The Jewish Annotated New Testament (49 page)

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Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles
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from Jerusalem,
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and talking with each other about all these things that had happened.
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While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them,
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but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
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And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.
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18
Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”
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He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth,
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who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,
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and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.
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But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
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Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.
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Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning,
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and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.
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Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”
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Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!
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Was it not necessary that the Messiah
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should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
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Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

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As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on.
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But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
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When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.
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Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.
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They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us
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while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
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That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together.
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They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”
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Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

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While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
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37
They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
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He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?
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Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
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And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
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While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
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They gave him a piece of broiled fish,
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and he took it and ate in their presence.

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Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
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Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,
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and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah
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is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,
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and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
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You are witnesses
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of these things.
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And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

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Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them.
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While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.
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52
And they worshiped him, and
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returned to Jerusalem with great joy;
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and they were continually in the temple blessing God.
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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN

The Gospel according to John, also known as the Fourth Gospel due to its placement in the New Testament, is one of paradoxes and contradictions both in its content and in the reactions it evokes in its readers. It tells the story of the Son of God who becomes flesh and dwells in the world, and dies an ignominious death that nevertheless marks his exaltation, ascension to God, and the divine triumph over the forces of evil. It presents a sublime vision of a future salvation that is also in some inexplicable way already a present reality. Many readers love this Gospel because of its sublime language and imagery, and its ability to lift its readers out of the historical moments of Jesus’ life to the lofty heights of the cosmos. Others dislike it because of its insistence on the exclusive truth of its message, and the absence of space for any other way of viewing the world.

The paradox that this Gospel presents extends to its relationship to Judaism. It makes abundant use of the Hebrew Bible, through direct quotations and allusions, as well as, more subtly, through its appropriation of some of its characters, motifs and stories that are then interpreted through the lens of faith in Jesus as Christ and Son of God. This Gospel also has numerous parallels to other Jewish sources, from the second temple and rabbinic periods, as well as references to Jewish practices. At the same time, the Gospel is highly disturbing in its representation of “the Jews.” “The Jews” are the archenemies of Jesus and his followers; they are blind to the truth and relentless in pursuit of Jesus to the point of masterminding his demise. Their behavior toward Jesus and their failure to believe demonstrate that they have relinquished their covenantal relationship with the God of Israel, and show them to be instead the children of the devil. For this reason, John’s Gospel has been called the most Jewish and the most anti-Jewish of the Gospels.

DATE AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT

John’s Gospel is generally considered the latest of the four canonical gospels to be written. This view was held as early as the second century CE. The church father Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–211/216), was quoted by the fourth century Christian historian Eusebius of Caesarea (
Hist. eccl
. 6.14.7), to the effect that John’s Gospel was written to supplement the other Gospels. Today, the question of John’s relationship to the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) remains controversial. To be sure, there are a number of significant parallels between John and the Synoptics, such as the feeding of the multitudes (6.1–14; cf. Mt 14.13–21; Mk 16.32–44; Lk 9.10–17) and Jesus’ walking on water (6.16–21; cf. Mt 14.22; Mk 6.45–51). On the basis of these parallels, some scholars have argued that John is familiar with one or more of these Gospels. Yet most of the stories, such as the wedding at Cana (2.1–13), Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman (4.1–42), and the raising of Lazarus (11.1–44), are unique to the Fourth Gospel. The Gospel also has a distinctive perspective on Jesus, such as belief in his identity as the preexistent Word and the Word’s role in the creation (1.1–5). It seems reasonable to suggest that while all the Gospels had access to some common traditions, insufficient evidence exists to determine whether the Fourth Gospel had access to a complete text of one or more of the Synoptics. For this reason, it is not possible to date John on the basis of a literary dependence upon one or more other canonical Gospels.

Dating the Gospel based on its theology is equally problematic. A late first-century or early second-century dating has been suggested on the basis of the Gospel’s high Christology, which focuses primarily on Jesus’ role as the Son of God rather than on his human aspect. Earlier examples of exalted views of Jesus, such as Paul’s letter to the Philippians (2.6–11), make this a less useful criterion for determining the Gospel’s date.

Nor are the historical circumstances in which the Gospel has been written of much assistance. No external evidence exists for the historical first audience of the Gospel, but on the basis of internal evidence it has been argued that the Gospel was written within and for a particular group of Christ-believers, often referred to in scholarly literature as the Johannine community. The particular circumstances that led to the final version of the Gospel are often reconstructed from three references to expulsion from the synagogue on account of confessing Jesus to be the messiah (9.22; 12.42; 16.2). Because expulsion on these grounds would be anachronistic to the time of Jesus, it is often argued that these passages refer to an exclusion of Jewish believers in Christ from the synagogue, either in John’s community or more broadly. Exclusion from the synagogue, it is argued, would have been tantamount to complete and forcible removal from the Jewish community, with numerous social and economic consequences. Proponents of this interpretation argue that the traumatic experience of expulsion was written into the community’s story of Jesus and suggest that experience can be reconstructed by reading the Gospel on two levels: as a story of Jesus set in the first third of the first century CE that simultaneously recounts a story of the Johannine community set in the last decade or two of the first century. External corroboration for this hypothesis has been sought in the liturgical curse on the heretics, “Birchat ha-minim,” euphemistically called a Blessing on the Heretics, that was added to the Eighteen Benedictions that constitute the central prayers of the Jewish liturgy. The theory is that at some point in the late first century, Jewish authorities added this curse to the daily liturgy as a way of flushing undesirables, including Jewish Christ-confessors, out of the worship service and thereby from the community as a whole. If this theory is correct, it would provide a basis for dating the Gospel to the late first century, after 85 CE.

This construction is flawed on both literary and historical grounds. From a literary-critical point of view, there is no evidence that the Gospel in fact encodes the history and experience of the community in its story of Jesus. With the exception of the expulsion passages, no other parts of the Gospel lend themselves easily to this two-level reading. The well-documented theological diversity within first-century Judaism, as evidenced by the widely differing views of the Pharisees and Sadducees on fundamental matters such as the authority of oral tradition and the belief in bodily resurrection and the distinctive views expressed in the Dead Sea Scrolls, makes it unlikely that Jews would have been excluded from the synagogue for believing Jesus to be the Messiah. Indeed, in the period of 132–135 similar claims were apparently made for Simeon Bar Kosiba to be a messiah, by the prominent Rabbi Akiva, whose status and stature within early rabbinic Judaism did not suffer as a result. Finally, the manuscript evidence for Birchat ha-minim as a whole does not support the view that the curse would have been in existence at this time in a form that could have served to exclude Jewish Christ-confessors from the synagogue. For these reasons, it is difficult to use historical circumstances as a basis for dating the Gospel.