§ 782a 1:1–18—On the doctrinal importance of the Prologue and on the concept and term Logos, see § 781 a, b, c. The most convenient division seems to be: The Word as God and Creator, 1–5; the role of the Baptist and the Advent of the Word, 6–13; the Word Incarnate, whose glory, as fount of grace and truth, is witnessed by the Apostles, by the Baptist, by the Church, 14–18. 1, 2. The phrase ‘In the beginning’ brings us up to the anterior verge of time from which creation descends, Gen 1:1; when the genesis of things began, the Word already was. This substantive verb was denotes existence and, in the context, pre-existence, self-existence. The Word is, therefore, eternal; and its name denotes that it is a Wisdom-Being, the Offspring of intelligence. The chain-linking of subjects and predicates in 1a, b, c should be noted; Logos links with Logos and Theos with Theos, the order of words in Gk being Predicate-Subject, S7559P, PS. The Challoner revision of D7560V had (almost perforce) partially to abandon this order which had been stubbornly retained by the original Rhemish translators. In 1b the preposition ‘with’ (πρός) marks the Word as distinct from Another called God, but here God has the Gk definite article, to show that the relation is that of person to person. The preposition πρός is actually the one chosen by Aristotle to express the category of relation; it means ‘towardness’, but in several passages of the NT it is used with the accusative in the same sense as with the dative, namely, of being or dwelling together but perhaps denotes greater intimacy, Mt 13:56. ‘The Word was with God’ means two not one; but the unity of the divine essence is safe; for ‘the Word was God’, Theos here (without the Gk article) being a predicate and a noun of essence. This first verse of the Prologue, therefore, attributes to the Word eternity, distinct personality, Godhead.
§ b 2.The emphatic Rhemish ‘this’, changed to ‘the same’ by Challoner, stands for the Logos of the last stichos, that is, the Logos-Theos—‘He was in the beginning with God’ is a résumé of his Divinity, his Eternity, and his Personal distinction from him who in vv 14 and 18 is called the Father. The term ‘Son’, which pervades the whole subsequent Gospel, does not occur in the best Gk MSS of the Prologue except equivalently, for the Word is called ‘Only-Begotten’, 14, and even ‘Only-begotten God’, 18. 3–5. The relation of the Word to all creation in general and to mankind in particular is the theme of these three verses. We pass at once from one pivotal verb, that of being to another pivotal verb, that of coming to be or becoming (εἶναι and γίνεσθαι). 3. ‘All things’—πάντα without the article meaning all and each—‘through him came to be’. Our translation uses by, to exclude the suggestion of instrumental agency conveyed by through. The context, however, sufficiently excludes it, for the Word, being God, cannot be an instrument. Besides, ‘Coming to be’ here means creation, and creation is an act immediately divine in which no secondary agent can be a partner. The same preposition is used of God the Creator elsewhere (Rom 11:36; cf. 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16). The Word is not an instrument of creation, but since the Word is the Wisdom-Person in the Godhead, the quasi-instrumental expression ‘through him’ is quite appropriate. § c The next group of words brings us to a problem of punctuation. The absolute universality of the creative action of the Word is emphasized by negative repetition in Semitic fashion: ‘Without him nothing came to be’. Many ancient authorities placed a full stop here and began the next sentence: ‘What has come to be in him was life’. This reading is traceable from the 2nd cent. through the early Gnostics and their adversary Irenaeus, through most of the Alexandrian, Syrian, Palestinian and Latin writers, in very authoritative uncial codices (except B and S which show no punctuation), in ancient versions and in the MS transmission of V7561g. St Augustine, to whom its Platonic touch undoubtedly appealed, seems to have made its fortune in the Latin Church. The Clementine edition of V7562g remains indecisive (using a comma only between 3 and 4), but the Roman Missal and Ritual are clearly in favour of beginning the new sentence with the words: ‘In him was life’. Mainly through St John Chrysostom (it seems) this latter mode of dividing became almost universal in the Greek Church and in later Gk MSS. It had the support of St Jerome amongst Latins, and is adopted by the vast majority of NT editors and commentators. We translate, therefore (noting the change of tense in the verb γέγονεν from aorist to perfect and also the emphasis secured by resolving into its components a Gk negative substantive—‘not-one-thing’ instead of ‘nothing’): ‘Without him came to be not-one-thing that has come to be’. The reading: ‘Whatever has come to be, in him was life’, though orthodox and beautiful, seems alien to the Evangelist’s mind and possibly has its origin in a construe of St John’s words by Gnostic commentators. This is a text-critical case in which the authority of the most ancient MS testimony does not prevail against other criteria. § d 4. The Evangelist next descends from creatures in general to man in particular. ‘In him (the Word) was life’. The term life is, of course, to be taken causatively in the sense of Ps 35 (36):10—‘With thee is the fountain of life, and in thy light we shall see light’. St John is certainly not thinking of plants and beasts, but of man only. Whether ‘life’ here has the specialized meaning ‘spiritual or supernatural life’ which it has throughout the whole Gospel (see B7563i 1 [1920] 38–58, 213–39) has been doubted, because of the absence of the article. In any case grace does not supplant, but elevates nature, and consequently spiritual life diffused by the Word as a supernatural gift supposes the life of intelligence and free will. However, the rule of context and the opposition between light and darkness seem decisive in favour of supernatural life. Precisely because man is an intelligent creature, supernatural life for him is primarily light illuminating his mind. Hence baptism was called photismos or illumination. § e 5. The present tense ‘shineth’ denotes habitual efficacy extending to past, present and future. The light is there, powerful to illuminate at all times. The metaphor ‘darkness’ has a moral meaning in St John. It is not merely privation of light but opposition to it (cf. 3:19). ‘The darkness did not take it’. ‘Comprehend’ is a good translation, in as much as it conveys the ambiguity of the Gk compound verb κατέλαβεν. The Greek Fathers (Cyril of Alexandria excepted) understood this verb in the sense of ‘hostile seizure and suppression’ (cf. Mk 9:17). Still, although it is true that the darkness did not overcome the light, this idea does not seem to belong to the sequence of the Evangelist’s thought. Therefore, we understand the verb as parallel to the verbs in 10c, 11b, 12a—ἔγνω, παρέλαβον, ἔλαβον in the sense of ‘take, receive, welcome’. The darkness was unreceptive (cf. Phil. 3:12 f.).
§ f 6–8. To what extent St John has the pre-Christian activity of the illuminative Word in mind, is very difficult to assess. Although indeed the mystery of the Incarnation is first announced in 14, all that runs from 6 to 12 seems nevertheless to refer primarily to the historical appearance of the Word in human form. This is apparently the reason why the Precursor is introduced here, before a series of verses, 9–13, which at first sight seem to refer to the pre-Incarnation manifestations of the Word—to his prophetic advent, as we should say. It is true that from the time of the first promise in Eden the attitude of mankind towards God’s plan is implicitly or explicitly an attitude towards the mystery of the Word Incarnate, so that all rejections of the Light in earlier days were only anticipations of the rejection of the Word made flesh. The Precursor is described as a man who appeared on the historical scene (‘There came’ rather than ‘There was’). That he was ‘sent from God’ marks his prophetic mission; his name denoted the gracious purpose of God, and his whole office was that of a witness to the Light—an office virtually as universal as that of Christ—in order that all might be brought to belief. The negative sentence, 8, emphasizes the role of witness, recapitulates, and prepares what follows—John was a lamp, not the Light (cf. 5:35). § g 9–13. In spite of a strongly seductive temptation (on grounds of apparent ease and of rhythm) to make ‘cometh’ refer back to ‘light’ we stand for the V7564g interpretation of 9, with all the older interpreters, Greek and Latin (except Theodore of Mopsuestia), and against most moderns (except Knabenbauer, Médebielle, Lebreton). Challoner supplies the demonstrative ‘That’. It is perhaps too much like popular speech to translate: ‘There it was—the very Light which enlightens every man coming into the world’, but this is really the effect of the emphatic ‘was’ at the head of the sentence. The redundant adjectival phrase coming into the world, found nowhere else in the NT, is a hebraic pleonasm common in rabbinical writings. The ‘shining’ of the Word (5) is here ‘illumination’, but the verb in the habitual present must be understood, as above, of the power to illuminate. The word kosmos means the created universe. § a10. It (the light) was in the world and the world came to exist through him (through the Logos-phôs), but the world (here with its moral nuance, meaning corrupt mankind) did not recognize him. The tragic note is stronger in 9 and 10 than in 5, and recurs frequently in chh 1–12. With the reservation already made concerning the central place of the Incarnation in the Evangelist’s thought, it is difficult not to see pre-Incarnation rejection of the Light in these words. 11. ‘He came into his own (domain)—Israel, his specially chosen people—and his own did not receive him’. Here we may still admit some implied reference to continued Jewish rejection of the Christ of prophecy throughout the ages of preparation, but there seems no doubt that St John already presents the historical advent of the Incarnate Word, and the great refusal of the Jewish people to receive him. It has been remarked that the stylistic motion of the Prologue is peculiarly ‘tidal’ and difficult of analysis, but it seems that full tide comes here in 11. The deep tragedy of the Prologue also ends here, 12 being introduced by an adversative δέ, a comparatively rare particle in this Gospel. Here begin the glories of the Incarnation. § b 12. The power given to those who received the Logos-phôs, whereby they were enabled to become children of God, is the grace of faith. Reception of the Word is itself an act of faith, and faith is the means of appropriating the dignity of divine sonship. Faith is not itself filiation, but the foundation and root of filiation. Hence the phrase (explanatory of the act of voluntary acceptance): ‘to them that believe in his name’—that is, adhere to him and all that his name (Messias and Son of God) signifies. 13. These ‘sons’, τέκνα (‘offspring’ in a very real sense), were not generated from material elements—the blood-products of man and woman—nor from that will of the flesh which is the concupiscence of human sexual life—nor from the deliberate will of man (ἀνδρός, a human father) rationally desiring human propagation, but were born from God. The reading ‘was born’, referring to Christ, though found in Tertullian, St Irenaeus and (possibly) St Justin has only negligible authority from MSS (Latin and Syriac) and is defended only by a few non-Catholic critics. The supernatural birth of Children of God is a very Johannine idea (cf. 3:3–6; 1 Jn 2:29; 3:9; 5:4, 18).
§ c 14–18. The manifestation of the Word now shows itself in all its splendid historical fullness. The term Logos, 1, appears again (and also for the last time in the Gospel) in a sentence that means more for mankind than any sentence ever written by a human pen: ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us’. The enunciation seems to come with a sudden shock, but the implied connexion between 13 and 14 is unmistakable. Men can become children of God, because the Word became man and entered our family. Borrowing a thought from St Augustine, we may say, that the wonder of 13 merges into the greater wonder of 14. It belongs to theology to explain the depth of these eight words. The exegetical facts are that the Eternal Divine Person, very God of very God, here called the Word, became, at an historical moment, a man amongst men, sharing (apart from sin) the whole frailty of mortal nature signified by the word ‘flesh’. Thus he took up his dwelling amongst us, the Gk word literally meaning: ‘He fixed his tent amongst us’, with allusion to the presence of God amongst his people, this being manifested in their Sanctuary by the symbol of a white cloud. St John could not have been insensible to the similarity of sound (especially perceptible to a Semitic ear) between the word ἐσκήνωσεν (‘he tented’) and the Shekinah which is the Hebrew term for the dwelling of God in the Israelite sanctuary. This ancient manifestation of the glory of God’s Majesty is also before his mind, as he proceeds to tell of the glory of the Word made man. § d 14c. Using the first person plural and a verb of ocular vision he places himself amongst those who saw with their eyes (cf. 1 Jn 1:1) the glory of the Word Incarnate—that is, the external evidences of his divine majesty in words, miracles, Transfiguration, Resurrection—a glory such as belongs to an Only-begotten (who came) from the Father. The Gk ὡς (Lat. quasi) simply designates the quality or status (of Only-begotten)—the glory which he has as being the Only-begotten. ‘From the Father’ may be construed with glory or with Only-begotten, but the latter seems more natural, cf. 16:27. ‘Full of grace and truth’, as far as the adjective goes (for it is indeclinable in the Koiné) may be attached to ‘glory’ or to ‘Only-begotten’, but V7565g and commentators generally read the second distich as a parenthesis and make ‘full’ an epithet of the Logos dwelling Incarnate amongst us. Ps 84 (85):11 speaks of ‘mercy and fidelity meeting each other’. This OT phrase is here found in surpassing fullness, but St John has taken the expression beyond its OT meaning. ‘Grace’ (a word which only occurs in the Prologue) means something more interior and unlimited than ḥesed (cf. 16, 17), and ‘truth’ is not merely the faithful fulfilment of all God’s promises but the new revelation of God’s majesty and mysterious purpose formerly hidden in the inaccessible light of his divinity. ‘Truth’ especially stands in contrast to the umbratic revelation and regime of the Old Dispensation. It is a capital concept in St John’s Gospel (cf. particularly 4:23; 8:32–46; 17:17; 18:37).
§ e 15 seems a surprising insertion, for 16 is the logical continuation of 14, but the Precursor’s testimony is of paramount importance in the mind of the Evangelist. As the fact of the Baptist’s testimony has been already announced in 6–8, its content is given here. Note the solemnity of the introduction; the perfect form of the Gk verb with present meaning renders, as it were, the permanent proclamation of the great herald’s voice: ‘This is he of whom I said: He who comes after me [by reason of the time of his ministry] has taken rank before me [in dignity], for he was before me’ [by reason of his eternal pre-existence]. 16 adds a third testimony from the experience of the Christian community (‘we’ standing for Christians, not merely for Apostles as in 14). The grace residing in the Word Incarnate was a plenitude, and not merely a derived but an essential plenitude springing from the fountain of the Word. Of that fullness ‘we have all received, that is, grace for grace’ (‘and’ is epexegetic). This phrase, according to a common meaning of the Greek ἀντί, means a succession of graces, and has been variously interpreted—Gospel succeeding Law (St Chrysostom, but improbable, for Law was not grace)—Christian life succeeding faith—better, a continuous succession of graces showing their cumulative abundance. § f 17. The reason of this abundance is that a new economy has begun. The Law was given as an external ordinance through Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ. The interior and real has taken the place of the exterior and the figurative. The proper name of the Saviour Messias occurs here for the first time, and thereby the Logos, 1, and the Incarnate, 14, is identified with Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ promised to Israel. ‘Truth’ means the revelation of God’s intimate secrets. 18. No man could have brought such a revelation, for no man has ever seen God (except mediately, like Abraham, Moses and some of the Prophets). ‘The Only-Begotten God’—this reading of codices B, S, C, L, the Sahidic, Bohairic, Peshitta versions, and several Greek Fathers is preferred by most modern editors to the reading ‘Only-begotten Son’ of other Gk codices, some Greek Fathers, the V7566g and the Latin Fathers generally—that Only-begotten who is in the bosom of the Father, conscious of all divine secrets with the consciousness of consubstantiality, he (ἐκεῖνος) has revealed (lit7567. told [it] forth, declared [the true nature of God]). Thus ends this sublime prologue. We now descend to historical narrative and follow almost a whole week of events, which, if the marriage of Cana took place on Wednesday (cf. § 786a), may be plausibly arranged between a Friday and a Wednesday in late February or early March. If we read πρωΐ for πρῶτον in 41, we should have a full week—from Thursday to Wednesday. It is the ‘Holy Week’ of the dawn of salvation.
§ 784a 1:19–2:12 The Messiah prepares for his Mission—In Jn official Israel is called ‘the Jews’; these form a hostile body from the beginning. The movement of the whole Gospel is manifest in these early pages: an opposition developing into national apostasy, chh 1–12, a few faithful who will ultimately gather round Jesus to hear the last secrets of his heart in the Supper-room, chh 13–17, and after the momentary consternation of the Passion, chh 18–19, will rally again around the victorious Master whom they have not ceased to love, chh 20–21.
1:19–34 The Precursor’s Testimony before the Jews—Points to remember are: Jn supposes the synoptic gospels and their account of Christ’s baptism; when he wrote, Judaism had fully declared over a period of sixty years and more its hostility to Jesus of Nazareth and his Church. Of the two testimonies here given before Judaism by the Precursor, one, 19–28, is spoken to a delegation from Jerusalem in the absence of Jesus, the other, 29–34, to a crowd [which also included the Delegation—Gen. Ed.] while the Precursor’s index finger points to Jesus actually present on the scene.
§ b 19–28. We know that the Jerusalemite attitude to John was superficial, 5:35, and quickly unsympathetic, Mt 3:7; 11:18; 21:24–26. Some evidence of hostility may be gathered from the present section, but it is mainly a record of John’s answer to an inquisitorial commission. The delegation is a highly official one, coming from Jerusalem, the centre of religious government, and composed of Priests and Levites—the former competent religious experts, the latter probably a sort of escort of temple police. 20. The Delegates refrain from asking the pointed question: ‘Art thou the Messias?’ but John answers the general question: ‘Who art thou?’ very pointedly, and with an emphasis and solemnity which is set in evidence by an introductory formula first solemnly positive, then solemnly negative, and once again solemnly positive, saying: ‘I am not the Christ’—a categoric negative which provoked another question. § c 21. Words of Malachias, 4:5 [3:23], and Ben Sira, Ecclus 48:10 f., had given rise to the popular persuasion that Elias should come to anoint the Messias and manifest him (Justin, Dial. 8, 4). The Baptist partly fulfilled the prophecy of Malachias (cf. Christ’s words, Mt 17:10 ff.; Mk 9:11 ff.), for he was Elias in spirit, but to the question of the Jews: ‘Art thou Elias?’ John answered even more briefly than before: ‘I am not’. The question may not have been very serious, for John, in spite of his long stay in the desert, and in spite of his resemblance to Elias in garb and manner of life and fiery zeal, must have been publicly known as the son of Zachary and Elizabeth. Still we cannot be very positive regarding the forgetfulness which a lapse of 30 years can cause. There is, of course, no contradiction between Truth and the Prophet of Truth, for although John was the spiritual Elias of the first advent, he only denied that he was Elias in person. § d Another question remained. The Jews vaguely believed that some prophet, Enoch or Jeremias, would reappear as Precursor of the Messias, and they especially built on an imperfect interpretation of Deut 11:15 ‘The Lord thy God shall raise up for thee from the midst of thee, from amongst thy brethren, a Prophet like to me: him you shall hear’. Moses’ words were a prophecy of prophetism in Israel culminating in the Messias himself (cf. Ac 3:22; 7:37); the Jews, however, thought confusedly that Moses foretold one whom they called ‘the prophet’, 6:14, whoever he might be, generally making him a Samuel or an Isaias or some other prophet redivivus. John’s answer was categoric: ‘No’. St Gregory and other Fathers have admired the Precursor’s solid and curt adherence to the humility which is truth. 22. Pressed for a positive answer, the Baptist—never so styled, however, in Jn—applied to himself the words of Isaias, 40:3, concerning the herald of Israel’s deliverance from Babylonian captivity. God’s return at the head of a redeemed people was a figure of Messianic redemption, and the Precursor is the herald who calls for the preparation of a highway of penance. Coming from the mouth of the Baptist there is a very touching solemnity in the words: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.…’ The voice sounds and vanishes, and John realized his role to be just that (cf. 3:30)—to fade before One greater than himself.
§ e 24. Some of those sent (ἀπεσταλμένοι most probably without the article) were Pharisees and were particularly interested in ritual ablutions. 25. They asked why he baptized. 26. John explained. His was a simple baptism of water, with no inherent spiritual efficacy beyond its symbolic power of exciting repentance. Hereupon the Baptist turns the minds of his hearers from his own preparatory baptism to the One whose advent he was preparing, and who was already in the midst of Israel, unknown to Israel. 27. He was coming after his Precursor, but as the Perfect after the imperfect, as the Lord after the servant. In the matter of menial service John declares that he is not worthy to perform the lowliest office towards him, even that of loosing the strap of his sandals. It is noteworthy that John speaking to the delegates from Jerusalem does not mention the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but only draws their attention to the Person who is already in their midst. § f 28. The place is indicated, but Bethania (Bethany) beyond the Jordan has not been identified with certainty. It is, of course, to be distinguished from Bethany on Mount Olivet, less than two miles from Jerusalem. The name of this Trans-Jordanic Bethania seems to have disappeared before the 3rd cent., for when Origen visited the sacred places 7568c a.d. 215 he found only a Bethabara, which, owing to his influence, but rather against his text-critical judgement, supplanted Bethania in some codices. The two places may have been near each other, for the etymological difference between Bethania and Bethabara is that between Ship-ham and Ford-ham. The place was probably near a ford or ferry of the Jordan and (we should surmise) not very far from the eastern head of the present Allenby Bridge.
§ g 29–34.—On the morrow Jesus appeared while John was surrounded by a number of disciples; cf. Orchard, The Rejection of Christ, D7569R 56 (1938) 410–26. Recently returned from his fast in the wilderness and probably staying for the time being in some hut near the Jordan, the Saviour comes to John to receive testimony. The Matins hymn of St John’s Nativity (24 June), the Liturgy, as well as Catholic devotion, and Christian art have emphasized the importance of this scene of ‘the pointing finger’. John’s words designate Jesus as a Lamb belonging to God and therefore evidently sent by God and to be disposed of according to God’s will. The lamb is a symbol of innocence, but whether John at this early stage of manifestation directly indicates that Jesus is a victim cannot be so easily decided—‘a sinless Lamb taking away the sin of the world’ may be the surface meaning of this word to the crowd, but the fullness of its meaning must include victimhood, for only thus did Jesus actually take away sin. There is an allusion to Is 53:7, but whether John had the paschal lamb or the lamb of daily sacrifice in mind is disputable. ‘Sin’ is generic and includes all sin original or personal. The next verse, 30, marking Jesus as later than the Baptist in time, but prior in dignity, because of the priority of pre-existence, has been already explained. [It is also the answer to the delegation’s question.—Gen. Ed.] § h 31. John’s statement that he did not know Jesus before the day he baptized him is easily understood of a knowledge of visual recognition. John had been in the wilderness for about 20 years. 32 f. Though by divine inspiration he recognized Jesus before he baptized him. Mt 3:14, the definite divinely-revealed sign by which he knew him, so as to manifest him to Israel, was the dove, for thus only the giver of the baptism of water recognized the One who should baptize with fire—the reference here being not only to the thorough purification symbolized by fire, but also (prophetically) to Pentecost. 34. The sentence: ‘This is the Son of God’, has its plenary sense in the mouth of the Baptist: ‘not revealed to him by flesh and blood’ but by the voice at the Jordan and the illumination that went with his office of Precursor.
§ 785a 35–51 First Disciples—That this ‘morrow’, 35, is the first great day in the autobiography of John the Evangelist is unmistakable. It was also the day on which the Church began to find its Saviour. The solemnity and grace of the simple narrative are equal to the occasion: John the Baptist standing, two disciples near by, a loving look cast by the Precursor on Jesus walking by, the repetition of the great words: ‘Behold the Lamb of God …’. 37. The two disciples followed Jesus. The heavenly attraction of which Jesus was to speak later, 6:44; 12:32, had begun to exercise its mysterious power. 38. Everything is vivid. Jesus turned and gazed on the two men following him. ‘What is it you seek?’ is perhaps a better rendering of the tone of Jesus’ question, which is memorable as being the first word from the lips of the Saviour in Jn. The disciples’ answer shows some embarrassment, but it beautifully and delicately expresses respect (Rabbi) and the desire to spend a while ‘at home’ with the new-found Master. 39. ‘Come and you shall see’ is the form which Jesus’ gracious invitation has in the best MSS. The writer’s precision is to be noted: ‘They came, they saw … they stayed …’ from about the tenth hour—from 4 p.m. till dark and (according to the laws of oriental hospitality) that night also. St Augustine’s comment cannot be omitted: ‘They wished to see where he stayed and to do what is written: “The threshold of his door let thy foot wear: rise and come to him assiduously, and be instructed by his precepts”. He showed them where he stayed: They came and they were with him. What a happy day they spent, what a happy night! Let us also build in our heart and make a house for him to visit. Let him teach us, let him converse with us’ (Tract, in Joann. in loc.).
§ b 40–42. Andrew (etymologically Manly) was one of the two; the other is not named, but the narrative is too intimate not to reveal him as the disciple whom Jesus loved; cf. chh 13–21. 41. The remark that Andrew first found his own brother Simon seems to suggest that John later found his own brother James; an implied reference to Philip and Nathanael,45, seems improbable. The joy of an ancient sage made Heurēka an enchanting word, but Andrew’s assurance: ‘We have found the Messias’ was a more momentous heurēkamen than any cry of a scientific discoverer. Messias is, of course, a Grecized Hebrew word meaning ‘The Anointed (King of Israel)’. 42. John alone records the original circumstances of the change of Simon’s name to Kêpha, which is Aramaic for Rock. Jesus looked fixedly upon him and, as it were, penetrated his soul, Ps 138, before giving him the name, which designated him as foundation-elect of the Church, Mt 16:18.
§ c 43–51. The fourth day of Jn’s chronological sequence marks the beginning of Jesus’ return journey to Galilee, The allusion to Jacob’s Ladder in 51 justifies the conjecture that the route was westwards to Bethel and then along the chief northern highway through Samaria. 43. Philip (‘lover of horses’), Greek-named like his friend Andrew, 6:5, 8; 12:22, was, like him, from Bethsaida, a much Hellenized town on the east bank of the Jordan not far from its junction with the Lake of Genesareth. 44. He was probably predisposed by what he heard from his fellow-townsmen, but, in any case, he promptly followed a single word of invitation from Jesus, and communicated his enthusiasm to Nathanael. 45. This Nathanael (the name being equivalent to Theodore-Deusdedit) is now commonly identified with the Bar-Tolmai or Bartholomew who is closely associated with Philip in the synoptic lists of Apostles. He was from Cana, 21:2, 4 miles NE. of Nazareth. The wording of Philip’s announcement to Nathanael would seem to indicate that the latter was a man of some scriptural learning, if not a scribe. Philip’s description of Jesus from his putative father, Joseph, is not surprising, and its retention by St John is a guarantee of the historical fidelity of an Evangelist who knew Jesus to be the Son of God. § d 46. The uncomplimentary reference to Nazareth is almost proverbial. St Matthew saw verified, 2:23, the prophetic description of a lowly, despised Messias, when Jesus became a Nazarene. What we know of Nazareth from the Gospels, Lk 4:29; Mt 13:54–58, does not give us a high opinion of its people. The sceptical question of Nathanael may, however, have had some local jealousy in it, but he loyally adopted the good method proposed by Philip: ‘Come and see’. 47. ‘Truly an Israelite’ was a eulogy that had religious sacredness in it (since God himself had given the name ‘Israel’ to Jacob), and the compliment of guilelessness asserted Nathanael’s sincerity. Jesus struck the very point of the newcomer’s character as a religious man splendidly sincere. 48. There was no lack of humility in the question: ‘Whence comes thy knowledge of me?’ What Jesus then revealed about a crisis of thought or feeling experienced by Nathanael was clearly an example of the reading of hearts (cf. Ac 1:24). It seems the event referred to was not recent, for, as we are some weeks from the Pasch (cf. 2:13), fig-trees were not yet in foliage. 49. In calling Jesus ‘Son of God’, Nathanael may indeed have vaguely confessed his divine origin, but our Lord’s subsequent words show that he could not have realized its full import. He certainly confessed his Messiahship, for St John regards ‘King of Israel’ (cf. 12:13, 15) as a Messianic title. § e 50. Nathanael’s act of faith was based on the manifestation of divine knowledge by Jesus. 51. The Master assured him that he should see greater things. The double Amen of solemn asseveration occurs here for the first of two dozen times in Jn. Jesus also used the single Amen, which the Synoptists retained throughout. The vision of heaven open and angels ascending and descending does not refer specially to any definite apparitions of angels between the end of Christ’s desert fast (which was gone by) and the day of the Ascension. It alludes to Jacob’s dream-vision, Gen 28:12, of a ladder at Bethel (near which place our Lord probably was at the moment), and asserts that the Son of Man in his earthly ministry shall be the centre of communications between heaven and earth—these communications being conceived as angelic goings and comings. The order: ‘ascent and descent’ is not that of angelic motion but of a ladder the primary purpose of which is ascent. In this sentence the title ‘Son of Man’ occurs for the first time on the lips of Jesus (31 times in Mt, 13 in Jn). Here it is only necessary to repeat: (a) that the name carried a suggestion of human lowliness and poetic rareness; (b) that in our Lord’s time it was not in use either as a substitute for the first singular personal pronoun nor as a Messianic name; (c) that (notwithstanding) it carried a thinking mind to the Messianic vision of Dan 7:13.; (d) that Jesus used it of himself with a variety of pointedness which was very suggestive (most often before his disciples, less often before Pharisees and scribes, seldom before the people, and most solemnly of all at his trial before the Sanhedrin); (e) that it had the fascination of mystery; (f) and lastly that being a humble title of the Messias, it did not continue to be used in the Church, being found only once in Ac, 7:55, on the lips of St Stephen, but in this case with deliberate allusion to Christ’s solemn answer, when adjured by Caiphas to say who he was.
No one who meditates these 33 verses (which follow the sublime Prologue) can remain insensible to the exquisite charm of the narrative. The voice of the great humble Precursor does its work, and the rally of these early disciples to a greater Master than John is the beautiful introduction to the history of Christianity.
§ 786a 2:1–11 The Marriage Feast at Cana—1. The third day should be reckoned from the beginning of the Galilean journey which covered a distance of some 70 or 80 miles. It may have been a Wednesday, the usual day for the marriage of a maiden. The bridegroom and bride are unknown, and the identifications: Simon the Zealot, John the Evangelist, Susanna, etc., are mere romancing. Cana is not Qāna 8 miles from Tyre, probably not Kirbet Qāna near Sepphoris, but rather Kefr Kenna four miles NE. of Nazareth, for which there is a reasonably solid tradition. If, as is likely, Mary was present as a relative, the invitation to Jesus and his disciples would have been on her account, although Nathanael may have had something to do with it. St Joseph evidently was dead. 2. Nuptial festivities lasted a week and were called in Aramaic mištîṯâ (drink-festival) with which accords the rabbinical dictum: ‘Where there is no wine, there is no joy’. 3. As wine supplies (especially when the family was poor) partly depended on gifts from those invited, the advent of Jesus and five disciples may well have contributed to the imminent (or already complete, Codex S) shortage, quickly noted by the charitable eye of the Blessed Virgin. Her brief announcement of the situation to Jesus is meant as a petition. § b 4. His answer has created three difficulties: (1) The term of address sounds severe, if not belittling; (2) the answer seems a refusal; (3) the reason given admits more than one interpretation. As regards the first: ‘Woman’ both in Gk and Semitic is a title not indeed of domestic intimacy (our Lord would not have used it at Nazareth) but of solemn honour. This honorific solemnity of the word on the lips of Jesus himself may be tested in Jn 4:21; 20:15, but most of all in 19:26, when he addressed his mother from the cross. Concerning the second: the Master’s question which literally reads: ‘What to me and to thee?’ has to be understood from biblical and not modern usage. Therefore it does not mean: ‘What concern is it of ours?’ or ‘There is no need for you to tell me’. In all the biblical passages where it occurs, Jg 11:12; 2 Sa 16:10, 19:22; 4 Kg 3:13; 2 Par 35:21; Mt 8:29; Mk 1:24, the phrase signifies, according to circumstances, a great or lesser divergence of viewpoint between the two parties concerned. In 2 Kg 16:10 it means total dissent; in Jg 11:12 it voices a complaint against an invader. In our passage, also, divergence must be admitted. In a sense our Lord’s answer is a refusal, but not an absolute refusal, rather a refusal ad mentem, as a Roman Congregation would say, and the Blessed Virgin understood her Son’s mind from the tone of his voice. His first public miracle belonged to the divine programme of his Messianic mission into which flesh and blood could not enter. His answer is therefore an assertion of independence of his Mother, similar to the word he spoke in the temple about his Father’s business. The Blessed Virgin’s subsequent action shows that the tone of our Lord’s protest on this occasion was neither a curt nor an unqualified refusal. On the third point, namely the sentence: ‘My hour is not yet come’, it is obvious that we cannot read the words as a question: ‘Is not My hour already come?’ Although the view has the support of Tatian, St Gregory of Nyssa and Knabenbauer, neither the context nor the Gk seem to admit interrogation. ‘My hour’ has been variously understood as the hour of my Passion when I shall recognize the mother of my mortality (St Aug), or (more probably) the hour fixed for my public manifestation through the working of miracles. § c 5. Mary, understanding perfectly that our Lord’s action would not be a family business, but would nevertheless follow the course of charity, gave orders to the servants with all confidence. 6. The water-pots (perhaps mostly borrowed) were large, for water had to be taken from them and poured on hands and vessels according to the rules of Jewish purification. Stone and not earthenware was proof against legal defilement. Six pots, containing 2 or 3 attic metretae each, would give a total capacity between 6 × 2 × 8½ = 102 and 6 × 3 × 8½ = 153 gallons. 7. ‘Filled … to the brim’ shows the water, as it were, peeping out of the vessels and, no doubt, suggested Crashaw’s beautiful pentameter: ‘Nympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit—the bashful maiden water saw its God and blushed’. 8. The architrichlinus, to whom the servants were ordered to bring the wine in a smaller vessel, probably in a cup, was to be the first witness of the unexpected provision. He would have been a local expert in convivial arrangements, not a symposiarch of the classic type (cf. Ecclus 32:1). § d 9. He did not know whence the wine was. 10. But once he had testified to its excellence, the servants could tell the facts. The custom: ‘Good wine to fresh palates, and less good afterwards’ is not otherwise known from contemporary writings, but we cannot deny its local authenticity—possibly it reflects Galilean parsimony—and it is certainly an outspoken testimony that would have called attention to the miracle, so that this would very soon have become known to all present. 11. This first of Christ’s miracles is, like all others, a sign of his divine power showing the ‘glory of the Only-begotten’. His disciples had already believed in him, but now they believed more strongly. Catholic piety finds almost inexhaustible riches in these 11 verses (Gospel of 2nd Sunday after Epiphany). The passage shows the sanctity of marriage, the Wisdom of God approving domestic joy, the power of the Blessed Virgin’s intercession, and even the law of her mediation. Besides, it suggests the thought that Christ’s own nuptials with his Church have begun, the water of the old dispensation is becoming the good wine of the new, and an image is offered of the Eucharistic wine which is to gladden the heart of man. § e 12 Descent to Capharnaum—Not long after the marriage at Cana Jesus went to Capharnaum—a descent of some 1,550 feet, from 870 above Mediterranean level to 680 below, in a distance of less than 20 miles. Not now but later he made Capharnaum his own city, Mt 9:1, by adopting it as the centre of his Galilean ministry. The more probable and common identification is Tell Hum, but the site of Capharnaum has also been sought at ‘Ain Tabigha, Kirbet Minych and even Kheraze—all of which are within a radius of a few miles. Capharnaum was a very Jewish city, and Peter and Andrew had a house there. It was a natural rendezvous for pilgrims forming into caravans for the Paschal journey to Jerusalem.
The present stay, being for this purpose, lasted ‘not many days’. ‘His brethren’ were the cousins or other relatives of our Lord, and were certainly neither full nor half-brothers or sisters (cf. art. ‘Brethren of the Lord’ for discussion of the evidence).
§787a 2:13–3:36 First Judean Ministry
13–22 Cleansing of the Temple—This cleansing is probably to be distinguished from that which took place on Monday before the Passion, Mt 21:12 f. That such a vindication by Jesus of the majesty of his Father’s house occurred twice—at the beginning and at the end of the public life—is not improbable; the differences of detail are not favourable to identification; moreover, Jn and the Synoptists show enough chronological intention in the matter to exclude the hypothesis of one and the same event. [There are however weighty arguments for holding that there was only one Cleansing of the Temple and that it did indeed occur at the beginning of the public life of our Lord where Jn places it. The reason why the synoptic gospels place it at the end may be that Mk and Lk in general follow the arrangement of Mt which is logical rather than chronological, and which accordingly groups all incidents connected with Jerusalem under the last Jerusalem visit.—Gen. Ed.] 13. The ‘Pasch of the Jews’ marks the feast as belonging to the old order. ‘Ascent’ was almost a technical term for the festal pilgrimage. 14. The sale of sacrificial animals (oxen, sheep, doves) and the setting up of tables of exchange in the court of the Gentiles, within the sacred enclosure (ἱερόν) meant not only unbecoming noise and movement, Mk 11:16, but also avarice in which not the salesmen and changers only but the temple authorities also had their share. Foreign money had to be changed into the ancient half-shekel (called Tyrian, approximately 1s 6d) payable as annual capitation tax to the temple by every Israelite over twenty (cf. Mt 17:24). § b 15. Cords were easily picked up in what had really become a market. Christ made a scourge (‘as it were’ is not represented in the best MSS). The text does not say clearly whether the scourge was used on both men and animals; presumably so, in keeping with the drastic action of spilling the coins (κέρμα) and overturning the tables of the bankers. 16. Though they sold the offerings of the poor, there is no sufficient reason for supposing that the dove-sellers were less guilty than the others. Christ’s action stopped short of dispossessing the culprits, and birds in cages could not be driven out. Moreover, the word addressed to the dove-sellers is really addressed to all. ‘My Father’s house’ involves the claim of divine Sonship. 17. This assertion of authority was so striking that the disciples thought of a verse from a Messianic Psalm, 68:10—quoted from LX7570X with its verb in the future. The verse is not merely accommodated, for in the Psalm the Just One is eaten up by his own zeal, not by the jealousy of persecutors. 18. Although the uneasy authorities had already received the witness of John the Baptist they now demanded further sign to authenticate Jesus’ personal authority to act thus. § c19. The answer is like that given later to similar demands made in bad faith (cf. Mt 16:4): ‘Destroy this Temple’—rather ‘sanctuary’ (ναός)—‘and in three days I will raise it up’. The sign is the Resurrection. Consequently, our Lord’s words refer in no sense to the material inner sanctuary of the Zorobabelian-Herodian temple. The concessive imperative ‘Destroy’ is prophetic, and shows clearly enough that the Jewish hostility which was to kill Jesus had begun that day. Such a saying from a Master, whose majestic zeal had just vindicated his Father’s house, should have provoked attentive thought, and the history of our Lord’s trial and crucifixion shows how it impressed itself; but actually it was now turned to ridicule. 20. A sanctuary 46 years in building to be destroyed and rebuilt in 3 days!—this is the sarcasm, which will be repeated on Calvary. The reference cannot be to the original Zorobabelian temple finished in 516 b.c. and not begun much earlier than 536. The Herodian reconstruction of Zorobabel’s edifice is meant. This had begun in the 18th year of Herod’s reign (20–19 b.c.) and is generally considered to have been finished only in a.d. 64. If the total includes the 18th year of Herod and counts 46 complete years up to the present Pasch (the aorist οἰκοδομήθη with ναός not ἱερόν as subject, raises a doubt) we can fix with some confidence of probability the spring of a.d. 27 as the date of this event. [On the other hand Fr Sutcliffe (in A Two Year Public Ministry) has verified the contention of Fr Power B7571i 9 (1928) 257 ff. that v 20 is to be rendered: ‘This sanctuary has been built forty-six years’, i.e. was completed 46 years before, in 19 b.c.—Gen. Ed.] 21. Jesus spoke, however, about the sanctuary of his body, the most holy of all temples. 22. After the resurrection the disciples entered fully into the resurrection texts of the Scripture and this word of Jesus.
§ d 23–25 Imperfect Converts—The feast lasted 8 days, during which time many believed on account of the miracles worked by Jesus. Miracles are strong arguments of credibility. They prepare the mind for faith, but faith and especially deep faith is not the mere impression of miracles. These new adherents of Jesus at Jerusalem ‘believed in his name’—accepted him as a divinely-sent Master. 24. St John’s double use of the verb πιστεύω cannot easily be rendered in English. Those men trusted Jesus as a Master accredited by heaven, but Jesus did not trust himself to them. 25. The reason is that he had immediate and intimate knowledge of their dispositions—the ‘searcher of hearts’ had no need to be told what depth of faith these believers had. He did not communicate himself entirely to them. St Augustine’s application to Catechumens is well known, but is only an accommodated sense.
§ 788a 3:1–21 Nicodemus—The name is Greek (victorious people), but the Talmud also attests its Jewish adoption. Pharisee and Sanhedrist of the order of scribes (cf. 10) were the religious titles of Nicodemus. 2. His nocturnal visit shows timidity but not cowardice (cf. 7:51; 19:39), and he was also probably moved by a desire to have a quiet talk with Jesus. His approach is respectful (Rabbi) and shows a certain conviction, based on the miracles, regarding the divine mission of Jesus. Nicodemus associates himself with others (probably Pharisees or even Sanhedrists—cf. 12:42, though the Pharisees as a body were hostile). 3. The question of the kingdom of God is what is in the visitor’s mind, and it is to this that the solemn answer of Jesus refers: ‘Amen, amen, I say to thee, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God’. With the possible exception of Gal 4:9, NT and even Johannine usage stand for ‘from above’ rather than ‘again’ as a rendering of ἄνωθεν. So also the Greek Fathers and many moderns. However, unless there is a similarly ambiguous word in Aramaic, our Lord, as interpreted by Nicodemus himself, spoke of second birth, other than one’s first natural birth. This justifies our ‘again’, which represents not only the Latin version but also the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic and Georgian. Without this second birth (which in any case must be ‘from above’) a man cannot belong to the kingdom of God (‘see’ has the sense of experience, enjoy). Kingdom of God occurs only here, 3, 5, in Jn. This term, familiar from the Synoptics, is broadly equivalent to life in Jn and to justice in St Paul. There is no real distinction between seeing the kingdom of God and seeing life, 3:36. § b 4. Nicodemus, probably an old man himself, reduces our Lord’s words to the absurdity of an elder entering his mother’s womb to be born again. 5. The answer of Jesus seems to attach itself closely to the impossibility thus crudely imagined. Water is like the material element giving the new birth, the fecundating power being the Spirit (many MSS of V7572g have Holy Spirit). This concept is beautifully expressed in the Roman Rite of blessing the Baptismal Font; ‘From the immaculate womb of the divine font comes forth a heavenly offspring, born as a new creature’. Water, as the Council of Trent defined (Sess. 7, can. 2), is not to be understood in the metaphorical sense. There is no difference (except one of aspect) between seeing the Kingdom of God, 3, and entering into it, 5. 6. Like begets like. ‘What is born of the flesh is flesh’—in the physical (not Pauline-moral) sense of the term—‘What is born of the Spirit is spirit’, that is, a spiritual being. 7. Jesus forestalls a second expression of wonder from Nicodemus on the subject of re-birth. It is mysterious, but one must not deny its reality because one does not know the whence, and the how and the whither of it. 8. The wind is taken as an analogy or parable. It comes apparently as it wills, and its whisper or growl or howl is heard, but one cannot say where it rises or where it dies away. So, the man born of the Spirit shows effects that are perceptible, but the vital processes of the Spirit are invisible. St Augustine supposes that the Holy Spirit is the subject throughout. If so, there may be a reference to the phenomena of Pentecost. 9. Nicodemus is still puzzled. § c 10. In view of Scriptural passages like Ez 36:25 f.; Is 44:3, Jesus points to the anomaly of the ignorance of one who (of the two speaking) is the ‘master of Israel’, i.e. teacher and interpreter of the Law and Tradition. 11. Then to ‘the master of Israel’ and all like him Jesus asserts his own competence as a divine teacher. Ranging himself for a moment with all competent witnesses in any sphere—or using the plural of majesty (?)—he says: ‘Amen, amen, I say to thee, that we speak what we know and we testify what we have seen, and you receive not our testimony’. 12. Then, resuming the first singular, he refers to the incredulity provoked by his revelations on things (like regeneration) actualized here on earth, and argues (a minori ad maius) that the revelation of heavenly things—the mysteries of the divine being—will encounter still greater incredulity. 13. The Word Incarnate—for he is the real subject of this sentence—is the only witness of heavenly things. No one has ascended to heaven, so as to be there and know the things of heaven, but he that descended from heaven. Coming to be visibly on earth in human flesh—this is the metaphor of descent—he who is the Son of Man has not ceased to be in heaven. As the last phrase: ‘Who is in heaven’ is absent from some of the best MSS, including S7573B, it may be a gloss, but it is an excellent one, giving splendid prominence to the communicatio idiomatum, or interchange of divine and human predicates. ‘Above’ and ‘below’ are spoken of the one Person; the Son of God was on earth, the Son of Man was in Heaven. This last sentence, 13, really refers to the Incarnation rather than to the beatific vision, which Christ’s soul possessed. § d 14f. With the Incarnation the thought of Redemption is closely connected. Faith in the Word Incarnate must also be faith in the Redeemer. 14. ‘Necessity’ is a dominant idea in the whole passage, 7, 14. Here it is the necessity of Christ’s redeeming death that is proclaimed. ‘Exaltation’ is crucifixion, 8:28; 12:32, 34. The brazen serpent raised by Moses as a divine remedy for poisonous serpent bite, Num 21:4, 9; Wis 16:6 f., was a figure of salvation through Christ crucified. The non-poisonous likeness of a serpent looked upon with faith healed poisoned wounds and preserved temporal life: the sinless Saviour in the likeness of sinful flesh heals the poison wounds of sin and gives life everlasting. 15. The negative side of salvation, namely, escape from perdition, is not mentioned in the best MSS, and probably comes from 16.
§ e 16–21. The arguments for regarding these lines not as words spoken to Nicodemus but as reflexions of the Evangelist, seem strong enough to establish a serious probability. It is pointed out that dialogue ceases, the verbs are in the past tense, several expressions occur which are Johannine but are not heard elsewhere from the lips of Jesus (e.g. ‘Only-begotten’, ‘believe in the name’, ‘do the truth’). The last of these arguments is impressive, but on the other hand the language is extremely like that of the Johannine discourses of Jesus; no clear notice of a change of speaker is given; and the things said are very closely connected with the ideas of Incarnation and Redemption, to the consideration of which Jesus had led Nicodemus. 16. The motive and fount of salvation is God’s love for the world—that is, for mankind. Love made God give and deliver to death his Son (co-equal with himself), his Only-begotten (infinitely beloved), with a view to the salvation of every believer from perdition into eternal life. 17. Salvation not judgement is the direct purpose of the mission of the Son of God. § f 18. Men make their own judgement by their attitude to him, 3:36; 5:24; 12:48. He who believes incurs no damnation. The unbeliever is already in the state of damnation (κέκριται), for he has established himself as an unbeliever (perfect tense) in the name—that is, in the mission and Godhead—of the Only-begotten Son of God. Note again the insistence on this double title of love and dignity, the order of words being the inverse of 16. The making of one’s individual judgement in this actual terrestrial present is powerfully put in terms of light and darkness. The working of grace is supposed, but the accent is on the dispositions of men in regard to the light. St Augustine’s application is justly celebrated: ‘Many loved their sins, and many confessed their sins. He who confesses and accuses his sins is already on God’s side. God (that is the light) accuses your sins: and if you also accuse, you are joined to God. There are, as it were, two things: the man and the sinner. God made man, and man made himself a sinner. Destroy what you made, that God may save what he made. You must hate your own work in you, and love God’s work in you. When that which you made begins to displease you, then your good works are beginning, in as much as you are accusing your bad works. The beginning of good works is the confession of bad works. You do truth, and you come to the light. What is it—to do truth? You do not fondle yourself, you do not caress yourself, you do not flatter yourself, do not say: I am just, when you are really not—then you are beginning to do truth’, Tr. 12 in Jn. The same saint said: ‘Sore eyes hate the light, which healthy eyes love’. § g 21. ‘He who does the truth’, that is, he who has the disposition that co-operates with truth, ‘comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest as being done in God’, that is, according to God’s pleasure. ‘In God’, ‘with God’, Gen 6:9, ‘according to God’, Rom 8:27, scarcely differ in meaning. The words of 19ff., as this phrase indicates, are more general than St Augustine’s comment and refer to the consciousness of general rectitude of life, which is co-operation with God, rather than to the acknowledgement of sin, which, however, is part of the rectitude or honesty of fallen man, cf. 1 Jn 1:8. Good will or a right heart prepares a man to welcome truth.
§ h 22–36 Last Testimony of the Precursor—No close student of Jn will escape the inclination to join the many modern commentators who regard 31–36 of this section as reflexions of the Evangelist. Still, there is not the slightest external indication of a change of speaker; the thoughts in 31–36 do not go beyond the Precursor’s understanding of the mystery of Christ (although we may admit that the Evangelist gives them something of his own personal style); the phrase ‘wrath of God’ at the end recalls the stern character of the synoptic accounts of the Precursor’s preaching.
22–26. The time is loosely marked as after the visit of Nicodemus—presumably soon after the Paschal Octave, for after the departure of the pilgrims hostility to Jesus would have made itself more felt in Jerusalem. The text shows us the Divine Master in some country part of Judaea—a place of springs or streams, or perhaps near the Jordan. He stayed a considerable time there with his disciples, whom he commissioned (cf. 4:2) to exercise a ministry of baptism, more probably not that baptism which was to give the Spirit, 7:39, but rather a preparatory rite like that of John. § i 22. The Precursor had come to the west of the Jordan and moved north. Aenon (Ainon, exactly our English Wells) or Salim nearby is situated 8 Roman miles south of Scythopolis (Beisan) by the Onomasticon of Eusebius, by St Jerome (Ep. 73) and Aetheria. There are still five or seven wells within a small radius in this district. Salim 1 1/4 miles nearer the Jordan seems to have left its name in the modern Tell es-Sarem. 24. The indication: ‘John not yet imprisoned’ is a precious explanatory reference to the Synoptics, who could easily give the impression that Jesus began his work only after the imprisonment of John. 25. The dispute of some disciples of John with a Jew (S corrected, B, L, A) or Jews (S, V7574g) about purificatory rites excited in the former a jealousy or group-selfishness towards Jesus which was indeed a felix culpa, for it occasioned the Precursor’s very striking testimony. (Or was their jealousy really due to the fact that Jesus was now drawing larger crowds than their own master?) 26. The popularity of Jesus was evidently rising, and that of John falling in proportion. This was intimated in the disciples’ report to John. § j 27–30. No wonder the Catholic Church has always given the Precursor a signal place of honour, due not only to his office but to the high dignity of his humility. These words of his are amongst the greatest and most beautiful ever pronounced by human lips. Their gravity, humility, grandeur, and exquisite beauty need to be ‘relished interiorly’. 27. John’s mission was from heaven, Mt 21:25; Mk 11:30 f.; Lk 20:4 f., but to pretend to more than was given him would be usurpation. 28. He was not the Christ, but his Precursor. 29. Comparing himself to the chief friend attached to a bridegroom, he says that his role and his joy are just like those of such a sincere friend. When the wedding is being celebrated (Christ was already gathering the bridal body of his disciples; cf. Mt 9:15), the ‘best man’ can only rejoice at the joyful voice of the bridegroom already happy in the possession of his bride. In this sense John’s joy is full. 30. Jesus must increase in the esteem of a multitude of disciples, John must decrease. Let us recall the quaint but fascinating comment which we read in the Breviary (Aug. 29): ‘John dwindled by decapitation, Christ grew on the cross’.
§ k 31–36. There seems to be no really cogent reason why we should not attribute these words to the Precursor. All other mortals and all other Prophets including John himself are compared to Christ. 31. The One whose origin is absolutely from above is over everybody. Terrestrial and celestial (cf. 1 Cor 15:47) are terms of immense distinction. The earthly has the limitations of earth, the heavenly is supreme. 32. As a witness of the things of God, he who comes from heaven has the authority of One who has seen and heard. No one, however (hyperbole for ‘very few’), receives his testimony. 33. To receive his testimony is equivalent to declaring under one’s own hand and seal that God speaks the truth. 34. The Divine Envoy’s words are the words of God. The total definitive revelation of God is delivered by him, for God does not give the Spirit in limited measure to the Word Incarnate. 35. To the Beloved Son, ‘in whom he is well-pleased’, God must give and does give the plenitude of all authority. Surrender to him by faith brings life everlasting (begun here, consummated hereafter); on the other hand, unbelief towards the Son means the forfeiture of life and permanence in the state of wrath.
§ 789a 4:1–54 Through Samaria to Galilee—It is only at the beginning of this section that Jn first joins the Synoptists, Mt 4:12; Mk 1:4; Lk 4:14, who begin the public life of Christ in Galilee. The short mission of two days in Samaria, 4:43, is an episode registered only by Jn. Lke Christ’s brief stay in the territory of Tyre and Sidon at a later date, Mt 15:21 ff.; Mk 7:24 ff., it was intended to show that salvation was not for ‘the lost sheep of the House of Israel’ only.
§ b 1–4 Motive of Journey—The Baptist was already in prison, Mt 4:12; Mk 1:14. 1. ‘When the Lord therefore understood …’ (B, C, A, L against S, D V7575g). The Master’s ordinary human knowledge of providential events usually determined his actions. At this point he knew that the Pharisees (the chief focus of hostility) were aware of the growing movement towards him and his baptism. 2. The remark that he did not himself baptize may be perhaps a further indication that no sacrament was yet administered. 3. Judaea was henceforth dangerous, and so the Messianic light was to rise in Galilee, Is 9:1 f. 4. Some ‘necessity’ which Jn does not explain compelled Jesus to go through Samaria. If he was in the Jordan valley (and so it seems) the direct way would have been due north, but the Lord seems to have followed a western road, possibly the less frequented, difficult and fatiguing Wady path that passed by modern Dejân. We may conjecture that the ‘necessity’ of journeying through Samaria was in the providential decree, for later ‘Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth’ was to be the Apostolic programme.
§ c 5–30 Meeting with the Samaritan Woman—The narrative is a little sketch of divine pedagogy. It not only shows Jesus thirsting and seeking a soul but reveals his method. 5. The place named Sichar (Sychar) was scarcely the ancient Sichem, replaced since Seleucid days by the city which Titus later rebuilt as Flavia Neapolis (Nablus, nearly a mile WNW. of Sichem). Though excavations of 1914 and 1926–8 have revealed that Sichem was still inhabited in the reign of Tiberius, nevertheless the name Sychar, the Onomasticon, the Madaba Map and many Itineraries rather favour the modern village of El ‘Askar. This place, at the foot of Ebal to the south-east, is three-quarters of a mile to the north of Jacob’s Well, which is close to the foot of Garizim. Joseph’s tomb, Jos 24:32, in Joseph’s field, Gen 48:22, is popularly located about half-way. 6. The ‘fountain’ of Jacob was really a well supplied from a deep spring. It will be noted that Jesus and the Evangelist keep to the notion of spring (pēgē), while the Samaritan woman calls it a well (phrear). Tired from the journey—quaerens me sedisti lassus—Jesus sat beside or on the margin of the well. There are two significant details: Jesus sat thus—just as he was in his fatigue (Chrys7576.) just as a tired man sits—and ‘it was the sixth hour’, that is, noon, ‘the hour of thirst’ (Nonnus). § d 7. A woman of Samaria, not the city founded by Omri, but of the land of Samaria, came with her pitcher and rope to procure water. If she came from the township of Sychar, the distance was fairly considerable, and the hour was not the ordinary time (either morning or evening) for drawing water. And as Sychar (‘Askar) has a copious spring of its own, the woman most probably came from the fields, and we may be sure that a special Providence arranged the details of that day. There is no reason to believe that the woman was known in Samaria by the symbolic name Photina (Lightsome like Latin Lucina) given to her in the Greek Menaea (Feb. 26) and the Roman Martyrology (March 20). Without any preliminary address, Jesus asked for a drink. St Augustine notes his double thirst, physical and spiritual, for he really thirsted for the faith of a human soul. 8. They were alone, for the disciples—a half-dozen perhaps—had gone in a body to buy food from Samaritans who could prove hostile. 9. The woman recognizing a Jew by his speech or by his dress, Num 15:37 f., called attention to the national hatred between Jews and Samaritans. The descendants of Sargon’s and Esarhaddon’s colonists from Cutha and other eastern cities were regarded as mixed pagans and schismatics. They had been rejected from partnership in the temple of Zorobabel in the 6th cent. marked as defiant schismatics when the apostate Jewish priest, Manasses, erected a temple on Garizim about 400 b.c., ranked with the hated Edomites and Philistines by Ben Sira, Ecclus 50:28; and their reciprocal animosities had survived the destruction of the Samaritan temple by John Hyrcanus in 129 b.c. Josephus (Ant. 8, 11 and 20, 6) joins the Gospels, Lk 9:53; Jn 8:48, in showing that in our Lord’s time friendly relations were not to be expected between Jews and Samaritans. § e 10. From the thought of national hatreds, however, and from regarding him simply as a Jew, Jesus raises the mind of the woman to God’s love and to the gift from heaven which his own presence is to her. He has asked for a drink, but he can give her ‘living water’—the symbol being that of a beverage like bubbling water from a spring (not dormant water from a cistern) figuring by its freshness a living and life-giving energy. 11 f. The woman now shows the impression made on her fundamentally good heart, for she addresses Jesus as Kyrie (Sir), but shifts the theme to the difficulty of a man with no hauling apparatus getting water from a well 100 ft deep (this being a fair average from the recorded soundings), and also to the unlikely supposition that the stranger is greater than the Patriarch Jacob. She thought: either he means he can get water from this well—but how could he without a bucket, 11, or else he means he can get it from some other well or spring better than this; in which case he evidently thinks himself superior to Jacob, who made this well. No doubt, she suspects that he might be, after all. 13 f. Jesus turns the comparison of himself and Jacob to a comparison of the two waters. The water of Jacob’s well relieves thirst only for a time, the water that Jesus gives is itself a perpetual spring, efficacious for life everlasting. The theological name for it is ‘sanctifying grace’. Jesus certainly did not set the physical law of water seeking its own level before the Samaritan woman, but this illustration proposed by Menochius is a good one. 15. The woman is deeply impressed. Her answer should not be regarded as sarcastic, but as expressing the naïveté of imperfect understanding. She wants the water, for she now vaguely believes that Jesus is a worker of wonders. § f 16 f. There is an obstacle, and Jesus reveals it in the moral disorder of this woman’s life. ‘Call your husband’ would have seemed a very natural remark, for a long public colloquy with a woman was not according to custom. The woman’s denial that she had a husband was evasive, equivocal, and perhaps a lie, and it concealed ugly facts which Jesus with merciless mercy unmasked, asserting that her words were literally true. 18. The woman’s record of five husbands in the past followed by the state of unlawful concubinage in the present would imply that she had contracted five lawful marriages (beginning probably from her fifteenth year), though we cannot tell for certain. It is possible that she may have been divorced by more than one husband. In any case, she is at present an adulteress. 19 f. In acknowledging Jesus to be a prophet she implicitly admits it, and is already sympathetically meeting the light of truth. She raises the question of the true religion in terms of the rival claims of Garizim and Jerusalem. § g 21–24. Jesus’ answer, introduced by a solemn ‘Believe me’ and a respectful title of address ‘Woman’, says that the time of particularist cults and local sanctuaries is nearing its end. For the first time in the Gospel record Jesus calls God ‘Father’, to be adored as such even by the Samaritans. These, heretofore accepting as inspired only the Pentateuch which they often misinterpreted as well, have adored ‘what (they) know not’ (i.e. know very imperfectly); but the Jews, being the people destined to give the world Messianic salvation have been progressively enlightened by Prophets and Psalmists and adore what they know. Worship in spirit and in truth is interior worship (not excluding bodily acts and ceremonies) carried out in the light of a full revelation. The hour of that spiritual, Catholic, perfect worship has come, for the Revealer is present. Such worship ‘in spirit and truth’ is the only worship proportioned to the pure spirituality of God. 25. The woman remarks that clarification on these points must come from the Messias, known by the Samaritans from the Pentateuch and called Tabeh (‘the Returned’ or ‘the Converter’). 26. Thereupon Jesus pronounces the first great ‘I am’ of Jn. The Christ is sitting beside Jacob’s Well and is revealing himself to a Samaritan woman. The One vaguely apprehended as a miracle-worker, 15, acknowledged as a Prophet, 19, is really the promised Messias. Such a revelation could be made in Samaria where Messianism was not contaminated with nationalistic and political aspirations.
§ 790a 27–30. Jewish custom was strict in regard to a man conversing with a woman in public. 27. Hence the surprise of the disciples, who concluded that some necessity had occasioned the conversation, but out of respect for their Master they asked no question. Meanwhile the woman (in a state of excitement, for she leaves the pitcher behind) has gone to the city. 29. Forthwith she becomes an apostle. Either Jesus had told her other things from her past life, or the expression ‘all I ever did’ is very natural feminine hyperbole. She does not doubt that Jesus is the Messias, but she invites the inhabitants of Sychar to test it for themselves. Her persuasive tone easily moves a people naturally curious and not indisposed to spend an hour on something new.
§ b 31–42 Results—31–34. The disciples expected Jesus to eat. He had been hungry as well as thirsty but had undergone the well-known psychological experience of hunger vanishing before a deeper desire, that of converting a soul. This is the satisfying food that his disciples did not know. They thought that he had received something to eat. He explained that the doing of his Father’s will and the accomplishment of his Father’s work was the supreme satisfaction of all his desires—it was ‘his food’.
§ c 35–38. The Father’s work, which is Christ’s work, is to be also the work of the disciples. It results in the gathering of a spiritual harvest. A remark recently made by the disciples, perhaps at the very moment that they came in view of the Plain of Machneh and the fertile valley between Ebal and Garizim, is taken by Jesus as his introductory sentence; moreover, a sufficient sprinkling of white in the garments of the approaching Samaritans would justify the verb of ocular vision. 35. ‘Do not you say’, etc.: this remark cited from the mouth of the disciples marks a date—January a.d. 29, four months from the wheat harvest. The suggestion that it is a proverb meaning that ‘everything takes time’ is not likely, and seems excluded by the assignment of a minimum space of four months between sowing and reaping instead of the ordinary or maximum, namely five or six. Besides, the opposition is between four months hence and this moment; see Bover B7577i 3 (1922) 442–4. The golden or yellowing harvest of the British Isles is a white harvest under the Palestine sun. From the harvest already in view and represented by the troop of Samaritans Jesus passes to the reapers. 36–38. Let the apostolic reapers have the joy of their work and of their reward, but let them humbly remember the proverb, ‘The sower is not always the one who reaps’. The disciples will reap a harvest which Moses and the Prophets and Jesus himself have sown, as laborious tillers of the soil. This thought, while bringing humility in apostolic success, also brings consolation to those who expend apparently sterile labour in what seems an unpromising apostolic field. Cf. 1 Cor 3:6–9.
§ d 39. The first-fruits of the harvest from that city were those who were convinced by the woman’s faith in the ‘Searcher of hearts’. 40. Contact with the Master excited the charity of hospitality in them. Christ accepted, but as his mission was to the House of Israel, stayed only two days—St Augustine’s ‘two days on account of the two precepts of charity’ is perhaps not exegesis but is worth recording. 41. No miracles are mentioned; but many more converts surrendered to the power of truth in Jesus’ words. Genuine faith—better than the weak miracle-produced conviction of those in Jerusalem, 2:23—seems like the supernaturalization of an innate sympathy for truth. 42. Besides the human touch in the remark to the woman, note the oecumenical title given to the Saviour in keeping with that worship which belongs particularly neither to Garizim nor to Jerusalem. ‘Saviour of the world’ occurs only here, as the fruit of Samaritan lips and under John’s own pen, 1 Jn 4:14; but cf. Gen 41:45, where the phrase is used of Joseph. For the pagan use of this title, cf. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, p 369. Philip the Deacon was the next preacher in Samaria, Ac 8:5 ff.
§ e 43–45 Return to Galilee—It is only by the unlikely supposition that Jn is tacitly alluding to the hostility of Nazareth, Lk 4:24, that our Lord’s saying in this context about a prophet in his own country can be referred to any country except his birthplace Judaea, where the proverb had just been verified. Jesus applied the same proverb later to Nazareth, the place of His boyhood, adolescence and hidden life. 45. The enthusiastic welcome of the Galileans is explained by what pilgrims from there had seen Jesus do in Jerusalem—nearly ten months earlier according to our chronology (or two months ago according to those who date these verses June a.d. 28).
§ f 46–54 Cure of Officer’s Son—46. In Johannine geography Cana of Galilee is the place where Jesus made the water wine. The name naturally became music to St John the Apostle, the guardian of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The man, whose son was sick at Capharnaum, was not a ruler (βασιλίσκος of the group of MSS to which D belongs, represented by V7578g regulus) but a royal officer (βασιλικός), an official of Herod Antipas, conjectured by some (with fair plausibility) to be the procurator Chusa, husband of Johanna, Lk 8:3. 47. Hearing of Jesus’arrival from Judaea, it seems that he came expressly from Capharnaum, seven hours’ journey on foot, though as a royal official he would ride. He must have pressed Jesus to go down to Capharnaum (1,500 feet of descent) that very day, for the boy was dying. 48. Not only did Jesus use reserve towards faith which was mainly the emotional impression produced by miracles, 2:23 f., but he warned against losing the divine significance of miracles by accepting them as merely useful, 6:26, or as feeding the appetite for wonder. Mere wonder-miracles he never worked, Lk 23:8. Hence Jesus combined ‘signs and wonders (prodigies)’ in the remark addressed in the plural number to the official and meant for others besides him. His faith was, in any case, far below that of the centurion of Capharnaum, Mt 8:8 f., for he considered that Jesus had to be present to work a miracle. § g 49. The repeated pleading of the father is respectful and touching, especially when we consider that the best Gk MSS have ‘my little boy’ instead of ‘my son’. 50. Note the brevity of the assurance of Jesus, the fewness of whose words in working miracles (cf. Mt 8:3; Mk 5:41; Lk 7:14; Jn 11:43) reminds us of the Fiat of creation. The text can be taken to imply that the believing father set out on the homeward journey at once, but it would have been more in accord with oriental behaviour for him to have spent the night at Cana and to have begun the descent the following day. 51 f. His servants came up to meet him and reported the cure as having happened yesterday at the seventh hour, between 1 and 2 p.m. 53. The father could thus note the synchronism of the cure at Capharnaum and the words pronounced by Jesus twenty miles away at Cana of Galilee. Not only the official became a believing disciple but his whole household, like the household of Cornelius converted in later days by St Peter at Caesarea and the household of Lydia by St Paul at Philippi. 54. St John, with the obvious intention of supplementing the synoptic gospels, here emphasizes two journeys of Jesus from Judaea into Galilee since the events of the Jordan—each arrival being marked by a miracle, one worked at Cana, the other from Cana.