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Home Bible Study: John

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16:51 / 16.12.07

The conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 isn't in any of the Synoptic Gospels.

Taken from other oral legends about Jesus? Made up by the author(s) of John?

Nicodemus is supposed to be a Pharisee and "leader of the Jews." This might have been Nakdimon ben Guryon, a prominent Jew of the time, known for both his wealth and his philanthropy (and even mentioned in the Talmud), who the authors of John appropriated and added to the story. No idea if he was a member of the Pharisees.

This is one of the many times the New Testament describes prominent, powerful Jews as Pharisees, grassroots populists who Christians saw as religious competitors at the time the Gospel of John was written, rather than as Sadducees, elitists who actually held most of the political power in Jesus's time but lost it after the fall of the Temple.

As for the "born again" bit:

Both the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach mean both "wind" and "spirit." (Ruach also means "breath," as in Genesis 1:1 -- God's breath/wind/spirit moving over the waters.)

When Jesus says you have to be born from water and spirit, it's a reference to Ezekiel 36:25-27:

25. And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you will be clean; from all your impurities and from all your abominations will I cleanse you.

26. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.

27. And I will put My spirit within you and bring it about that you will walk in My statutes and you will keep My ordinances and do [them].

This part of Ezekiel actually is addressing the purification necessary for the Jews to return from the Babylonian Captivity to Israel.

It may have been interpreted in a more personal, mystical manner by the Essenes, a group of Jewish mystics whose teachings probably pre-dated Jesus by a couple hundred years.

If Jesus existed, he and John the Baptist very well may have been Essenes.

19:26 / 16.12.07

Sometimes I've found this thread a bit boring. I think it's personal responses and engagement with the meaning that can be made of scripture that I find much more interesting than what can come across as intellectual interrogation of the text and its context without an attempt to link that to personal/spiritual experience.

I'm not knocking scholarship: my relationship with scripture has been hugely influenced by learning about the context and culture of the writing. Thanks to those of you who are doing such a good job at that here - grant and Ev most opbviously. It's just that for me, it's people's engagement and personal meaning-making that makes it more than just another text. I understand it's not easy to do that in a public forum though, especially now I'm trying to put my own response to this section!

I love the bit here about being born again. It reminds me how deeply my spiritual understanding was renewed and transformed as I developed an understanding of how emotional attachment works. Really felt like being reborn: some part of me growing and changing as rapidly as an infant as I started to allow myself to experience relationships with a secure and autonomous style of attachment.

Since I understand 'God' as 'Love', the huge transformation in my understanding of the world as I learned something fresh about what 'Love' meant, perhaps inevitably changed how I understand 'God'.

22:01 / 16.12.07

@Ev: in the NAB, Nicodemus is explicitly referred to as a rabbi - part of that Billy Jack feeling for me is rooted in the same "new lessons/better than Judaism!" vibe you've underlined in other passages.

@apt plutology: I'm very glad you've dropped a couple pennies in this bucket. The scholarship, for me, if it *is* that, is so wound up with my emotional relationship to scripture, I can't separate the two. I get excited about some of this concepts, or moved, or awed.
What's interesting to me about this "born again" bit is that it ties in with the baptism imagery, and the creation of the world from "the waters," and the water being transformed to wine - all of this that's just been gone over in the bits of John leading up to this. I think there's something unspoken and biological about it, too - the waters breaking on a new life on a spiritual level.

I also like it as a lesson about how metaphor and parable work in Christ's ministry, but that's just me geeking a little.

I also need to mention that this, of course, is one of the Big Themes in contemporary evangelical fundamentalism (which at root is a mystical movement, I think). The "born right the first time" bumper stickers, you know?

Anyway, it's a beautiful and important image. I get far more personally engaged with the narrative elements in the Passion, but this lesson is good, isn't it?

23:16 / 16.12.07

Ev: in the NAB, Nicodemus is explicitly referred to as a rabbi

The New Revised Standard Version I'm looking at has Nicodemus call Jesus "rabbi" (roughly, teacher or "great one"), in John 3:2, but not vice-versa. Are you looking at 3:10? ("Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?")

part of that Billy Jack feeling for me is rooted in the same "new lessons/better than Judaism!" vibe you've underlined in other passages.

Sure: take a famous philanthropist who helped fund the rebellion against the Romans during the first Roman-Jewish War, and turn him into a buffoon who visits Jesus under cover of night but can't grasp his message.

(Here's the Oxford Bible Commentary: "Jesus rebukes the teacher of Israel for his lack of understanding . . . an indirect attack on the Jewish contemporaries of the evangelist who do not accept the Christian testimony.")

This is one of the problems I have with the Gospel of John: it's a big, blunt, and (in my admittedly biased opinion) entirely unjustified "fuck you" to the Jews and Judaism of its time. ("How dare you Jews not accept my revised version of your own religion!")

It's just that for me, it's people's engagement and personal meaning-making that makes it more than just another text.

To me it's just another text. Wasn't raised with it, has no connection to my own personal spirituality.

Since over the millennia it's probably been responsible for the deaths of more Jews than Mein Kampf, I'm not inclined to look to it for spiritual guidance.

On the other hand, I find its development and appropriation from various Jewish and other contemporaneous sources fascinating.

If the discussion continues, perhaps all of us together can cover both its background and context and the personal meaning it's had to some of us.

23:53 / 16.12.07

Here are some comments from a guy who has grappled with both the origins and spiritual message of the Gospel of John:

"More and more scholars acknowledge that most of the words attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel were actually shaped by the conflicts in the ninth and tenth decades of the Christian era . . .

The Gospel of John . . . alternately thrills and exasperates me. I think that, better than any other piece of Christian writing, this gospel captures the profundity of the experience of Jesus as the Christ. . . . Yet I do not think that there is one word in the Johannine text that Jesus actually came close to saying. . . .

I am intrigued by the hints that perhaps there is some connection between the seven-day creation story of Genesis and the constructed order of John's gospel. . . .

I am . . . fascinated . . . by the possibility that John's whole gospel . . was originally written to be part of a seven-week liturgical observance designed to instruct and prepare, with fasting and prayer, converts to Christianity in anticipation of their baptism. . . . This theory would suggest that John 1-11 was designed to lead one through four weeks of preparation. John 12-19 was the text for Holy Week, with John 20-21 leading the worshiper through the joys of Easter day and two Sabbaths afterward.

I . . . believe that the definitive work on John has not yet been written. It will not be, in my opinion, until someone can place this book into its original Jewish setting, discern the motive and the agenda of its original Jewish author, and in this manner open the mysteries hidden away there for so long. The great contribution of the Fourth Gospel is that it continues to feed Christians in every generation on many levels, whether they know its well-kept secrets or not."

That's my Jersey homeboy John Shelby Spong, one of the greatest theologians alive today, in Liberating the Gospels.

15:08 / 17.12.07

You're right - Jesus calls him "Teacher," he calls Jesus "Rabbi."

That's a bit peculiar, isn't it? As far as translation goes?

You're also right - Spong is a cool dude.

19:09 / 17.12.07

I should also clarify my above statement by saying that from surfing to Taoism to long walks on the beaches and waterways where I grew up, water has always been part of my spiritual experience. So I like reading different ways it's used, from Thales to Bruce Lee to John (whoever he was).

20:28 / 17.12.07

That's a bit peculiar, isn't it? As far as translation goes?

Looks like it's in the original text.

3:2 uses the transliterated word "rabbi" as a title or honorific for Jesus. 3:10 uses "didaskalos" (teacher) when Jesus mentions that Nicodemus is "a teacher of Israel."

(As it happens, the use of the term "rabbi" in John might be an anachronism.)

14:53 / 08.01.08

So the next bit of John 3 is the bit that I have the most personal trouble with. It includes the verse you see on placards and posters at football games and under the cups at In-and-Out Burger shops.

11
Amen, amen, I say to you, we speak of what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony.

The notes in the NAB here point out the shift from singular (you, Nicodemus) to plural (you people), which seems to underline my feelings of unease. The voice shifts here to a didactic, exclusive one.

12
If I tell you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
13
No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.

"No one." Hmm. This is why the Book of Enoch wasn't included in the canon, even though it's quoted elsewhere in the New Testament, and referred to in Genesis. Enoch went up to heaven.

14
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."

The association between Moses and serpents always seemed strange to me, you know?

There's a Gnostic belief that Jesus was a return of the serpent from Eden, come to re-enlighten the world. …

16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

Beautiful concept, followed by some frightening corollaries….

17
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
18
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
19
And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil.
20
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed.
21
But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

I'm really not sure what to do with this stuff, especially 18 & 19.

15:03 / 08.01.08

Muscular religion:

This association isn't accidental, I don't think. It's a sweet passage that leads directly into bad-assedness.

Paradox.

16:20 / 08.01.08

Here's the way I read it. John 3:17-20 read together with Jesus' prayer in John 17 shows that the intention is for us to learn from the example of Christ Jesus in knowing God and doing God's work. The idea is that we should learn to live in God the way Jesus showed to be possible by attending to that light which can shine in us as well if we are willing to attend and learn.

George Fox & co in 17th century North West England (founders of Quakers) came to understand that the light of understanding compassion which they experienced when they sat quietly with their minds turned to the power of goodness, was that same power that brought forth the prophets and was Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. That's the Christ-power which can shine into each of us, it allows us to see ourselves and to see what we need to do to be enlightened and help build God's kingdom.

That light is universally available and yet it's hard to let ourselves face it. People who are doing wrong and know it fiercely resist insight: denial and narcissism prevent us from recognizing the wrong we do. But it's been the experience of many generations of people that if we learn to submit ourselves to the searching light of Christ, sitting quietly in attendance on God, that as well as revealing our shortcomings we can be enabled to bear them and Christ's light teaches us how to take the next step towards all goodness, and then the one after that. That light that each of us attend to is seen as the same light, hence it is the ground that can unify us: we can find peace as we each pay attention and report our findings to each other: it is all goodness and will show us the way.

It works similarly for me reading other parts often interpreted as exclusive e.g. John 14:5-7 : no-one can come into unity/wholeness/God/fullness of love except by attending to the Light and living by it.

17:31 / 08.01.08

Are you (and, I suppose, Fox) reading the "Son of Man" as a kind of singular case of a plural phenomenon? (The Son of Man is the human who has experienced heaven....)

Or are you seeing this as a description of a special historical case - Jesus of Nazareth - as being the one and only Son of Man whose *personal* message is necessary for salvation (not being "condemned")?

Because I find it hard not to read it the second way, although there does seem to be wiggle room for the first reading. And that's what makes me uneasy. The specificity.

18:58 / 08.01.08

Let me clarify, because I just reread what I wrote and it looks wrong now.

In your Foxian reading, does Jesus Christ have a uniqueness beyond being one person in one time who had a popular message? Or is the Christ-light something that is universally accessible and internalized by you and I and everyone in exactly the same way as done by Jesus?

How separate are Jesus (the person) and Christ (the status)?

10:46 / 09.01.08

That's an ongoing conversation amongst Friends (what Quakers call themselves - Quakers is a nickname from 17th C.). In my own view right now, Jesus was the one who showed us this way, and revealed it in an exceptional fullness, hence the huge impact of his life story. (I tend to use a Girardian christology to understand the passion and resurrection, but obviously I don't understand it all yet.) As well, our church is part of historical tradition stemming from his ministry. He has a unique position as the person who teaches us this lesson, but as Job Scott writes in 1792, Christ has not conquered to excuse us, but that we should follow his steps. This is very much in the 'Christus Victor' theological mould which we have in common with the eastern Orthodox church.

However, it has always been acknowledged amongst Friends that knowledge of Christ, though useful and instructive, was not essential for access to God - early Quaker preachers were able to trade and negotiate with Americans recognising that a divine light spoke through them as well, even though they had never heard the Jesus story. For myself I know the light is universally available: I have close spiritual friends who are buddhist, and Jewish, and 'other', and atheist, and I know that I meet them in the 'things which are eternal' & that the relationship we enter into is holy.

Quakers have held since the earliest days that the knowledge of the holy spirit is what is vital - after that experience of transformative power, then we can learn to read scripture so it starts to make sense to us. But without direct experience of what is holy, we can knot ourselves up in lies as easily with the Bible as any other book.

Some other British Quakers' writings about Christ Jesus, and particularly about universality are found in 'Quaker Faith and Practice' which might throw more light on answers to your last question. (It's an anthology compiled published collectively by (the liberal majority organisation of) British Quakers, tends to be revised about once a generation).

15:44 / 09.01.08

The Friends please me.

16:34 / 09.01.08

John 3:11-21. Oof.

So much to talk about here I barely know where to begin.

For a start, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . ."

Over time, Jesus's followers made him more and more divine earlier and earlier in his career: from the author of various clever Cynic/Talmudic sayings (the Q Document), to someone who died or disappeared but would become the divinely ordained king of Israel upon his (King-Arthurish) second coming at some unspecified future date (Simon), to someone who became divine at the time he was raised from the dead (Paul), to someone who was adopted as a son by God at his baptism (Mark), to someone who was born as the Savior (Matthew/Luke), to someone who was eternally God since before Creation (John).

The Gospel of John has a strong point of view about proper Christology, and wants to slam home that Jesus is and was God since the beginning of time. He's God's ONLY son -- not any of those other roughly contemporaneous magicians and miracle-workers like John the Baptist or Simon Magus, and certainly not Jesus's brother (and leader of the Jerusalem Christians) James the Just -- who some early Christians saw as the successor and superior to Jesus the way Jesus was the successor and superior to John the Baptist, and who insisted that Christians had to follow strict Jewish purity laws.

"so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

It's interesting that some modern American Protestants see this as the most critical element of Christianity, and as a spiritual "get out of jail free" card: simply profess belief in Jesus as the Son of God at some point in your life and from that point forward (barring backsliding) you're guaranteed a place in Heaven.

There seems to be a reasonable argument that the second part of this verse actually means "everyone who continues to rely on and obey Jesus shall, through this ongoing process of obedience, have eternal life in the here and now." If you follow the example of Jesus in your personal life, you're already living in the Kingdom of Heaven.

More later.

16:47 / 09.01.08

(Oh -- a killer book on Christology, "The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity," is available in its entirety online, with the permission of the author, a Stanford professor. Great stuff, especially part III.)

17:57 / 09.01.08

Coincidentally, I was just reading about the James who might be James the Just (but probably isn't) yesterday - the first known Marian visionary. He saw Jesus' mother (and mmmaybe his own mother, too) standing atop a pillar in what's now Zaragosa, Spain, where he'd been having trouble spreading the faith.

Or so the story goes.

John the Evangelist and the James who saw Mary are both "sons of Zebedee," but whether this James and James the Just are the same James is a matter of dispute. There's a third James who may be one or the other or both.

Anyway, James the Just is the same James who's known in the other gospels as the "brother of Jesus." IF he's the same as the son of Zebedee (a cousin of Jesus?) then he'd be John's brother, too.

The weird way family titles work in the gospels make me think there's something strange about the "Son of Man" phrase and the idea about being the Son of God here. I suspect there might even be some doublethink involved around the "only" as being a sign of a mystical, private event - an "only" that can be shared, in a way, but is always exclusive to the individual.

I am the only child of God, you are the only child of God, we are all only children of God.

I need to learn more to see if that feeling holds up with the language - with the actual words that are written.

19:11 / 09.01.08

As per Matthew 13:55 ("are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?"), there's an argument that the Gospels -- and later the Church and other Christian institutions -- created multiple Jameses, Josephs, Simons, and Judases (including my favorite, "Judas not Iscariot," in John 14:22) to obscure the fact that Jesus had brothers, and that these brothers continued one (eventually discredited) branch of Christianity after his death.

There also were a bunch of Jesuses who may have been conflated -- Joshua (Jesus) was a common name. There was Jesus Barabbas (yes, that Barrabas) the revolutionary, whose last name, bar-abbas, essentially means "Son of the Father." There was Jesus ben Anaias, a well-known prophet of doom who lamented the fall of Jerusalem before it happened. There was Jesus ben Sapphiah the bandit chief, Elymas bar-Jesus ("son of Jesus") the sorcerer, and Paul's pal Jesus Justus.

Here's a nice review of "James the Brother of Jesus" that addresses the issue a bit, and notes that Yochanan ben Zabda (John son of Zebedee) was a famous healer noted in the roughly contemporaneous Sepher Refu'ot (Book of Medicines), who might have been imported into the Gospels to explain why John wasn't the brother of Jesus.

Unconditional Love

07:33 / 10.01.08

NUMBERS

"From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the Land of Edom; and the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food."

"Then The Lord [see Rock Of Ages] sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses, and said, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against The Lord and against you; pray to The Lord, that he take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the people."

"And The Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live." So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live." (Numbers 21:4-9 RSV)

JOHN
14
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
15
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
16
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

I believe the comparison is made between the serpent and Christ because both are able to remove sin and thus redeem man.

The serpent is also a symbol that has strong associations to rebirth, the shedding of an old skin (sin) to be born again. Thou it is able to give a deadly venom, the very same source can provide a means of redemption through the transmutation of sin into divinity.

But as aim for joviality points out, that means approaching that source of divinity willing to bear the truth of oneself. Much like Christ, naked and suffering upon the cross, we face our own suffering and its cause in order to be born again, the venom of the snake is the revealer of the wounds, the source and knowledge of the wounds must be fully comprehended and experienced before we can cast off the old skin and slither along on our belly's as per usual.

23:00 / 04.06.08

John 3:22-36 has John the Baptist graciously stepping aside for Jesus and naming him the Messiah.

There are some interesting notes.

It starts out with another argument with "a Jew":

23 John was also baptizing in Aenon near Salim, because there was an abundance of water there, and people came to be baptized,
24 for John had not yet been imprisoned.
25 Now a dispute arose between the disciples of John and a Jew about ceremonial washings.

The note in the NAB says that "a Jew" might mean Jesus himself. Which is an interesting reading, but not impossible. (Why else do we care who the disciples of *John* are arguing with?)

And John the Baptist steps aside, saying this new guy is the Messiah - he is the bridegroom who has the bride, and I'm the best man, I'm happy for him.

Repetition of some imagery there, huh? Water and weddings.

This also could be the point where John the Baptist prefigures the crucifixion - his last words are "He must increase; I must decrease." And since this is stated to be before he was imprisoned, well....

The last bit of John 3 is unclear, the notes say - it could be John the Baptist still speaking, or it could be the author summarizing the chapter - with that trick of not explicitly naming Jesus but sort of allowing you to conclude that Jesus and the Son and "the one who comes from heaven" are all the same person.

It ends with another jarring (for me) note:
34 For the one whom God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.
35 The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.
36 Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him.

Disobeys the Son? What does that mean?

02:56 / 05.06.08

John 3:22-36 has John the Baptist graciously stepping aside for Jesus and naming him the Messiah.

This is a rewrite of sorts of Mark 2:18-22.

There seems to have been a lot of friction between the followers of Jesus and the followers of John the Baptist -- who believed that John, not Jesus, was the prophet and/or messiah -- around the time of early Christianity. (This little feud is referred to obliquely as two groups of quarreling children in Matthew 11:16-19.)

The Gospel of John asserts Jesus's superiority by having John the Baptist flatly concede that superiority -- despite the fact (if you can call it a fact) that John came first, and that (according to the Synoptic Gospels, although it's omitted here) John baptized Jesus.

I imagine the followers of John the Baptist would have disagreed. But they didn't write this Gospel, and they eventually lost this particular battle. Not many Mandeans in the world today.

Even so, there's a fair argument that hefty chunks of the Gospels, including John 1 (the Logos Hymn) and Luke 1 (the nativity story, including the Magnificat), were originally about only John the Baptist, not Jesus, and were eventually appropriated and rewritten by followers of Jesus. There even are a few bits of John's own passion narrative left over in Mark 6:17-19 and Matthew 14:3-12, his entombment in Mark 6:29, and his resurrection in Mark 6:14 and Matthew 14:2.

I'll hit John 3:31-36 later. I'm not a fan.

22:08 / 05.06.08

The nativity of John? That's weird. Or is it because Mary's talking to John's mom?

(Cool bit in the link about the Magnificat being banned in Guatemala. Who'da thunk?)

14:12 / 06.06.08

The nativity of John? That's weird. Or is it because Mary's talking to John's mom?

All of Luke 1 is basically about the conception and birth of John the Baptist, with a small bit about Mary and Jesus apparently cut-and-pasted in in Luke 1:26-45 and 56.

For example, here's a bit about John, not Jesus, that seems oddly familiar:

5 In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah. . . . His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

6 Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.

7 But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. . . .

11 Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.

12 When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.

13 But the angel said to him, 'Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.

14 You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,

15 for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. . .

That's an annunciation, just like the annunciation for Jesus slapped in almost immediately afterwards in the very same chapter.

17:51 / 06.06.08

This also could be the point where John the Baptist prefigures the crucifixion - his last words are "He must increase; I must decrease."

He will diminish, and go into the West, and remain John the Baptist.

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