physi cal world, had its adequate object in the person of the Son (ver. 24), finds it, since the creation of the new spiritual world, in all those who are united with the Son." What God desired in sending His Son here on earth was precisely that He might form for Himself in the midst of humanity a family of children like Him, of which He should be the elder Brother (Bom. viii. 29). — Jesus adds : And that I myself may be in them. Connected as it is with the preceding words, this expression must mean : "And in loving them thus, it will still be myself in them whom thou wilt love, and thus thy love will not attach itself to anything that is defiled." Its object, indeed, will be Jesus living in them, His holy image reproduced in their person. What simplicity, what calmness, what transparent depth in this whole prayer! "It is indeed," as Gess says, " the only Son who here speaks to His Father. Everything in these beautiful words is supernatural, because He who speaks is the only Son who has come from heaven ; but at the same time everything in them is natural, for He speaks as a son speaks to his father." The feeling which is the soul of this prayer, the ardent zeal for the glory of God, is that which inspired Jesus throughout His whole life. His three peti tions — that for His personal glorification, that for the consecration of His 346 THIRD PART. apostles and that for the glorification of the Church, are indeed the senti ments which must have filled His soul in view of the blow which was about to put an end to His earthly activity. In the details not a word has been met whose appropriateness and fitness to the given situation has not been proved by exegesis. Can it be possible to hold, with Baur, that, at the distance of more than a century, a Christian should have succeeded in reproducing thus the impressions of Jesus? This would be to say that there existed then another Jesus than Jesus Himself. Weiss and Reuss hold, as we do, that this is the composition of an imme diate witness. But they find in certain passages — in ver. 3 for example — the proof that the disciple has reproduced the thoughts of the Master after his own fashion. The second asks whether John had, then, in his hands tablets and pencil to take down word for word the prayer of Jesus. — But, if John truly regarded Jesus as the Logos, we ask once again how could the respect which he must have had for His words have permitted him to make Him speak, and especially pray, according to his own fancy? He undoubtedly did not have his pencil in hand ; but the memory is proportionate to the attention and the attention to the interest ; now must not that of John have been excited to the highest degree ? On the other hand, the words of Jesus, simple, grave, earnest, were of a nature to impress themselves more deeply and distinctly on the heart of John than any other words. Moreover, it is not impossible that, at an inconsiderable remove of time from that evening, John should have felt the need of committing to writing what he recalled to mind of these last conver sations and this prayer. Or again, the unceasingly renewed meditation upon these words engraved upon the tablets of his heart and ever refreshed by the action of the Spirit, may have supplied the place of any external means. This inward miracle, if one will call it so, is far less improbable than the artificial composition of such a prayer. But is the profound calmness which reigns in this scene compatible with the agony in Gethsemane which immediately follows it in the other Gospels ? Keim asserts that John by this narrative annihilates the Synoptical tradition. — The conflict in Gethsemane .has the character of a sudden crisis, of a violent shock, in some sort of an explosion, after which calmness was re-established in the soul of Jesus as quickly as it had been troubled. This passing crisis has a double cause : the one natural, the singular impressibility of the soul of Jesus, of which we have seen so many proofs in our Gospel, particularly in ch. xi. and xii. 27. By virtue of the very purity of His nature, Jesus was accessible, as was no other man, to every lawful emotion. His soul resembled a magnetic needle, whose mobility is only equalled by the perseverance with which, in every oscillation, it tends to recover its normal direction. Geth semane must have been for Jesus, not punishment, but the struggle with a view to the acceptance of punishment ; and thus the anticipatory suffering of the cross. Such an anticipation is sometimes more painful than the reality itself. The supernatural cause is pointed out by Jesus Himself, xiv. 30 : " Tlie prime of this world is coming." Comp. Luke xxii. 53 : " This is your hour and the power qf darkness. " The extraordinary character of this agony betrays itself in its suddenness and even its violence. St. Luke had closed his narrative of the temptation in the desert with the words : " Tlie devil withdrew from Mm, dxpt Kaipov, until another favorable moment.'' The hour of Gethsemane was that moment which Satan judged favorable to subject Jesus to the new test which chap. xvn. 26. 347 he was reserving for Him. There is nothing here which is not in perfect accord with the normal development of Jesus' life. The sacerdotal prayer is, as it were, the amen added by Jesus to His work accomplished here on earth ; it forms thus the climax of this part, which is intended to trace out the development of faith in the disciples (chs. xiii. -xvi.), and corresponds, notwithstanding the difference of forms, with the passage in xii. 37-50, in which John gave his reflections on the history of Jewish unbelief (chs. v.-xii.). FOURTH PART. THE PASSION. XVIII. 1.— XIX. 42. The intention of the evangelist, in the following narrative, is certainly not to give a narration as complete as possible of the Passion, as if no nar rative of this event existed side by side with his own. The most pro nounced adversaries of the authenticity of our Gospel, Baur and Strauss, are at the present day in accord with the orthodox interpreters, Lange and Heng stenberg, on the point that the narrative of the fourth evangelist stands in con stant relation to those of his three predecessors. The difference is only on the question of the end which the author proposes to himself in composing this fourth narrative. According to Baur and Strauss, the pseudo-John bor rows from the Synoptics the material? which are indispensable to the end of giving some probability to his romance of Jesus-Logos. According to the commentators of the opposite side, John endeavors simply to fill up the vacancies in the earlier narrations, or to present the facts, already pre viously related, in their true light. We are convinced that, as the latter writers think, the choice of materials is frequently determined by the intention of completing the accounts already current in the church. Thus, when John relates the examination of Jesus in the house of Annas, which the Synoptics omit, and omits the appearance before the Sanhedrim, which the first Gospels relate with detail, this inten- * tion seems evident. It will appear also from a multitude of other examples. But, on the other hand, the narrative of John has presented, up to this point, a too serious meditative character and too profound elaboration to allow the possibility of holding that, in the part which is to follow, it is not governed by any higher thought, and is obedient only to chance, as would be the case in a narrative which confined itself to relating that which others had not related. In the narrative of the Passion in John, we shall find, as throughout his whole work, the triple point of view indicated in the introduction (Vol. I., p. 228 f .). Jesus causes His glory to shine forth through the vail of ignominy by which it was covered, and this especially through the freedom with which He surrenders Himself to the fate which awaits Him ; this is here, as always, the luminous foundation of the whole narrative. On this founda tion there stands out in relief, as a dark figure, the Jewish unbelief unmask ing its moral perversity by a series of odious acts and disloyal words, and, chap, xviii. 1-3. 349 after having thus pronounced its own condemnation, reaching its consum mation in the murder of the Messiah. Finally, in contrast with it, we dis cern the faith which is hidden in the person of the disciples gathering up the scattered rays of the glory of Jesus, and growing in silence, as plants during a storm. The second of these three features is that which prevails in the following narrative. Three principal scenes : 1. The arrest of Jesus : xviii. 1-11. 2. His double trial, ecclesiastical and civil : xviu. 12-xix. 16. 3. His punishment : xix. 17-42.FIBST SECTION. XVIII. 1-11. The Arkest op Jesus. John omits here the account of the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane ; but he clearly assigns to this fact its place by these words of ver. 1 : where there was a garden into which he entered. In reading these words, no Christian, in possession of the first three Gospels, could fail to think of that narrative. The reason of this omission, as well as of the omission of the accounts of the transfiguration, the institution of the Holy Supper, and so many others, is that John knew that this scene was sufficiently well known in the church, and that it had no special relation to the end which he set before himself. There cannot be a dogmatic design in this omission ; this is proved by the story in xii. 24-27, which belongs exclusively to John, and in which he has preserved for us the moral essence of the scene in Gethsemane. Strauss exclaims : " Every attempt to insert in John's narrative, between chs. xvii. and xviii. the agony of Gethsemane is an attack upon the moral elevation and even the manly character of Jesus."1 According to this, John would have been the first to commit an outrage of this kind (xii. 27). Strauss concludes from this that the Synoptic narrative is "a more naive poetic fiction " than that of John, which presents to us " a more well-considered and carefully con trived poetic fiction." Thus those who relate, lie in relating ; he who omits, lies in omitting ! This is the point at which criticism arrives by pursuing its course even to the end. It destroys itself. Vv. 1-3. The arrival of the band. " After having said these things, Jesus went out with his disciples beyond the brook Cedron,7 where there was a goirden, into which he entered as well as his disciples. 2. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew this place, because Jesus had often met3 there with his disciples. 3. Judas, then, having taken the cohort, with officers sent by the chief priests and Pharisees, comes thither with lanterns, torches and weapons." — The verb i^vWe, 1 Das Leben Jesu, 1864, p. 553. KLMUXYTAn most of the Mnn. Orig. 7 A S A If " Vulg. and some other Vss. read and Tisch. : ™* KeSptov (of the cedars). tov ne-pio* (of Cedron), X D If" Cop. Sah. : 3 9 Mjj. (E G M etc.) read km after o-v*tjx»i|. tov iceSpov (of the cedar), T. R. with B C B G H 350 FOURTH PART. he went out, is ordinarily referred to the departure lrom the supper room See on xiv. 31. In our view, this verb, being directly connected, as it is, with the limiting phrase iripav tov xeipdppov, beyond the brook, designates a time farther removed, and signifies rather : " He went out from the city to pass across the brook." This is acknowledged by de Wette, even though he holds, with so many others, that the discourses of chs. xiii.-xvu. were pro nounced in the supper room. — The received reading, which is that of the Vatican MS. and of most of the Mjj. and Mnn., and of Origen, is rav KiSpov, and would signify " the brook of the cedars „•" there would be evidently an error of John here, for the name Cedron comes from "JTnp (Kidron), black (black water). In Josephus also the name KiSpov is a nominative singular (for example, xelpappog KeSpavog, Antiq. vni. 1, 5). The reading of the Sinaitic and Cambridge MSS. is rov KiSpov, of the cedar. It is evident that these two readings are the work of copyists, some of whom conformed the substantive to the article (by substituting KiSpov for KiSpov), others the article to the substantive (substituting rav for rov), and that the true read ing — apparently very improbable — is that of the Alexandrian MS. and of the Sangallensis, tov KiSpov, which alone easily explains the two others. Westcott, in honor of the Vatican, maintains the reading rav KiSpov, by ap pealing to a legend of the Jerusalem Talmud, according to which there were some cedars on the Mount of Olives ; Tischendorf, out of regard for the Sinaitic MS., reads tov KiSpov. Behold what prepossession can effect ! The same variety of readings is found again in several MSS. of the Old Testament (LXX) ; see 2 Sam. xv. 23 and 1 Kings xv. 13. — The brook Cedron has its source half a league to the north of Jerusalem, and falls into the Dead Sea at the southward after a course of six or seven leagues. It is ordinarily dry during nine months of the year ; for more than twenty years, as we were told in Jerusalem, not a sign of water had been seen in it. Its bed is at the bottom of the valley of Jehoshaphat, between the temple hill and the Mount of Olives. After having passed the little bridge by which this dried- up bed is crossed, one finds on the right a plot of ground planted with ancient olive trees, which is asserted to be the garden of Gethsemane. There is no valid reason, whatever Keim may say, against the truth of this tradition. The word irollaKig, often, in ver. 2, might apply only to the pre ceding days ; but it is more probable that it refers also to the earlier so journs of Jesus in Jerusalem. This garden undoubtedly belonged to friends of Jesus. It ordinarily served as a place of meeting for the Lord and His disciples (avvfjxBv, the aorist : he met with), when they returned from Jeru salem to the Mount of Olives and to Bethany, and wished to avoid passing all together through the streets of the city. Comp. Luke xxi. 37, xxii. 39. — The term airelpa always designates, in the New Testament (Matt, xxvii. 27, Acts xxi. 31), and in Josephus, the Boman legion or a part of the legion which occupied the citadel of Antonia, at the north-eastern angle of the temple. A detachment of Boman soldiers had seemed necessary to sup port the servants of the Sanhedrim. For Mark xiv. 2 proves that a rising in favor of Jesus was feared ; and for this reason it had been necessary to ask for orders from the governor, This detachment was commanded by the chap. xvm. 4-9. 351 tribune himself, the chiliarch, mentioned in ver. 12. The article i}, " the cohort," designates the well-known cohort ; and, if it seems to indicate the presence of this entire body of soldiers (600 men), we must find here either a popular expression or a manner of speaking which is justified by the pres ence of the commander-in-chief. The Synoptics do not speak of this es cort. The message of Pilate's wife, however, which is related by Matthew, proves that, since the preceding evening, the governor had been occupied with this matter ; and this circumstance confirms the fact of the participa tion of the Boman soldiery in the arrest. Keim turns this narrative into ridicule, by speaking ironically of " half an army ; " this wretched piece of pleasantry is quite gratuitous. Baumlein and others have contended against the application of the term oireipa to the Boman garrison, and have thought that the question was only of the guard of the temple. But the constant meaning of this word does not allow this explanation. — The v-irvpirai, officers, are, as in vii. 32, 45, the sergeants of the temple. They were the persons who had properly the task of arresting Jesus. The Boman cohort was only to give them aid in case of resistance. Ver. 10 shows that servants belonging to the houses of the chief priests had also joined the band. — The meaning of the words ap*., BCL 'XBCLX some Mnn. If™" Vnlg. Syr. read o 7*. tov ap*. Cop. read /cai before o HeTpos (and Peter also). 2 X : eunj*ey/ce instead of eto-ljya-ye*. chap, xviii. 15-18. 359 privileged families from which the high-priests were ordinarily taken. Nevertheless, this title has nowhere in our Gospel this broad sense, and it would be difficult indeed to believe that after having contrasted, as he has done in ver. 13, Caiaphas as " the high-priest of that year," with Annas, his father-in-law, John would designate this latter person, a few lines farther on, simply by the title of high-priest. How could the readers, who had never heard of Annas, have su].posed that he also bore this title ? It is, therefore, clearly the house of Caiaphas of which John means to speak, if he has not written in an unintelligible way. But, in that case, it is asked how the re lations which the disciple sustained to the high-priest Caiaphas and the members of his household could open to him the entrance into the abode of Annas, to whom Jesus was first led. There is but one solution to this ques tion, which the narrative of John itself suggests, setting aside that of the Synoptics ; it is that these two personages lived in the same palace. The bond of close relationship which united them explains this circumstance, and it is for this reason, undoubtedly, that John has so expressly noticed this particular. Meyer is wrong, therefore, in saying that the text does not offer the least indication in favor of this opinion. John's account leads directly to it. The Hebrews very commonly had female doorkeepers (Josephus, Antiq. vii. 2, 1; Acts xii. 13; 2 Sam. iv. 6, according to the text of the LXX). — The ml, also ("Art not thou also"), shows that this woman already knew the unnamed disciple as one of the adherents of Jesus. — The three denials of Peter, as Luthardt observes, have three distinct historical starting-points, which are more or less distributed among the four evangelists : 1. The intro duction of Peter into the court by a friend, who was himself known as a disciple of Jesus ; 2. The recollection which had been retained of Peter by those who had seen him at the time of the arrest of Jesus ; 3. His Galilean dialect. To these external circumstances,, which called forth his trial, was added an internal one which facilitated his fall : the recollection of the •blow which he had struck, and which exposed him, more than all the rest, to the danger of being involved in the judgment of his Master. Fear therefore combined with presumption ; and thus was the warning which Jesus had given him verified : " The spirit is willing, but the flesh is The SoiXoi, servants, ver. 18, designate the domestic servants attached to the priestly house; the virvpirai, officers, are the official servants of the Sanhedrim, charged with the police duties of the temple. — The last words of ver. 18 : Peter was standing with them and warming himself, are repeated literally in ver. 25. They are placed here, as a stepping-stone with a view to the approaching resumption of the story relating to Peter, after the appearance of Jesus in the house of Annas. Hence it follows : 1. That there is an absolute impossibiUty in the way of placing the last two denials in another locality than the first ; and 2. That these last two denials took place, not after, but during the examination of Jesus. — The verbs in the imperfect tense are picturesque, and signify that the situation described continues during the whole examination which is about to br? related, so that, accord- 360 FOURTH PART. ing to the narrative, the scene of vv. 25, 26 (Peter) took place simultane ously with that of vv. 19-23 (Jesus). 3. Appearance in the house of Annas : Vv. 19-21. " The high-priest therefore asked Jesus concerning his disciples and his doctrine. 20. Jesus answered him : lhave spoken1 openly to the world; I have always taught in open synagogue 2 and in the temple, where all 3 the Jews come together, and I have said nothing in secret. 21. Why askest thou met* Ask * those who have heard me wliat I have said to them : behold, these know what I have said." — It is generally held that, as the examination took place in the house of Annas, it was he who directed the investigation. But this would imply that the high -priest of vv. 13-16 was Annas, which we have seen to be contrary to the natural meaning of John's narrative. This ses sion was a purely private one ; it had its necessary place, as we have seen, in the course of the trial ; the presence of the officer in ver. 22 impUes the official character of the scene. The duty of presiding over it fell, therefore, to the high-priest officially. It has been supposed that Annas was exercis ing functions here in the character of Ab-beth-din (chief of the court of justice). But this dignity appertained to the high-priest himself (Schurer, p. 413). Keim rightly says (certainly not to support the narrative of John) : "If Caiaphas was truly the acting high-priest and, at the same time, the soul of the sudden onset which was proposed against Jesus, it belonged to him, and not to his father-in-law, to acquaint himself with the matter and to make a report to the Sanhedrim" (iii. p. 322). If it was otherwise, according to John, what purpose would the characterizing of Caiaphas, in ver. 13, have served ? When, in ver. 22, the officer says to Jesus : Answerest thou the high-priest so ? it is unnatural to think of another personage than the actual high-priest, the one who has just been expressly designated as such in vv. 13, 14. Reuss brings forward in opposition to our view ver. 24, in which the high-priest must necessarily be another personage than the one who is called thus in ver. 19. At the first glance, this observation appears just. But if Jesus was led away to the house of Annas, it was quite naturally Annas who gave the order to conduct Him to the house of Caiaphas, while yet it would not follow from this fact that it was Annas himself who presided over the preliminary session. The question proposed to Jesus had as its design to draw from Him an answer suited to give a ground for His condemnation. For there was embarrassment felt respecting the course to be pursued in this matter, as the recourse to the false witnesses proves. — What is asked of Jesus is not the names of His disciples, as if the question were of a list of accomplices ; it is information as to the number of .His partisans and the principles which serve them as a standard. — Jesus, understanding that they were only ¦XABCLXYA: kckak-^Ka, instead of (from all quarters) C with 10 Mjj. (ITii ckakifaa. etc.) : jra*TOTe (always) ; X A B C L X n : 7 T. R. reads ttj before o-vvayuiyr} (the syna- Tra*Te. (all), gogne) with A and some Mnn. only. * T. R. with Byz. : en-epwTa. and en-epc-Tijo-o* ; 8 T. R. with some Mnn. only : ir a*. ooe* Alex. : epura. and epuTijo-o*. chap, xviii. 19-24. 361 seeking to wrest from Him an expression which might be turned to account against Him, simply appeals to the publicity of His teaching. He is not the head of a secret society, nor the propagator of principles which fear the light of day. — Zwayoyij, without an article (according to the true reading) : in synagogal assembly; the word lepbv, temple, has the article, because this edifice is unique. When Jesus instructed His disciples in private, it was not for the purpose of telling them something different from what He declared in public. — The testimony of the ancient Versions decides in favor of the Alexandrian reading : "all the Jews ; " not, the Jews from all parts or continually. Vv. 22, 23. " When he had said this, one qf the officers, who was at his side, struck him with a rod, saying, Answerest thou tlie high-priest so ? 23. Jesus answered him, If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil; but if lhave spoken well, wlvy dost thou smite me t " — The answer of Jesus certainly con tained a tacit rebuke intended for the one who thus interrogated Him. An officer who wished to court the favor of his chief takes occasion to remind Jesus of the respect due to the ruler of Israel. The word pdiriapa properly means : a blow with a rod. Undoubtedly in Matt. v. 39 the verb pairit,ziv is taken in the sense of striking in the face. The proper sense, however, is here the more natural one ; comp. the term Sipeiv, to flay, ver. 23. Maprvpelv : to prove by a regular giving of testimony. — Jesus does not literally fulfil here His own precept, Matt. v. 39 ; but by this reply, full of dignity and gentleness, He endeavors to bring the man to himself, which is pre cisely the moral fulfilment of that precept. Ver. 24. " Annas therefore1 sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high-priest." — This verse has always perplexed those who have held that at ver. 15 Jesus was led to the house of Caiaphas, and that the session which John has just described is the great session of the Sanhedrim, which is related by the Synoptics. This twofold error is what has occasioned the transposition of this verse in some documents to a place after ver. 13 (see the critical note on that verse). It is this likewise which has led some interpreters, such as Calvin, Lucke, Tholuck, de Wette, Langen, to take diriartikav in the sense of the pluperfect, had sent. But when the aorist has the sense of the pluper fect, the context clearly indicates it. Precisely the contrary is here the case. Besides, the particle ovv, therefore, if it is authentic, excludes this explanation, and it is even probable that this is precisely the reason which has made some reject it and others change it into Si, now : "Now, Annas had sent. ..." By inserting this notice here, the evangelist simply wished, as by the irpdrov, first, of ver. 13, to reserve a place expressly for the session in the house of Caiaphas, which was indeed otherwise important, and of which he does not give an account. Comp. ver. 1 (for the scene in Gethsemane) and ver. 5 (for the kiss of Judas). Lutteroth gives to this verse a sentimental cast. There is, according to him, a picture here ; John means to say : Behold ! This Jesus, thus struck by the officer, was standing there with His hands bound, in the condition in which Annas had [previ- 1 T. R. (C) with B C L X If" some Mnn,, -e (now) ; C with 13 Mjj. (A etc.) omits the reads ov* (therefore) ; X Syr8ch some Mnn. : particie altogether. 362 FOURTH PART. ously] sent Him to Caiaphas ! But. this sense has nothing in common with the simplicity and sobriety of the apostolic narrative; it implies, moreover, the pluperfect sense as here given to the aorist. — Jesus had undoubtedly been unbound during the examination ; after this scene, Annas causes Him to be bound again, in order to send Hiin to the house of Caiaphas. Probably He was unbound a second time during the session of the Sanhe drim. This explains why in Matt, xxvii. 2 and Mark xv. 1, He is bound anew at the time of leading Him away to Pilate! — To Caiaphas : in the part of the palace where Caiaphas lived, and where were the 'official apartments and the hall for the meetings of the Sanhedrim. This body had been called together in the interval ; for all the members were in Jerusalem for the feast, The title of high-priest reminds us of the wholly official char acter of the session which was in preparation, as well as that of the place where it occurred. 4. Second and third denial : Vv. 25-27. "And Simon Peter was standing and warming himself . They said therefore to him, Art not thou also one qf his disciples ? He denied and said, I am not. 26. One qf the servants of the high-priest, a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, says to him, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? 27. Peter denied again; and immediately tlie cock crew." — As far as ver. 18, according to John, all has happened in the house of Annas ; and as ver. 25 expressly places us again in the situation of ver. 18, it is evident that the following facts also occur at his house ; it is the same court, the same fire, the same persons ; so that those who, like Weiss, are unwill ing to admit that Caiaphas and Annas lived in two different apartments of the same priestly palace, are obliged to hold that Matthew and Mark have made a mistake in placing the denial of Peter in the house of Caiaphas. As for ourselves, we have already stated the reasons which seem to us to support the contrary opinion. — The sending of Jesus to Caiaphas, mentioned already in ver. 24, in reahty followed the last denial (ver. 27). For the facts of vv. 25-27 took place simultaneously with w. 19-23. This cir cumstance explains the incident, related by Luke, of the look which Jesus cast upon Peter (xxii. 61). Jesus crossed the court to go from the apart ments of Annas to those of Caiaphas (ver. 24). He heard at this moment the cock-crowing (ver. 27) ; and then it was that His eye met that of Peter. The epithet SeSepivov, bound, makes us understand more fully the impression produced on the unfaithful disciple by the sight of his Master in this condition. The subject of elirov, they said (ver. 25), is indefinite. According to Matthew, it is a maid-servant who sees Peter approaching the gate to go forth from the court to the front of the house. According to Mark, it is the same maid-servant who had already troubled him in the first instance and who denounces him to the servants who were gathered about the fire. In Luke, it is indefinitely irepog, another person. It is probable that the portress spoke of Peter to one of her companions, who denounced him to the assembled servants. From this group came forth instantly the question addressed to Peter.— After the second denial, Peter seems to have played chap, xviii. 25-27. 363 the bold part, and to have set himself to speak more freely with the persons present. But his Galilean accent was soon noticed, and attracted the more particular attention of a kinsman of Malchus, a fact which occasioned the third denial. — John does not mention the imprecations which Matthew puts into Peter's mouth. If, then, any one was animated by hostile feelings towards this disciple, it was the first evangelist, and not the author of our narrative. Though he does not speak of Peter's repentance, the narrative of the scene in xxi. 15 ff. evidently implies it. — The story of the denial of Peter is, besides those of the multiplication of the loaves and of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the only one which is related at once by John and the Synoptics. There is no discourse here to be accounted for, as in ch. vi., and no series of events to be explained, as in ch. xii. John's purpose, therefore, could only have been to reproduce in all their grievous reality the two simultaneous scenes of the appearance of the Master before the authorities and the disciple's denial, which had formed the prelude of the Passion. In any case, we may discover here how the oral tradition related the facts with less of life and flexibility than is done by the pen of an eye-witness. The latter alone has reproduced the minutest articula tions of the history; and it is not without reason that Renan speaks of " its varied and sharply defined points." II. The Trial before Pilate : xvni. 28-xix. 16. Had the Bomans, in making Judea a province of the empire, taken away from the Jews the right of capital punishment ? Our narrative affirms this positively by putting in the mouths of the latter the words (ver. 31) : " It is not permitted us to put any one to death. " To this have been objected the execution of Stephen, Acts vii. 57 ff., and the permission which Titus had granted the Jews to put foreigners, even Bomans, to death who had invaded the inclosure of the temple court (Josephus, Antiq. vi. 2, 4). But the first event was an extra-legal act of popular fury, and the permission given by Titus is quite an exceptional case. According to the Talmud, as according to John, the right of inflicting capital punishment belonged no longer to the Sanhedrim. And it was precisely at the time of the judgment of Jesus that this change took place, " forty years before the destruction of the temple."1 Probably, in the time which followed the annexation, the governors desired to use moderation towards the conquered people. But the despotic Pilate had reduced the Jews to the common law of the provinces. This was the reason which obliged the rulers to bring Jesus before this governor in order to obtain from him the confirmation and exe cution of the sentence which they had just pronounced. — Pilate was from the year 26 procurator of Judea, under the order of the proconsul of Syria. He was deposed in 36 by Vitellius and sent to Bome, to be judged there for all the wrongs which he had committed. According to ' ' Greek historians " (Euseb. ii. 7), he was put to death under Caligula. — Such were the reasons 1 Sanhedr. fol. 2i, 2 : Quadraginta amis capitalia ab Israele. ante vastalum templum ablata sunt judicia 364 FOURTH PART. which made the Jews hold a third session — that of ihe morning, which took place very early, no longer in the high-priest's house, but in the vicinity of the temple, either in the famous hall paved with mosaic (lischkath hagga- zith), situated in the interior court at the south of the temple, or in the synagogue Beth midrasch, between the court of the women and the outer court (see Keim, III. p. 351). This is confirmed by Matthew (xxvii. 1), Mark (xvi. 1), and especially Luke (xxii. 66 ff.)1 The last mentionedhas preserved for us the most complete account of this session, perhaps mingling in it some particulars borrowed from the great session in the night, which he passes over in silence. In any case, the examination and the judgment of Jesus must have been repeated a second time, though summarily, and confirmed in this morning session, which was the only legal and plenary one (irdvreg, all, Matt.). We must observe the expression of Matthew, acre Bavaraoai airrdv, to put him to death, which indicates the seeking for ways and means to suc ceed in obtaining from Pilate the execution of the sentence, as well as the expression of Luke : " They led him into their assembly," ver. 66, which can only refer to the passage from the house of Caiaphas (ver. 54) to one of the two meeting-halls near the temple, of which we have just spoken. The Jews ask Pilate to confirm their sentence without an examination (ver. 30). The latter refuses ; this is the first phase of the negotiations : vv. 28-32. Then they set forth a political accusation : He made Himself a king. Pilate judges this accusation unfounded ; then he makes two ineffectual attempts to deliver Jesus with the support of the people ; this is the second phase : ver. 33-xix. 6. The Jews then bring forward a re ligious charge : He made Himself Son of God. On hearing this accusation Pilate endeavors still more to deliver Jesus ; this is the third phase : xix. 7-12a. At this moment, the Jews, seeing their prey ready to escape them, put aside all shame, and employ the odious expedient of personal intimidation to make the judge's conscience yield. On this path they suffer themselves to be carried away even to the point of the denial of their dearest hope — that of the Messiah ; they declare themselves vassals of Caesar ; this is the fourth phase : xix. 12b-16. Ver. 28. " They lead Jesus therefore from Caiaphas to the Prcetorium. Now it was early. And they did not themselves enter into the Prcetorium, that they might not be defiled, but that7 they might eat the Passover." — The Prcetorium was at Bome the place where the pra-tor sat when he adminis tered justice. This name had been applied to the palaces of the Boman governors in the provinces. Most interpreters hold that this term desig nates here the palace of Herod, which was in the western part of the upper city. In proof of this the passage of Josephus, Bell. Jud. ii. 14, 8, is cited, where it is said that "Florus lived at that time (-ti-.) in the royal palace ; " but this passage proves precisely that the Boman governor did not ordinarily live there. It is more probable that Pilate occupied a palace 1 Lightfoot, Bar. Bebr. in Matt, xxvii. 1. in the case of a capital judgment, were required Keim : " The day meeting was required to to be held in the day-time and in the morning. complete, in point of legality, that of the night, before man has eaten or drunk." For tlie meetings of the Sanhedrim, especially 'KABC- reject the second u>a. chap, xviii. 28. 365 contiguous to the citadel Antonia, where the Boman garrison was stationed, at the north-west corner of the temple. It is there, at all events, that tradi tion places the starting-point of the Via, Dolorosa. — I\pui (T. B. irpaia), in tlie early morning, includes the time from three to six o'clock (Mark xiii. 35). The Boman courts opened their sessions at any hour after sunrise ( West cott). Pilate, as we have seen, was forewarned, since the previous evening, of what was taking place, and he had no doubt consented to receive the Jews at this early hour. The scruple which prevents the Jews from entering into the governor's house places us again face to face with the contradiction which seems to exist between the narrative of John and that of the Synoptics. If, as these latter seem to say, the Jews had already on the previous evening celebrated the Paschal meal, how can we explain the fact that, through defiling themselves by contact with the leaven which would necessarily be found in a Gentile house, they fear that they may be unable to celebrate this meal on this same evening . The only way of escaping this contradiction, it seems, would be to give a wider sense to the expression to eat the Passover, by referring it, not to the Paschal meal properly so called, hut to the food of the feast in general, such as the unleavened bread and the flesh of the peace-offerings which were celebrated during the seven days of the feast. Some passages are thought to have been found in the Old Testament where the word Passover is taken in this more general sense ; thus Deut. xvi. 2, 3 : " Thou shalt sacrifice the Passover to the Lord, of ihe flock and of ihe herd, and with it (these meats) thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days." Comp. the analogous expression 2 Chron. xxx. 22 (literally) : "And they ate the feast (the feast-sacrifices) seven days, offering sacrifices of peace offerings and prais ing the Lord; " 2 Chron. xxxv. 7-9 : " And Josiah gave to those of ihe people who were there lambs and kids, to ihe number qf thirty thousand, all of them for Passover offerings, and three thousand bullocks, of the king's substance." To confirm this' conclusion it is alleged that, according to the Talmud, the defilement which the Jews would have contracted by entering the Prse- torium would have continued in any case only until the end of the day, and consequently would not have prevented them from eating the Paschal meal in the evening. — But the passages cited do not prove what they would need to prove. As to the first (Deut. xvi. 2, 3), the term Passover is applied exclusively, in vv. 5, 6, which immediately follow, to the Paschal lamb ; hence it follows that in ver. 2 the expression of ihe herd and of ihe flock is not an explanatory apposition of the word pesach (Passover), but a supplementary addition by which all the secondary sacrifices which com plete the Paschal supper during the course of the week are designated. At all events, if the term Passover really included here, together with the Paschal lamb, all the other sacrifices of the feast, it would not follow there from that it could designate, as would be the case in our passage, these last apart from the first. As to the with it, it refers to all the sacrificial meats which were to be accompanied by unleavened bread during the entire week. — In 2 Chron. ch. xxx. the name Passover is applied in vv. 15, 17, 18 exclusively to the Paschal lamb. Why, then, should the chronicler in ver. 22 366 , FOURTH PART. substitute for the proper term : to eat the Passover, the more general expression to eat ihe feast, if it was not because he wished now to speak of the sacrifices of the feast, exclusive qf the eating of the Paschal lamb ? Be sides, the reading : and they ate (vajokelou) the feast, is very doubtful. The LXX certainly read : vajekallou, and they finished the feast; for they translate : ml avveriTieaav. — In the third passage (2 Chron. xxxv. 7-9) the distinction between the lambs or kids which were intended to serve for the Paschal meal (pesachim) and the bullocks which were consecrated to the other sacrifices and feasts is obvious. — But even supposing that in some passages of the Old Testament the term Passover had received from the context a wider meaning than ordinary, would it follow from this that a phrase so common in the New Testament, in Josephus and in the Talmud, as that of eating the Passover, could be applied, without any explanatory indication, to entirely different meals from the Paschal supper, and this even to the exclusion of the latter ? As to the objection derived from the duration of the defilement which the Jews would have contracted : 1. It is impossible to form any certain conclusion, with reference to the time of Jesus, from a passage of the Babbi Maimonides written about the year 1200. 2. This passage refers to a defilement arising from contact with dead animals, etc., and not to the defilement arising from leaven, and with special relation to the Paschal feast. The same is the case with the examples borrowed from other kinds of defilement (Lev. xv. 5 ff., 19 ff.). After the analogy of Num. ix. 6 ff., the Jews would simply have been obliged to put off the celebration of the Pass over until the 14th of the following month. 3. If the question were only of the feast-meals in general, the members of the Sanhedrim might have abstained altogether from taking part in them ; for these meals were volun tary ; the Paschal supper alone did not allow of abstention.1 4. The defile ment thus contracted would, in any case, have forced the priests, who were members of the Sanhedrim, to abstain from participating in the sacrifice of the lamb in the afternoon, an abstention which was incompatible with their official duty. For all these reasons it is impossible for me to adopt the opinion of many and learned interpreters who refer the expression to eat the Passover in our verse to the peace-offering (the Chagigah), which the Jews offered on the 16th of Nisan at mid-day ; we will mention among the modern writers only Tholuck, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Wieseler, Hofmann, Lange, Riggenbach, Baumlein, Langen, Luthardt, Kirchner and Keil. The pronoun ahroi, themselves, contrasts the Jews, with their Levitical pu rity, to Jesus, whom nothing could any longer defile, so defiled was He al ready in their eyes. He was immediately delivered over to the governor, and introduced into the Pr_etorium. From this time, therefore, Pilate will go from the Prfetorium to the Jews (vv. 29, 38, xix. 4-12) and from the Jews to the Pra.torium (ver. 33, xix. 1, 9). Keim judges this situation to be historically impossible, and jests about this ambulant judge, this peripa- » Soo the Article of Andrew already cited (xiii. 1) in the Bewete des Gtaubens, 1870. chap, xviii. 29-32. 367 tetic negotiator, whom the narrative of John presents to us. But the apostle clearly perceived that this situation had an exceptional character, and he has precisely explained it by this ver. 28. Pilate does not feel himself free in his position with regard to the Jews ; the sequel shows this only too clearly. This is the reason why he bears with their scruples. — The first po sition taken by the Jews : Vv. 29-32. "Pilate therefore went out1 to them and said,7 What accusation do you bring against7 this man ? 30. They answered him, saying, If he were not an evil doer,* we should not have delivered him to thee. 31. Pilate therefore'' said to them, Take him yourselves, and judge him according to your law. Where upon ihe Jews answered him, It is not permitted us to put any one to death ; 32, that the word might be fulfilled which Jesus liad spoken," signifying by what death he should die. "—The ordinary residence of the governor was Csesarea ; but he went to Jerusalem at the time of the feasts. Pilate was fond of dis playing before the eyes of the people on these occasions the pomp of Boman majesty. Philo (Leg. ad Caium) represents him as a proud, obstinate, in tractable man. Nevertheless, it is probable that the fanaticism of the Jews was also an important element in the contentions which they continually had with him. "All the acts of Pilate which are known to us," says Re nan, "show him to have been a good administrator." This portrait is somewhat flattering ; but it is partially confirmed by the picture which Josephus himself has drawn of his government, Antiq. xviii. 2-i. — Ovv, therefore: in consequence of the fact that the Jews were unwilling to enter into his palace. The answer of the Jews to Pilate (ver. 30) is skilful ; it is dictated by two reasons : on the one hand, they endeavor to keep the largest possible share of their ancient autonomy, by continuing in the main the judges, and leaving to Pilate the part of executioner ; and, on the other hand, they undoubtedly are also apprehensive of not succeeding before him with their political and religious grievances. The manoeuvre was well contrived. But Pilate understands them ; he refuses the position which they wish to give him. He plays cautiously with them. Entering apparently into their thought, delighted at finding a means of relieving himself of the affair, he replies without hesitation : " Very good ! Since you wish to be sole judges of the case, be so ! Take the accused and punish Him yourselves (vpelg, ver. 31), of course within the limits of your cotapetency. " The Sanhedrim had, in fact, certain disciplinary rights, like that of excommunicating, scourging, etc. There was no need of Pilate in order to inflict these punishments ; only this was not death. Some interpreters have thought that Pilate really authorized them to put Jesus to death, but with this understood reserva tion : "If you can and dare " (Hengstenberg). But this is to make Pilate say yes and no at the same time. XIX. 6 proves nothing in favor of this meaning, as we shall see. ' X adds efw after n.AaTo_, B C L X Syr. 4 X reads pa Se ij*. eKpavya£o* ; BLX: eicpavyatra* ov* e«ei*oi ; 8 The MSS. are divided between u. and uo-ei X : oi Se eAeyo*. chap. xix. 13-16a. 379 the Sabbath was prepared : " the Preparation of the Sabbath." Comp. Matt. xxvii. 62, Luke xxiii. 54, and especially Mark xv. 42 : " the Preparation, which is the day before the Sabbath. " The complement tov iraaxa, of the Pass over, must necessarily in this Case recall the Passover week, to which this Fri day belonged. But from the fact that irapaoKsvfj in itself took this technical meaning of Friday, it does not follow that, when this word is followed by a complement like tov iraaxa, of the Passover, it does not preserve its natural sense of preparation : " the preparation ofthe Passover." This complement has as its precise purpose to distinguish this preparation of the Passover from the simple ordinary preparation for the Sabbath. If the question were only that of indicating the day of the week, why add the complement here : of the Passover, which gives the reader absolutely no information, since after xiii. 1, xviii. 28, etc., no one would be ignorant that it was the Passover week at this time. Every Greek reader, when hearing this phrase, would necessarily think of the 14th of Nisan, known as the day on which the Passover supper was prepared. This date agrees with those of xiii. 1, 29, xviii. 28, and leads us, as do all these passages, to the idea that the Pass over supper was not yet celebrated, but was to take place on the evening of this day. According to John, the sentence of Jesus was pronounced about the sixth hour — that is, about noon, at least if we do not adopt the method of reck oning according to which John would make the day begin at midnight, in accordance with the custom of the Boman courts. It is certainly difficult to bring this hour of noon into harmony with the account of Matthew, ac cording to which at that hour Jesus had been already for some time sus pended on the cross, and still more difficult to reconcile it with Mark xv. 25, where it is said that it was at the third hour — that is, at nine o'clock, that Christ was crucified. But is the difficulty really any less if, with Rettig, Tholuck, Wieseler, Keil, Westcott, etc., we hold that John reckons from midnight, and that the hour indicated is consequently six o'clock in the morning ? Was not this, according to the Synoptics, the hour when, fol lowing upon . the session of the morning, the Sanhedrim brought Jesus to Pilate . Keil makes the reckoning thus : At five o'clock, the last session of the Sanhedrim until six or half past six ; then the negotiations with Pilate, and the pronouncing of the sentence a little later. But is it possible to confine within so brief a space 1. The first appearance before Pilate ; 2. The sending to Herod ; crimp, the words iv Myoig Imvoig (Luke xxiii. 9) ; 3. The discussion relative to the release of Barabbas ; 4. The scourging, with the scene ofthe Ecce homo; 5. The renewal ofthe examination afterthis scene, and finally the pronouncing of the condemnation ? No ; the greater part of the morning is not too much for so many things. The reading rplrv, third (nine o'clock), in some MSS. of John, would therefore be in itself very suspi cious, even if it were not so evidently a correction intended to reconcile the two narratives. Eusebius supposed that some ancient copyist made of the gamma (r = 3) a stigma (r = 6). This supposition in itself has little probability. Let us rather call to mind, the fact that the day as a whole was divided, Uke the night, into four portions of three hours each. This 380 FOURTH PART. fact explains why in the whole New Testament mention is scarcely ever made of any hours except the third, sixth and ninth (comp. Matt. xx. 1-5), and also why, as Hengstenberg remarks, the expressions nearly, about, are so frequent in it (Matt. xxii. 46, Luke xxni. 44, John iv. 6, Acts x. 3, 9). This word about is also added by John in our passage. It is certainly al lowable, therefore, to take the middle course, either in Mark or in John, especially if we recall the fact that, as Lange says, the apostles did not have watch in hand. , As the third hour of Mark, properly nine o'clock, may in clude all the time from eight to ten, so the sixth hour in John certainly includes from eleven to twelve. The difference, therefore, is no longer so very great. But especially, 2, account must be taken of an important circumstance, noticed by Lange : it is that Matthew and Mark, having given to the scourging of Jesus the meaning which it ordinarily had in such a case, made it the beginning of the punishment. We see this clearly from the manner in which they both speak of it, connecting it closely with the pro nouncing of the condemnation, Matt, xxvii. 26 : "He gave Jesus up to them after having scourged Him." Comp. Mark xv. 15. They have there fore united in one the two judicial acts so clearly distinguished by John, that of the scourging and that of the final condemnation, and they have thus quite naturally dated the second at the same moment as the first. How can Weiss call this solution an affirmation without proof ? It clearly fol lows from the comparison of the narratives. Hofmann has proposed the following solution : a mark of punctuation must be placed after the word irapaaKtvv, and we must translate : "It was Friday, and the sixth hour of the Passover" (omitting the Si after apa with the principal Mjj.).— But the hours of the day, not those of the feast, are reckoned. There is a bitter irony in the words of Pilate : Behold your King ! But it is directed towards the Jews, not towards Jesus. Towards the latter, Pilate constantly shows himself full of a respectful interest, which, near the end, amounts even to fear. In this sarcasm there is at the same time a serious side. Pilate understands that, if there is a man through whom the Jewish people are to fulfil a mission in the world, it is this man. — The rage of the rulers increases on hearing this declaration. The three aorist imper atives express the impatience and haste to have the matter ended. Pilate henceforth consents to yield ; but first he wishes to give himself the pleas ure of yet once more striking the dagger into the wound : Sliall I crucify your king ? He avenges himself thus for the act of baseness to which they compel him. The Jews are driven thereby to the memorable declaration by which they themselves pronounced the abolition of the theocracy and the absorption of Israel into the world of the Gentiles. They who cherished only one thought — the overthrow of the throne of the Caesars by the Mes siah — suffer themselves to be carried away by hatred of Jesus so far as to cry out before the representative of the emperor : "We liave no other king but Cmsar." " Jesum negant," says Bengel, "usque eo ut omnino Christum negent. " After this, all is said. By denying the expectation of the Messiah, Israel has just denied itself ; at such a price does it secure the end that Jesus chap. xix. 13-16a. 381 should be surrendered to it. 'Avrolg, to them, says John, and not to the Boman executioners. For the latter will be only the blind instruments of the judicial murder which is about to be committed. Modern criticism (Baur, Strauss, Keim) regards this entire representation of Pilate's conduct as fictitious. The thought of the author is to personify in Pilate the sympathy of the pagan world for the Gospel, and to throw upon Israel almost the whole responsibility of the crime. But 1. The fact is not presented otherwise in the Synoptics, in the Acts and in the Epistles. In Matthew, the governor marvelled (ver. 14) ; he knows that it is for envy that the rulers deliver Jesus to him (ver. 18) ; he endeavors by means of the people to effect His release, rather than that of Barabbas (vv. 17, 22). He asks indig nantly : " What evil, then, has he done ?" (ver. 23). He sees that he prevails nothing, and ends by yielding, while he declares himself, by a solemn act, innocent qf the blood of this righteous man (ver. 24). Such is the description of the condem nation of Jesus by Pilate in the Gospel which is called Jewish-Christian. Does it really differ from John's description ? Mark brings out still more clearly than Matthew the eagerness with which Pilate takes advantage of the spontaneous request of the multitude that a prisoner should be released to them, and the support which he counts upon finding in the popular sympathy for the saving of Jesus (vv. 8-10). Luke adds to the other attempts of Pilate that of the sending of Jesus to Herod, and the twice repeated proposal to release Him at the cost of a simple scourging (vv. 16, 22). " Having ihedesire to release Jesus" is expressly said in ver. 20. Then in ver. 22 : " And he said to them ihe third time, Why, what evil has he done 1" In the Acts, the conciliatory tendency of which book towards Judaism is made prominent at the present time, Peter, as well as John, charges the Jews with the whole responsibility for the murder : " You have crucified him by the hands of wicked men," ii. 23 ; comp. iii. 15. Even James, when addressing the rich men of his nation, says to them : ' ' You have condemned and put lo death the Righteous One' ' (v. 6). Finally, the Apoca lypse—that book which is represented as the most pronounced manifestation of Jewish-Christianity — designates Jerusalem as " the Sodom and spiritual Egypt where our Lord was crucified," xi. 8. The notion of place (where) in this pas sage very evidently includes those of causality and responsibility. — 2. More over, the second century, in which it is claimed that the composition of the Fourth Gospel must be placed, was, from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, a time of bloody persecution on the part of the pagan world against the Church, and it would be very strange that at that epoch an author should have attributed to the Roman governor an imaginary character with the purpose of personifying in him the sympathy of the pagan world for the Gospel ! — 3. Finally, the scene described by John is its own defence. It is impossible to portray more to the life, the astuteness, the perseverance and the impudent suppleness of the accuser, determined to succeed, at any cost, on the one side, and, on the other, the obstinate struggle, in the heart of the judge, between the consciousness of his duty and the care for his own interests, between the fear of sacrificing an inno cent man, perhaps more formidable than He appeared to be outwardly, and that of driving to extremity a, people already exasperated by crying acts of injustice, and of finding himself accused before a suspicious emperor, one stroke qf whose pen (Reuss) might precipitate him into destruction ; finally, be tween cold scepticism and the transient impressions of natural religiousness and 382 FOURTH PART. even pagan superstition. Reuss acknowledges thatjt is " the Fourth Gospel which gives the true key of the problem" of Pilate's inconceivable conduct : "Jesus was sacrificed by him to an exigency of his position" (p. 675). Ex cepting the natural vacancies resulting from " the fact that no witness saw the whole from one end to the other," the Gospel narrative (that of John included) "bears, according to this author, the seal of entire authenticity" (ibid). These two figures, in fact —one of a cold and diabolical perversity (Caiaphas, as the representative of the Sanhedrim), the other of a cowardice and pitiable vacil lation — both contrasting with the calm dignity and holy majesty of the Christ, form a picture which we do not hesitate to call the masterpiece of the Gospel of John, and which, by itself alone, might, if necessary, serve as a certification of authenticity for this entire work. —Whence did he derive such complete information ? Perhaps he saw everything himself. The judicial sessions among the Bomans were public, and he was not prevented from entering the court of the Pra_torium by the same scruples as the Jews. For he did not have to eat the Passover supper in the evening. THIED SECTION. XIX. 16b-42. The Execution or Jesus. 1. The crucifixion : vv. 16b-18 ; 2. The inscription : vv. 19-22 ; 3. The parting of the garments : vv. 23, 24 ; 4. The filial legacy : vv. 25-27 ; 5. The death : vv. 28-30 ; 6. The breaking of the legs and the spear- thrust : vv. 31-37 ; 7. The burial : vv. 38^2. John does not desire to present a complete picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. He brings out some circumstances omitted by his predecessors, and at the same time completes and gives precision to their narratives. The crucifixion : Vv. 16b-18. "Nmo1 they took Jesus ;7 and, bearing his cross,3 he went out qf the city [going] to the place colled the place of tlie skull, in Hebrew Golgotha, 18, where they crucified him, and with him two others, on either side one, and Jesus in tlie midst." — These two verses sum up very briefly the Synoptic nar rative. The subject of they took is : the Jews (ver. 16a) ; it was they who executed the sentence by the hands of the soldiers. It would be otherwise if the following words : and tliey led Him away, in the T. B., were authen tic. For the subject would then he : the soldiers. — According to ancient testimonies, condemned persons were obliged to bear their own cross, at least the horizontal piece of wood. This is implied, moreover, in the figura tive expression used by Jesus in the Synoptics : " If any man will come after me, . . . let him take up his cross " (Matt. xvi. 24 and parallels). John alone mentions this particular in the sufferings of Jesus. And in this he does not 1 The MSS. arc divided between 6e (T. R. Cop. reject these words ; X : oi 8e Aa6o*re. to* with 14 Mjj.) and ov* (B L X). 1. aTrijyayo* aVTO*. » After to* Irjo-ov*, T. It. reads with A M U r : a T. R. with 11 Mjj. : avTov (eavTov) ; B X ! Kat an-Tjyayo* (and led him aioay) ; 9 Mjj, 180 ovtw ;KLII: eavT_>. Mnn. : «ai rjyayo* ;Bl)J some Mnn, ItPu"4 chap. xix. 16b-18. 383 contradict the Synoptics, who relate that Simon of Cyrene was compelled to perform this office. For the participle jiaara^ov, bearing, is closely con nected with the verb i^vTiBev, he went forth bearing. At the moment of set^ ting out, Jesus was subjected to the common rule. Afterwards it was feared, no doubt, that He might succumb, and advantage was taken of the meeting with Simon to free Him from the burden. — Moses had prohibited capital executions in the enclosure of the camp (Levit. xxiv. 14, Num. xv. 35), and the people remained faithful to the spirit of this law, by putting criminals to death outside of the walls of cities (1 Kings xxi. 13, Acts vii. 58). It is on this custom that the exhortation in Heb. xiii. 12, 13 is founded. 'HZvMev accordingly means : He went forth from the city. The Holy Sep ulchre is now quite a distance within the interior of Jerusalem ; but the city wall may have been displaced. The bare rock in this place seems to prove, even now, that this part of the city was formerly not inhabited. Moreover, there exists no certain tradition respecting the place of the crucifixion and that of the burial of Jesus. — The name place of the skull does not come from the executions which took place on this spot ; the plural would then be necessary : place of skulls ; and among the Jews such remains would not have been left uncovered. The origin of the name was undoubtedly the rounded form and the bare aspect of the hill. Golgotha : nSjSji in Ara maic xnSj^J) skull, from '-fry, to roll. The word ippatari, which is found four times in our Gospel, is found again twice in the Apocalypse, but no where else in the whole New Testament. The cross had the form of a T. It was not very high (see ver. 29). Some times it was laid on the ground, the condemned person was nailed to it, then it was raised up. But most frequently it was made firm in the ground ; the condemned person was raised to the proper height by means of cords (in erueem tollere) ; then the hands were nailed to the transverse piece of wood. That they might not be torn by the weight of the body, the latter rested on a block of wood fastened to the shaft of the cross, on which the condemned sat as on horseback. There has been a long discussion, in mod ern times, on the question whether the feet were also nailed. The passages from ancient writers cited by Meyer (see on Matt. xxvu. 35) and Keim are de cisive ; they prove that,- as a rule, the feet were nailed. Luke xxiv. 39 leads us to think that this was the case with Jesus. The condemned commonly lived on the Cross twelve hours, sometimes even to the third day. This kind of death united- in the highest degree the pains and infamy of all other punishments. Cradelissimum teterrimumque supplicium, says Cic ero ,(in Verrem). The increasing inflammation of the wounds, the unnatural' position, the forced immobility and the rigidity of the limbs which resulted from it, the local congestions, especially in the head, the inexpressible an guish resulting from the disturbance of the circulation, a burning fever and thirst tortured the condemned without killing him. — Was it the Jews who had demanded the execution of the other two condemned persons, in order to render the shame of Jesus more complete ? Or must we find here an in- suit on Pilate's part to the Jewish people represented by these two compan ions in punishment of their King ? It is difficult to say. 384 FOURTH PART. The inscription : Vv. 19-22. " Pilate also caused an inscription to be made and to be put1 upon the cross ; there was written : Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 20. Many of the Jews therefore read this inscription, because the place where Jems was crucified was near ihe city ; and it was written in Hebrew, in Greek, and in Latin.7 21. The chief priests of ihe Jews said therefore to Pilate : Write not, The King qfthe Jews," but that he said, I am King qf ihe Jews. 22. Pilate an swered, What lhave written, lhave written." — John here completes the very brief account of the Synoptics. According to the Boman custom, the cru- ciarius carried himself, or there was carried before him, on the road to the crucifixion, an inscription (titulus, rirXog, iiriypaajij, aavlg, atria) which con tained the indication of his crime, and which was afterwards fastened to the cross. Pilate took advantage of this custom to stigmatize the Jews by pro claiming even for the last time this malefactor to be their King. — Tholuck and de Wette have thought that eypafe must be explained in the sense of had written ; Meyer and Weiss hold that Pilate had the inscription written dur ing the crucifixion, and placed on the cross after it. But the Si mi, now also, is a connection sufficiently loose to allow us to place these acts at the very time of the crucifixion, which is more natural. The mention of the three languages in which this inscription was written is found also in Luke, ac cording to the ordinary reading ; but this reading is uncertain. Hebrew was the national language, Greek the language universally understood, and Latin that of the conquering nation. Pilate wished thus to give the in scription the greatest publicity possible. Jesus, therefore, at the lowest point of His humiliation, was proclaimed Messiah-King in the languages of the three principal peoples of the world. — The expression : the chief priests of ihe Jews, ver. 21, is remarkable. It is found nowhere else. Hengstenberg explains it by an intentional contrast with the term King of the Jews. The struggle^ indeed, was between these two theocratic powers. This explana tion, however, is far-fetched ; the expression means, more simply, that they were acting here as defenders of the cause of the theocratic people. — The imperfect tliey said characterizes the attempt which fails. The present write not is the present of the idea. Pilate answers with the twice repeated per fect : 2" have written ; it is the tense of the accomplished fact. We find Pi late here again as Philo describes him : inflexible in character (Hengsten berg). The parting of the garments : Vv. 23, 24. " The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified* Jesus, took Ms garments and made four parts, one for every soldier, and then the tunic;6 now the tunic was without seam, woven from the top throughout. 24. They said therefore one to another :" Let us not rend it, but let us cast lots for it wlwse it shall be. That the Scripture might be fulfilled which says „•* They parted my 1 A K 12 Mnn. : eireOyKev for e--tKe*. o-a*Te_. a Instead of e/3p., eAAr)*., pc-p.., B L X 8 Mnn. 6 X It01" Syr"111 omit the words xai to* xiTui*a Cop. Sah. read e/3p., pcop.., eAArj*. (and the tunic), ' X omits w. 20 and 21 as far as aAA' oti not " X : ovtovs instead of aAArjAov.. included. . x B iu>i°'"»« omit rj keyovaa (which says). 4 Instead Of OTe eajavpbujav, X has oi _-Tavpu>- chap. xix. 19-24. 385 garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots. These things there fore the soldiers did." — Here, also, John completes his predecessors, so far as the description of the tunic and the accomplishment of the prophecy are concerned. The Boman law De bonis damnatorum adjudged to the execu tioners the garments of the condemned. It is generally held that the entire detachment was composed of four men.1 Keim thinks that each cross had its particular detachment.2 The soldiers performed two opera tions. They divided among themselves either the different pieces of cloth ing, such as the caps, girdles, under-garments, sandals and tunics of the two malefactors, or the garments of Jesus alone (avrov, qf him, ver. 23), if the question is only of the particular detachment which had to do with Him. Then, as the tunic of Jesus could not be divided, and was too precious to be placed in one of the parts, they cast lots for it. This tunic was undoubt edly a gift of the women who ministered to Jesus (Luke viii. 2, 3, Matt. xxvii. 55). It was woven throughout its whole length, as, according to Jo sephus, the garment of the priests was. Hence the use of the lot (therefore, ver. 24). Thus was realized to the very letter the description of the Psalm ist, as he drew the picture of the King of Israel at the height of His suffer ings. Criticism claims, it is true, that the two members of the verse quoted by the evangelist (Ps. xxii. 19) are entirely synonymous, and that John is the sportof his own imagination in wishing to distinguish either between the verbs to divide and to cast lots, or between the substantives Ipdria, gar ments, and Ipanapbg, robe (LXX). But a more profound study of the paral lelism in Hebrew poetry shows that the second member always adds a shade or a new idea to the idea of the first. Otherwise the second would be merely an idle tautology. It is not repetition, but progression. Thus, in this verse, the gradation from the plural D'U.!) garments, to the singular w\_i*,, tunic, is manifest. The first term designates the different pieces making up the outer clothing and the second the vestment, properly so called, after the removal of which one is entirely naked, the tunic. The passage in Job xxiv. 7-10 confirms this natural distinction. The advance from one verb to the other is no less perceptible. It is already a great humiliation to the con demned person to see his garments divided. After this he must say to him self that there is nothing left for him except to die. But what greater humiliation than to see lots drawn for his garments, and thus see them treated like a worthless plaything ! David meant to describe the two de grees, and John calls to the reader's notice the fact that in the crucifixion of Jesus they are, both of them, literally reproduced ; not that the fulfil ment of the prophecy was dependent on this detail, but it appeared more distinctly by reason of this coincidence ; and this the more because every thing was carried out by the instrumentality of rude and blind agents, the Boman soldiers ; comp. the remarks on xii. 15, 16. — It is on this last idea that John wishes to lay stress when he concludes the narrative of this scene with the words : These things therefore the soldiers did. The Boman gov ernor had proclaimed Jesus ihe King of the Jews; the Boman soldiers, 1 Philo, in Flaccum. tachments, each of four men ; undoubtedly 2 Comp. Acts __ii. 4, where we find four de- one for each of the four watches, 25 386 FOURTH PART. without meaning it, pointed Him out as the true David promised in Psalm xxii. Strauss thinks (new Vie de Jesus, p. 569 ff.) that, when the Messianic preten sions of Jesus had been proved false by the cross, the Church sought in the Old Testament the idea of the suffering Messiah, and found it there, especially in Ps. xxii. and Ixix. Thenceforward there was imagined in this programme a whole fictitious picture of the Passion. Thus the facts, in the first place, created the exegesis ; then the exegesis created the facts. But 1. The idea of the suffering Messiah existed in Jewish theology before and independently of the cross (Vol. I., pp. 311 f. 324). 2. It will always be difficult to prove that some righteous person, whoever he may have been, under the Old Covenant could have hoped, as the author of Ps. xxii. does, that the effect of his deliverance would be the conversion of the Gentile nations and the establishment of the kingdom of God even to the ends of the earth (w. 26-32). The filial legacy : Vv. 25-27. "Now there stood near the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary1 the wife qf Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26. Jesus, therefore, seeing his mother and beside her the disciple whom he loved, says to his mother,7 Woman, behold thy son. 27. Then he says to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from that hour7 that disciple took her to Ms home." — This inci dent has been preserved for us by John alone. Matthew and Mark say, in deed, that a certain number of Galilean women were present, but "behold ing from afar." It follows from John's narrative either that some of them, particularly the mother of Jesus, were standing nearer the cross — this de tail may easily have been omitted in the Synoptic tradition— or that, at the moment of Jesus' death, they had withdrawn out of the way, in order to observe what was about to take place ; for it is then only that the presence of these women is mentioned in the Synoptics. — Uapd does not mean at the foot, but beside; the cross was not very high (ver. 29). — We have already stated, in the Introduction (Vol. I., pp. 29, 30), that Wieseler, holding to the reading of the Peshito (see critical note 1), finds in this verse the mention, not of three women, but oifour. He thus escapes the difficulty that two sisters should bear the same name, Mary — the mother of Jesus and the wife of Clopas. The sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, according to him, is not named ; and she is consequently no other than Salome, the mother of John, indicated by Matt, xxvii. 56 and Mark xv. 40 as also present at the cruci fixion. Wiexeler's opinion has been adopted by Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Westcott, etc. The incident here related becomes, it is said, much more in telligible ; for if the mother of the apostle John was the sister of Mary, and this apostle the first cousin of Jesus, we can explain more easily how Jesus could entrust His mother to him, notwithstanding the presence of her sons. This interpretation seems to me inadmissible. By omitting a mi, and, be fore the words : Mary, tlie wife of Clopas (at least, if the text of all our i Syr"h and tho Persian and Ethiopian Vss. " X B L X It"'" omit avTov. read v (sister) to express this idea. ' These words of Jesus, thus understood, contain nothing unkindly either to His own brothers, who did not even yet believe on Him, or to the mother of John himself, who was by no means separated thereby from her son. Hegesippus declares positively that Joseph's brother, whom he also calls the uncle of Jesus (or of James), was named Clopas (Vol. I., p. 358 f.). This name must in this case be regarded as the Greek form of the Aramaic ,Sl7n. AMphmus. Reuss sees herein "one of the grossest mistakes of modern exegesis," and thinks that Clopas is a Jewish corruption of the Greek name Kleopatros. But in speaking thus Reuss himself confounds Clopas with Cleopas, a name which is also known in the New Testament (Luke xxiv. 18). — Bespecting Mary, the wife of Clopas, see Vol. L, p. 358 f. — The Synoptics do not mention the presence of Jesus' mother, perhaps because she left the cross immediately after the fact re ported by John, and because they do not speak of the presence ofthe friends of Jesus and of the women except at the end of the whole story. Stripped of everything, Jesus seemed to have nothing more to give. Nevertheless, from the midst of this deep poverty, He had already made precious gifts ; to His executioners He had bequeathed the pardon of God, to His companion in punishment, Paradise. Could He find nothing to leave to His mother and His friend ? These two beloved persons, who had been His most precious treasures on earth, He bequeathed to one another, giving thus at once a son to His mother, and a mother to His friend. This word full of tenderness must have completely broken Mary's heart. Not being able to endure this sight, she undoubtedly at this moment left the sorrow ful spot. — The word to his home does not imply that John possessed a house in Jerusalem, but simply that he had a lodging there ; comp. the same elg rd Uia applied to all the apostles, xvi. 32. From this time, Mary lived with Salome and John, first at Jerusalem and then in Galilee (Introduction, Vol. I., p. 35). According to the historian Nicephorus Kallistus (died in 1350), she lived eleven years with John at Jerusalem, and died there at the age of fifty- nine. Her tomb is shown in a grotto a few paces from the garden of Gethsemane. According to others, she accompanied John to Asia Minor and died at Ephesus. — On the word : Woman, which has nothing but re spect in it, see on ii. 4. Keim, after the example of Baur, regards this incident as an invention of pseudo-John, intended to exalt the apostle whose name he assumes, and to make him the head of the Church, superior even to James and Peter. Renan attributes this same fiction to the school of John, which yielded to the desire 388 FOURTH PART of making its patron the vicar of Christ. For every one who has the sense of truth, this scene and these words do not admit of an explanation of this kind. Besides, is it not Peter whom our evangelist presents as the great and bold confessor of Jesus (vi. 68, 69) ? Is it not to the same apostle that the direction of the Church is ascribed in ch. xxi. and this by a grand thrice repeated prom ise (vv. 15-17) ? Finally, this supposition would imply that the mother of Jesus is here the type of the Church, a thing of which there is no trace either in this text or in the whole Gospel. The death : Vv. 28-30. " After this, Jesus, knowing1 that all was now finished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled,7 says, I thirst. 29. There was3 a vessel there full qf vinegar ; and the soldiers, having filled a sponge with vinegar and having put it on the end of a hyssop stalk, * brought it to his mouth. 30. When Jesus therefore had taken the vinegar, he said, It is finished. Then, having bowed his head, he gave up his spirit." — John completes by means of some important details the narrative already known respecting the last moments of Jesus. — Mera roiro, after this, must be taken in a broad sense, as throughout our whole Gospel. It is between the preceding incident and this one that the unspeakable anguish of heart is to be placed from the depth of which Jesus cried out : ' ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" — The expres sion : All is finished, refers to His task as Bedeemer, so far as He was able to accomplish it during His earthly existence, and, at the same time, to the prophetic picture in which this task had been traced beforehand. There remained, however, a point in the prophecy which was not yet accomplish ed. Many interpreters (Bengel, Tholuck, Meyer, Luthardt, Baumlein, Keil) make Iva, that, depend on TerileaTat : ' ' Knowing that all was accomplished to this end, that the Scripture might he fulfilled." This sense does not seem to me admissible. The fulfilment of the Scriptures cannot be regard ed as the end of the accomplishment of the work of Jesus. Moreover, it follows precisely from vv. 28, 29 that, if the redemptive work was consum mated, there was, nevertheless, a point still wanting to the fulfilment of the prophetic representation of the sufferings of the Messiah, and that Jesus does not wish to leave this point unfulfilled. The that depends therefore on the following verb liyei : Jesus says. So Chrysostom, Liicke, de Wette, Weiss, etc. Only we must not, with Weiss, attribute the purpose to God ; it is that of Jesus Himself, as the dSag, knowing that, shows. By saying I thirst, Jesus really meant to occasion the literal fulfilment of this last point of the sufferings of the Messiah : " They gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps. Ixix. 22). Jesus had been for a long time tormented by thirst — it was one of the most cruel tortures of this punishment — and He could have restrain- 1 E G H K S Y r 70 Mnn. Cop. : .Su* (seeing) * X B L X some Mnn. It"'" Sah. read _T.oy.o» Instead of e._co.. ov* fteo-TO* ofov. vo-o-un-oi 7rep._e*Te_ (having • Instead of i ¦> a. u.,e,u x won* some Mnn. : put on a hyssop stalk a sponge fuU of vinegar), jrAijpiu.Tfl. instead of ot Se jrkrjtravTe, o-iroyyo* ofov. Kal ' A B L X Itnl" omit the ov* (therefore), vo-o-ioirw irepiSevTei which T. R. reads with 13 which T. R reads with the other Mjj., with Mjj. Syr. (they having .filled a sponge with tho exception of X, which reads Se (now). vinegar and having put it on a hyssop stalk). chap. xix. 28-31. 389 ed even to the end, as He had done up to this moment, the expression of this painful sensation. If He did not do it, it was because He knew that this last point must still be fulfilled, and because He desired that it should be fulfilled without delay. John says refeiafiy, and not ir?ivpa0y (which is wrongly substituted by some documents). The question, indeed, is not of the fulfilment of this special prophecy, but of the completing of the fulfilment of the Scripture prophecies in general. Keil thinks that this momentary re freshment was necessary for Him, in order that He might be able Himself to give up His soul to God. — The drink offered to Jesus is not the stupefy ing potion which He had refused at the moment of the crucifixion, and which was a deadening wine mixed with myrrh (Mark) or wormwood (Matthew). Jesus had refused it, because He wished to preserve the per fect clearness of His mind until the end. The potion which the soldier offers Him now is no longer the soldiers' wine, as it was ordinarily called ; for, in that case, the sponge and the stalk of hyssop would have been to no purpose. It was vinegar prepared for the condemned themselves. — In the first two Gospels, theory of Jesus : " Eli, Eli ! ... My God ! my God ! . . ." had called forth from a soldier a similar act, but three hours had elapsed since then. — Hyssop is a plant which is only a foot and a half high. Since a stalk of this length was sufficient to reach the lips of the condemn ed person, it follows from this that the cross was not so high as it is ordinarily represented. — Ostervald and Martin translate altogether wrongly : "They put hyssop around [the sponge] ;" or " surrounding it with hyssop. " A Dutch critic, de Koe (Conjecturaal Critik en net Evangelie naar Johannes, 1883), has proposed to substitute for vooairo (hyssop) va-aa, a lance. The conjecture is ingenious, but not sufficiently well founded. " I thirst" was the fifth expression of the Saviour, and "all is finished" the sixth. The first three of His seven expressions on the cross had reference to His personal relations : they were the prayer for His executioners (Luke), the promise made to the thief, His companion in punishment (Luke), the legacy made to His mother and His friend (John). The following three referred to His work of salvation : the cry " My God ..." (Matthew and Mark), to the moral sufferings of the expiatory sacrifice ; the groan : "I thirst" (John), to His physical sufferings ; the triumphant expression : "It is finished," to the consummation of both. Finally, the seventh and last, which is expressly mentioned only by Luke : "Father, into thy hands I com mend my spirit," is implied in John in the word irapiSuKe, he gave up ; it re fers to Himself, to the finishing of His earthly existence. This Greek term is not exactly rendered by our phrase to give up the ghost. It expresses a . spontaneous act. "No one takes my life," Jesus had said ; "I have power to lay it down and lhave power to take it again " (x. 18) ; it would be neces sary to translate by the word hand over (commit). Such was also the mean ing of the loud cry with which, according to Matthew and Mark,- Jesus ex pired. — The word icXivag, "having bowed His head," indicates that until then He had held His head erect. The breaking of the legs : vv. 31-37. Ver, 81. " The Jews therefore, that the bodies might not remain on the cross 390 FOURTIt PART. during ihe Sabbath, because it was the preparation1 (for the day of that Sabbath* was a high day), asked Pilate that the legs of the crucified might be broken, and that they might be taken away." — John describes here a series of Providen tial facts, omitted by his predecessors, which occurred in quick succession, and which united in impressing on the person of Jesus, in His condition of deepest humiliation, the Messianic seal. The Bomans commonly left the bodies of the condemned on the cross ; they became the prey of wild beasts or of dissolution. But the Jewish law required that the bodies of executed criminals should be put out of the way before sunset, that- the Holy Land might not, on the following day, be polluted by the curse attached to the lifeless body, a monument of a divine condemnation (Deut. xxi. 23, Josh. viii. 29, x. 26, Josephus, Bell. Jud. iv. 5, 2). Ordinarily, no doubt, the Bomans did not trouble themselves about this law. But, in this particular case, the Jews would have been absolutely unable to bear the violation of it, because, as John observes, the following day was neither an ordinary day nor even an ordinary Sabbath ; it was a Sabbath of an altogether ex ceptional solemnity. Those who think that, according to John himself, the Jewish people had already celebrated the Passover on the preceding even ing, and that at this time the great Sabbatic day of the 15th Nisan was end ing, give to the word irapaaKcv,, preparation, the technical sense of Friday, and explain the special solemnity of the Saturday which was to follow by the fact that this Sabbath belonged to the Passover week. They call to mind also the fact that on the 16th of Nisan the offering of the sacred sheaf was celebrated, a well-known act of worship by which the harvest was annually opened. But neither the one nor the other of these reasons can explain the extraordinary solemnity which John ascribes to the Sabbath of the next day. The 16th of Nisan was in itself so little of a Sabbath that, in order to cut the ears on the evening of the 15-16th, which were intend ed to form the sacred sheaf, the messengers of the Sanhedrim were obliged to wait until the people cried out to them : " The sun is set ;" then only did the 16th begin, and then only could they take the sickle. Thus in Levit. xxiii. 11-14 the 16th is called "the day after the Sabbath." How could the weekly Sabbath derive its superior sanctity from its coincidence with this purely working day ? As to the technical sense of Friday, given to irapaoKevv, it is set aside here by the absence of the article. Finally, the ydp, for, clearly puts the idea of preparation in a logical relation to that of the extraordinary sanctity of the Sabbath which was to begin at six o'clock in the evening, and thus obliges us to keep for this word its natural sense of preparation. Hence it follows that the time of Jesus' death was the afternoon of the 14th, and not that of the 15th, since the Sabbatic day was on the point of beginning, not of ending. The words : "For it was the preparation," signify at once preparation for the Sabbath (as Friday) and 1 The words eirei n-apao-Kevi} yjv (because it Mjj.). was the preparation), are placed by X B L X V '' Instead of ckcivti which T. R. reads with 10 Mnn. ItP"'"«° Vnlg. Syr. Cop. Sah. immedi- some Mnn., It"1" Vulg. (that day of the Sab- ately after oi ov* IovSaioi (the Jews therefore), bath), c«i*ov is read in all tlie other documents and not after «* t w o-aflSaT-j (T. R. with 12 (tlie day of that Sabbath). chap. xix. 32-34. 391 preparation for the great Paschal day (as the day before the 15th of Nisan). There was, therefore, on this day a double preparation, because there was an accumulation of Sabbath rest on the following day, which was at once the weekly Sabbath and the great Sabbath, the first day of the feast. By the words : "it was the preparation," the evangelist reminds us indirectly that the essential act of the preparation, the slaying of the lamb, took place in the temple at that very moment, and that the Paschal supper was about to follow in a few hours. This was the reason why it was a matter of ab solute necessity, from the Jewish point of view, that the bodies should be put out of the way without delay, before the following day should begin (at six o'clock in the evening). — Pilate, respecting this scruple, consented to the thing which was asked of him. The breaking of the legs did not occasion death immediately, but it was intended to make it certain, and thus to allow of the removal of the bodies. For it rendered any return to life impossible, because mortification necessarily and immediately resulted from it. The existence of this custom (oKeTioKoiria, crurifragium), among the Bomans, in certain exceptional cases, is fully established (see the numerous passages cited by Keim). Thus Renan says : "The Jewish ar chaeology and the Boman archaeology of ver. 31 are exact." If Keim him self has, notwithstanding this, raised difficulties, asking why the Synoptics do not mention this fact if it is historical, it is easy to answer him : Be cause Jesus Himself was not affected by it. But His person alone was of importance to them, not those of the two malefactors. Neither would John have mentioned this detail except for its relation to the fulfilment of a prophecy, which had so forcibly struck him. — Is it necessary to understand hpBaai, might be taken away, simply of removal from the cross. I think not. What concerned the Jews who made the request was not that the bodies should be unfastened, but that they should be put out of sight. The law Deut. xxi. 23, which required of them this request, had no reference to the punishment of the cross, which was unknown to Israel. Vv. 32-34. " The soldiers therefore came and broke Jhe legs of the first, then of the other who was crucified with him. 33. But, when they came to Jesus, seeing that he was already dead, ' they did not break his legs ; 34, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with his spear, and immediately there came thereout blood and water." — The word : they came, is more naturally explained if we hold with Storr, Olshausen and Weiss that they were different soldiers from those who had accomplished the work of crucifixion. They had been sent espe cially for this purpose with the necessary instruments. — If the purpose for which the limbs of the condemned were broken was that of which we have spoken, this treatment was made useless with respect to Jesus by the fact of His death. The spear-thrust of the soldier was, therefore, as it were, only a compensation for the operation which was omitted ; it signi fied: If thou art not dead already, here is what will finish thee. It would be absurd to demand examples for such an act, which had in it nothing judicial. — The verb vvaaeiv indicates a more or less deep thrust, 1 X : eVpo* avTO* ij-7) Te-VljKOTa Kai ov, instead of us .. . TeQvi]KOTa, ov 392 FOURTH PART. in contrast to a cut. This term is sometimes used in Homer to desig nate mortal wounds. — Is the fact of the outflowing of the blood and water to be regarded as a natural phenomenon ? In general, undoubtedly, when a dead body is pierced, no liquid comes forth from it ; neverthe less, if one of the large vessels is reached, it may happen that there will flow from the wound a blackish blood covered with a coating of serum. Can this be what John calls blood and water ? This is improbable. Ebrard accordingly supposes that the lance reached the deposits of extravasated blood. Gruner (Commentatio de morte Jesu Christi vera, Halle, 1805) also has this opinion. He thinks that the lance pierced the aqueous deposits which, during this long-continued torture, had been formed around the heart, and then the heart itself. William Stroud (London, 1847) alleges phenomena observed in cases of sudden death in consequence of cramp of the heart. These explanations are all of them quite improbable. The ex pression : blood and water, naturally denotes two substances flowing simul taneously, but to the eyes of the spectators distinct, a thing which has no place in any of these suppositions. Baur, Strauss, etc., conclude from this that there is a necessity for a symbolic interpretation, and find here again the purely ideal character of the narrative. The author meant to express by this fact of his own invention the abundance of spiritual life which will, from this moment, flow forth from the person of Christ (Baur) ; the water more especially represents the Holy Spirit, the blood the Holy Supper, with an allusion to the custom of mixing the wine of this sacrament with water (Strauss, in his new Life of Jesus). But what idea must we form of the morality of a man who should solemnly affirm that he had seen (ver. 35) that which he had the consciousness of having beheld only in idea. In fa vor of this allegorical explanation an appeal has been made to the words in 1 John v. 6 : "He came not by water only, but by water and blood." But these words do not have the least connection with the fact with which we are occupied. The water of which John speaks in his epistle denotes, as Ui. 5, baptism : Jesus did not come, like the forerunner, only with the bap tism of water, the symbol of purification, but with the blood which brings the expiation itself. In our view there remains but one explanation : it is that which admits that this mysterious fact took place outside of the laws of common physiology, and that it is connected with the exceptional nature of a body which sin had never tainted and which moved forward to the resurrection without having to pass through dissolution. At the instant of death, the process of dissolution, in general, begins. The body of Jesus must have taken at that moment a different path from that of death : it en tered upon that of glorification. He who was the Holy One of God, in the absolute sense of the word, was also absolutely exempt from corruption (Ps. xvi. 10). This is the meaning which the evangelist seems to me to have ascribed to this unprecedented phenomenon, of which he was a witness. Thus is explained the affirmation, having somewhat the character of an oath, by which, in the following verse, he certifies its reality ; not that the affirma tion of ver. 35 refers only to this fact ; for it certainly has reference to the totality of the facts mentioned vv. 83, 34 (see below). Weiss holds that chap. xix. 35-37. 393 there is a natural phenomenon here which cannot be certainly explained ; but he thinks that John saw in the blood the means of our redemption and in the water the symbol of its purifying force. In this case, a grossly su perstitious idea must be imputed to the apostle : by what right . The text says not a word of such a symbolic sense. According to Reuss, also, the blood designates the redemptive death, and the water baptism, and we have here a mystical explanation of a fact which struck the author. All this has no better foundation than the opinion of those who think that the evange list wished to combat the idea that Jesus was not really dead (Liicke, Nean der), or the idea that He had only an apparent body (Olshausen). The first of these ideas is entirely modern ; the second ascribes to the author an ar gument which has no force, since the Docetse did not in the least deny the sensible appearances in the earthly life of Jesus. — The absence of all corruption in the Holy One qf God implied the beginning of the restoration of life from the very moment when, at death, in the case of every sinner the work of dissolution which is to destroy the body commences. Vv. 35-37. "And lie who saw it has borne witness, and Ms testimony is true,1 and he knows that he says true, that you also2 may believe. 3 36. For these things came to pass that the Scripture might be fulfilled : No one of his bones* shall be broken. 37. And another word also says : Tliey shall look on him whom they pierced." — Some (Weisse, Schweizer, Hilgenfeld, Weizsacker, Keim, Baumlein, Reuss, Sabatier) claim that in these words of ver. 35 the author of the Gospel expressly distinguishes himself from the apostle, and that he professes to he only the reporter of the oral testimony of the latter. He declares to the readers of the Gospel that John the apostle saw this, that he bore witness of it, and that he had the inward consciousness of saying a true thing in relating this fact. Thus these words, which have always been regarded as one of the strongest proofs of the Johannean composition of our Gospel, are transformed into a formal denial of its apostolic origin. We have already examined this question in the Introduction, Vol. I., pp. 193-197. We will also present here the following observations : 1. As to the school of Baur, which asserts that the author all along wishes to pass himself off as the apostle, it should evidently have been on its guard against accepting this explanation. It has not been able, however, to re frain from catching at the bait ; but it has clearly perceived the contradic tion into which it is brought thereby ; see the embarrassment of Hilgenfeld with respect to this question, Einl., p. 731. In fact, if the author wishes throughout his entire work to pass himself off as the apostle John, how should he here openly declare the contrary ? The reply of Hilgenfeld is this : " He forgets (falls out of) his part " (p. 732). A singular inadvertence, surely, in the case of a falsarius of. such consummate skill as the one to whom these critics ascribe the composition of our Gospel ! — Other critics, such as Reuss, find themselves no less embarrassed by the apparent advantage 1 X : oAt).t|., instead of aAi;9.*7j. (E G etc.) and the other Mnn. 7 15 Mjj. (X A B etc.) 25 Mnn. It. Vulg. Syr. 3 X B : mo-TevrjTe instead of ^-o-Tevo-ijTe. r°_id koi before vwets ("that you also may * 60 Mnn. ItPierique. a„' avrov instead of avTov believ"! "_ ; T. R. omits this word with 7 Mjj. (according to Exod. xii. 46, in the LXX). 394 FOURTH PART. which they yet try to derive from these words. In fact, there exists in ch. xxi. 24 an analogous passage in which the depositaries of our Gospel — those who received the commission to publish it — expressly attest the identity of the redactor of this work with the apostle- witness of the facts, with the disciple whom Jesus loved. How can we explain such a declaration on the part of the depositaries of the work, if the author had in our passage him self attested his non-identity with the apostle, the eye-witness ? Do they knowingly falsify ? Reuss does not dare to affirm this. Are they mistaken ? It would be necessary to conclude from this that those who published the book had themselves never read the work to which they give the attestation in opposition to his. Still more, if they received from the author his hook to be published, they must have known him personally ; moreover, it is from the personal knowledge which they have of him and his character that they come forward as vouchers for -his veracity. How, then, could they be de ceived with respect to him ? — 2. And on what reasons are suppositions so im possible made to rest ? Above all, the pronoun iKeivog is alleged, by which the author designates the apostle, distinguishing him from himself. But throughout the whole course of our Gospel we have seen this pronoun em ployed, not to oppose a nearer subject to a more remote subject, but in an exclusive or strongly affirmative sense, with the design of emphasizing somewhat the subject to which it refers ; comp. i. 18, v. 39, vii. 20, ix. 51, xix. 31, etc. , and very particularly ix. 37, where we see that when the One who speaks does so by presenting himself objectively and speaking of himself in 'the, third person, he can very properly use this pronoun.1 Being forced to speak of himself in this case, John uses this pronoun, because he had alone been witness of the special fact which he relates. — 3. Keim no longer insists on this philological question ; he makes appeal to "rational logic," which does not allow us to hold that a writer describes himself objectively at such length. But comp. St. Paul, 2 Cor. xii. 3 ! And it is precisely ' ' rational logic " which does not allow us to ascribe to another writer, different from John, the affirmation : And his testimony is true. A disciple of John de claring to the Church that the apostle, his master, did not falsify or was not the dupe of an illusion ! The first of these attestations would he an insult to his master himself ; the second, an absurdity ; for has he the right of affirming anything respecting a fact which he has not seen and which he knows only by the testimony of John himself ? — 4. Reuss rests upon the perfect pcpapTvpvKt-, lias borne witness. The narrative of the witness, accord ing to this, is presented as a fact which was long since past. But comp. i. 34, where the : I have borne witness, applies to the declaration which John the Baptist has just uttered at the very moment. The same is the case here ; this verb applies to the declaration which the author has just made in the preceding lines respecting the fact related : " It is said ; the testimony is given and it continues henceforth ;" such is the sense of the perfect. — 5. It seems to me that we must, above all, take account of the expression : " He knows that he says true." Here is the meaning which we are forced • See on the use of the pronoun .k..*o. in tho 497-606, and Buttmann, ibid., 1860, pp. 505-586. Fourth Gospel, Steitz, Stud, vnd Krit., 1859, pp. chap. xix. 35-37. 395 to give to these words : ' ' The witness from whom I have the fact knows that he Says true." But by what right can the writer bear testimony of the consciousness which this witness has of the truth of what he says ? One testifies as to one's own consciousness, not that of another. — 6. Hilgenfeld, Keim, Baumlein, Reuss, Sabatier, cite as analogous xxi. 24. " This is the disciple (the beloved disciple) who testifies these things and wrote these things ; und we know that Ms testimony is true." But the very similarity in the ex pressions makes us perceive so much more clearly the difference between them. The attestants say, not as in our passage : "he knows (olSe) that he says true," but : "we know (oldapev) that he says true ;" they do what the evan gelist should have done in our passage, if he had, like them, wished to dis tinguish himself from the apostle ; they use the first person : we know. The adjective d\v«i'vv docs not here, any more than elsewhere, mean true (dlvOvg) ', the meaning is : a real testimony, which truly deserves the name, as announcing a fact truly seen. Kal vpelg, you also : "you who read, as well as I who have seen and testified." The question is not of belief in the fact reported, but of faith in the absolute sense of the word, of their faith in Christ, which is to derive its confirmation from this fact and from those which are mentioned afterwards, as it was these facts which had already confirmed the faith of the author himself. It is not only from the fact of the outflowing of the blood and water that this result is expected. The for of ver. 36 proves that the question is of the way in which the two proph ecies recalled to mind in vv. 36, 37 were fulfilled by the three facts related in vv. 33,34. — The first prophecy is taken from Exod. xii. 46 and Num. ix. 12 ; not from Ps. xxxiv. 21, as Baumlein and Weiss think ; for this last passage refers to the preservation of the life of the righteous one, not to that of the integrity of His body. The application which the evangelist makes of the words implies as admitted the typical significance of the Paschal lamb ; comp. xiii. 18, a similar typical application. — The Paschal lamb belonged to God and was the figure of the Lamb of God. This is the reason why the law so expressly protected it against all violent and brutal treatment. It is also the reason why the remains of its flesh were to be burned immediately after the supper. As the prophecy was fulfilled by what did not take place with reference to Jesus (the breaking of the legs), it was also fulfilled at the same time by what did take place in relation to Him (the thrust of the lance), ver. 37. Zechariah (xii. 10) had represented Jehovah as pierced by His people, in the person of the Messiah. The action of the Jews in delivering Jesus up to the punishment of the cross had fully realized this prophecy. But this fulfil ment must take a still more literal character (see on xii. 15, xviii. 9, xix. 24). The meaning of the Hebrew term 'Ipi, they have pierced, was con siderably weakened by the LXX, who undoubtedly deemed this expression too strong as applied to Jehovah, and rendered it by KaTapxho-avTo, they in sulted, outraged God by idolatry. The evangelist goes back to the Hebrew text ; comp. also Apoc. i. 7. The term they shall look on, bfovrai, refers to that which will take place at the time of the conversion of the Jews, when iu this Jesus, rejected by them, they shall recognize their Messiah. The look 396 FOURTH PART. in question is that of repentance, of supplication, of faith, which they will then cast upon Him (etc ov) ; a striking scene magnificently described in the same prophetic picture, Zech. xii. 8-14. In order to understand clearly what John felt at the moment which he here describes, let us imagine a believing Jew, thoroughly acquainted with the Old Testament, seeing the soldiers approaching who were to break the legs of the three condemned persons. What is to take place with regard to the body of the Messiah, more sacred even than that of the Paschal lamb ? And lo, by a series of unexpected circumstances, he sees this body rescued from any brutal operation ! The same spear-thrust which spares it the treatment with which it was threatened realizes to the letter that which the prophet had foretold ! Were not such signs fitted to strengthen his faith and that of the Church . This is what John had experienced as an eye-witness and what he meant to say in this passage, vv. 31-37. The entombment of Jesus : vv. 38-42. Here, as in the preceding passage, John completes the narrative of his predecessors. He makes prominent the part which was taken by Nicodemus in the funeral honors paid to Jesus, and sets forth clearly the relation be tween the advanced hour of the day and the place of the sepulchre where the body was laid. He thus accounts for facts whose relation the Synoptics do not indicate. Vv. 38-40. ' ' After this1 Joseph qf Arimaihea, who was a disciple qf Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, went and asked Pilate that they might take away ihe body of Jesus ; and Pilate gave Mm leave. He came7 therefoi-e, and took away7 the body of Jesus." 39. Nicodemus, who at the first came to Jesus by night, came also, bringing* a mixture* of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. 40. They took therefore the body of Jesus and wrapped it in6 linen cloths with the spices, according as the Jews are accustomed to bury. " — The request of the Jews, ver. 31, refers to the three condemned persons ; but, as John has observed, the order of Pilate had only been executed with reference to two of them. Joseph then presents himself before him with an entirely new request, which applies to Jesus only. Baumlein: "Sometimes, especially on occasion of a feast, the bodies of those crucified were given up to relatives. Philo in Mace., §10." Mark relates that Pilate, on hearing this request, was astonished that Jesus was already dead — a fact which, according to Strauss, contradicts the permission which he had just given for the breaking of the legs. But this operation did not cause death immediately, as Strauss himself acknowl edges ; it served only to make it sure. Pilate therefore might be astonished that the death of Jesus was so speedily accomplished. Perhaps also his sur prise was caused by the fact which was reported to him, that Jesus was dead even before the performing of this operation. For, as is also attested by Mark xv. 44, he caused a detailed account of the way in which the things 1 Ae is omitted by 7 Mjj. (X A B etc.) It. « X reads eXo>v (having), instead of £epw*. » Instead of r)A9e* and rjpe*, X It1"" read X B : eAiyua (a roll) instead of myua. i)A9o* and rjpa* (they came and they took away). 'XBKLXYn Ital" Vulg. omit e* before 1 Instead of to o-coua tov I., B L X A read o0o*ioi.. to o-tapa avrov ; X : avTov ; It-"-"-- ; ovto. chap. xix. 38-42. 397 had taken place to be given him by the centurion who had taken charge of the crucifixion. — Arimathea probably denotes, not the city of Rama, two leagues north of Jerusalem, or the other Bama, now Ramleh, ten leagues north-west of. the capital, near to Lydda, but Ramaihaim (the noun, with the article represented by the syllable ar), in Ephraim, the birthplace of Samuel (1 Sam. i. 1). In any case, Joseph was now settled at Jerusalem with his family, since he possessed here a burial-place, but only recently, because the sepulchre had not yet been used. — By mentioning Joseph and Nicodemus, John brings out, in the case of both, the contrast between their present boldness and the cautiousness of their previous conduct. That which, as it seemed, must completely dishearten them — the ignominious death of Jesus — causes the faith of these members of the Jewish aristocracy to break forth conspicuously, and delivers them from all human fear. No doubt, on seeing the Lord suspended on the cross, Nicodemus recalls to mind the type of the brazen serpent which Jesus had set before him at first (iii. 14). — T6 irparov designates here, as in x. 40, the beginning of Jesus' ministry. If Nicodemus had been for John, as Reuss seems to affirm, merely a fictitious type, how could he make him appear again here as a real and acting person, and this whUe expressly recalling the scene of ch. Ui. ? — Myrrh is an odoriferous gum ; aloes, a sweet-scented wood. Aftertheyhad been pounded, there was made of them a mixture which was spread over the whole shroud in which the body was wrapped. Probably this cloth was cut into bandages to wrap the limbs separately. The words : "As ihe Jews are accustomed," contrast this mode of embalming with that of the Egpytians, who removed the intestines and, by much longer and more com plicated processes, secured the preservation of the corporeal covering. — The hundred pounds recall to mind the profusion with which Mary had poured the spikenard over the feet of Jesus, ch. xn. ; it is a truly royal homage. The Synoptics tell us that the holy women had the intention also, on their part, to complete this provisional embalming, but only after ihe Sabbath. Vv. 41, 42. " Now there was in the place where he was crucified a garden, and in ihe garden a new sepulchre wherein no one had ever yet been laid.1 42. It was there that they laid Jesus, because of the Preparation qf the Jews ; for the1 sepulchre was near." — According to Matthew, the sepulchre belonged to Joseph himself, and this was the reason of the use which was made of it. According to John, this sepulchre was chosen because of its proximity to Golgotha, since the Sabbath was about to begin. These two reasons, far from contradicting, complete each other. What purpose would the prox imity of the sepulchre have served, if it had not belonged to one of the Lord's friends ? And it was certainly the circumstance that Joseph owned this sepulchre near the place of crucifixion, which suggested to him the idea of asking for the body of Jesus. — John and Luke (xxiii. 53) remark that the sepulchre was new. Comp. Luke xix. 30 : " You shallfind a colt tied whereon yet never man sat." These are providential facts, which belong to the royal glory of Jesus. When a king is received, objects which have not 1 X B : ij* Te0eip.e*Of , inBtead of eTeSjj. 398 FOURTH PART. yet been used are consecrated to his service. — The expression . the Prepara tion of the Jews, signifies, according to those who hold that the death of Jesus took place, not on the 14th, but on the 15th : the Friday of the Jews. But what would be the object of so singular an expression . It was designed, answers Rotermund, ' to give us to understand how it happened that the day following a Sabbatic day (the 15th) was again a Sabbath (Saturday). By this means the first Sabbath became, as it were, the preparation for the sec ond. But if the first of the two days was Sabbatic, like the following one, the carrying away of the body, which they did not wish to do on the next day, could not any more have been done on this day. The quite simple meaning is that it was the hour when tlie Jews (thus is the complement ihe Jews explained) prepared their great national and religious feast by sacrific ing the lamb. They were obliged to hasten because, with the setting of the sun, this day of preparation, the 14th, a non-Sabbatic day,came to its close, and because the following day, the 15th, was in that year a doubly Sabbatic day (ver. 31) ; comp. Luke xxiu. 56. On the Day qf Jesus' Death. Respecting the day of the week on which the death of Jesus took place, the agreement of the four evangelists is manifest ; it was a Friday (Matt, xxvii. 62, Mark xv. 42, Luke xxiii. 54, John xix. 31). But they appear to differ as to the question whether this Friday was the 14th or the 15th of the month Nisan — an apparently insignificant difference, but yet one which implies a more con siderable one. For on this depends the question whether Jesus had celebrated' on the preceding evening the Paschal supper with all the rest of the Jewish people, — in that case Jesus would have died on the 15th, — or whether the people were to celebrate this supper later, on the evening of the day of His death, — in this case the day of His death was the 14th. For the Paschal supper was celebrated on the evening which formed the transition from the 14th to the 15th. I. — The View qf John. According to John xiii. 1, Jesus celebrated His last supper before the feast qf the Passover. Rotermund (in the article which is cited above) affirms, no doubt, with Langen, that the Passover feast began only on the 15th, and that, as a consequence, this supper, which took place before the feast, must be placed on the evening of the 14th, and must therefore be identified with the Paschal supper. But see on xiii. 1. John would not have designated this supper simply by the words : "A supper," or even, if one will have it so, " ihe supper." For the benefit of his Greek readers, he could not have refrained from designating this supper as that qfthe Passover. — The passage xviii. 28, notwithstanding all the efforts of some scholars (comp. also Kirchner, Diejudische Passahfeier, 1870), plainly declares that the Jewish Paschal supper was not yet celebrated on the morning when Jesus was condemned, and consequently that Jesus was put to death on the 14th, and not on the 15th.— The passages xix. 14, 31, 42 lead to the same result. Neither Kirchner nor Rotermund has suc ceeded in proving that expressions such as these : Vie Passover IHday, the 1 Von Ephraim nach Golgotha, Stud, und Krilik., 1876, 1. chap- xix. 41, 42. 399 Friday of the Jews, are natural. That it was a Friday is oertain ; that the word irapaaKevh (preparation) may designate Friday, as the preparation for the Sab bath, is unquestionable. But that in John's context this term paraskeue, prep aration, can have the technical sense of Friday, is inadmissible. — After the observations of Kirchner and Lidhardt, I give up alleging xiii. 19 as decisive, although one still asks oneself how a purchase could have been made during the Passover night, all families, whether rich or poor, being at that time gathered around the Paschal table, and all the shops being consequently closed. H. — The Apparent View qf the Synoptics. This view seems to follow evidently from the three parallels, Matt. xxvi. 17 : " The first day of unleavened bread (the 14th of Nisan), the disciples of Jesus came to him saying, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee the Passover supper?" Mark xiv. 12 : "And on the first day of unleavened bread, when they sacrificed the Passover, the disciples said to him ;' ' Luke xxii. 7 : " The day of unleavened bread came, when the Passover must be sacrificed, and he sent Peter and John." It seems altogether natural to place this question of the disciples, or (according to Luke) this commission which Jesus gives to two of them, on the morning of the 14th, when the preparations of the Paschal supper were made for the evening. And from this fact precisely it is that the apparent contradiction to the narrative of John arises ; for, if Jesus gave this order on the 14th in the morning, the supper which the disciples were to pre pare for the evening could only be the Paschal supper, from which it would follow that His last supper coincided with the Paschal supper of that year. Now, according to John, as we have just proved, the Jewish Paschal supper must have taken place only on the evening which followed that of the last supper of Jesus, on the evening of the day of His death. Here is one of the greatest differences between the Synoptics and John. Since the earliest times it has attracted the notice of all those who have closely studied the Scriptures. And already in the second century, as we shall see, we encounter numerous traces of the discussions which it has raised. HI. — The Attempts at Solution. From the time of St. Jerome, the view of the Synoptic narrative became prev alent in the Church ; it continued so even until the Reformation : Jesus had celebrated the Passover with the whole people before He died. But at that epoch the revival of Biblical studies caused the need to be felt of giving a more exact account of the Gospel narratives ; their apparent disagreement was obvious, and the attempt was made to resolve it. Calvin and Theodore Beza, then Sealiger and Casaubon, brought out the idea, already expressed by Eusebius and Chrysostom (see Tholuck, p. 41), that the Jews, in order that they might not have to celebrate two successive Sabbatic days (Friday, the 15th of Nisan, as the first day of the feast, and the next day, the 16th, which fell in this year on Saturday), had exceptionally delayed by one day the great day of the feast, while Jesus had, for Himself, kept the legal day. Thus would the fact be explained that He, at this time, celebrated the Passover a day sooner than the rest of the people. It appears that, at the present day also, when the 15th of Nisan falls on a Friday, the Jews transfer the feast from this day to Saturday. This solution is very simple and natural. Only we do not find either in the 400 . FOURTH PART. New Testament, or in Josephus, or in the Talmud, any trace of such a trans. position, which .would constitute a grave derogation from the law. Other reasons have been sought which might lead Jesus in this circumstance to deviate from the generally-received usage. Slier has thought that He attached Himself to the mode of action of some sects, like that of the Karaites, who had the custom of celebrating the Paschal supper, not on the evening of the 14th-15th, but on that of the 13th-14th. — Ebrard has supposed that because of the great number of lambs to be slain in the temple (sometimes more than 250,000, according to Josephus) from three to six o'clock in the afternoon, the Galileans had been authorized to sacrifice and eat the lamb on the 13th instead of the 14th. — Serno applies the same supposition to all the Jews of the disper sion. But these hypotheses have no historical basis, and are, in any case, much less probable than that of the Keformors. — Rauch has affirmed that the Israelites in general celebrated the Paschal supper, legally and habituaUy, on the evening of the 13th-14th, and not that of the 14th-15th. But this opinion, which, even if adopted, would yet not resolve the difficulty, strikes against all the known Biblical and historical data. Lutteroth, in his pamphlet, Le jour de la preparation, 1855, and in his Essai a" interpretation de V Evangile de saint Matthieu, 1876, places the day of the con versation of Jesus with His disciples much earlier, on the 10th of Nisan, when the Jews set apart the lamb which was to be sacrificed, on the 14th. It was, according to him, on the same 10th day that Jesus was crucified ; He remained in the tomb on the 11th, 12th, and 13th ; the 14tlfwas the day of His resurrec tion. This entirely new chronology is shattered by the first word of the con versation. How is it possible that the 10th of Nisan should be called by the evangelists the first day of unleavened bread, especially when this determination of the time is made still more precise, as it is in Mark, by the words : " when the Passover is sacrificed." It is true that Lutteroth tries to make this when refer only to the idea of unleavened bread : " the unleavened bread which is to be eaten when the Passover is sacrificed " (!). The words of Luke xxii. 7 : " The day of unleavened bread came, when the Passover must be sacrificed," are still more rudely handled : it is not an historical fact which Luke relates, it is a moral reflection by means of which the evangelist announces at the beginning that the Passion will have an end (!) (Essai, pp. 410, 411 '). — After all these fruitless attempts, one can understand how a large number of critics limit themselves at the present day to establishing the disagreement and declaring it insoluble ; this is what is done by Lucke, Neander, Bleek, de Wette, Steiiz, J. Mutter, Weiss, de Pressense,7 etc. IV. — The Truth of John's Narrative. But if the contradiction exists, it remains to determine which of the two narratives deserves the preference. Then it must be explained how so grave a difference can have arisen in the Gospel narrative. 1 We desire to say that, notwithstanding these the particular views of the author respecting eccentricities, the works of Lutteroth are never- this question. theless monuments of solid learning and perse- a"We regard thus far the contradiction," vering investigation. Pages 60, 76, 77 of the says this author (viithed.), "as insoluble, while pamphlet on tho Passover provo interesting entirely justifying the narrative of John " 0> points of contact ia Patristic literature with 603, note). chap. xix. 41, 42. 401 The critics of the Tubingen school — Baur, Hilgenfeld, Keim — are not embar rassed : it is the Synoptics that have preserved the true historical tradition. As to John's narrative, it is a deliberate alteration of the real history, intended, on the one hand, to make tbe death of Jesus, as the true Paschal lamb, coincide with the time of the sacrificing of the lamb in the temple, and, on the other hand, to throw into the shade the Jewish Paschal supper by making the last supper of Jesus a simple farewell meal. But neither the one nor the other of these ends required a means so compromising as that which is thus ascribed to pseudo-John. Such a disagreement with the first three Gospels, which were already received throughout the whole Church, and with the apostolic tradition, of which these writings were known to be the deposi taries, exposed the work of the fourth evangelist to the danger of being greatly suspected, and that in a very useless way for him. For to present Jesus as the true Paschal lamb, there was no need of such a desperate expedient as that of misplacing the well-known day of His death ; it was enough that this event should be placed in the Paschal week ; there was, therefore, nothing to be changed in the tradition of the Church ; comp. the words of Paul in 1 Cor. v. 7 : " Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us ;" those of Peter, 1 Ep. i. 19, and all the passages of the Apocalypse where Christ is called ihe Lamb. As to the Jewish Passover, there was no need in the second century to depreciate it ; it was already replaced everywhere, both in the Church and in the sects, by the Christian supper (Schurer, pp. 29-34). A second class of critics, as we have seen, try to interpret the texts of John so as to put them in accord with what they think to be the meaning of the Synoptic narrative. They are, for example, Lightfoot, Tholuck, Olshausen, Hengstenberg, Wieseler, Luthardt, Wichelhaus, Hofmann, Lichienstein, Lange, Riggenbach, Ebrard, Baumlein, Langen, Keil. But all their efforts have been unsuccessful in bringing out from John' s text a sense contrary to that which is obvious on reading it. As to the third class, which concedes a real difference between our Gospel narratives, the greater part give the preference to that of John ; thus, among the moderns, Weiss, Pressense (see note on p. 400), Reuss himself (Theol. joh. pp. 59, 60). And, in fact, if the conflict is real, the choice cannot be doubtful. The witnesses in favor of the historical exactness of John's narrative are the following : 1. The Synoptics themselves. — These writings contain a series of facts, and a certain number of words, which are in complete accord with John's narrative and in no less evident disagreement with the view which is attributed to them. If there was an hour sacred to the Jewish conscience, it was that of the Paschal supper ; and yet it was at this hour that a multitude of officers and servants of the chief priests and elders had left their houses and their families, assembled around the Passover table, to go and arrest Jesus in Gethsemane ! Still more, we know that everything which was reprehensible on the Sabbath, as, e.g., to climb a tree, to ride on horseback, to hold a session of a court, was also pro hibited on the festival day (Traite Beza, v. 2) ; and yet there were held, on that Sabbatic night of the 14th-15th, at least two sessions of the court, in one of which the sentence of death for Jesus was pronounced ; and then all those long negotiations with Pilate, as well as the sending to Herod, took place ; all this, notwithstanding the festival and Sabbatic character of the 15th of Nisan ! It is answered that a session of the court w_._i permitted on the festival day, 26 402 FOURTH PART. provided that the sentence was not put in writing, and that, in general, the rule of the festival days was less rigorous than that of the Sabbaths properly so called. But, at the foundation, all the difference between these two kinds of days is limited to the authorization to prepare the necessary articles of food on the festival day, if even we are allowed to draw a general conclusion from Exod. xii. 16. Now would so slight a difference be sufficient to justify the use of such a day which is here implied ? — That Simon of Cyrene, who is returning from the fields (Matt, xxvii. 32) ; that Joseph of Arimathea, who is going to pur chase a linen cloth (Mark xv. 46) ; those women who give up embalming the body, because the Sabbath is drawing near (Luke xxiii. 56) — is all this explicable on the supposition that the day when these things happened thus was itself a Sabbatic day, the 15th of Nisan ? No doubt it is answered that Simon was returning from a simple walk in the country, or that he was a countryman who was going to the city ; then, that purchases might be made on a festival day, provided they were not paid for on the same day. It is nevertheless true that the impression made by the narrative of the Synoptics is that the day of Jesus' death was a working day, entirely different from the Sabbatic day which was to follow ; that it was, consequently, the 14th, and not the 15th of Nisan. This is what appears also from a certaiu number of expressions scattered throughout the Synoptic narrative. Thus Matt. xxvi. 18 : " My time is at hand ; let me keep the Passover at thy house with my disciples." What is the logical connection which unites the two propositions of this message? The only satisfactory relation to be established between them is this : " It is necessary for me to hasten ; for to-morrow it will be too late ; I sball be no longer here ; act, then, so that I may be able to eat the Passover at thy house immediately with my disciples (iroto, the present)." — Matt, xxvii. 62 : The evangelist calls the Saturday during which the body of Jesus reposed in the tomb : " the morrow which is after ihe preparation." In this phrase it is impos sible that the word preparation should have the sense of Friday, as if Matthew had meant to say that the Sabbath during which Jesus was in the tomb was the next day after a Friday .' We do not designate the more solemn day by that which is less so, but the reverse. If the day of the 15th is designated here from its relation to the less solemn day of the preparation which had preceded it, it is because this day of preparation had become much more important, as- the day of Jesus' death. From this singular phrase, therefore, it follows that Jesus was crucified on the 14th. — The same conclusion must be drawn from Mark xv. 42 : " Seeing it was the Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath." It is of the day of Jesus' death that Mark thus speaks. Now, it is impossible that Mark, a Jew by birth, should have characterized a day like the 15th of Nisan as a simple Friday, preceding the Sabbath (Saturday), this 15th day being itself a Sabbath of the first rank. And if the expression : preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, can in the ordinary usage designate a Friday, this technical sense is inapplicable in a context where the reason is explained why a work was allowed which could not be done on the following day. The term preparation has here its general sense according to which it is applied to any day of the week preceding a Sabbath. Mark explains thereby the act of Joseph of Arimathea in burying Jesus, after having bought a linen cloth. " All this was possible," he says, " because it was the preparation, the day before the Sabbath and not the Sabbath. This is what the expression in Luke chap. xix. 41, 42. 403 xxiii. 54 also signifies : " That day was the preparation, and the Sabbath was about to dawn. " All these facts and words, no doubt, do not imply that the redactors of the Synoptic narratives fully understood the conclusion to be drawn from them as to the day of Jesus' death. But they are indications, which are so much the more significant since they seem to be unconscious, of the real tradition rela tive to the day of this death and of the complete conformity of this tradition with the narrative of John. 2. The Talmud. —Some passages of this monument of the Jewish memorials and usages declare expressly that Jesus was suspended on ihe cross on the evening of the Passover (beerev happesach), that is to say, in the Jewish language, the evening before the Passover. The erroneous details which are sometimes mingled in these passages with this fundamental statement do not at all diminish the value of the latter, because it is reproduced several times and identically — a fact which indicates an established tradition. If it is objected that the Jewish scholars derived this statement, not from their own tradition, but from our Gospels, this is to acknowledge that they understood the latter as we ourselves understand them. 3. St. Paul. — Keim cites this apostle as a convincing witness in favor of the Synoptic view. We recognize, he says, in the institution of the Holy Supper (1 Cor. xi,), all the forms of the Jewish Paschal supper— a fact which can be explained only if this last supper of Jesus coincided with the Passover, and if it consequently took place on the evening of the 14th-15th, and not on the evening of the 13th-14th. But Jesus may very well have used the forms of the Paschal supper on an evening before that on which that supper was cele brated ; for, as He says Himself, " his time was at hand," and He was forced to anticipate. From the expression of Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 23 : " The Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed," it follows rather that that night was not the night of the Paschal supper ; otherwise Paul would have characterized it in another way than by the betrayal of Judas. All the witnesses whom we are able to consult, even the Synoptics, who are set in opposition to John, do homage, therefore, to the accuracy of his narrative. V. — The real Meaning of the Synoptic Narrative. But, I would ask, is it indeed certain that the Synoptics really say what they are made to say? They say expressly that "the first day of unleavened bread" (Matt., Mark, Luke), "when the Passover was sacrificed " (Mark), " came" (Luke), and that " the disciples asked Jesus" (Matt., Mark), or that Jesus Himself, taking the initiative, sent John and Peter from Bethany to Jerusalem (Luke), with a view to seeking a place for celebrating the Passover. This conversation is unhesitatingly placed on the morning of the 14th of Nisan for the very simple reason that the days are reckoned, as we ourselves reckon them, making the official day coincide with the natural day. But, in calculating thus, it is forgotten that among the Jews the official day began at six o'clock in the evening, and that thus, when it is said : " The day of unleavened bread came," this indication, properly understood, places us, not in the morning of the 14th, but in the evening of the 13th-14th. . Taking the Synoptics literally, we are obliged to hold that the conversation between Jesus and the disciples of which they tell us took place, not on the 14th in the morn ing, but late in the afternoon of the 13th, between the two evenings, according to 404 FOURTH PART. the customary expression1 — that is, between the moment when the sun sinks to the horizon and that when it disappearis, a moment which is the transition point between the civil day and the day following. Rotermund asserts, no doubt, that, notwithstanding this official way of reckon ing the days, it was always the beginning and the end of the natural day which determined the popular language. But the contrary follows from Luke xxiii. 54, which designates the last moment of Friday evening by the words : " It was the preparation, and the Sabbath was about to dawn," as well as from the phrase which was customary among the Jews, according to which erev haschab- bath, evening qf the Sabbath, denotes the evening, not of Saturday, but of Friday. Moreover, we can cite a telling fact taken from Jewish life at the time of Jesus. On the 16th of Nisan, in the morning, the sacred sheaf was offered as the first- fruits of the entire harvest of the year. This sheaf was cut in a field near to Jerusalem, on the preceding day at evening, or, as we should say, on the 15th at evening. The messengers of the Sanhedrim arrived in the field followed by the people : " Has the sun set '." they asked. — " It has," answered the people. — " Am I to cut?"—" Yes, cut."—" With this sickle?"—" Yes."— "Into this basket?" — "Yes." — And why all these formalities? Because the 15th was a Sabbatic day, and because manual labor, like that of the reaper, must not be done until after it was established that the 15th was ended, and until the 16th, a working day, had begun. We see from this how deeply the way of reckoning days, which we attribute here to the Synoptics (from evening to evening, and not from morning to morning), had penetrated into the Jewish social life. There is also a circumstance which comes to the support of what we are here saying. It was already alleged by Clement qf Alexandria, and its importance has been acknowledged by Strauss. The crowd of pilgrims was so great in Jeru salem at the Passover feast, that no one waited until the morning of the 14th to secure for himself the place where he might celebrate the Paschal supper with his family in the evening. It was on the 13th that this search for a place was attended to. So Clement of Alexandria calls the 13th the irpoeroipaola, the pro-preparation ; 2 for the preparation itself was the day of the 14th. It was certainly, therefore, on the day of the 13th, and not that of the 14th, that the disciples spoke to the Lord, or He to them, with the purpose of procuring the place which they needed for the next day at evening.3 The conversation reported by the Synoptics must have taken place, therefore, at the latest, about five or six o'clock in the afternoon of the 13th, according to our mode of reckon ing the days. Jesus, at that time, sent to Jerusalem the two disciples in whom He felt most confidence, charging them to secure a room. In the thought of all the disciples, it was for the next day at evening ; but Jesus gives His two messengers to understand that it was for that same evening. This is what the terms of the message imply which He intrusted to them for the host whom He had in view : "My time is at hand : I must hasten." And why this course of 1 Exod. _dl. 6 : " The whole assembly of the thee the Passover . For this day waB the pro. children of Israel shall kill the lamb between preparation of the Passover." the two evenings"— that is, late in the afternoon • Strauss himself says (Leben Jesu fur dot of the 14th. yolk, p. 533) ; "it was naturally difficult, if not * Clement expresses himself thus : " On the impossible, in view ofthe crowd of foreign pil- 13th Ho taught His disciples the mystery of grlms, to procure on the morning of the first tho typb of the lamb, when they asked Him, day of the feast a place in the city for the saying : Where wilt thou that we prepare for evening." chap. xix. 41, 42. 405 action, which was full of mystery ? The reason for it is simple. Judas must not know in advance the house where Jesus would spend this last evening with His disciples.— From six to eight or nine o'clock, the disciples would have time enough for preparing the supper, even for killing and preparing the lamb, which was already set apart since the 10th of Nisan. Undoubtedly they did not sacrifice it in the temple. But could they have done this, even on the official day and at the official hour— they who must have been excommunicated as adherents of Jesus (ix. 22) ? However this may be, according to the primi tive institution of the Passover (Exod. xii. 6, 7), it belonged to every Israelite to sacrifice his lamb in his own house ; the sacrificing in the temple was a matter of human tradition. And at that time, when the Israelitish Passover was about to come to an end, to be replaced by the sacramental supper of the new covenant, it was altogether natural to return to the simplicity of the start ing-point. The priestly sacrificing was useless when the typical lamb had no longer any other part to fill than that of serving as the inauguration of the new supper which was to replace the old. It has been objected (Keim, Luthardt) that Jesus did not have the right to change the legal day of the Pass over. But if He was the Lord qf the Sabbath, the corner-stone of the whole cere monial law (Mark ii. 28), He was certainly the same also with respect to the Passover. The legal Paschal supper was no longer for Him, at that moment, anything but the calyx, withered henceforth, from the bosom of which the com memorative supper of the perfect Redemption was about to blossom. Let us -also observe an interesting coincidence between the well-known Jewish usages and the narrative of the Synoptics, as we have just explained it. On the evening of the 13th, about six o'clock, the lamps, were lighted in order to search the most obscure corners of the houses and to remove every particle of leaven. Then, before the stars appeared, a man went from every house to draw the pure water with which the unleavened bread must be kneaded. Does not this usage very naturaUy explain the sign given to Peter and John when Jesus said to them : " On entering the city, you wiU meet a man bearing a pitcher of water ; follow him into the house where he shall enter' ' (Luke xxii. 10) . The solution which we here present is not new ; it is at the foundation the same which was already set forth in the second century by the two writers who were especially "occupied with this question at the time when it seems to have deeply engaged the attention of the Church, Apollinaris l of Hierapolis and Clem ent of Alexandria.'2 The first expresses himself thus : " The day of the 14th is the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice, in which the Son of God, put in the place of the lamb, was delivered up to be crucified." The second says, with still more precision : " In the preceding years, Jesus had celebrated the feast by eating the Paschal lamb according as [on the day when] the Jews sacrificed it. But on the 13th, the day on which the disciples interrogated Him, He taught them the mystery [of the type of the lamb]. ... It was on this day (the 13th) that the consecration of the unleavened bread and the pro-prepara tion of the Passover took place ; . . . and our Saviour suffered on the day following (the 14th) : for He was Himself the true Passover. . . . And this is 1 We write the name thus according to the of extracts from ancient authors, made from ordinary usage (instead of Apotinarius). the fourth to the seventh century, and discov- 7 In the fragments of different works pre- ered in Sicily in the sixteenth century (Le jour served in the Chronicon Paschale, a compilation de la preparation, by Lutteroth, p. 59}. 406 FOURTH PART. the reason why the chief priests and scribes, when leading Him to Pilate, did not enter into the Prsetorium, that they might not be defiled and might eat the Passover in the evening without any hindrance." In reality, therefore, we have only reproduced Clement's solution in the most violent of the Paschal disputes of the second century, of which we shall soon speak. Weiss, who rejects every solution, yet acknowledges that, strictly speaking, Mark xiv. 12 is the only passage which is opposed to what we have just set forth. What seems to him incompatible with it is the remark : " The first day of unleavened bread, when ihe Passover was sacrificed." But why could not these last wordB be applied to the evening of the 13th, if this evening, according to the Jewish manner of reckoning, belonged already to the 14th, on the afternoon of which tho lamb was sacrificed ? Weiss cannot himself refrain from adding that, in any case, the question of the disciples, if placed in the morning of the 14th, is improbable, for the people did not ever expect to occupy themselves at that time with the place of the supper. De Pressense has nothing else to object ex cept the words of Matt. xxvi. 20 : " And when the evening was come, he reclined at table with the Twelve, ' ' which implies, he says, that the prepara tions for the supper were made, not a few moments earlier in the evening, but during the course of the day. This remark would perhaps be well founded if the evangelist had had in view, in writing these Unes, the question which occupies us. But Matthew does not seem, any more than the other two Synop tics, to have accounted for the problem which is raised by the traditional account ; he simply meant to say that this last supper of Jesus took place, not in the daytime, but in the evening. It is probable that two circumstances contributed to the want of clearness which prevails in the Synoptical narration : first, the very easy confounding of the civil and natural day, and then the fact that the institution of the Holy Supper had impressed on this last supper a character very similar to that of the Paschal feast. Finally, let us recall to memory the lights which exegesis has asked from astronomy with respect to this question. The question being to determine whether, in the year of Jesus' death, the great Sabbatic day of the 15th of Nisan fell on Friday, as the Synoptic narrative, or on Saturday, as the narra tive of John implies, the calculation of the lunar phases might serve, it was thought, to decide the question. Two astronomers set themselves to the work, Wurm, of Gottingen (BengeVs Archiv., 1816, II.), and Oudtmann, Professor at Utrecht (Revue de theologie, 1863, p. 221). But it is necessary to begin by determining the year of Jesus' death, and scholars still differ on this point. Ideler and Zumpl place it in 29 ; Winer, Wieseler, Lichtens>ein, Caspari, Pres sense, etc., in 30 ; Ewald, Renan, in 33 ; Keim, in 35 ; Hilzig, in 36. In this state of things, the two astronomers have extended their calculation to the whole series of years 29-36 of our era. The result, as to the year 30, which we think, with most of the oritios, to be the year of the death, is the following : In this year, the 15th of Nisan fell on a Friday. This result would condemn our explanation ; but Caspari, taking up anew the calculation of Wurm, start ing from the same data as this astronomer, has arrived at the opposite result. Aooording to him, in the year 30 the 15th of Nisan was Saturday, as it must be according to our explanation. The fact is, that we find ourselves here face to faoe with the incalculable uncertainties and subtleties of the Jewish calendar. Wurm himself deolares that one can speak here only of probabilities, that there chap. xix. 41, 42. 407 will ever remain an uncertainty of one or two days. Now, everything depends on a single day (Keim, III., p. 490-500). It is safer to work upon positive texts than upon such unsettled foundations. And as for ourselves, everything being carefully weighed, we think that the most probable date of Jesus' death may be stated thus : Friday, the 14ft qf Nisan (7ft qf April), in the year 30. We are happy to agree, on the question of the relation between John and the Synoptics, with some modern scholars : Krummel, Darmstadt Lilieraturblatt, Feb., 1858 ; Baggesen, Der Aposiel Johannes, 1869 ; Andrew, in the Beweis des Olaubens, Der Todestag Jesu, July to September, 1870. — On the consequences Cf the historical superiority of John's narrative, with reference to the authen ticity of the Fourth Gospel, see Introd., Vol. I., pp. 77-79. VI. — Glance at the History of the Paschal Controversies. The fact which lies at the foundation of that long disagreement between the primitive churches is the following : The churches of Asia Minor celebrated the Paschal feast by fasting during the whole of the 14th of Nisan and by com municating on the evening of this day, at the time when the Jews were eating the lamb. The other churches of Christendom, Rome at their head, fasted, on the contrary, during the days which preceded the Passover Sunday, which was always the Sunday that followed the 14th ; then they received the sacrament in the morning of this Passover Sunday. —In both cases the communion ter minated the fast. First phase of the discussion. About 155, • Polycarp, in a visit which he makes to Rome, has a conversation on this subject with Anicetus, the bishop of Rome. Each defends the rite of his own church in the name of an apostolic tradition of which it claimed to be the depositary (originating at Ephesus from John and Philip, at Rome from Paul and Peter). There is no proof that on this occasion they entered within the exegetical and dogmatic domain of the question. The ecclesiastical peace remained undisturbed. " The diversity in the rite served rather," as Irenceus says, " to establish agreement in faith."2 Second phase. Fifteen years later, in 170, there breaks out. in the midst even of the churches of Asia, at Laodicea, a disagreement on the subject of the Passover. There are persons there— who are they ? we shall have to examine this point— who, like the Asiatics, celebrate the 14th in the evening, but rest ing upon this fact : that it was on the 14th in the evening that Jesus instituted the Supper, in conformity with the time prescribed by the law for the Paschal supper, and they rest upon the narrative of Matthew, according to which the Lord was crucified on the 15th.3 We see that from the domain of tradition the question is 'Carried to that of exegesis. Melilo is the first who writes on this subject, with what view we do not know. Then, on occasion (.f airlag) of his book — not against him, as Schurer still claims — Apollinaris* and Clement of Alexandria also take up the pen. Both, according to the fragments quoted in the Chronicon Paschale, prove that Jesus celebrated His last supper on the 1 Recent discoveries, due especially to Wad- mouth of these persons : " The Lord kept the dington, seem to prove that the martyrdom of Passover and suffered on that day ; this is the Polycarp occurred in 155 or 156, and not later, reason why I should do as Se did." Comp. as was supposed. also the answer which Apollinaris gives to 7 Letter to Victor (Euseb. K. __., v. 24). them, that " in that case the Gospels would ' The following are the words which Hip- contradict each other" (Introd., Vol. L, p. yolytus, in the Philosophumena, puts Into the 143). 408 FOURTH PART. 13th, and that He died on the 14th. They specially allege John's narrative in favor of this view. But who are the Laodicean adversaries whom these two writers oppose ? Baur, Hilgenfeld, Schurer, Luthardt, answer : They are the churches of Asia themselves, with their celebration of the 14th. Apollinaris was even in Asia the adversary of the Asiatic rite. It is difficult to believe this. For, ]. Eusebius presents the churches of Asia before us as unanimous: "The churches of the whole qf Asia thought, according to an ancient tradition, that they must observe the 14th by the celebration of the Holy Supper." I£ this consensus of all the churches of Asia had been broken by so considerable a bishop and doctor as Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Eusebius, the pronounced adversary of the Asiatic rite, would not have failed to notice it. Baur alleges that a little later Polycrates, when enumerating in his letter to Victor, a bishop of Rome, all the illustrious personages who practised the Asiatic rite, does not mention Apollinaris. But he names only the dead. Apollinaris might also be found among the numerous bishops of whom Polycrates speaks without naming them, who surrounded him at the time when he was writing his letter, and who gave their assent to it. 2. If Apollinaris had made a division as related to his colleagues in Asia, the dispute would, no doubt, have broken out in his home, at Hierapolis, rather than at Laodicea. 3. The polemic of Apollinaris by no means implies opposition to the Asiatic rite and adhesion to the occi dental rite. The adversaries justified their observance of the 14th by resting upon the fact that this was the evening on which Jesus had instituted the Supper. Apollinaris remarks that this view puts the first three- Gospels in contradic tion to that of John. But this does not prevent him from celebrating the 14th also — only for another reason. In any case, it is impossible to understand how this view of Apollinaris, according to which Jesus died on the 14th, not the 15th, could have favored the Roman observance, according to which the Holy Passover Supper was celebrated on the following Sunday. 4. Schurer is embarrassed here by a manifest contradiction : According to him, the Asiatic rite did not rest on any fact of the Gospel history, neither on the time of the insti tution of the Supper nor on the day of Jesus' death. It arose only from the fact that the 14th was the day of the Jewish Paschal supper, which had been simply transformed, in Asia, into the Christian Supper. But, on the other hand, in the presence of the polemics of Apollinaris, he is forced to acknowledge that his adversaries fixed the Supper on the 14th, in remembrance of the day of the institution of the Supper. These two grounds of the same observance not coin ciding, he ought not to maintain that the Laodieeans combated by Apollinaris are no others than the churches of Asia in general. It ia with reason, therefore, that Weitzel and Sleiiz, with whom are associated Ritschl, Meyer, Reville, etc., have been led to see in the Laodieeans, contended against by Apollinaris, a Judaizing party whioh arose in the Church of Asia, and whioh had as its aim to preserve for the Holy Supper the character of a complete Jewish Passover supper, as they imagined that the Lord also had celebrated that supper before He died. Then the polemic of Apollinaris and Clement takes effect. These people said : " We wish to do as the Lord did [oelebrate the Paschal supper on the 14th], and this by eating the Paschal lamb as He did." The two Fathers answer : " The Lord did not do this. He carried back the Paschal supper of the 14th to the 13th in the evening, and this by instituting the Supper." This opinion evidently did not prevent Apollinaris chap. xix. 41, 42. 409 from remaining faithful to the rite of his Church, since, as Schurer himself acknowledges, if the churches of Asia celebrated the 14th, as did the Laodi eeans, it was not as having been the day of the institution of the Supper. I would differ in opinion from Weitzel and Steitz only on two points : 1. The Laodicean adversaries, against whom Apollinaris contends, do not seem to me to have been an Ebionite sect properly so called, but only a branch of the Church of Asia, with a more pronounced Judaizing tendency. 2. The rite of the churches of Asia did not arise, probably, as these scholars think, from the fact that, in their view, Jesus died on the 14th, but quite simply from the fact that in these churches the day of the Israelitish Paschal supper was main tained. This is what results from the following words of Eusebius : " The churches of Asia thought they must celebrate the 14th, the day on which the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb;" then more clearly still from those of Polycrates : " And all my relatives (bishops before me) celebrated the day when the people removed the leaven." The Asiatic rite is expressly placed in connec tion with the day of Christ' s death only in two passages of the fourth and fifth centuries— one in Epiphanius, the other in Theodoret (see Schurer, pp. 57, 58)— a fact which shows clearly that this point of view was not the prevailing one at the beginning of the discussion. Third phase. Between 180 and 190 a certain Blastus (comp. the Adv. Haer. of the pseudo-Tertullian, c. 22) attempted to transplant the Asiatic rite to Rome. It was probably this circumstance which reawakened the dispute between the Churches of Rome and Asia, represented at this epoch, the one by Victor, the other by Polycrates. The latter, in his letter to Victor, no longer defends his cause by the traditional arguments, as Polycarp had done thirty years before. " He went through all the Holy Scriptures before writing (irdaav dylav ypai)v Sie'kri'kvQag)." And he declares that " his predecessors also observed the 14th according to ihe Gospel (Kara to evayyeliov)." These words give rise to reflection. It has been sought to get rid of them by means of sub. tleties (see the embarrassment of Schurer, p. 35). They evidently prove, as do those which precede, that Polycrates and the bishops of Asia had succeeded in establishing an agreement between the Gospels, by means of which these writings not only did not contradict one another (rb evayye"kiov, the one Gospel in the four), but also were in accord with the law itself (all the Scriptures). Such expressions imply that Polycrates and his bishops had found the Asiatic rite confirmed first by the law (the question is of the Paschal institution, Exod. xii., fixing the Paschal supper on the 14th), then by the unanimity of the canonical Gospels, which has no meaning unless Polycrates harmonized the Synoptics with John by interpreting them as we ourselves have done. There is, therefore, a perfect equivalency between these words of Polycrates and that which Apollinaris had maintained against the Laodieeans, when he said : " Not only is their opinion contrary to the law, which requires that the lamb should be sacrificed on the 14th (and consequently that Christ also should die on the 14th), but also there would be [according to the opinion which they defend] disagreement between the Gospels [since, according to them, Matthew fixed the death of Christ on the 15th, while John places it on the 14th]." This dispute was quieted by the efforts of Irenasus and many others, who interposed with Victor and arrested him as he was proceeding to violent measures. Fourth phase. It, is marked by the decision of the Council of Nice, in 325, which enjoined upon the Orientals to fall in with the Occidental rite, which 410 FOURTH PART. was now generally adopted. "At the end of the matter," says Eusebius (in his irepi rijg tov irdoxa eopTijg, Schurer, p. 40), " the Orientals yielded ;" " and thus," adds the same historian, " they broke finally with the murderers of the Lord, and united with their co-religionists (61_.o<5_fo.c)." In fact, the prac tical consequence of the Asiatic rite was that the Christians of Asia found themselves to be celebrating the Holy Paschal Supper at the same time as the Jews were celebrating their Passover supper, thus separating themselves from all the other Christians who celebrated the Supper on the following Sunday. This rite became in the view of the other Churches, as it were, the sign of a secret sympathy for the unbelieving Jews. This was what determined its defeat. There were, nevertheless, Christians who, like the Judaizerg of Laodicea, persisted in the observance of the 14th for the reason that Jesus had instituted the Supper on that day at evening. They figure under the names of Audians, Quarto-decimans, in the lists of later heresies. Athanasius frankly confesses that they are not easily to be refuted when they allege these words of the Synoptics : "On tlie first day of unleavened bread, ihe disciples came to Jesus" (Schurer, p. 45). ¦ We here come upon the first symptom of the pre ponderance which the Synoptical narrative finally gained in the Church over that of John, and which it maintained through the middle ages and . even to modern times. The Synoptics, more popular than John and apparently more clear, forming besides a group of three against one, and especially no longer encountering in the way of counterpoise the fear of a mingling of the Christian Supper and the Jewish Passover, carried the day in the general feel ing. Jerome is the one of the Fathers who contributed most to this victory. But how are we to explain the origin qf the two observances — the Asiatic and ihe Roman — in the second century ? 2 — Paul had no fear of bringing into the Church the celebration of the Jewish Passover feast (Acts xx. 6 ; comp. 1 Cor. v. 7, 8 with xvi. 8). He transformed and spiritualized its rites — this is beyond doubt ; the Holy Supper was substituted for the Paschal supper of the lamb and unleavened bread ; but the time of the celebration was the same ; this seems to follow from Acts xx. 6. John certainly did not do otherwise ; it was thus that the celebration of the Holy Supper on the evening of the 14th of Nisan was quite naturally introduced into Asia. But the churches of the West, more estranged from Judaism, felt a certain repugnance to this unity in point of time which was established between the Jewish and the Christian feast, and to the kind of dependence in which the simultaneous ness placed the second with relation to the first. They therefore threw off the yoke ; and, instead of celebrating the Holy Passover Supper on the 14th at evening, as they already had the institution of the weekly Sunday, distinct from that of the Jewish Sabbath, they fixed this ceremony for the morning of the Sunday which in each year followed the 14th of Nisan, or, to Speak more properly, the full moon of March.3 Thus, no doubt, the occidental 1 It is to one of these obstinate and hence- 3 Schurer seems to us to have thrown real forth schismatic Quarto-decimans that we light on this important and difficult point, pp. must apply the words of Eusebius, in the work 61 ff . cited above (Schurer, p. 40): "But if any one 3 This is the way in which it happens, ob- says that it is written : On the first day qf un- serves Schurer rightly, that the name Easter is leavened bread."— It is obvious that this ob- applied at the present time to the day of the Jection embarrasses Eusebius as well as Atha- resurrection rather than to that of the death. nasius. chap. xix. 41, 42. 411 observance grew up, which finally carried the day over the primitive observ ance. The Church is free in these matters. The result of this long and complicated history, so far as relates to the sub- jeot which occupies our attention, seems to us to be this : From the time when the Church occupied itself with the exegetical side of the question, it attached itself to the Johannean narrative. It made use of it, on the one hand, to refute by the pen of Apollinaris the exegetical basis on which the Laodicean party rested the observance of the 14th (by making that day, according to Matthew, the day of the institution of the Supper) ; on the other hand, to defend against Rome, by the pen of Polycrates, the Asiatic celebration of the 14th, by presenting the Supper as the Jewish Passover spiritualized— that is to say, as the feast of the Christian redemption, the counterpart of the deliverance from Egypt. The matter in question, therefore, for the Church of Asia, was not that of celebrating the 14th of Nisan as the day of the institution of the Supper, nor even, properly speaking, as the day of Jesus' death (against Steitz). It simply Christianized the Jewish Passover. The Asiatic observance, therefore, does not furnish, as Baur has claimed, an argument against the Johannean origin of the Fourth Gospel ; quite the contrary, the polemic of Apollinaris against the Laodieeans, and that of Polycrates against Victor, are a striking testimony given to the narrative of the Fourth Gospel. To sum up, the difference between John and the Synoptics may be stated and explained as follows : In drawing up the oral tradition, the Synoptical writers contented them selves, as he did, with placing the last supper of Christ on the 14th of Nisan, the first day of unleavened bread, without expressly distinguishing between the first and the second evening of that day. Now, as Jesus had given to this last supper, celebrated on the evening of the 13th-14th, the forms of the Paschal supper, which took place on the evening of the 14th-15th, in order to substitute the Holy Supper for the Paschal feast for the future, a misunderstanding might easily arise ; it might be imagined that this supper was itself the Paschal feast of the 14th, which necessarily had the effect of carrying over the day of the death of Jesus to the 15th. John (as he had done so many times in his work) desired to dissipate the sort of obscurity which prevailed in the Synoptics, and to rectify the misunderstanding to which their narrative might easily lead. He therefore intentionally and clearly re-established the real course of things to which, moreover, the Synoptic narrative bore testimony at all point*. FIFTH PAKT. XX. I.— 29. THE RESURRECTION. The fourth part of the Gospel has shown us the Jewish people carrying unbelief with reference to Jesus even to complete apostasy, and consummat ing this spiritual crime by the crucifixion of the Messiah. In the fifth we see the fidelity of the disciples raised to complete faith by the supreme earthly manifestation of the glory of Jesus — His resurrection. The narrative of John pursues its independent path through the some what divergent narratives of the Synoptics, and, without any effort, gives us a glimpse of their harmony. In a first section (vv. 1-18), the evangelist relates how, in consequence of the report of Mary Magdalene, the two prin cipal apostles attained to faith in the resurrection, and describes the first ap pearance of Jesus. The second section, vv. 19-23, relates His appearance in the midst of the Twelve, by means of which He established faith in the apostolic company. The third (vv. 24-29) describes the finishing of this work, which remained unfinished after the preceding appearance. I. — Mary, Peter and John at the sepulchre; Appearance to Mary : w. 1-18. 1. Vv. 1-10. The entire first part of this section tends towards the words of ver. 8 : " And he saw and believed." After this, the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene makes the latter the messenger who should prepare all the dis ciples for faith, as she had brought the first two to the sepulchre. Vv. 1-3. " On the first day ofthe week, Mary Magdalene goes to the sepulchre early, while it was yet dark, and she sees tliat the stone is taken away1 from the sepulchre ; 2, she runs therefore and comes to Simon Peter and to the disciple whom Jesus loved, and says to them, They have taken away the Lord from the sepulchre, and we know not where tliey hare laid him. 3. Peter therefore went forth, and ihe other disciple, and they came to the sepulchre. " — In the expres sion pla tov aafifi&Tav, we may give to the word adpfiara the meaning Sabbath : "the first day (pla) starting from the Sabbath." But Luke xviii. 12 proves that o&pparov or <.<_/3/.ara signifies also the entire week, as forming 1 X some Mnn. It""i Cop. Sah. add a.™ ttj. (from tlie door of the sepulchre). dvpas before -k tov pvrfpeiov (X) or to, pvnpeiov chap. xx. 1-3. 413 the interval between two Sabbaths. It is better therefore to explain pla : the first [of the days] of the week. The name M.ayih'Avvv (Magdalene) is derived from that of village of Magdala, probably El Megdjil, two leagues north ward of Tiberias, on the borders of the lake of Gennesareth. The greater the deliverance which Mary Magdalene owed to Jesus (Lukc viii. 2, Mark xvi. 9), the more ardent was her gratitude, the more lively her attachment to His person. John does not speak of the purpose which brought her to the sepulchre, but it is indicated by the Synoptics : it was to embalm the Lord's body. Did she come alone . This is in itself scarcely probable, at so early an hour in the morning. The Synoptics inform us that she had companions who came with the same intention as herself. They were Mary, the mother of James, Salome, Joanna and some others who had come with Jesus from Galilee (Matt, xxviii. 1, Mark xvi. 1, Luke xxiv. 10). There is in John's narrative itself a word which gives us to understand that she did not come alone. It is the plural olSapev, we know ; for, whatever Meyer may say, it is impossible to understand by this we : I, Mary, and you, the disciples (!). If Mary alone is mentioned, it is because of the part which she plays in the following scene. Meyer makes the ovk olda, I do not know, of ver. 13 an objection. But this contrast is precisely what disproves it. There she is alone with the angels, and naturally she speaks only in her own name, as she also says : My Lord, and no longer : the Lord (ver. 2). — These women or some of them came together. But, as soon as from a distance they saw the tomb open, Mary Magdalene, carried away by her vividness of impression, hastens to go and tell the disciples, while her companions come even to the sepulchre. There is a slight chronological difference between John, Matthew and Luke, who say : " As it was dark," or "at the dawn of day," and Mark, who says : " The sun having risen." Perhaps there were several groups of women in succession whom each evangelist unites in a single one. Hence this slight difference as to the time of arriving. It was during the absence of Mary that her companions received the message of the angel, related by the three Synoptics. — Matthew xxviii. 9, 10 relates that, on their return from the sepulchre, there was an appearance of Jesus to these women. But the narrative in Mark xvi. 8 and especially the words of the two disciples from Emmaus, Luke xxiv. 22, 23 : " They had a vision of angels, saying that he was alive," are incompatible with this fact. This appearance to the women is, therefore, no other than the appearance to Mary Magdalene (which is to follow in John) generalized. All the details of the appearance coincide. The First Gospel applies to the entire group what happened to one of its members. As Mary Magdalene saw the Lord only after the other women had returned to the city, we may understand how the two disciples from Emmaus were" able to depart from Jerusalem without having heard of any appearance of Jesus (Luke xxiv. 24). There had been, therefore, in fact, no other appearances in the morning of this day, except that of the angels to the women and then to Mary Magdalene, and finally that of Jesus to the latter. There is no reason here for making the loud outcry against our narratives which is uttered by criticism {Keim, III., p. 530), 414 FIFTH PART. The repetition of the preposition irpbg, to, in ver. 2, leads us to think that the two disciples had different homes, which is natural if John lived with his mother and with Mary, the mother of Jesus. — The term ia)'ikei, loved, has something of familiarity in it beyond vyaira ; it is undoubtedly used here be cause the matter in question is a simple indication of a fact, without any par ticular emphasis, Jesus Himself being absent. — The imperfect vpxovro, they were coming, repairing, is pictorial ; comp. iv. 30. ^This imperfect of continuance reflects the feeling of inexpressible expectation which caused the hearts of the disciples to beat during the running to the sep ulchre. Vv. 4-7. "And they ran both together; and the other disciple1 ran more quickly than Peter, and he came first to the sepulchre ; 5, and, stooping down, he sees the linen cloths7 lying on the ground;3 yet he did not enter in. 6. Simon Peter, following him, comes, and he entered into the sepulchre; and he beholds the linen cloths lying on the ground,7 7, and the napkin, which had been placed upon his head, not lying with the other linen cloths, but rolled up and lying in a place by itself." — John, being younger and more agile, arrives first. But his emotion is so strong that he timidly stops at the entrance to the sepulchre, after having looked in. Peter, of a more masculine and practical character, resolutely enters. These details are so natural, and so harmonious with the personality of the two disciples, that they bear in themselves the seal of their authenticity. They recall those of ch. i. — The present he sees (ver. 5) is contrasted with the aorist came (ver. 4) ; the same contrast occurs again between the verbs he entered and he beholds (ver. 6). This difference springs from the contrast between the moment of arrival or of entrance and the continuance of the examination which follows or pre cedes. The word fieupel, beholds, unites in one- the observation of the fact and the reflection on the fact. These linen cloths spread out did not sug gest a removal ; for the body would not have been carried away completely naked. The napkin, especially, rolled up and laid aside carefully, attested, not a precipitate removal, but a calm awakening. Here was what might suggest reflection to the two disciples. Vv. 8-10. " Then entered in also the other disciple who had first come to the sepulchre ; and lie saw and believed. 9. For they did not yet 4 understand the Scripture which says that he should rise from the dead. 10. Then ihe disciples returned to their own homes. " — The singular verbs he saw and he believed are remarkable. Until this point two disciples had been spoken of, and in the following verse the story joins them again : Tliey did not understand. These two verbs in the singular, which separate the plural verbs, cannot have been placed here unintentionally : the author evidently wishes to speak of an experience which is peculiar to himself. He cannot testify, for the other disciple ; but he can do so for himself. This must, indeed, -lave been one of the most ineffaceable moments of his life. He initiates us into 1 S omits k