The Gospel of John: A Commentary Noting Its Jewish Context

The Gospel of John

A Commentary Noting Its Jewish Context

The Rev. Daniel W. Kreller

Published by Daniel W. Kreller at Smashwords

Copyright 2018 Daniel W. Kreller

Table of Contents

Notes

Preface

Purpose of this Writing

The Name of God

The Lord’s Prayer

Unique Elements in the Gospel of John

John 1:1-18 The Prologue

John 1:19-34 The Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist

John 1:35-51 Jesus Calls His First Disciples

John 2:1-12 The Wedding at Cana

John 2:13-25 Jesus Cleanses the Temple

John 3:1-21 Nicodemus Visits Jesus

John 3:22-36 Jesus and John the Baptist

John 4:1-42 Jesus and the Woman of Samaria

John 4:43-54 Jesus Returns to Galilee

(Chapters 5 & 6 are reversed in this commentary)

John 6:1-15 The Feeding of the Five Thousand

John 6:16-21 Jesus Walks on the Water

John 6:22-71 The Bread from Heaven

John 5:1-47 Jesus Attends the Festival of Shavuot

John 7:1-52 Jesus at the Festival of Sukkot (Booths)-Part 1

John 8:1-59 Jesus at the Festival of Sukkot-Part 2

John 9:1-41-John 10:1-21 Jesus at the Festival of Sukkot-Part 3

John 10:22-42 Jesus at the Festival of Dedication (Hanukkah)

John 11:1-54 The Raising of Lazarus

John 11:55-12:11 The Days before Jesus’ Last Passover

John 12:12-50 Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem at Passover

John 13:1-38 The Last Supper-Jesus Prepares the Disciples for His Departure

John 14:1-31 The Last Supper-Jesus Prepares the Disciples for the Coming of the Holy Spirit

John 15:1-27 The Last Supper-Jesus Instructs the Disciples About the Work of the Holy Spirit in Them

John 16:1-33 The Last Supper-Jesus Instructs the Disciples About the Work of the Holy Spirit in the World

John 17:1-26 The Last Supper-Jesus Prays for the Disciples

John 18:1-40-19:1-16 The Arrest and Trial of Jesus

John 19:17-42 The Crucifixion and Burial of Jesus

John 20:1-31 The Resurrection Appearances of Jesus in Jerusalem

John 21:1-25 The Resurrection Appearance of Jesus in Galilee

About the author

Cover art

Notes

Bible Text:

The New Revised Standard Version Bible Copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the Nation Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, 1989.

(In certain instances I have changed the translation to clarify the meaning. In Hebrew Scripture quotations, for instance, the term Lord is replace by the actual name for God used in the text, Yahweh. In another instance, the NRSV translates the 26 Amen, amen sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John as Very truly. I have restored these texts to the original.)

Supplemental Bible Text:

The Five Books of Moses: A New Translation With Introduction, Commentary, and Notes by Everett Fox, Schocken Books, New York, 1983.

Liturgical Texts:

The Book of Common Prayer, Oxford University Press, New York, 2007.

Hymnbook 1982, The Church Hymnal Corporation, New York, 1985.

The Union Prayer Book for Jewish Worship, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, New York, 1971.

Gates of Repentance: The New Union Prayer Book for the Days of Awe, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, New York, 1978.

Sources:

My purpose was not to write a scholarly commentary on the Gospel but to offer my personal reflections. I did not, therefore, give the usual citations for sources in footnotes. Given the availability of information on the Internet, I leave it to the reader to fact check, source check, and otherwise investigate further that way.

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Preface

A quarter of a century ago I awakened one morning with this thought in my mind - Jesus was a Jew. Of course he was. I knew that at a factual level, as most of us do. But I did not know it at a heart and soul level. Nor did anyone else in my circle of Protestant clergy and laity. I could tell by the way that that truth, whenever it came up, skipped off the surface of our hearts like a stone sent skipping across a pond. It would touch once or twice or maybe thrice before sinking into the depths, disappearing from our awareness. In an instance it was gone. And when it was gone we remade Jesus in our own image. Surely he was one like us (me) - white, European, and Christian. All the preachers and teachers I was instructed by never gave me much reason to think otherwise. All of the artwork depicting Jesus that I was exposed to growing up only confirmed it.

In my home, for example, I have a fragment of a stained glass window that survived a fire in a Philadelphia church. The window, designed by the American artist John La Farge, depicted Christ among the Doctors, as it is often titled. Great masters of the past, including Da Vinci and Durer, painted the scene which shows Jesus in the Temple at 12 years of age discoursing with the elders of Israel. (This event from Jesus’ life is recorded in the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel starting at verse 41). The fragment I have is of the head of the boy Jesus. La Farge, like the artists before him, depicted Jesus as Northern European, not Semitic like the elders around him, with pale white skin, flowing shoulder length auburn hair, and light brown eyes. La Farge’s Jesus is a beautiful boy but no one would mistake him for a Jewish boy of bar mitzvah age. Nor would many ponder why Jesus was in the Temple in Jerusalem in the first place. The artistic depiction of the scene with Jesus as the focal point and the expressions of the doctors around him looking mystified by his wisdom, conveys the message. The wisdom of Jesus and the New Covenant surpasses, or supplants, the wisdom of the doctors of the Old Covenant. But Luke in his Gospel states the reason why Jesus was in the Temple. He had gone up to the Temple in Jerusalem with his parents to observe the Passover. Luke writes, "Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival." (Luke 2:41-42) Jesus was an observant Jew brought up by observant Jewish parents! He was not just biologically a Jew. He was a Jew in heart and soul as well. His devotion to God was expressed in full-blown Torah observance.

It is hard to change one’s habits of mind once they are ingrained. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it, the writer asserts in Proverbs 22:6. I had been trained up, not actively but passively, by the failure to make any connection to the significance that Jesus was a Jew, to believe that that part of his identity was accidental, as the philosophers would say, not essential. His essence, in the view of those who trained me, was that he is the universal Lord and Savior - the Christ for humankind and not bound by any particular race or nation. Therefore, every race and nation could claim him. And so they have, and do. Christianity is the world’s largest religion numerically, with about 1/3 of the world’s population identifying as Christian and it has adherents in most, if not all the nations of the world. When these nations have embraced Jesus they have, like my European ancestors, transformed him into their likeness. Thus, I have seen artistic depictions of Jesus as African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and so on. And, of course, there are theological outlooks and worship practices that reflect this same adoption and adaptation of the Jewish Jesus to the local culture. There is much that is good and true about all of that. I once attended a conference during which a man uttered a vision he had received during the time of worship. He saw the face of Jesus with a heavy beard. When he looked closer he saw that the beard was made up of people of all the different races, colors, and nations of the world. It is a marvelous vision of the Christ for all humankind. But still there is the irrefutable fact that when this universal Christ took on human form, and was made man, he was made a Jewish male, in the tribe of Judah, and from the house and lineage of David. Simply put, he had a beard as many religious Jews do, just as that man saw in his vision.

The thought that was in my mind upon awakening so many years ago challenged me to consider that the circumstances of his birth may not be accidental after all, but essential. From that morning forward I began to explore what that might mean. I stopped reading Christian theologians and writers. They didn’t seem interested in the question of what that might mean. I began reading Rabbinical writers to discover what it means to be Jewish, an observant one, for not all are. By reading Rabbinical writers I saw things in the Christian Scriptures, and in the life and ministry of Jesus, that I did not see or appreciate before. In others words, that study bore fruit. I doubt if I would have even continued my study if it had not been for several fortuitous encounters that directed my path. I had just begun my study when I presided at the wedding of the son of one of my parishioners. At the reception a woman came up to me to introduce herself. She was Rabbi, one of the few in those days since women had only begun to be ordained in her Jewish denomination. The same was true in my own Christian denomination. I related to her my recent interest in Rabbinical writers. She, in her response, revealed she knew more about Christians than we Christians know about Jews. She said we don’t practice Biblical Judaism. Christians take it as a badge of honor if we practice Biblical Christianity. We assume we can consume the Biblical texts, so to speak, or hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them as one prayer in my denomination puts it, and then put what we have digested into practice. Rabbinical Judaism is different. What she meant, I came to understand as I studied more, is that it is not possible for Jews to practice the Hebrew religion described in the Bible. One major reason for that is the Temple no longer stands in Jerusalem and so all of the rites and ceremonies described in the Torah that were practiced first in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness of Sinai, and then in the Temple in Jerusalem, cannot be performed. The other fortuitous encounter was with a Messianic Rabbi (one who believes Jesus is the Messiah). I attended a service in his synagogue nearby to where I live. There were only a handful of people in attendance for Messianic Judaism, as it is called, has a relatively small number of adherents, though probably more so than any time since the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry. When I spoke to him after the service and told him I was celebrating the Passover in my congregation he said, Many Christians are doing that now, but you should investigate the other festivals as well. I was unaware of the other festivals, or of their importance. I never met with or spoke to these two very different Rabbis again, but both gave me good guidance in our brief encounters.

The one nation that has not claimed Jesus as its own, oddly enough, is the Jewish nation. It is true that all of Jesus’ apostles and his first disciple were Jews. Even the first fifteen Bishops of Jerusalem were Jews. But eventually the belief in Jesus as the Messiah (the Christ) became a Gentile phenomenon. Though the separation between those Jews that acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah - a minority - and those who didn’t - the majority - did not happen immediately, the division was present from the outset of Jesus’ ministry. That division only increased in the generations that followed. Thus, the Apostle Paul, a Jew who came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah, pondered in his letter to the Romans (in chapters 9-11) how it could be that as he proclaimed the good news of Jesus to his fellow Jews wherever he traveled on his missionary journeys, they tended to reject his proclamation while the various Gentile nations accepted it. The explanation for this outcome he advances in the letter to the Romans as to why his fellow Jews have not accepted Jesus as Messiah and Lord is a tour de force that clearly reveals his Rabbinical training. But his fellow Rabbis, and subsequent Rabbis, have advanced equally cogent reasons for rejecting Jesus as their Messiah. Both, however, could agree on one thing - the sovereignty of God. Thus, Paul saw the hand of God’s sovereignty in showing mercy to the Gentiles in calling them through Jesus to be children of the living God. And his opponents saw the hand of God’s sovereignty in the election of Israel as his chosen people, which they accepted by their Torah observance. But mostly the two groups of Jews were at odds and eventually they parted ways. Those who rejected Jesus as the Messiah continued to gather in their synagogues and observe the Torah (the revelation to Moses). Those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, which they received as a further revelation of God, gathered in their own fellowships that came to be known as churches. Yet, Paul held out hope that as the hand of God’s sovereignty played out in time even his fellow Jews, who did not believe, would come to believe in Jesus and when they did a spiritual renewal would take place the likes of which the world has not seen. For their part the Jews who do not believe in Jesus, at least the devout ones, are expecting a similar spiritual renewal in the world when the Messiah is finally revealed.

Men, however, are seldom content to let the hand of the sovereign God play out over time. God is outside of time and we are time bound and our time is very short. Thus, we are prone to impatience and intemperance. As a result we often try to force God’s hand to see the end in our lifetime. This intemperance led the Jews that rejected Jesus to persecute the believers in Jesus and eventually exclude them from the synagogue. Paul, when he was still named Saul, participated in such persecution. But soon the tables turned. As the church expanded into the Gentile world and grew in numbers and power, the Christians in their impatience with the unbelieving Jews began to persecute them. It is indisputable that historically the Christian’s persecution of the Jews, the church of the synagogue, has far, far, exceeded anything done by Jews to Christians. The sheer numerical strength and political power of the church, once it was endorsed by many an earthly sovereign, led to a certain hubris that convinced its doctors that as far as election goes, the church had supplanted the synagogue and that Christians had replaced the Jews in God’s favor. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas, the great doctor of the Roman church of the Medieval Age in his hymn that begins Now my tongue the mystery telling, speaking of the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, compares Jesus’ sacrifice and the commemoration of it in the Christian Eucharist to the former sacrifices in the Temple. He refers to those Temple sacrifices as types and shadows and exalts that they have their ending, for the newer rite (of the Christian Eucharist) is here. Several centuries later when Pope Sixtus IV reconstructed the Cappella Magna in Rome and renamed it the Sistine Chapel after himself, a place where those newer rites are routinely celebrated, he had it built to the exact dimensions of the Jerusalem Temple. It is as if he intended to put an exclamation point on the Christian assertion that the old had been supplanted by the new, even down to the sacred space where the newer rites are performed. The Western Latin Christians were not alone in their affirmation of the doctrinal belief that they replaced the Jews in God’s favor. So were the Protestant Christians in the West that did not stray far from the Roman point of view after the Reformation, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians held similar views. All Gentile Christians were in agreement. God may have chosen Israel as his beloved in the past, but now he has rejected Israel - divorced her and sent her away as an unfaithful wife (Hosea 2:2) - and taken another beloved, the church, to be his chosen bride.

Practice follows from belief. The unfortunate practice that has followed from the belief that Christians have replaced the Jews in God’s favor is the Christian persecution of the Jews. That persecution waxed and waned over the long centuries since the birth of Christianity but it certainly came to a head in the 20th Century. Then, the virus of anti-Semitism that had long infected Christian nations turned virulent. Around the beginning of that century pogroms against the Jews broke out in Russia that spurred an emigration of Russian Jews to the United States. A few decades later, in the aftermath of World War I, National Socialism reared its ugly head in Germany and under its leader, Adolf Hitler, a Final Solution was promulgated whose aim was the extermination of all Jews living on the continent of Europe. Of the roughly 9 million Jews that lived on the continent at the time, about 6 million died in this Action that Jews call the Shoah (calamity) and secular historians call the Holocaust (whole burnt offering). By mid-century the world wide Jewish population had been reduced by nearly 40% as a result.

But at the beginning of the 20th Century a counter movement to anti-Semitism had gained a foothold among European Jews. Termed, Zionism, its aim was to inspire Jews to return to their ancient homeland of Israel and re-establish a nation where they could dwell secure. The former nation of Israel experienced its demise some 1800 years before when its Roman conquerors expelled the Jews from the land of Israel and renamed it Palestine. A small number of Jews took up the Zionist cause and migrated back to Palestine. A minority of Christians supported the Zionist cause, particularly those Christians that hoped for the immanent return of Christ. Since the Christian expectation is that Jesus will rule in his millennial kingdom from Jerusalem, re-establishing the Jewish state was viewed as a pre-requisite for his return. This meager support for Zionism gained traction after the traumas of World War II and the holocaust. As a result, many of the nations of the world endorsed the return of the Jews to Palestine and the establishing of a Jewish state there in 1948. Since then the state of Israel has prospered, despite several wars with its neighbors, and no permanent resolution as to the status of the Arab population living in the land. The Jewish population in Israel has grown, however, to around 6 million, or slightly more than 40% of the worldwide population of Jews. The Hebrew language, which had long been used only in the synagogue, has even been revived as the language of the nation. The fact that the Jewish people endured and survived intact for several millennia dispersed among the nations, only to be reborn as a nation in their former land, is unprecedented in the history of the world. Some see it nothing short of miraculous. For Christians, especially for those who do see it as miraculous, this has caused them to reassess their view that God had rejected the Jews. They reason, if God in his sovereignty has resurrected the Jewish nation, surely it signifies his favor towards the Jews. That reasoning received even greater confirmation when in the war that broke out in 1967 Israel captured Jerusalem, its ancient capital, and made it its capital once again. This seemed to be definitive evidence that God had never removed his favor from Israel, his chosen and beloved, but had remained faithful to his covenant with Israel all along. Now God was fulfilling his promise of a return and restoration of his people as spoken through the prophets, starting with Moses. (Deuteronomy 30:1-5)

The foundation upon which the house of the ideology that the Jews had been replaced in God’s favor by the Christian Church had been built proved to be sand (error), to reference one of Jesus’ own parables. So when the storms of the 20th Century beat against it, it collapsed. Now in the 21st Century we, both Christians and Jews, are seeking a better foundation of rock (truth) upon which to rebuild our relationship. As I write in 2018 we are at the beginning stages of rebuilding. Even so the early efforts are quite startling. From the Christian side most denominations have renounced the replacement theology of the past and have even ceased to seek to convert Jews to Christianity. Those who are most active in evangelizing Jews today are Messianic Jews - Jews that believe Jesus is the Messiah but also practice Torah observance in varying degrees. The Jews, for their part have responded in kind. In the year 2000 C.E. a number of Rabbis from various Jewish denominations signed a document entitled Dabru Emet (To Speak the Truth) in which they acknowledged, among other things, that Christians and Jews worship the same God, Nazism is not a Christian phenomenon, and the controversy between Christians and Jews will not be settled until God redeems the world as promised. In the interim no one should be pressed into believing the other’s beliefs. Only a few Orthodox Rabbis signed the document for they felt it minimized the theological differences between us, particularly the long held Jewish view that Christian worship of Jesus is a form of idolatry, something strictly forbidden in the Torah. However, in 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the Vatican II document, Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), a document that clarified the relation of the Roman Church to the other world religions, renouncing discrimination against any, and specifically taking a more gracious attitude towards the Jewish religion than in the past, 70 Orthodox Rabbis signed on to a statement that affirmed the emergence of Christianity is not an accident nor an error, but the willed divine outcome and gift to the nations. Then in 2017 a delegation of Orthodox Rabbis visited Pope Francis to offer a reflection on the 50 years since Nostra Aetate. The brief document produced at that meeting acknowledged Christians to be our partners, close allies, friends, and brothers in our mutual quest for a better world blessed with peace, social justice, and security. At the same time it acknowledged the irreconcilable theological differences between Christians and Jews. But it asserted this difference was a God willed separation of partners, not enemies. And, it called upon both faith communities to encounter and grow acquainted with one another, and earn each other’s trust.

I thought I was alone in my desire to investigate what it meant for Jesus to be a Jew after I awoke 25 years ago with that thought in my mind. But I soon discovered that the Spirit was moving many Christians to do the same all around the world. One remarkable example of the Spirit moving an individual that I am personally acquainted with is that of Ruth Fazal. I met Ruth when I was active in an organization called Fishnet Northeast. Fishnet’s mission was to promote healing prayer in churches and sponsored conferences throughout the northeastern United States. For a number of years Ruth, a very accomplished musician and composer, provided the music for our gatherings. In 1998 a friend gave her the book, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, saying she may want to do something with it some time. The book is a collection of poems and artwork of Jewish children that had been interned with their families by the Nazis in a small fortress in the Czech town of Terezin from 1941 to 1945. Many died there because of the poor conditions, or we deported to Auschwitz where they were killed. Ruth put the book away on her bookshelf. When she picked it up and read it a year later, she was deeply moved to compose an oratorio about human suffering. The composition took her several years to finish and during her labors her compassion for the Jews and their suffering in particular grew. The completed oratorio entitled, Terezin, was critically acclaimed for its power and beauty when it premiered in Toronto, Ruth’s hometown, in 2003. It has since been performed in Europe, the United States, and Israel. But that was only the beginning of the story. Ruth’s compassion for the suffering of the Jews led her to a ministry of playing her violin for Holocaust survivors wherever she found them. She also felt led to move to Israel and study Hebrew. There she found a young Orthodox teacher, also a musician, to instruct her. As their friendship grew they began to collaborate, producing videos of music and teaching aimed at Christians to better inform them about Jewish people. They also organize and lead tours of the Holy Land for Christians who want to connect with Jews and the land of Israel. While living in Israel Ruth was inspired to write another oratorio, which as I write, she is recording for the first time in Bratislava, Slovakia. This oratorio is entitled Ezekiel-Out-of-Exile. The prophet Ezekiel lived most of his life in exile in Babylon after the Babylonians had conquered Judah and Jerusalem and destroyed Solomon’s Temple in the 6th century before Christ. From Babylon Ezekiel prophesied a future restoration and return of the people of Israel to their homeland. There was a return after 70 years only to be followed by an even longer exile many centuries later when the Romans conquered Judah and Jerusalem and destroyed the second Temple, the one Jesus knew. As with all prophecies there are depths of fulfillment. A return from Babylon is not the only meaning of Ezekiel’s prophecy. Another return of the people of Israel from an even greater exile can also be read into his utterances. It has been read that way by devout Jews ever since the Roman imposed exile millennia ago and by doing so they kept their hope for a return alive. Now in this present day the Jews have returned and established themselves in the land of Israel. Ruth, for her part seeks to throw in her lot with them and has applied for permanent residence. Ruth’s namesake, after all, was a Moabite woman who migrated to Israel with her mother-in-law Naomi after they were both widowed declaring, Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16) That Ruth married an Israelite of the tribe of Judah named Boaz. They had a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse. Jesse had a son named David, and he became the second king of Israel. It is from this lineage that Jews believe the Messiah will descend, and Christians believe Jesus, Son of David, did descend. So, you can see the Spirit has been at work in other Christians as well, prompting many to desire to walk together again with our Jewish partners, close allies, friends, and brothers.

Now that Christians have begun to renounce the long held view that we replaced the Jews in God's favor, we can better appreciate that that view contradicted Jesus own teaching. In his sublime teaching recorded in Mathew's Gospel, that we call the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declares, Do not think that I have come to overturn the law and the prophets, I have not come to overturn it but to fulfill it. (Matthew 5:17) If the law and the prophets are not overturned by his ministry, then, they have not been replaced and they continue to be a valid expression of God's Will. This is exactly what Judaism believes. God will never abrogate or overturn the Torah or the prophets. But Jesus in the sermon goes on to say that his ministry will fulfill it.

The best way to illustrate what this might mean comes from the Rabbis themselves. Reflecting on the 4 consonants that comprise the Divine Name - YHWH - they say these letters represent the 4 stages of God's works. The first letter Y represents the initial stage -conception. The second letter H represents the second stage - creation. The third letter W represents the third stage - formation. And the fourth letter represents the final stage - completion. Think of the work of building a house. The work begins with the concept. The concept is translated into plans for the building drawn up by an architect. The work of building begins when the ground is broken for the foundation of the house. This is the stage of creation. As the work of building continues, the form of the house takes shape with its walls and roof and finishes. This is the stage of formation. Once the house is fully formed, it is not yet complete. The house only fulfills its purpose when people take up residence in it and, then, the work of building the house arrives at the stage of completion.

The Rabbis recognize that the work of God that is Israel is not yet complete. Israel was conceived when Abraham was called by Yahweh to worship him alone. Israel was born when Yahweh brought her out of Egypt. Israel’s formation began with the revelation of the Torah through Moses at Sinai and continued through the revelations given to the prophets. But as the prophets assert the vocation of Israel is not complete until the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of Yahweh God. (Habakkuk 2:14) Devout Jews believe this will be accomplished in the days of the Messiah and they long for that time. When Jesus spoke of completing the work of the law and the prophets he was making a Messianic claim. He was asserting that through his ministry all of the nations of the world would come to know the one true living God who revealed himself first to Israel. Remarkably, the Rabbis in recent statements like Dabru Emet do acknowledge, to some degree, that this has proven true. Yet, in doing so they are not confessing that Jesus is the Messiah. Rather, they confirm that through the witness of Jesus' Jewish disciples, the Gentile nations have come to know and worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - the God of Israel. Even we Christians acknowledge that Jesus' ministry is not complete but ongoing and will only be complete when he returns again. So, Jews await the Messiah and Christians await Jesus’ return. We are both people of hope looking forward to a future time when the work of God will be complete.

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Purpose of this Writing

My purpose in writing is to demonstrate the value of studying the Jewish roots of Christianity. As I noted above, my quarter century study of our Jewish roots bore fruit. I came to see and understand things in the Christian Scriptures I had not seen or understood before. It also helped me to recognize the error of things that I had been taught, and are still being taught in Christian churches. In order to demonstrate the value of such study I have chosen to write a commentary on the Gospel of John. What follows is not a traditional Biblical commentary produced by an eminent scholar of the subject. Such works are a thorough verse-by-verse exegesis and commentary on the text. Raymond Brown’s two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John in the Anchor Bible Series is a superlative example of such a commentary. Mine is simply a reflection on each section of the Gospel in which I note how our understanding can be enhanced by knowing related Jewish practice or belief.

We are very familiar with the chapter and verse system that printers introduced into the scriptures. That system was not original to the texts, however, as any Jew would know that is called forward to the bema in the synagogue to read a portion from an actual Torah scroll. Originally, the text was continuous and without the demarcations that are dictated now by our grammatical and printing conventions. Printers, like translators, have greatly aided readers by making the texts of scripture more accessible. But, the downside of the conventions adopted by printers is that we have grown accustomed to quoting a chapter and verse in a particular book, like John’s Gospel, without paying due diligence to the whole context. Because every verse is set within a context, my commentary does not proceed verse by verse. Rather, I comment on the themes of each section of the Gospel. For example, John 3:16 is one of the most familiar verses in the New Testament. It reads, For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. What is often overlooked is that this declaration of Jesus occurs in the course of a discussion with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a leader of the Jews, in Jerusalem during Passover. Passover is the celebration of Israel being birthed as a nation by Yahweh when he delivered them from the womb of Egypt. For most of the Israel’s sojourn in Egypt they prospered and developed into a numerous people. Their numbers eventually threated the Egyptians and so they were subjected to persecution and slavery. It was time, therefore, for them to be born as a nation and to fulfill their destiny in the Promised Land. God then acted to bring Israel out of Egypt and into the Land. With the story of the birth of the nation as the context, it is no wonder Jesus’ discussion with Nicodemus is about birth by the power of God. However, in their discussion Jesus asserts that a further spiritual birth, beyond one’s physical birth or national rebirth, is necessary to attain the Kingdom of God. One only fully attains the Kingdom when he shares in God’s own eternal life and that, Jesus claims, is facilitated through him, by belief in him. In their conversation Jesus pushes the limits of Yahweh’s Passover deliverance beyond this present temporal age to include the eternal age to come.

I have chosen to focus upon the Gospel of John for several reasons. For one, it is common these days to lay the charge of anti-Semitism at John’s feet. This is largely because of his use of the term Jew(s) in his gospel in what appears an unfavorable way. For example, John reports in chapter 10 verse 31 that, The Jews took up stones again to stone him (Jesus). But again the context is revealing. This took place in the Temple in Jerusalem at the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah) in the winter. If John were anti-Semitic, would he report that Jesus attended this celebration of Jewish liberation from foreign oppression? It is not one of the three pilgrim festivals required by the Torah, for it refers to events that transpired in the 2nd Century B.C.E., long after the Torah was written. Yet, John reports that Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to observe this festival. Just consider that the only mention of Hanukkah in the Old and New Testaments is this one reference in John’s Gospel! During this and other trips to Jerusalem for the festivals, John reports Jesus did get embroiled in controversies with his fellow Jews. This is hardly unusual. The various factions of Jews in Jesus’ day contended with one another just as the various factions of the Jews do today. (The various factions of Christians do the same). Or, if John was truly anti-Semitic would he have reported Jesus’ saying to the Samaritan woman, You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. (John 4:22) Is it possible for John to be against the Jews and at the same time give them such a ringing endorsement on the lips of Jesus? I know of no anti-Semites that attribute salvation to the Jews. Quite the opposite is true. Anti-Semites view the Jews as a scourge upon humanity and the source of this world’s ills.

A second reason I have chosen to focus upon John’s Gospel is that it is sometimes asserted that his Gospel is not Jewish at all, but reflects the philosophical wisdom of the ancient world. According to this view, John portrays Jesus more like a Greek philosopher than a Jewish Rabbi, prophet, or miracle worker. This view takes its cue from the very first words of the Gospel that read, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3) Since the Gospel was written in Greek, the term translated as Word in English is Logos in the original. Logos, as the rational element that creates order in the world, does play a significant role in ancient Greek philosophy. So, if one is disposed to look for influences upon John from outside of Judaism, one need not look any farther. After all, the Judea and Galilee of Jesus’ day had been significantly Hellenized after the conquest of these lands by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.E. After his conquest the Greek’s rule lasted nearly three centuries before the arrival of the Romans just prior to the birth of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is clear that John identifies the person of Jesus with the Word and there is nothing in Greek philosophy that so personalizes the Logos. Furthermore, John asserts this Word who was and is with God, became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… (John 1:14) Such a notion would have confounded the Greek philosophers. For them glory is reserved for the eternal realm of the never changing Logos. There is no glory in this transitory material realm. Indeed the goal of Greek philosophers, like Plato, is to transcend the material world, not to become incarnate in it! So the movement of Jesus as the Word from the spiritual eternal realm with God to the material temporal realm among us is just the opposite of the movement ancient philosophy extoled.

A third reason I have chosen to focus upon John’s Gospel is to address the question of why his gospel is so different from the other three - Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three share much that is in common, telling much of the same story of Jesus’ life and ministry, in much the same way. Most of what can be found in Mark’s version can be found in Matthew’s and Luke’s. Matthew and Luke have some other material in common and each have some material exclusive to their account. Then there is John’s Gospel that contains so much exclusive material it seems to bear little relation to, or dependence upon, the other three. The question of why this is so has long been a puzzle. My answer to this puzzle is that John, even more so than the others, is eager to show Jesus as the fulfillment of Judaism. As I noted in the Preface, fulfillment does not mean replacement, but completion, or full realization. Matthew usually gets the credit for being most concerned with the fulfillment of Judaism because of his constant use of the refrain, All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet. (Matthew 1:22, et al) But John, more so than the others, deals with the quintessential issues of Judaism - the Sabbath, and the observance of sacred time including the Festivals; the Temple and the sanctity of sacred space; and the role of the Messiah. While the other three Gospels report on Jesus’ celebration of the Passover, John alone reports on Jesus’ fulfilling the obligation of Jewish males to attend the three pilgrim festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. In addition, as I noted above, John also reports on his attendance in the Temple on Hanukkah. Thus, in John’s Gospel Jesus completes one yearly liturgical cycle during his ministry, from Passover to Passover. And it is during his sojourns in Jerusalem on these sacred occasions that Jesus engages in most of the lengthy discourses that are characteristic of, and unique to, John’s Gospel. The first one was with Nicodemus that I referred to above. John reports that when Nicodemus came see Jesus he addressed him saying, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from God. (John 3:2) That address sets the agenda for this and subsequent discourses. Is Jesus a teacher who has come from God, and therefore, the awaited Messiah? Do the signs (miracles) he performs prove that? Do his teachings prove that? If they do, then, Jesus should be followed, as John and the other disciples do. If not, then Jesus should be rejected as the elders finally do, though not all the elders. In the scene of Jesus’ burial recorded in all four Gospels, Joseph of Arimathea who is a disciple and a member of the council of elders, takes Jesus’ body and buries it in his own tomb. John, alone, adds, Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing a hundred pounds. (John 19:39) The implication is that Nicodemus, too, had come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. But if Jesus is the Messiah, then, he must inaugurate the Kingdom of God in an unexpected way, for the Jews did not expect the Messiah to die in the manner Jesus did. John, however, is eager to demonstrate that the way in which Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom was expected after all. The prophets had predicted it. It would be inaugurated by a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So, from beginning to end in John’s Gospel, Jesus, either by prophetic sign like the changing of water into wine, or by prophetic teaching like the analogy of the branch and the vine given in his last discourse, affirms that he is the Messiah of God who inaugurates the coming Kingdom by baptizing those who believe in him with the Holy Spirit.

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The Name of God

As I noted, my reading of Rabbinical writings bore fruit. The first and most important fruit was to clearly understand that God has a personal Name. The term, God, is the title for the office of the deity. It is not a personal name. Using the term God is similar to speaking of the office of the President of the United States. A number of different persons have served in that office over the course of the history of the United States. The office endures. But the person in the office routinely changes since the law limits each one that serves to two four-year terms. So, to identify the President correctly, we must identify the person who currently holds that office. In a similar way, when we speak of the office of the Deity, we must identify the Name of the one who holds that office. Observant Jews know the Name of God very well for it appears nearly 7,000 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Hebrew Scriptures only the consonants are written in the text of the scrolls and there are four consonants in the Name of God - YHWH. Most agree that two vowels, A and E, need to be added to form the Name. Thus, the Name of God in Hebrew is Yahweh. By Jesus’ day, it seems, the pronunciation of the Name was reserved to the High Priest who spoke it out loud, and, then, only on Yom Kippur in the Temple. When the Second Temple was destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago even this practice ceased. Thus, Jews do not pronounce the Name when reading the sacred texts out loud. For sake of devotion to God they do not want to pronounce the Name incorrectly and, thus, profane it in violation of one of the commandments. Instead, Jews substitute Hashem (the Name) when reading silently, or Adonai (Lord) when reading out loud, whenever the Name Yahweh appears in the text. Modern translators of the Bible into English have chosen to go a step further and have actually replaced the Name Yahweh with the term Lord in all Old Testament texts. Admittedly, the work of translation is difficult and translators have all good intentions in making word changes that would help the reader, but this change is not one of them. It actually hinders understanding for English readers who do not know the Hebrew original. Lord is not a personal name, but like the term God refers to the rank, station, or office. As a result, many English speaking Christian readers of the Bible are ignorant of the Name Yahweh, while Jewish readers are cognizant of it, but shun pronouncing it.

Names are of great importance in the Scriptures. They are viewed as keys to understanding the character and destiny of the person to whom it is given. Moses, for example, the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, was named by Pharaoh’s daughter. She pulled him out of the Nile after his mother had placed him in a basket in the river in order to hide him. The name she gave him means, He-Who-Pulls-Out. This name certainly did reveal his destiny for many years later Yahweh God commissioned Moses to pull out the people of Israel from Egypt where they had been enslaved. This commission was given to him while he was tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro in the wilderness of Sinai. There he saw a bush burning that was not being consumed. He investigated this strange site. And when he did, God spoke to him from the bush. God charged him to go down to Egypt and lead the Israelites out from there to Canaan, the land promised by Yahweh to Abraham and his descendants. Before Moses accepted this commission he asked God to identify himself saying, Here I will come to the Children of Israel and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they will say to me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them? (Exodus 3:13) God replied to Moses, Thus you shall say to the Children of Israel: Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, sends me to you. (Exodus 3:15) Thus, Moses by his inquiry pulled out the personal Name from God who disclosed that, he, Yahweh, is the God who revealed himself to Abraham, to his son Isaac, and to his son Jacob. Yahweh changed Jacob’s name to Israel (Genesis 32:29) and it was his 12 sons who formed the clans of Israel. When, then, Moses brought the clans of Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness of Sinai and formed them into nation, they committed to the worship Yahweh alone. Thus, the quintessential confession of faith for the Jews is, Hearken O Israel: Yahweh our God, Yahweh (is) One. (Deuteronomy 6:4)

There is some ambiguity in that confession. Just how is, Yahweh is One, to be understood? Does it mean Yahweh alone is God, and there is no other? That is certainly what it has come to mean for the Jews. Moses and the people of Israel recognized in their day that the other nations of the world worshiped a variety of gods, just as they do today. After all, when in Egypt, the Israelites had worshipped the gods of the Egyptians. Or, to be more precise, most nations recognized that there is a Most High God over all the other gods, but in practice that God was not routinely worshiped for he was seen as too far removed from the day to day affairs of humanity. Worship focused upon the lesser gods for it was these deities, they believed, that governed the affairs of ordinary life. For example, Pharaoh’s court magicians, with their occult practices that called upon the powers of these lesser gods, were able to replicate the first several plagues Yahweh brought upon Egypt to convince Pharaoh to release the Israelites. But when the magicians could not replicate the subsequent plagues, they reported to Pharaoh that the finger of God had brought these, and that the Most High God was intervening in the world on behalf of the Israelites. (Exodus 8:15) This demonstration of the power of the Most High God led the Israelites to the conclusion that Yahweh God is high above all other gods, and that he alone is worthy of worship. He alone is the One true God and in comparison to him the other gods are not really Divine. When the Israelites exited Egypt and were pursued by Pharaoh but delivered from his hand at the Red Sea, they gave voice to this affirmation of the One true God in a song of praise, singing, Who is like you among the gods, O Yahweh! Who is like you majestic among the holy-ones, Feared-One of praises, Doer of Wonders! (Exodus 15:11)

There is also some ambiguity as to the meaning of the Name Yahweh. Or, it is more accurate to say there is more than one possible meaning of the Name and these several meanings reveal a depth and breadth of God’s nature and character. One meaning of the Name Yahweh, when translated into English, is I am who I am. This way of translating the Name is a statement about the eternal existence of Yahweh God. He alone can be said to truly exist. He alone has Life in himself, and to the degree that any other beings exists, visible or invisible, they have been created by Yahweh God who generously shares his Life with them and gives them life. This Life he imparts by giving a measure of his Spirit (breath) to each creature. The creation account of Adam in Genesis 2 reveals this. In that account, Yahweh God forms man out of the dust of the ground and breaths into him the breath of life. Man then becomes a living being that exists always bounded by and dependent upon God for life. (Genesis 2:7) The Psalmist